An in depth look at Liandry's Torment

Liandry's Torment, the newest AP item, is built out of a haunting guise (1485 g.) and an Amplifying Tome (435 g.). It gives 70 ability power, and 200 health, 15 magic penetration, and comes with a pretty nifty passive that burns 5% of an enemy's CURRENT health over three seconds for each spell (cut in half for damage over time spells, but doubled if the enemy is slowed). To be honest, I haven't even seen the item that much in my low ELO games or competitive play. However, we're going to do an analysis of this item and see how much it can do:

Building the item

First off, if we want to see what this item can do, we need to look at what its built out of. Now, in the Season 2 Finals, Haunting Guise was one of the most bought AP middle items in the game, dealing huge damage with champions like Katarina or Evelynn with the sick magic penetration it gave. However, before this era in League of Legends History, we saw most champions building Deathfire Grasp as a first item rather than Haunting Guise. It wasn't until we saw Morello bring down his righteous hammer of nerfs onto Deathfire Grasp that we saw many players switch to Haunting Guise as a first item onto their favorite AP casters.

Now with the Season 3 changes, we see some of the high burst AP champions have fallen out of favor recently. So, safe to say, Haunting guise really only came into the spotlight because of the DFG nerf, and then quickly fell out of the spotlight. In addition, it should also be worth noting that Haunting Guise was built on high burst AP champions like Katarina or Evelynn, but the new upgrade focuses more on poking champions to abuse the passive, which is counter intuitive in my opinion. 

The Damage

Because tons of damage... get it?

Math time, children! So, we're going to do calculations on how much damage the passive for Liandry's actually does. For this exercise, we'll be assuming that you have Magic penetration Marks, Sorcerer's Shoes, and obviously Liandry's Torment, making a total of 37 flat magic penetration. 

 

 

Note: This table assumes that the enemies are at full health, which is unlikely, so the damage will most likely be even less.

So, there is a rough table of some situations you will be facing and how much damage that Liandry's passive will do. To be honest, the passive does a pretty decent amount of damage, especially on that singed. However, the question is will you be able to land enough spells to make the significant investment worth it? The total item cost is 2900, you could almost buy a rabadon's deathcap for that amount (3200 g.), and the magic penetration is no where near as good as a Void Staff, which is actually cheaper.Note: These numbers assume that the enemy is at full health, which is unlikely, and the damage will therefore be even less.

However, also, the damage is doubled when a target is slowed, meaning it can deal 250 damage to that Singed. But to do that, you need to play a champion with natural slows, or buy a Rylai's Crystal Scepter, another 2900 gold, and that's honestly not worth the investment since you could get significantly more AP from items like Rabadon's or Zhonya's. You're undeniably paying way more for small amounts of AP and a passive that, at most deals 125 damage (250 with rylai's), and depending on your champion, its unlikely that you'll be hitting enough spells to make that truly worth it. 

Conclusion 

The strength of this item lies in that table, it can end up dealing a sick amount of damage for just landing one spell, like an orianna Q or nidalee spear. However, the real weakness comes from the cost of the item, the unreliability of it, and the lack of Ability Power. All in all the choice is yours to make, but Liandry's item seems to need a bit of a rework to truly be effective. However, with the ever-changing meta of Preseason 3, who knows?