Tiamat: It's Not Just For Tuesdays Anymore

It's the best item that not nearly enough people are building. While expensive, it is still extremely efficient, and gives us a whole slew of stats and abilities that few, if no other items can hope to offer. It has not been ignored, but Ravenous Hydra has not been given the due credit that it most certainly deserves.

Just for the sake of visibility, here are the stats for both Ravenous Hydra and Bloodthirster:

The stats between the two items are similar enough to warrant a direct comparison: they both offer Life Steal and Attack Damage, but how do the two compare?

As we can pretty easily see, after 5 stacks, the Bloodthirster will give us a higher AD than the Hydra. It also doesn't take any number of stacks for your Bloodthister to give you a higher amount of lifesteal; at full stacked it gives you 8% greater lifesteal than Hydra ever can. On paper, it certainly looks like Bloodthirster is going to be superior in damage than Ravenous Hydra, but is it true?

We can't forget the importance of a certain ability that Hydra offers us:

Unique Active - Crescent: Deals up to 100% of your Attack Damage to units around you as physical damage, decaying down to 60% near the edge. (10 second cooldown)

This is perhaps one of the most undersold actives in the game. Building a champ to try to burst down some squishy jerks? You'll probably want Bloodthirster instead, or so the majority seems to think. It turns out that this isn't always right. Below is a quick chart that shows how much damage is added by a Bloodthirster in comparison to a Ravenous Hydra. All of these stats assume that the Bloodthirster is fully stacked on a level 13 Kha'Zix, with no runes or masteries.  It is only the damage that each item adds to his full combo.

Looking at the chart here, a quick number crunch gives us the fact that, at least on Kha'Zix, Ravenous Hydra gives a greater boost to burst damage than Bloodthirster does, even on single targets. This doesn't apply the chance that the active on Hydra has the chance to hit multiple people; granted this is not a 100% to happen, but the radius of the active is large enough that it is fairly likely that at least some of the damage gets applied to more than one person. With a radius of 400, it covers a much greater range than the old Tiamat.

It's important to note that this is a drastic range increase over the old Tiamat, which didn't even stretch as far as regular melee range; in fact, it's nearly four times as large. This makes it viable to actually hit multiple people not only with your autoattacks, but with Crescent as well.

However, everything isn't perfect in this regard. Kha'Zix has some solid AD ratios, yes, but how does Ravenous Hydra fare on somebody with AD ratios flying all over the place?

Riven's Skillset.  Q > W > R, from top to bottom

Riven is the type of person that ends up being an exception; she manages to have enough extremely high AD ratios that she loses damages in the switch from Bloodthirster to Ravenous Hydra. With her total AD ratios adding up to a ridiculous 740%, she can leverage that 25 AD into a higher burst.  This chart is more or less the same as the Kha'zix chart, only it applies to Riven.  It shows a level 13 Riven with a fully stacked Bloodthirster, and no runes or masteries once again.

Note that this burst is barely higher than it would be with Ravenous Hydra.  As she increases in levels, she won't benefit more from Bloodthirster, but Ravenous Hydra will end up giving her nearly identical burst damage at level 18 as a fully stacked Bloodthirster, without the concern for losing those all important stacks. Also note that as long as you hit with the active off of Hydra, you can help to compensate for missed abilities.

Once again using Riven as an example, if you are forced to use your first two Q activations to close the gap to your opponent, we can subtract 140 of the extra damage from her combo with Bloodthirster equipped, and 105 damage from her combo with Hydra as her only item. Hydra grows better in comparison to Bloodthirster if you accidentally miss abilities or are forced to use them as gapclosers.

After you grab your Tiamat in the laning phase, it is suddenly much less intimidating to battle your opponent in their minions. While it is certainly not a good idea, you will naturally thin out the wave simply by fighting your opponent. This will give you a natural minion advantage, and make it much easier for you to pick fights, especially if you're playing a champion that doesn't do a great job of clearing minions as collateral damage during a duel.

When you upgrade your Tiamat to Hydra, this advantage ramps up even more quickly. Not only do you clear out entire waves simply by hitting one or two minions, you also life steal off of the entire wave at the same time. It applies 50% of your life steal to minions in the AoE, which means you don't get the full value, but this lifesteal is purely accidental; you don't have to spend any of your time lifestealing off of them.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the item, you'll lose the ability to control your lane. You will always push; always. This puts you in a position which more or less forces you to clear out your wave, and go roam somewhere. Whether you decide to roam out to your jungle or to create plays throughout the rest of the map is up to you, but you put yourself in the position that makes you need to be willing to become a playmaker.

Unfortunately, it's also slightly more expensive than Bloodthirster.  However the fact that it builds out of several smaller items via Tiamat makes the transition of power much more gradual than it is for Bloodthirster.  You end up having a more gradual growing of power instead of just grabbing a B.F. Sword and seeing a big damage jump, whereas Tiamat has you building a Pickaxe and a Long Sword, which ends up offering a comparable amount of AD, while also being 300 gold cheaper.  

Hydra as an opening item gives you the option also to start out with double Rejuvenation Bead, which as it turns out you can start with two of.  This gives you an extra 10 hp/5, which doesn't sound exceptional, but is an extra 120 HP every minute.  If you want to go super crazy with your sustain, you can also tack on regeneration quintessences, which will give you 18.1 hp/5 before you even touch your base HP regen.  One someone such as Zed or Lee Sin, this is an incredible amount of sustain, and makes it very hard for your opponent to push you our of lane.  Two beads and three potions gives you a great deal of sustain, and puts you further ahead in your build than the nine potion two ward opening that has become so popular.  You are slightly more vulnerable to ganks, but this can be compensated by a bit of careful play.

While it comes close, Hydra is not the perfect item. It is advantageous on many bruisers; it actually shows an increase in damage for many of them. Lee Sin is a prime example; his full combo ends up doing more damage than he would with Bloodthirster, and he also gains an incredible amount of pushing power that he otherwise would not come close to matching. Any time you are considering build Bloodthirster on a bruiser or someone with AD ratios that are not completely off the wall insane (more or less anyone who isn't Riven), try out Ravenous Hydra instead. You won't miss a few lifesteal points as much as you think you will, and you'll do a lot more damage than you think.