League of Legends: Sanguine Blade is a Balance Nightmare

Of all the new items introduced to League of Legends in the preseason, none has been more controversial than Sanguine Blade. Here’s what all the fuss is about.

Preseason 10 is barely into its infancy and already there are a lot of issues that players are having with the new state of League of Legends. While many are complaining about the reworked Conqueror rune, the shortened respawn jungle timers (and seeing the jungle timers for all the camps), or visual issues surrounding the new dragons. However, there is one item that I think puts all these items to shame: Sanguine Blade.

This item has been the topic of countless Reddit posts and Twitter discussions. High elo players liked Foggedftw2, WayoftheTempest, and Pants are Dragon have come out to say not only is the item super strong right now, it’s downright unhealthy.

In case you didn’t catch our recap of the item changes in Patch 9.23, Sanguine Blade is a new lethality item that also grants life steal and has a passive which grants bonus attack speed when near one or fewer visible enemy champions. On the surface, the stats it gives aren’t eye-popping. According to the LoLwiki, Sanguine Blade is 84.58% gold efficient without the passive. The problem is that passive, which boosts the gold efficiency scaling from 123.92% to 173.92% based on level.

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If we compare that to the other lethality items at a similar price point as Sanguine Blade (Sanguine Blade costs 3000 gold total; Youmuu’s Ghostblade, Edge of Night, and Duskblade of Draktharr all cost 2900 gold total) we’ll see how much that passive means. Youmuu’s – which has higher gold efficiency when out of combat due to the passive out of combat movement speed – has a 106.09% base gold efficiency and 133.33% gold efficiency with the active effect. In combat, those efficiencies are lower at 89.54% and 116.78%, respectively.

Edge of Night, on the other hand, has a base gold efficiency of 97.99% between Youmuu’s and Sanguine Blade. It has no active and the passive effect (a spell shield) is difficult to quantify.

Finally, Duskblade of Draktharr has a base gold efficiency of 97.9%. While it has no active, with the passive Nightstalker’s basic attack bonus damage, the item is approximately 134.11% gold efficient for that one attack.

So all these numbers mean that, whenever a champion is not split pushing or in a 1v1 scenario, this item is extremely gold inefficient. However, in those scenarios where the champion has the passive up, it’s one of the most gold efficient items in the game outside of a stacked Dark Seal or Mejai’s. In short, this item’s passive is insanely strong in the right hands.

“Well that’s fine,” you might say, “Riot just needs to adjust the numbers.” Well, the problem is that I’m not sure if that solves the problem.

For instance, let’s say Riot halved the bonus attack speed that Sanguine Blade gives when the passive is active (so 40%-100% based on level to 20%-50% based on level). That would take it’s base gold efficiency (at Level 1) to 107.25% and at max gold efficiency (Level 18) it would still be 132.25% gold efficient. That’s still ridiculously high, as high as the gold efficiency that Duskblade gives for one attack that you can have up as long as the enemy doesn’t send multiple members to contest you.

The biggest problem is that bonus attack speed that the passive grants and how much gold value it adds. Veteran League of Legends players might remember a time back when Youmuu’s Ghostblade granted 40% bonus attack speed when activated.

In Patch 6.22, that active effect was removed and instead the item got out of combat movement speed as a result. Right now, Sanguine Blade grants that 40% bonus attack speed at a minimum and scales up to 100% bonus attack speed at level 18. Youmuu’s was considered wildly too strong with the amount of attack speed this item grants at base and that item only granted 40% attack speed while the active was used (which was 6 seconds).

Granted, Sanguine Blade does not have the same level of control over the attack speed (you can’t pop the active to get the bonus AS) but that’s easily outweighed by the fact that you’ll have that bonus attack speed until at least two or more visible enemy champs are near you. That is certainly a worth-while tradeoff for this item and good split pushers will easily be able to make full effect out of the active by properly kiting and dancing away from collapsing enemies.

Finally, the main problem with this item is that it grants stats that almost anyone can use. The lethality is obviously good for assassins, and they’ll get the bonus AS whenever they are able to find a pick thus enabling them to win any 1v1.

Split pushers love the bonus attack speed, but also probably love the life steal and lethality for tower diving. Finally, ADCs can easily use that lifesteal and attack speed to push down towers after they have cleaned up a team fight (although in team fights the item will not be ideal). In short, this item gives far too many good stats that any AD or auto-attacker can use.

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Possible solutions would be for Riot to tune the attack speed numbers (as described above) or increase the combine cost to make the item less gold efficient at baseline. They could also add another component item (like a Dagger or Long Sword) to make the item more awkward to build (it effectively makes you waste an item slot or spend more gold to complete the item). However, I’m not sure if Sanguine Blade can survive banishment to the graveyard, given how many problems it’s already caused.

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