We’re going to go over the recent Support/Gold Income item changes in Patch 4.3, and we’ll take an in-depth look from a numbers perspective at just what these changes mean for you.
This is a fairly long post (with proofs and detailed analysis), so what I’ve done is simply put the conclusion at the beginning for those who want to read just the comprehensive summary of it all. The summary concludes the changes in the numbers (such as GPM), and overall, what these changes mean and how they affect game play.
Comprehensive Summary
Spellthief’s Edge Line
Objective: Active lane presence by poking
Line’s Concept: Utility through CC to help kite/chase
Gold income: High
Effectiveness: Low
Consistency: Low
Utility: Moderate
Spellthief’s Edge
Max GP10 = 7gp10
Pays for itself = 10:45
Notes: Tribute Passive damage > 5 AP = Damage buff
Frostfang
Max GP10 = 14gp10
Pays for itself = 16:45
Frost Queen’s Claim
Max GP10 = 14gp10
Pays for itself = 30:15
Notes: Tribute Passive can no longer be disabled, good if you need to kill minions
Relic Shield Line
Objective: Tanky/Combat stats. Co-ordination in farming, teamwork in harass/trades.
Line’s Concept: Utility through survivability in shielding + damage. Helps with getting dived/poor positioning through supplementing durability/tankiness.
Gold Income: Highest
Difficulty: Moderate
Effectiveness: High
Consistency: High
Utility: Low to Moderate
Relic Shield
Max GP10 (Killing exclusively siege minions) = 9gp10
Min GP10 (Killing exclusively melee minions) = 7gp10
Pays for itself at:
With Max GP10 = 7:30
With Min GP10 = 9:00
Notes: 80+ intial gold income, QoL change with CS counting towards lane partner too
Targon’s Brace
Max GP10 (Kill cycling 2 melee & 1 siege minion) = 17.77gp10
Min GP10 (Killing exclusively melee minions) = 13.33gp10
Pays for itself at:
With Max GP10 = 11:00
With Min GP10 = 13:45
Notes: 120+ initial gold income
Face of the Mountain
Max GP10 (Kill cycling 2 melee & 1 siege minion) = 17.77gp10
Min GP10 (Killing exclusively melee minions) = 13.33gp10
Pays for itself at:
With Max GP10 = 20:20
With Min GP10 = 26:10
Notes: 160+ initial gold income. Active – Sheilds ally for 10% of your max HP at no cost, target then deals AOE damage surrounding them 4 seconds later, scaling off target’s AD and AP.
Ancient Coin Line
Objective: Classic laning. Safety through passiveness, low risk and guaranteed income.
Line’s Concept: Utility through mobility. Escape or Engage for surrounding allies.
Gold Income: Lowest
Difficulty: Low
Effectiveness: Moderate
Consistency: High
Utility: High
Ancient Coin
Max Gp10 = 4gp10
Pays for itself = 17:25
Notes: Healing passive > Health regen nerf = Overall buff
Nomad’s Medallion
Max GP10 = 8gp10
Pays for itself = 28:50
Notes: Healing passive + current stats > Previous regen stats = Overall buff
Talisman of Ascension
Max GP10 = 8gp10
Pays for itself = 52:30
Notes: Item mostly unchanged
Gold Generation – The Numbers
Numerically, they rank from highest to lowest:
- Relic Shield line
- Spellthief’s Edge line
- Ancient Coin line
But considering consistency and relative efficiency of the item in regards to risk and difficulty of using it, the items rate in actual gold generation in the order of:
- Relic Shield line
- Ancient Coin line
- Spellthief’s Edge line
Situations – Team Composition Synergy
Beyond the numbers showing the obvious leader in gold generation, one must look at utility you get from the items, and what utility you want for your team (looking at what your team possesses and lacks)
- Relic Shield: Best for high damage teams with low tankiness (less effective on already tanky members). Best for fight/brawl heavy team fighting comps, who look either for hard engage, or domination through enclosed fights in pits or the jungle. Also good for friendly carries with no innate escapes.
- Ancient Coin: Best for high CC teams that lack mobility (less effective on already mobile teams from diminishing returns on movespeed stacking) Best for hard engage team comps, but also good with poke/pick comps.
- Spellthief’s Edge: Best for high mobility teams that lack CC (less effective from diminishing returns of slow stacking) Good for poke/pick comps as well.
Differences in Playstyle – Laning Preferences
- Spellthief’s Edge line: Aggression. Requires skilled support to act, react, and be active in lane. Attempt = Win lane through harass damage to generate gold.
- Relic Shield line: Farming & Fighting. Requires teamwork and co-ordination in trades. Attempt = Win lane through trades, kills, and farming to generate more gold than the opponent.
- Ancient Coin line: Passivity. Classic ADC/Support lane. Requires nothing of the laners for this self working item, allowing you to focus strictly on laning. Attempt = Win through mid-late game, by simply going even in lane (or ahead) by focusing on out-sustaining and out-staying your opponents. Then out scale after laning phase.
Consistency of Lines – When the items lose efficiency:
- Ancient Coin = Highest consistency – Few requirements = guaranteed consistency through game, but low rewards.
- Relic Shield = High consistency – Win/Lose, this item is consistent and efficient. Moderate co-ordination to keep effieicny active, but not hard.
- Spellthief’s Edge = Moderate, then Low consistency – High income early game, but drastically falls off over time when laning ends in mid game, and where vision is scarce in late game, generating close to no gold.
WHEN & WHY to buy WHICH? – No objectively best:
Regardless of what the numbers show, there’s a reason the gold generation was designed like this. They each have different purposes aside from the utility provided in the Actives mentioned above in “Situations – Team Composition Synergy”. This is due to their relational power curve/spike for gold generation during different points in the game to indicate the true incentive behind the purchase of each item line.
- Spellthief’s Edge – Early Game: Though it falls off immensely, its gold generation is made up for in an unmatched early game strength of a massive gold generation spike. Ideal for early game dominance – early snowball items and wards to cover early dragon vision for your team, while providing vision for your jungler to focus your lane, while denying vision from their jungler. This early gold income to transition into securing advantages early through dragons could alone be enough to win lane, and what it takes to snowball an entire game in your favour.
(Early game strengths: dragons, vision control/denial, jungle assistance – Can snowball an early game lead into a victory. While it takes coordinated team play, this is why LCS and professional level players buy this item for early leads and controls)
- Relic Shield – Mid game: For those who lack a weak mid game, this helps to strengthen that. Meant as the most consistent means of gold income through moderate levels, it’s strong through all stages of the game, shining mostly during the mid. It can be used to help win back a losing lane, snowball an already winning lane, or gain an advantage in an even lane. Arguably the safest, best, and most reliable item to adapt to all situation. However, it possesses the least utility in it’s active, making it non-optimal if your team does not possess a balance of mobility and CC.
(Mid game strengths: Lane trades, power spike for dragons, brawling, and team fighting. Good against dive heavy compositions that go after your carries)
- Ancient Coin – Late game: Strengthens your late game through low, but non-stop gold income. Good if you have a strong early/mid game meaning you can sacrifice more early/mid game power by supplementing it to your weak late game. (If you wished to strengthen your early/mid game power and empower that at the cost of a weaker late game, you would go Spellthief’s Edge). Continuous gold income allows you to scale into late game while the item does not fall off too hard.
(Late game strengths: Scaling into late game for team fights with engage/diengage, fits almost any team comps with its great utility)
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Now moving on – For our detailed analysis, we will be discussing:
Items individually:
- Items & info. (Patch 4.3)
- Changes in stats, and what impact this has. (from their previous Patch 4.2 version)
- Overall GP10 values, and their break-even points*
As an entire line of items:
- Main objective of change
- Playstyles of the item
- Difficulty of the item & likelihood of effectiveness, situations where GP10 change, and consistency changes.
At the end, we do a final comprehensive summary of our conclusions/results. We discuss and compare:
- Gold Generation
- Differences in playstyle
- Consistency of the lines
*IMPORTANT NOTE: For break-even points, there’s easy discussion on when an item becomes gold efficient factoring in the gold value of its stats/active/passive. I’m here to discuss what players mainly care about; not gold efficiency, but break even points.
Players really only see 2 things with gold generation items
1) “How much gold is this item generating for me?”
2) “When is it going to pay for itself?”
So we look at the absolute earliest point an item can pay for itself (generate the equivalent gold for it’s cost) which assumes that the item is being used consistently and efficiently. The next assumption (for consistency purposes) is that each item in the line will pay for itself, before you purchase the next upgrade.
Realistically, it’s unlikely you sit on the first base item for long periods of time, as you’ll often tend to be able to purchase the upgrades sooner than the items can pay for themselves. This just means it won’t ACTUALLY take as long for the item lines to pay for themselves as I list in this post. We do this in order to set a standard baseline of discussion, excluding some of the variables (many insignificant), so we have a constant factor through the item lines.
This gives perspective, and makes comparisons easier as we look at strictly the numbers of item costs in line, which remain constant at 365->865->2000, and look at just their gold generation factor of each item/line to pay for themselves. We look at this from a strictly numerical stand point because there are too many variables in each individual game such as dying, recalling, etc. that is just too impossible to factor in.
*ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: While I will be accurate, I will be rounding slightly, and using approximates to get the message across as most of you are simply interested in the general in-game time values, and not the specific 7 decimal numbers. This is just so you can understand it better in terms of actual practical game time as the difference between 1 second and 1.00001 seconds is insignificant.
We discuss this in the same way Riot did in their patch notes
– Spellthief’s Edge Line -> Relic Shield Line -> Ancient Coin Line.
Spellthief’s Edge Line – Individual Items
Riot states that this line will have the highest risk, and highest reward in terms of gold generation. As this discussion goes on, you’ll see this is actually untrue, and we’ll find out how.
Changes:
The Tribute Passive buff + AP nerf together was to move in the direction of buffing Ranged Supports in general, while not over-powering AP Ranged Supports. This opens up the option to build this line on champions like Thresh or Soraka. Also the 10 bonus damage provides effectively more than 5 AP would on most champions, making it an overall damage buff.
Stats:
Minor changes practically insignificant.
GP10:
With the Tribute Passive used to full efficiency, you get 15gp30 = 5gp10.
GP10 passive of 2gp10.
Your maximum GP10 = 7gp10.
Break Even Point:
With 365g cost, at 7gp10, it would take approximately 8min40sec of fully utilizing the Tribute passive. Entering lane at 2:05, the item would pay for itself entirely at the 10:45 mark.
The earliest this item can pay for itself – 10:45.
Changes:
The same concept/idea as Spellthief’s Edge.
Stats:
Tribute buff, AP nerf, mana regen nerf, gold cost went up by 15g for an upgrade cost of 500g.
GP10:
The Tribute Passive used to full efficiency will now grant: 10gp10.
GP10 passive = 4gp10.
Your maximum GP10 = 14gp10
Break Even Point:
With 500g cost, at 14gp10, it would take approximately 6min for this item to pay for itself. With our previous pay-off point of Spellthief’s Edge at 10:45.
The earliest this item can pay for itself – 16:45.
Changes:
Tribute passive cannot be disabled, allowing you to split push or clear waves of minions as a Support to get gold (if your ADC is elsewhere), while being able to trigger the Tribute passive still if applicable.
Stats:
Final stats are more or less untouched from it’s 4.2 predecessor, Tribute still making up for the AP loss. Now also provides 10% CDR which is nice to keep in line with the CDR in the other two gold income/support items.
GP10:
Unchanged: Your maximum GP10 is still 14gp10.
Break Even Point:
With 1135g cost, at 14gp10, it would take approximately 13.5min for this item to pay for itself fully. Assuming it’s purchased at 16:45 after Frostfang has paid for itself entirely:
The earliest this item can pay for itself and generate 2000g is at 30:15.
Spellthief’s Edge Line – Entire Line
Main Objective:
The main objective is to promote activity. The polar opposite of Ancient Coin, it’s about gold generation through aggression, it wants the support to be more noticeable in lane.
Also, it helps push structures quicker for siege purposes, with the final concept of providing survivability through kiting and CC.
Playstyle:
It’s meant to promote an active and aggressive playstyle, poking/harassing down enemies as you seek to gain gold.
However, this only works when you are in lane, as neither side can be winning or losing, as will be explained in the next section.
Difficulty of Item & Likelihood of Effectiveness:
The item has the highest difficulty, as it requires nearby enemy champions or structures in order for you to make use of it. A total of 5 champions + 1 nexus + 3 inhibitors + 11 towers = 20 total objects to activate this passive on, which only decreases over time.
In reality, this really means that the item is useful in early laning. In the mid-late game, there won’t be much utilizing of this passive easily. Also, if the lanes are even, then the item is still effective and can be used to help slowly generate gold for you, but once the lane tips in favor of either side, the chances of you using the item to the same efficiency drops. Regardless of what happens, variables out of your control (the enemies) cannot be accounted for consistently. And the if the lane is tipped in anyone’s favor- if either side is winning/losing, if you’re pushed under tower, if you freeze the minion wave, if the enemy is pushed under tower, or if the enemy has freezed the minion wave, you won’t be able to trigger this passive safely (or will be punished trying to trigger it). Essentially this item is built for lane aggression in an even lane, and any tip in advantage will cause this item to lose efficiency, regardless on if you’re winning or losing. Again this is all in mind you NEED enemy champions or structures nearby, otherwise if either lane roams away due to winning or losing, or more specifically if someone loses their bottom tower, this item is rendered almost useless aside from the passive gp10 generation, as the Tribute Passive becomes immensely hard to trigger.
As laning ends in the mid game and vision is scarce in the late game, this makes it an inconsistent and somewhat ineffective item to function properly. Riot is correct that it is the highest risk item, with that in mind, it’s not the highest reward item… First of all, you’ll later see in the Relic Shield numbers that objectively, Relic Shield’s line generates more gold than the Spellthief’s Line, more importantly at greatly reduced risk, meaning even speaking in terms of relativity, Spellthief’s Line still isn’t the highest reward item. Even if Spellthief’s numbers generated more gold than Relic Shield, the consistency of the gold generation from Relic Shield to constantly generate gold, compared to Spellthief’s gold generation being very situational, then Relic Shield would still be a “better reward” item line. This is because the risks are so high that you have a very difficult time reaping the rewards, that those rewards potentially become non existent.
Losing Efficiency:
When it comes to losing efficiency, this item line loses efficiency once your charges max out and you are unable to expel them. This takes place after 30 seconds of not using the item’s Tribute passive, and you will continue to lose gold generation the longer that time goes on past 30 seconds without using the Tribute passive.
Loss of gold income/inefficiency timer: 30 seconds.
Relic Shield Line – Individual Items
The Doran’s Shield of Support/Gold Income items. Pretty much a must have for any melee support who’s looking to engage and fight/brawl. This looks to reward melee supports for their disadvantage from ranged supports . This item also works just as well on ranged supports for the sake of an item for a farm heavy lane. Arguably one of the best starters.
Changes:
The Spoils of War passive now heals both your ally as well as yourself now, significantly enhancing the gold value of this item, and it’s benefits. The new healing value is roughly 5x as much as before, and for both laners. This is a very significant healing amount, not enough to sustain in lane, but enough to save a life. Slight reduction in bonus kill gold per CS, a minor and insignificant amount in the long run.
Clarity passive is a nice quality of life change, allowing your ADC to better keep track of his supposed CS count and gold income.
Stats:
Buff to flat HP.
Health regen changed from combat stats into passive laning stats.
The healing for yourself is less than the health regen from the previous version of the item, but the overall health regeneration including your ally’s healing from the Spoils of War passive will equal more than the previous health regeneration of the item.
GP10:
The GP10 for this item is dependent on what minion you kill with the passive.
– Maximum Gold/Ideal situation: Killing Cannon/Siege minions which offer 40+ gold each (increasing over time)
– Melee minions offer 20+ gold each (increasing over time)
– Caster minions offer 14+ gold each (increasing over time)
First, we assume you save all your charges to ensure you’re killing a siege minion, for the maximum GP10.
Secondly, we assume that if you’re not killing a siege minion, you’ll always be killing a melee minion over a caster minion as it offers more gold, and they spawn together, giving you an equal chance of killing either.
Assuming you get into lane at 2:05, and kill the first 2 melee minions quickly, you will have an instant income of 8o gold total. (Killing 2 melee minions, at 20 gold each, given to 2 people.) By this time (around 2:15) is when we’ll start calculating for GP10. Assuming you save every charge at this point for the Siege minion to come (40 gold at minimal value), you will be getting around 80 gold every 1.5 minutes. (To effectively use this strategy, one must save their charges for only siege minions at all times, unless you have 2 charges present, and no siege minion is present in the oncoming wave, then you expel one charge on another minion (preferably melee) to reset the clock for charge regeneration, to repeat and continue to the process *so to speak*)
After an initial gold income of +80g. (+40g individual, for two people, from 2 melee minions)
Killing exclusively siege minions, your maximum GP10 becomes roughly 9gp10 between two people.
Your maximum TOTAL GP10 is 9gp10. (between two people)
Killing exclusively melee minions, your minimum GP10 becomes roughly 7gp10 between two people.
Your minimum TOTAL GP10 is 7gp10. (between two people)
This lesser gold income is still an understandable tactic as not many may want to wait for the siege minions to come, as some people just want to expel charges as quickly as possible either due to impatience, or fear of death in losing charges (due to them being at low health), or requiring some HP healing, but I consider this the minimum GP10, because if you’re going to be killing minions that aren’t the siege minion, you might as well kill the melee ones rather than the caster minions, as you’ll get more gold. So I will not be accounting for gold income off of killing caster minions.
Break Even point:
With 365g cost, and an initial 80 gold income = 285 g cost leftover. This is when we consider the gp10.
At this point, the time is around 2:15 in laning phase, and it’s up to your tactic of choosing which minions to kill to determine your GP10 now.
Killing only siege minions for a maximum of 9gp10 will allow you this item to pay for itself after 5 min and 15 sec, resulting in around the 7:30 mark.
Killing only regular minions (melee for more gold, not ranged) for a minimum of 7gp10 will allow this item to pay for itself in 6 min and 48 sec, around the 9 minute mark.
Killing exclusively siege minions – The earliest this item can pay for itself is at 7:30.
Killing exclusively melee minions – The earliest this item can pay for itself is at 9:00.
Changes:
No real changes beyond the ones already mentioned in Relic Shield. Changes remain in line.
Stats:
Added health regen from Relic Shield’s no health regen.
Gold cost goes up to match in line with the other upgrade costs of 500g to a total cost of 865g.
GP10:
Going back into lane with 3 charges maxed out and immediately killing 3 minions in lane, even if they are only melee minions, will award you 20 gold per minion, 3 minions = 60 gold, for 2 people = 120 gold.
Initial gold income of 120 gold.
Next, with 1 charge every 30 seconds, you can expend 1 charge per minion wave. First 2 waves in this 3 wave cycle can be used on a melee minion, while the 3rd charge in the 3rd wave can still be used on a siege minion. This means you can get every siege minion, while still effectively getting melee minions for bonus gold income.
This results in 20 + 20 + 40 gold, every 1.5 minutes = 80 gold per 1.5 minutes. This is doubled for sharing gold between two people, resulting in 160 gold per 1.5 minutes = 17.77gp10.
If you cycle through killing 2 melee minions and 1 siege minion with your charges:
Your maximum GP10 = 17.77gp10.
If you end up missing the siege minion and kill 3 melee minions instead:
Your minimum GP10 = 13.33gp10.
Break Even point:
With 500g cost, and an 120 initial gold income = 380g remaining cost.
At 17.77gp10, it would take 3.56 minutes to pay for the 380g. Approximately 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
At 13.33gp10, it would take 6.25 minutes to pay for the 380g. Approximately 6 minutes and 15 seconds.
Thus,
Targon’s Brace pays for itself somewhere between 11:00-13:45. (Depending on your tactic, and which minions you kill)
Kill cycling 2 melee & 1 siege minion – The earliest this item can pay for itself is at 11:00.
Killing exclusively melee minions – The earliest this item can pay for itself is at 13:45.
Changes:
Active change, all in all, still revolving around the idea of durability through tankiness. The active offers an HP shield to your ADC/allied target at no cost of yourself, and will also deal damage after 4 seconds to nearby enemies. Used for tanky supports to help their ADC survive through shielding for tankiness, while bringing some damage.
Stats:
All in all, still the same. The addition of 1% max HP healing as scaling healing for the Spoils of War passive is brought in.
GP10:
After the initial gold income of expelling all 4 charges, the GP10 remains unchanged as a charge is still only produced every 30 seconds, regardless of how many charges you can hold.
Assuming killing melee minions only, 4 charges, 20+ gold each, for 2 people = 160+ gold income.
Initial gold income of 160+ gold.
After the initial gold income, gold generation remains the same.
If you cycle through killing 2 melee minions and 1 siege minion with your charges:
Your maximum GP10 = 17.77gp10.
If you miss the siege minion and kill 3 melee minions instead:
Your minimum GP10 = 13.33gp10.
Break Even point:
With 1135g cost, and an initial gold income of 160g = 995g cost remaining.
At 17.77gp10, it would take 9 mimutes and 20 seconds.
At 13.33gp10, it would take 12 minutes and 25 seconds.
Face Of The Mountain will pay for itself somewhere between 20:20 – 26:10, having finally generated 2000 gold through the entire Line of its items by this point.
Kill cycling 2 melee & 1 siege minion – the earliest this item line can generate 2000 gold to pay for itself is at 20:20.
Killing exclusively melee minions – the earliest this item line can generate 2000 gold to pay for itself is at 26:10.
Relic Shield Line – Entire Line
Main Objective:
The main objective is co-ordination. The medium between aggression and passivity, it’s perfect for duo queue laners, so long as you have the co-ordination to manage it.
Smart aggression, or planned passiveness, it requires co-ordination, but when done well, it’s the best out of all the support items, with the best stats, and highest gold generation.
Playstyle:
Though the main focus is for the item to be used for durability stats in fights and brawls, this item can be adapted to basically every playstyle with the largest margin of error and freedom. It can be used for aggression, or in a winning lane, and works just as well playing passive or in a losing lane. Even in an even lane, it works all the same. Why this item is so good is because essentially: If you’re ahead, it helps you snowball that advantage. If you’re behind, it helps you catch up much quicker. And if you’re even in lane, it will help you gain an advantage.
Difficulty of Items & Likelihood of Effectiveness:
Difficulty is moderately low.
Gold income is much more consistent as the only real requirement for it to be active is a nearby allied champions with minions nearby. This makes this line a very “farm focused” playstyle, where you can practically ignore the enemy’s presence as they have no impact on this item.
As a Support, you’re almost always with your ADC, hence why the item is so consistent.
Even if your this isn’t the case, you can roam to make use of this passive.
With a huge time limit for error and efficiency loss on this item, this makes the item greatly efficient and a very safe “fall back” route, as it’s more forgiving for time lost when recalling, dying, or walking back into lane.
Losing Efficiency:
This item loses efficiency upon reaching max stacks and being unable to expel them. Each item in the line has different time limits for this. With the largest time limit for efficiency loss of all item lines:
Loss of gold income/inefficiency timer: 1.5 – 2 minutes. – You begin to lose gold generation after 1.5 – 2 minutes of not using the Spoils of War passive.
Relic Shield’s inefficiency timer: 2 minutes
Targon’s Brace’s inefficiency timer: 1.5 minutes
Face of the Mountain’s inefficiency timer: 2 minutes
After the initial flat gold income, once you reach the inefficiency timer, you lose all the gold generation from this item. This sounds harsh, but for the highest income item line with a huge time limit for error, it’s understandable you’ll be losing the most, and basically the entirety of the gold generation from not making use of the Spoils of War passive, especially since the item itself provides fairly good stats in and of itself for combat rather than farming as well.
Ancient Coin Line – Individual Items
Combat stats removed, made up for through the healing from Favor Passive, as long as it’s active. With the lowest rewards, the only real reason to go this route is to get the active on Talisman of Ascension, essentially building this item for mid to late game through mobility and utility. However, the risks are more or less the same as Relic Shield, so the choices come at the same risk, with Relic Shield having more gold income. Meaning again, you would only build this if you think the Talisman active serves you better than the Face of the Mountain active.
Changes:
Transfer of stats and strength from in-combat related stats, to passive situational stats.
Stats:
The loss of 5 HP per second is made up entirely by the Favor Passive’s healing mathematically.
So long as you are in lane and nearby the death of a minion at all times (while not at full health), then this makes up for the loss in health regen.
Losses in efficiency: Every moment you’re not near dying minions.
This means that in a lane where:
1. Both sides are even in lane ad matched in the middle
2. Or you’re losing and pushed up to your own turret
Then everything is more or less the same for the numbers, and you lose no efficiency.
However, in a lane where either:
1. You’re winning and pushed up to the enemy turret
2. Or losing and the enemy is freezing the minion wave near their own tower
Then this item begins losing efficiency and healing as you won’t be near dying minions while remaining safe.
GP10:
2 gold per minion death, 6 minions per wave, 1 wave every 30 seconds = 12gp30 = 4gp10
Your maximum Gp10 = 4gp10
Break Even point:
With 365g cost, at 4gp10, it takes 15 min and 15 sec to pay for itself.
Since the gold generation from minion deaths only really starts around 2:10 when you kill the first minion:
The earliest this item will pay for itself is at 17:25.
Changes:
Reduced mana regen, reduced health regen.
Stats:
Mainly health regen loss made up for by Favor passive healing.
Gold cost increased by 15 to be in line with all the upgrades costing 500 gold.
GP10:
3 gold per minion, 6 minions per wave, 1 wave every 30 seconds = 18gp30 = 6gp10.
GP10 passive: 2gp10
Your maximum GP10 = 8gp10.
Break Even point:
With 500g cost, at 8gp10, it will take 10 min and 25 sec to pay off.
In addition to the previous pay-off point of Ancient Coin at 17:25.
This earliest this item can pay for itself is at 28:50.
Changes:
Insignificant.
Stats:
Mainly health regen/healing is stronger.
GP10:
Unchanged.
Your maximum GP10 is 8gp10.
Break Even point:
With 1135g cost, at 8gp10, it would take 23 min 40 sec.
In addition with the previous pay off point for Nomad’s Medallion at 28:50.
The earliest this item can pay for itself is at 52:30.
Ancient Coin – Entire line
Main Objective:
The main objective of the Ancient coin line is passivity, the polar opposite of Spellthief’s Edge. The objective is low risk, low rewards, but ENSURED rewards. This is the absolute safest route.
Playstyle:
Playstyles may vary. You can still be aggressive in poke/trading, as long as you remain close enough to dying minions. Passive play is recommended to make use of the Favor passive, otherwise, you might as well start a different item to match your playstyle in Relic Shield for fighting, or Spellthief’s Edge for poke.
As the reincarnation of Philosopher’s Stone->Shurelya’s Reverie, this is reminiscent of the classic playstyle of an ADC + Support in previous seasons, where the support sits in the bush warding and waiting for opportunities to engage, poke, or deal damage, while keeping their ADC in good condition.
Difficulty of Item & Likelihood of Effectiveness:
Difficulty is practically zero, with few requirements for it to work. You’re almost always near dying minions, even when roaming to other lanes.
Likelihood of effectiveness is static through lane and through the game, and has great consistency with the ease of the item.
Losing Efficiency:
This item loses efficiency like Spellthief’s Edge.
However, unlike Spellthief’s Edge and Relic Shield, which have charge times giving you margin for error and down times from making use of the gold passive, there is no charge time or increment for Ancient Coin. You NEED to always be using this passive constantly through the game without breaks for it to be efficient. This is not going to happen, so this item loses efficiency pretty easily.
There is no inefficiency timer for loss of income on this item. You lose efficiency every moment you are not near dying minions.
