Underused Items: Ohmwrecker

Hello everyone,
In this post about underused items, I will be discussing Ohmwrecker.

First of all, the item's stats:

+350 health
+50 ability power
+15 health regeneration
+15 mana regeneration
 Unique Active: Prevents the closest enemy tower from attacking for 2.5 seconds (120 second cooldown). This effect cannot be used against the same tower more than once every 7.5 seconds.
Recipie:

Ruby Crystal (475g)
Blasting Wand (860g)
Philosopher's Stone (700g)

Item cost 2850g (800g)

According to the wiki, this item's gold efficiency without it's active is: Total Gold Value = 3452g.

So, seeing as this item is so cost effective, why is it not picked up? Well there are many reasons for this. First of all, it builds out of Philosopher's Stone, which is an item built almost exclusively on supports. Of course, the item's active is a great active for a support to have in a dive composition team, because it allows for safer turret dives. However, look at the item's overall stats. First of all, it builds out of a blasting wand, and gives 50 AP. Supports in general don't want AP. Sometimes they are built with penetration on someone like Elise, but almost never with any more AP than comes with a kage's lucky pick and possibly one of it's upgrades. So, while this item may be cost efficient, it is not the stats that the obvious intended buyers (supports) would be buying. This is problem 1 with the item.

The next reason is that the active on the item is really a niche active. It is only worth putting gold into this active if you are playing a turret diving composition, which is a team composition not always used.

Another problem is that this item's active could easily become useless to you very quickly. Let's say you buy the item to allow your team to turret dive, but then something goes wrong in the next fight and the other team gets ahead and now your team is on the defensive. Until the moment that you are able to go on the offensive again (if ever) this active is not helping you at all.

So, to balance this item, two things need to be fixed from what I see. First of all, this item needs to have stats intended for one role, not stats split all over the place. Secondly, the item's active should have some kind of use when you are on defense. I do not believe that the item being niche is a problem that necessarily needs fixing, because niche items can be kind of cool and allow for some interesting diversity when trying out new team compositions.

There are two ways that I could possibly see this item going. Either it could be made into a tank item, having tank stats along with the active, or it could be made into a support item, still building from philosopher's stone, but also out of other stats that a support might want.

So, let us explore both of these options. First of all, how to make it into a tank item:

When it first came out, Ohmwrecker was designed as a tank item, then later changed into the weird supporty item it is now. So what went wrong to make them change it? Well, the item just wasn't worth it to buy on a tank. The logic was why build this item to be tankier against turrets for 2.5 seconds when I can build this other item to be tanky against everything all the time? Riot realized that there was no reason for a tank to buy this item, and turned it into what it is now (which is not much better in my opinion). Initially, it build out of catalyst and chain vest, ending up with 350 health, 300 mana, and 55 armor. It kept the same active. So what was wrong? First of all it had mana, which while a good stat on a lot of tanks, limited the item to tanks with mana, and is not a stat that you see tanks build. This is really the main problem I see with the previous iteration of the item as a tank item. It gave health and armor which as you can see from sunfire cape are great stats, but because it gave mana, it didn't give enough of the tanky stats to make it worth it over something like sunfire cape, which is also a nice damage and split pushing source for tanks.

So, how would I change Ohmwrecker back into a tank item? Well first of all, let us start with it's old recipie. From here there are a few options we can go with. But for all of them, we will be removing catalyst as a recipe item, and mana as a stat. At this point, we can go a few different routes. We can either turn it into a health/mr item, a health/mr/cdr item, a health/armor item, or a health/armor/cdr item. For the sake of balance, let us keep cdr off of it (meaning no kindlegem in the recipe). This leaves us with giants belt, or two ruby crystals as the source of the items health (since it clearly needs more based on the first iteration of the item's success). Let us just say giant's belt will be the health item, but keep in mind that it could easily be two ruby crystals.

So, the item could either build out of the chain vest and giants belt like sunfire cape does, and be a decision item based on this. Do I want to be able to turret dive well, or split push well? The other option is to replace the chain vest with a negatron cloak. This will make the item into a health mr item that gives you another option from banshee's veil and spirit visage, both of which are niche pick items. Either of these fixes would make the item worth it for tanks with the right team composition in my opinion.


Now lets move on to making the item good for supports. For this, we will edit it's current recipe. First of all, remove the blasting wand and AP from the item; supports do not need this. Replace this with mana manipulator, another support item, and lower the item's combine cost. This will do a couple of things. First of all, it will make the item more affordable to supports. Secondly, it will give only stats that supports would want to have. Note that I had initially thought of replacing blasting want with emblem of valor, but I do not want to make it not worth it to buy both ohmwrecker and aegis of the legion, and I do not want to make any too powerful aura stacks. So mana manipulator was my next thought. Also please note that mana manipulator is gold effecient if at least one other person on your team has mana and is near you, and considering most teams with have 3-4 mana users, this aura will continue to be useful in the late game.

So, the item will now build from Philosopher's Stone, Mana Manipulator, and Ruby Crystal, which all gives stats that supports want, and the active will be an active that supports may want on aggressive tower diving teams.

There is one last change that I would like to make for this item, whether it be a tank item or support item. This change is to address my second problem above, and it is to make it so that if cast near an allied turret, ohmwrecker will give this turret a buff in damage output, and make it immune to enemy ohmwreckers for the duration. Making this change will make the item less of a risky take, since it will have uses whether you are on the offensive or defensive, which was one of my goals for the item.

So with these changes in mind, I think that this item could be turned into a strong niche support or tank item. What does everyone else think? Leave a comment below if you have any questions or anything to add!

Until Next Time!
"Stand and Fight"
-Rikukun