[2021] Item discussion: The Collector as a second item against LDR

Long post, so I’ll provide a TL;DR a the beginning:

Both items are viable 2nd purchases, without either of them being objectively superior under all circumstances (except maybe for Aphelios, still not completely undisputable). Picking The Collector over LDR as a 2nd item has several advantages:

• Versatile build path with lots of stats at different purchase points allows you to leverage early advantages.
• Offers significantly more AD at a point in the game when you’re starved for stats.
• Increased damage against squishy targets (mages, ADCs, enchanters, lethality stackers), steelcaps are not enough to invert this.
• Big Numba is not as bad as people make it to be.

However, it also presents these main drawbacks:

• Scales progressively worse as more items/levels enter the equation. Breakeven at IE 3rd item against squishier targets, hence requiring some tangible early gain from the purchase to justify the item slot at later stages.
• Lacking the value provided by Giant Slayer against Goredrinker/Steraks users.
• Forced to choose between finishing GA or LDR as a 4th item once Stopwatch is used.

As such, considering sensible itemization from the enemy team, it becomes mostly a matter of deciding between maximizing your damage against priority targets during a portion of the midgame (16->27 gametime), or lightly sacrificing your damage so you assure better scaling at 3+ items.

In Competitive the item may be slightly overbought, given the higher control over which fights are taken. In a Solo Queue environment Collector is more often the best choice.

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Context

For the past weeks, there’s been a very interesting discussion regarding the merit of building LDR as a 2nd item over The Collector (henceforth shortened to Collector) when itemizing for crit. Some analysts have apparently done the math, yes, The Math™, the one that’s absolutely conclusive and infallible, and according to this math the verdict is quite clear: Collector sucks. Big numba bad. Or at least that’s what’s being regurgitated by a portion of the playerbase at this point.

The reasoning behind this thought is quite simple; when you take a hard look at these two items you’ll compare them for what seemingly defines them over other crits items; the armor penetration. So naturally, you’d begin by analyzing their performances relative to this niche, and when doing so it becomes quite clear that LDR outperforms Collector against anyone with over 34 armor (even considering the maximum amount of 12 armor penetration). So what makes Collector even worth considering? Why am I writing this post?

The argument for Collector as a 2nd item

To put it quite simply; the one thing that puts Collector as a competitive option is the difference in the amount of AD both items offer in their build path and completion. LDR absolutely annihilates Collector when it comes to scaling, but the truth is Collector offers nearly double the amount of bonus AD (1.83x to be slightly more precise) and because we’re discussing the purchase at a 2nd item point, this presents a considerable variance in your total damage output, especially in champions with bonus AD ratios and/or low base damage numbers. To add some perspective, if we take into account a level 11 Miss Fortune with Galeforce or Shieldbow, building Collector as the 2nd item will give her 14.5% more total AD and 26% more bonus AD relative to an LDR purchase. Here’s what this means for her damage:

^{I picked Miss Fortune because she’s a relatively simple example, with tAD ability multipliers and a decent mixture of base damage present in her kit. The same calculations can be applied to other ADCs, with Aphelios being probably the one notable exception, which I talk about later}.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/y9chh8rg8i

Her auto, passive, and R damage is higher with Collector until you start hitting anyone with over 96 armor (a considerably high value at this point), and/or someone with significantly more HP than you. Considering we’re talking about two distinct variables (armor and HP), it’s unfeasible to talk about something even resemblant to a single breakpoint, or a specific set of item combinations that makes one item outperform the other. Generally speaking, Collector will, unsurprisingly, perform better against squishier targets (other ranged carries, enchanters, lethality stackers) while LDR is stronger against bruisers or engage supports.

Even at this point, LDR can outperform Collector against defensive itemization purchases, however, the degree by which this happens is often overstated; if a squishy champion buys Plated Steelcaps that by itself is NOT enough for LDR to outperform Collector. And if a Bruiser buys Goredrinker and Steelcaps the difference between the two items is negligible if the 2nd item purchase isn’t either another HP item (Steraks, Titanic) or a heavier armor option (Deaths Dance, Chain vest component).

Let’s use some practical examples to get the point across. All of the builds below were taken from varied matches in Worlds group stages at the time a Miss Fortune completed her second item:

1. Level 11 Aphelios will have the same hp pool as a level 11 Miss Fortune, with 54 armor, increased to 60 with armor shard. Without any other bonus armor/HP components, Collector will deal 6.1% more damage than LDR.
2. Level 13 Syndra with Ludens and Archangels will have 100 more hp and 62 armor, let’s assume no armor shard in a mage vs mage matchup. Collector will do 5% more damage than LDR.
3. Level 11 Jhin will have the same hp pool, with an armor shard if he buys Steelcaps he’ll have 80 armor, Collector will do 2.4% more damage than LDR.
4. Level 13 Twisted Fate with Everfrost and RFC will have 400 more hp and 61 armor (with armor shard). Collector will do 2.8% more damage than RFC.
5. Level 13 Camille with Divine Sunderer, Steelcaps and Ravenous Hydra will have 500 more hp and 97 armor. LDR does 3.8% more damage than Collector.
6. Level 13 Jayce with Eclipse and Muramana will have 65 armor in cannon stance, 90 in hammer stance. Collector does 5.1% more damage in cannon stance and 0.85% more in hammer stance.
7. Level 13 Kennen with Rocketbelt and Zhonyas + 1 mountain drake will have 300 more hp and 120 armor. LDR does 5.3% more damage than Collector.
8. Level 11 Lee Sin with Goredrinker, Steelcaps, and a Phage will have 600 more hp and 88 armor. LDR does 2.7% more damage than Collector.
9. Level 9 Leona with Pauldrons, a Kindlegem, a Cloth armor and Steelcaps will have 200 more hp and 112 armor. LDR will deal 3.5% more damage than Collector.

Only against double HP items (Gore-Steraks-Steelcaps for instance) or HP-Armor (Gore-Deaths Dance-Steelcaps) will you be dealing considerably more damage with LDR at 2 items. And against squishier targets, Collector will consistently outdamage LDR at this point, even in the rare cases where the carries buy Steelcaps (occasionally TF and Jhin will do this, but it’s still rare). Also worth taking into account that I tried to pick somewhat balanced games for these examples; depending on who’s getting extra exp and plates these numbers might be more skewed towards an item than the other. On average I’d say that ADCs are the fastest at completing their 2nd items, but I don’t have the hard numbers to back that assumption.

From this, we can at the very least conclude that LDR is NOT better than Collector 2nd in any given situation, there’ll be several real games where the Collector purchase outdamages LDR against priority targets in teamfights between 21-24 minutes, and that’s a relevant gamestate for at the very least dragon contestation in this current meta.

3rd item point

As mentioned before, Collector simply can’t compete with LDR when it comes to scaling. However, the difference between the 2 items when you take into account extra levels and items (on both the champion in question and his target) is slightly overblown.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/q0bmjjqnha

What I mean by this is, LDR has Collector convincingly beaten at IE 3rd item, but it’s not a complete wipeout. In fact, taking into account the MF example once again, her autos, passive, and ult damage at level 15 with a 3rd item Infinity Edge would still do (just barely) the same damage against any ADC/Mage/Enchanter/Lethality user without extra HP/Armor from items (which granted, in the case of mages is slightly more unlikely given the prevalence of Zhonyas). And before you complete IE, if you sit at a BF sword for a long time, Collector will still outdamage LDR against squishy targets.

Time for some more examples, again from Worlds Group stages games, builds at the point a Miss Fortune finished her IE (tried to use the same games as the previous examples when possible):

1. Level 15 Aphelios will have the same hp pool as the level 15 Miss Fortune. 74 armor from base + shard. LDR does 0.2% more damage than Collector.
2. Level 16 Syndra with Ludens, Seraphs, and 2NLRs has the same hp pool and 74 armor. LDR does 0.2% more damage than Collector.
3. Level 15 Jhin with Steelcaps has same hp pool and 94 armor. LDR will do 5% more damage than Collector.
4. Level 15 Jayce with Eclipse, Ghostblade, and Muramana has same hp pool and 73 armor (98 in hammer stance). Damage is equal in cannon stance, LDR does 3.9% more damage than Collector in Hammer stance.
5. Level 15 Twisted Fate with Everfrost, Zhonyas, and RFC + 1 mountain drake will have 200 more hp and 114 armor. LDR does 7.5% more damage than Collector.
6. Level 16 Kennen with Rocketbelt, Zhonyas, Voidstaff, and 2 Mountain drakes will have 200 more hp and 150 armor. LDR does 11.8% more damage than Collector.
7. Level 13 Lee Sin with Goredrinker, Steelcaps, and a Steraks will have 500 more hp and 96 armor. LDR does 7.5% more damage than Collector.
8. Level 10 Leona with Bulwark, Locket and Steelcaps, and 1 Mountain drake has same hp pool and 144 armor. LDR does 9.5% more damage than Collector.

Collector is able to hold its ground against anything that isn’t itemizing specifically for Armor/HP. One thing that immediately jumped to my attention was how small the HP gap became as soon as ADCs start gaining some levels; even against mages investing into HP mythics or Cosmic Drive the Giant Slayer passive barely offers value. It’s really only the big hp stackers who itemize into Steraks + Goredrinker who skew the calculations the most in this regard.

With that being said, LDR beats Collector quite convincingly, there really isn’t any question here. If one could jump straight from the 2nd item to the 3rd item without engaging in any fight whatsoever, there’d be very little reason to ever consider Collector. But this is where the discussion truly gets interesting in my opinion; just how highly do you value a 2 item powerspike?

Let’s put it simply; getting as much immediate power as possible is usually the strongest possible move in this game, as even in controlled games there is constant teamfighting/damage trading in the process of contesting objectives. Unless your team is consciously running a comp that just plays through sidelanes and gets objectives in such a way, you’ll be often forced into fights even at points when you don’t feel strongest. It’s very rare to see teams just handshaking and trading crossmap objectives with the intent of just scaling, as that usually goes against the gameplan of the team with the worse late game options.

With that being said, I do believe Collector is overbought in competitive. I've seen several games where the Collector purchase just didn't make sense in the context of team comps and gameplan. However, I've also seen people bashing absolutely fine Collector purchases, especially on Miss Fortune games, for seemingly all the wrong reasons (more often than not, pure ignorance "THE MATH HAS BEEN DONE, COLLECTOR SUX!"). It's especially egregious when the early game dynamics are completely disregarded, and people chose to ignore the inventory advantage provided by Collector's build path.

Build path and components

In this current meta we’re seeing a lot of early teamfights at 3rd drake spawn, which usually happens at around the time 2nd items are being completed or just about to. This can add some relative value to the purchase of a Collector, as it’ll provide better damage against squishier (often priority) targets, while having a considerably stronger build path. Build path is something that isn’t really mentioned often, I’ll just mention this; LDRs components suck compared to Collectors. Last Whisper costs 1450g against Dirk’s 1100g, while providing 10 less AD and a weakened version of the %armor pen which does not offset the loss of AD. And to add to this, Collector also has an extra component in the form of the Pickaxe, while LDR only allows you to buy a Crit Cloak (weak component at this stage) while you can’t afford the remaining 950g combine cost.

Here’s what this means for your damage as a level 10 MF: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/0xt7zbsdow

If you’re forced into a fight at a point where you can’t afford the extra gold to finish up LDR you’ll potentially be at a very disadvantageous position. At this stage, the extra AD is REALLY impactful in your damage, in such a way that the 20% armorpen is simply incapable of out-damaging it in any realistic scenario. Or if you’re actually ahead and you WANT to force a fight against an enemy at a lower item point, then perhaps buying Collector components is the best way to snowball a temporary lead.

The BIG NUMBA

Wait I actually can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this part of the item yet, what the hell is wrong with me? Yeah you can just completely ignore the rest of this thread tbh, Collector just automatically wins based on big numba alone. I mean...

• Huge dopamine release
• 999
• Looks cool
• Absolutely based “pew” sound effect
• Very satisfying
• +25g
• Dopamine release (so good it's listed twice)

What’s there not to like?

Ok but this effect has actually become a meme (somewhat deservingly so at first), to the point where it’s often completely disregarded. While the value of this passive is hard to quantify, you can simply look at it this way: the person you’re trying to kill has its health pool reduced by a flat 5% of its total value when fighting you. Yeah, that’s it. Fighting a Kaisa with 1700 hp? Boom, not anymore, she actually has 1615 hp. Fighting an Irelia with 3000 hp? Nope, she actually has 2850 hp, Collector just removed a Ruby Crystal from that guy’s inventory lol.

But the overkill!

You’ll always risk overkilling an enemy, whether you have Collector or not, getting an exact lethal on an enemy is incredibly rare. What Collector does is in essence quite simple, it reduces the total amount of damage you must do before an enemy dies, by a percentage of that enemy’s total hp. Of course, this only applies to your damaging effects though. It also has a perhaps not-so-obvious synergy with extended damage effects. For example, an enemy tries to flash away from the last wave of a Miss Fortune’s R before it kills him? BIG NUMBA. Bruiser tries to kite away from damage so he can lifesteal and reengage? Oh what’s that, there’s a red buff on the Collector Kaisa? BOOM, +25g.

Also worth mentioning that the +25g effect really adds up in chaotic games. Getting a potential +125g per teamfight (rare, but possible) is the equivalent of getting another minion wave’s worth of gold. Essentially a slightly better version of Triumph’s second passive.

Aphelios

Considering his current popularity - and how the debate also applies to him - I’m nearly obligated to clarify this one thing: Aphelios is a bit of a special case. Because he obtains an unnaturally high amount of extra AD from his passive AND extra lethality (which actually has a synergistic relationship with the %armor pen from LDR), the time window during which Collector will outdamage LDR is actually quite tiny.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/zmidsblv6g

As you can see, LDR outscales Collector on auto-attack damage at 72.8 armor, while the same item situation with MF required 96 armor. The damage from abilities will show somewhat of a similar scenario, although I didn’t really help the case for Collector as I used the base damage values (and bonus AD ratios) for a level 13 Aphelios rather than level 11, mostly because I was too lazy to include all multipliers possible. With that being said, the whole story about build components still applies to Aphelios, and in a situation where you’ve gotten several tower plates/kills early into the game, consistently translating your gold lead into an advantageous item situation might still be optimal if you’re able to force fights in your favor. In such situations, Collector actually gains some value over LDR. Still way harder to justify the purchase compared to an MF though. Also, hilariously enough, if you do manage to get to 4 items with both LDR and Collector, it’s actually a killer combo given the way lethality (flat arpen) is applied after %armpen.

Aphelios is THE special case though, with other ADCs like Draven, Kaisa, etc the situation is pretty much identical to MF’s, give or take a few extra dynamics between base damages vs bonus AD ratios.

Conclusion

While it’s currently very fashionable to bash on Collector purchases, the item still has a place in our inventories, we just need to see it for what it is; a snowballing option with a great build path that maximizes the damage against enemies not itemizing defensively. You can’t expect it to outperform LDR against teams stacking armor and/or HP, and you absolutely cannot think of it as a replacement for LDR in your build. LDR is almost mandatory at later game stages, as you have more items and face higher amounts of armor the item is simply irreplaceable. With that being said, you won’t automatically lose the game if you build Collector, lose a teamfight, and the enemy team starts building armor. While the item has some hits of a gambling nature, its worth isn't solely defined by the ability to snowball a game. You’ll be in a disadvantageous position compared to an LDR purchase, but not doomed to be irrelevant for the rest of the game, the difference between LDR and Collector at that point is not yet gigantic and you’ll still have invested your gold into a considerable amount of AD.

Oh, and on another note, you can multiply everything that said about “chaos, early teamfights, snowballing” by a factor of 10 if thinking purely about soloqueue lol.

Please

just

buy

Collector

in

solo

queue

. The games are too erratic, there’s barely anything resembling a gameplan even at higher levels, RNG fights galore. Perfect environment for Collector.

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