I'm seeing a lot misinformation, and misunderstandings. There is also a lot of information that might not be known to people currently, so I thought I'd write this post.

You are not forced to buy a Mythic item first.

If you feel like there is a better Legendary item for your first item, buying that and then the Mythic second might be better. You also don't lose out on the extra stats that Mythic items give, since those are only added for each Legendary (Mythics aren't considered Legendary).

Basically, don't just think "oh I must buy a Mythic, because the item is a Mythic", instead just think what items you want, that might actually be a Mythic, but don't just buy it because it says it's a Mythic.

You can buy more than 1 Doran's item (sort of).

All named passives are now Unique, if you ever read people say you can only buy 1 Starting item or 1 Doran's Item, they meant that the passives don't stack, you can still buy as many as you want.

Doran's Blade is weaker on Auto Attack based carries, but might be stronger on AD Casters.

While now you only heal for 1% of damage dealt to minions, you heal for all physical damage dealt, including abilities.

Doran's Ring gives about the same amount of mana as it currently does on Live.

The new Doran's Ring gives you 6 Mana every time you kill a minion. In 30 seconds an average of 19/3 (6.333... or 6 and 1/3) minions spawn. Assuming you get all CS you will get 38 Mana per wave (or every 30 seconds) = 1.266... Mana per second, this is the maximum possible and over 4 minutes will give 60 more Mana. But you will almost never get every single last hit. You need to get 79% of last hits to get the same amount of mana, and if you get 90%, then you will have 34 more Mana, barely 1 more spell cast over 4 minutes with incredibly good last hitting.

But it does give 3 HP per last hit to manaless champs, which is nice.

Critical Strike Chance is a lot easier to build, but it's also less effective.

There are tons of items that now grant Crit, most ADCs will have easy access to 100% crit while also building stats like Life Steal [Bloodthirster], Armor Pen [Lord Dominik's Regards] or even having QSS [Mercurial Scimitar] or Grevious Wounds [Mortal Reminder]. The difference is that Crit now only deals 175% of your AD instead of 200% of your AD.

All Legendary Items are now Unique.

Something new Riot recently added. Basically items can now be Unique. For example Infinity Edge both and Guinsoo's Rageblade have "Unique: Crit Modifier". This means that you can't have both Infinity Edge and Guinsoo's Rageblade in your items.

What Riot also just did was to make every single Legendary item Unique, meaning you can't have two of the same Legendary item.

Finally, items such as Lost Chapter that only built into Mythic items have "Unique: Mythic Component" which shares itself with "Unique: Mythic", meaning that if you have a Mythic item you can't buy any items that are only Mythic Components. This means that you can't build a Mythic item such as Luden's Tempest and then decide to just buy and hold onto a Catalyst that gives 10% Omni Vamp.

Tear of the Goddess should not be considered a starting item.

TL;DR: If you want Tear early, Cheater Recall (two vids explaining it) to buy it, don't start with it.

The new Tear only gives 150 flat mana and nothing else. No HP, no AP, no AD. That is lower than a Sapphire Crystal (250 Mana). The moment you come into lane with a Tear, a competent player will make sure you either get bullied out of lane or force you to use up all your mana and deny you any good backs. You don't get reduced mana costs that the current Tear gives, and I believe (haven't tested) that the mana you gain is just the stat and you won't literally have more mana by casting a spell (this is how Manaflow Band works [tested], which makes me believe that Tear might work the same way), so you will have problems in lane by building it.

The analogous situation on Live is buying Tear before Pickaxe on champs like Lucian and Twitch.

What the new Tear does allow you to do though is start with another starting item and then Cheater Recall after crashing in the 3rd wave. Assuming you got most of the CS you should have at least 400 gold to buy Tear early. You might argue why not get Tear and cheater into another item? That is because if for some reason you aren't able to pull the cheater off, you are then stuck in lane with a Tear.

The Sightstones do not give you free Control Wards.

This item was probably misread as one might wonder why you would pay so much gold for it then. There are a few things this item does that will help supports out.

1. After placing 20 stealth wards (including trinket wards) it gets upgraded allowing you to place up to 4 stealth wards and 2 control wards.
2. You are able to hold up to 3 control wards instead of 2.
3. When the support is full build, they want to keep an open slot for control wards, but this means that they also have reduced stats. Instead they can purchase the Sightstone which the final upgrade is considered a Legendary item (giving Mythic stats), having 40 Ability Haste and 10% extra Movement Speed.

Liandry's Anguish and Demonic Embrace built together isn't OP.

I believe this is due to a misunderstanding on how much damage Liandry's Anguish does, as it says 4% max health over 4 seconds, but a lot of people might have read it as 4% per second, regardless I have read that building these two items together is OP, which it actually isn't.

Currently, assuming you build Rylai's (it's a fine assumption as many champs build both, and we are talking about a combination of two items), Liandry's Torment will deal 2.5% max health damage per second do enemies, if you fully stack the madness passive that become 2.75% max health damage per second.

Demonic Embrace does 2% max health damage per second and Liandry's Anguish does 1% max health damage per second, which is a total of 3%.

Considering that Demonic Embrace is 3000 gold and Liandry's Anguish is 3400 gold, that is a total of 6400 gold. Currently you only need Rylai's (2600 gold) and Liandry's Torment (3100 gold) for a total of 5700 gold. 700 Gold less and you also get a slow, since the previous build doesn't have Rylai's. Which now takes me to my next point.

Liandry's Anguish isn't the replacement for Liandry's Torment, but rather Demonic Embrace is.

The only common thing that Liandry's Anguish has with Liandry's Torment is that they are both AP items that burn. But Anguish gives no HP and the burn itself is a low lower than Torment, instead giving a lot of mana and ability haste while costing 300 more gold. Demonic Embrace gives 350 HP (50 more than Torment) 90 AP (15 more than Torment) and costs 100 less gold. The burn is stronger when enemies aren't slowed or immobilised, but weaker when they are. It also gives Armor and MR when you burn enemies still going by the idea that this is an AP bruiser item.

Basically, champs like Singed and Morde that don't care for mana, but liked the burn want Demonic Embrace, whereas battlemages like Cassio and Ryze most likely will prefer Liandry's Anguish as it gives mana and Ability Haste, which will increase their DPS. There might be an argument that Luden's Tempest might just be outright better due to the low CD passive that also gives a lot of movement speed, but I haven't done the math and I am uncertain how much they'd prefer MS over ridiculous amounts of Ability Haste, MR Shred, and some burn.

Stop assuming that item bugs are part of the item.

When Navori Quickblade Yi was shown, everyone went crazy as to how OP yi would be when the items get released. As if they would release the item without it being Unique. The same thing happened with Thornmail, and now the item is unique. Also the Bramble Vest passive doesn't stack anymore.

Another bug was one with twitch and Duskblade of Draktharr where Twitch wouldn't become visible again after damaging an enemy made everyone go crazy as to think that is how the item would be released.

People were also complaining that the shop had no stat filters and how and how the old shop was better because it had them. As if Riot themselves didn't say that they were releasing the items and shop earlier than usual, what we were seeing was pre-beta, not even beta.

Finally items and champions WILL have to be played unbalanced before they can see what is unbalanced to balance them. That is what Pre-Season is for, and before you go ahead and start talking about Riot's Balance Team I will refer you to these few videos [1] [2] [3]. I suggest you try to think before you start blaming, and maybe even testing some things before just outright share something as if you are certain of it. If you aren't, just say you believe that is the case or just say you haven't tested it, while also giving a reason as to why you believe that.

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