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What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy! Also, just a heads up when this video goes
live I’ll be giving away And if you enjoy the video hit that like button
and if you don’t please hit the dislike, Anyways let’s get started.
Back in patch 5.22, right at the start of the preseason to season 6, was when Maw of
Malmortius and Hexdrinker received a pretty significant change, which involved a minor
nerf to hexdrinker and a rework that was a buff to maw of malmortius. Before that change,
Hexdrinker was a strong item and was definitely viable as a pickup for the laning phase or
the mid game, but maw of malmortius actually was a bit underrepresented for the most part
as it was a lot less powerful than hexdrinker in terms of the gold spent to power gained
ratio, so the buff to maw was arguably deserved at the time. However, after the buff maw evolved
from this niche late game pickup to a seriously strong option, comparable to zhonyas almost
for ad champions in the sense that versus ap, you pretty much always pick it up, and
with the hexdrinker component bring such a powerful option, it gives you a huge advantage
in those matchups, especially for mid laners like talon and zed facing ap champions.
So based on the history of the two it’s definitely important to look at the items
separately, because although hexdrinker might just be a cheap part to the larger item that
is maw, the fact that you can pick it up as early as your first back during the laning
phase means it can be just as if not more impactful to your situation and lane. And
since the cooldown is 90 seconds only, that almost always results in a situation where
if the mage wants to kill a target with hexdrinker, they have to just power through it, rather
than trying to find a time where the cooldown isn’t up, since most ap ultimates have a
similar cooldown or even a longer cooldown than 90 seconds, so there isn’t much of
a cooldown window to take advantage of, or you have to find a way to proc it without
using your ultimate which is tough, and it forces the mage player into a really difficult
playstyle to pull off. The key thing to understand here, is that
the way magic damage works is a lot different to how attack damage works. Magic damage is
almost entirely burst oriented, and cooldown based, which means that any shield of some
sort is an incredible counter because if you tank the burst of an AP champion, you are
good to go until their cooldowns come back up, whereas attack damage is able to pump
out sustained dps with auto attacks. So the shield on these items give you a huge amount
of leg room to work with when facing an ap champion, and the raw combat value the item
provides is honestly just insane. Being able to tank out the burst of an ap champion, especially
in the early game when the mages are just working with their base damages and not very
much ap at all, is an extremely powerful effect, and in combo with the magic resistance hexdrinker
and maw gives absurd combat effectiveness versus an ap champion, and unlike zhonyas,
you aren’t stunning yourself when you use it, and hexdrinker is a big reason why ad
champions tend to have a lot of strong matchups in the mid lane.
As well, the big thing that maw has over hexdrinker is the lifegrip passive that grants 25% attack
speed, 10% lifesteal and 10% spellvamp when the shield procs, and that component of the
item synergizes incredibly well with the shield, since it procs but comes with this huge boost
in survivability. And with that said, remember that both hexdrinker and maw are just about
100% gold efficient, so despite providing an incredibly useful ability, they aren’t
sacrificing too much in the stats compartment for it.
But at the same time, there’s no doubt that zhonya’s is a great item on the flip side
that kind of does like the same thing that maw does, but in the opposite end of the spectrum.
So I do think maw and hexdrinker have a place in league of legends for sure, it’s just
difficult to measure. And this kind of item hurts certain styles
of mages quite a bit. Ever since season 6 began, mages have taken a fair hit overall
as a result of the item changes, as most of the ad items were buffed or were given more
options, while the mage items remained the same or received nerfs. And because of that,
we’ve seen mostly just the mages with a lot of utility like Lux and Ahri really succeed,
while the more damage focused mages have struggled a bit, they haven’t been thrusted out of
the meta, but they are definitely a little bit weaker than they were in season 5. Nerfing
maw and hexdrinker would be a buff to pretty much every mid and top lane mage, and even
the junglers to some extent. So it’s a very tricky item to change, since no matter how
you change it, it’s going to effect a ridiculous amount of champions in the game, potential
more than any other item in the entire game except for the stuff that everyone builds
like boots, wards, and trinkets, since hexdrinker has a huge effect on those building it, and
on the mages facing it, whereas most items effect one or the other.
Maw as an item though is one that is probably on a power level that is a bit higher than
hexdrinker. For starters, maw of malmortius has a win rate of around 58%, while hexdrinker’s
winrate is around 50%. Now item win rates are a weird thing to go off of, since they
are situational and don’t mean that much, but the added lifegrip passive that maw brings
combo with the shield so well to bring an item that accomplishes a lot of what titanic
hydra did before it got nerfed, in that it provides you with a lot of damage, especially
when you consider the armor pen, while also bringing you quite a lot of tankiness. 50
magic resistance is a lot, and an item that makes you tanky and gives a lot of survivability
while still making you deal tons of damage isn’t exactly the most balanced thing for
the game. And to top it off with hexdrinker the build path of the item is fantastic, and
the gold efficiency isn’t bad either. And once the passive procs you ae talking like
160% gold efficiency worth of stats, which at that point the item becomes pretty insane,
and the shield part ensures that you will live to make use of those stats as well.
Overall, I’m not entirely sure if Hexdrinker should be nerfed, I mean it’s a good comparison
to seeker’s armguard and the two are on a somewhat similar power level at the moment,
but maw is a different story and probably deserves a minor hit to the magic resistance
or attack damage at most. It’s hard to justify nerfing the passive, because that is likely
to hurt the viability of the item quite a lot, since if you hurt the passive shield
of either item, they are just going to do a much worse job of accomplishing their goal
of being an awesome dueling item versus any ap champion, but a hit to the passive stats
would help out mages a decent amount in matchups that are already bad for them regardless of
hexdrinker and maw for the most part, so at this point maw kind of is what titanic hydra
was before the nerf, it just gives too much tankiness and damage, and those two things
are really powerful when chocked into just a single item.
However, if either hexdrinker or maw would be nerfed into unviability, that would be
quite unfair for the melee champions who still have to deal with the power of seeker’s
armguard and zhonyas. And it’s not a bad interaction, when one side has a maw and the
other has a zhonya’s it’s not unfair for either side in terms of the mechanics the
items bring, and it creates a skillful interaction, so neither maw nor hexdrinker deserves a serious
nerf, otherwise that would put the advantage in favor of the ap champions by a lot, it’s
just that at the moment maw probably deserves a little bit of a toning down to be a bit
more fair for the ap champions to make that type of matchup a little bit more balanced
overall. And that’s just about it. If you enjoyed
the video subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!