The Gathering Storm

Gentleman Gustaf here to bring you mathcrafting on the first new item designed for Ranged AD Carries: Runaans Hurricane. When looking at any item, I think there are three things to consider.

  1. Its role/purpose. What is this purpose? Is it an important purpose? Is it an optimal purpose?
  2. Its potence. Does it accomplish this purpose? Is it math efficient? What is the result?
  3. Its synergy. Does it synergize well with other expected strategies? Does it force a new playstyle?

Today, I'll be going through everything about Runaans Hurricane, and ultimately, giving it the thumbs up or thumbs down.



What is the purpose of Runaans Hurricane?

Quote from Xypherous

Hurricane allows your ranged basic attacks to fire secondary bolts at nearby targets. These bolts cannot critically strike but can trigger your other on-hit effects, such as Varus Blighted Quiver in the above example. This allows characters like Varus or Miss Fortune, already strong Area of Effect damage dealers, to specialize into Area of Effect damage if theyd like to do so.

So first, is this an important purpose? Well, AoE damage is very strong, and many teams run strategies heavily built around AoE damage. For example, Miss Fortune has been growing in popularity recently, and is incredibly strong because of her mid-game team fight contribution, and her ability to use her ult from very far away to avoid aggro, especially in conjunction with other AoE CC/damage. And AoE damage is very important to have a strong amount of: It relies on being able to stack to burst people down: if your AoE damage doesn't pose an immediate threat to the other team, you could end up losing a team fight simply on account of lack of focus.

So does this item fulfill its purpose optimally, at least as far as theorycrafting goes? I think so. It is consistent damage onto targets, which means you don't risk using it prematurely. Moreover, this means it can be used very well as cleanup in those fights where you do fail to burst their team down. There is one scary downside, and that is lacking single-target damage to focus targets down. Normally, this role is filled by the AD Carry in AoE comps, and your ability to do so is hurt somewhat by this item. But overall, I give it an A for creativity, and a B+ for theoretical usefulness. So as far as its role and purpose, I give it a tip of the hat and a pinky out. But how does it look on paper?

The Fun Part (Math)

First, let's get some assumptions out of the way. According to the information released by Xypherous, the item works as follows:

Quote from Xypherous

Hurricane triggers each time you attack.
Hurricane is not an on-hit proc, nor does it trigger off of spells or abilities like Mystic Shot or Double Up that apply on-hit effects.
Hurricane deals 50% of your total attack damage.
Hurricane applies the full effect of on-hit effects with each bolt.

Your dps looks something like this:

Woah! Now that's a doozy of a formula, but essentially it means the following. Attack 1 target with your crit damage, attack the rest of the targets without critting and at half damage, and apply your on-hit effects in full. So we can see that champions who benefit a lot from crit won't benefit much from this, but champions with on-hit effects will love this item a lot. This is the first thing that worries me about this item. It's designed to help AoE champs itemize for AoE, but it actually benefits champions with strong on-hit effects the most. Kog'Maw called, and he'd like to kill the whole team at once.

Your first item was probably IE or Bloodthirster, so let's stick with that for now. To lessen the complicated nature of the math, let's remind ourselves that we're only looking at AS/Crit Chance/Crit Damage/auto attacks, so we can ignore ability damage. So here's what IE PD looks like next to IE Hurricane (for single target damage)

Ok, so in a straight up 1v1, you obviously don't like Hurricane, as it performs at about 70-80% of what PD would. But that would be scary: an AoE item that beats out single target items in single target DPS. Let's assume you hit 1 additional target:

The only champion who doesn't prefer Hurricane while hitting 2 targets is the champion who has critical strike scaling (Draven) via his passive. Those champions who are mostly physical/auto attack based don't benefit that much, with most of them only gaining about 3% in damage, a pretty big deal considering how much single target damage they lost. But the on-hit champions gain a decent amount, with Caitlyn/Corki/MF/Varus gaining about 10% dps, and Kog'Maw gaining a whopping 31%. Now let's assume best case scenario, 3 targets:

Now this item pulls ahead for every champion, and puts out an INSANE amount of dps on Kog'Maw, not to mention pretty ridiculous damage on Caitlyn/Corki/MF/Varusi. What about with BT? We see about the same numbers. It's not very awe-inspiring on one target:

Pretty good on 2 targets, but especially on Caityn/Corki/Kog/MF

And downright ludicrous on 3 targets (Kog'Maw benefits from Hurricane twice as much as from PD):

I think this a pretty strong argument for Hurricane: you get a crazy amount of damage with the full effect, and a nice buff even without the full effect. Just don't get caught in a 1v1... Since this purchase should be finished towards the end or after the laning phase, I think that's not a huge problem.

So for DPS, I give it another tip of the hat and another pinky out, and the whole table puts pinkies out for Kog'Maw with this item.

But wait, there's more! This item takes utility AD Carries and breaks them. Frost Shot? Now slows three targets. Basically, every attack is a Volley with a little less damage. Attached is a picture of hashinshin when I told him Frozen Mallet and Frost Shot would now apply to three targets at once.

Kennen and Caitlyn's every X attack passives coming up way faster? Graves getting his dash up faster? But a few cases in particular strike me as obscene.

First, Teemo's standard build has him getting Frozen Mallet and Wit's End. He will now slow 3 targets, apply the Wit's End on-hit to 3 targets, and apply his poison to three procs. With synergy like that, I might even buy Malady (jk but maybe not so I can say I called it when it becomes a thing). Second, Urgot's passive now applies to 3 targets. That's 3 targets whose damage is now decreased. Twitch now stacks true damage on loads of targets in an AoE. That's 24 true damage per second, per stack.


OK, so utility buffs out the wazoo for some champions, a ludicrous amount of damage from Kog'Maw, and pretty good damage on anybody with an on-hit effect or the ability to make sure to hit three targets. What does this item lack?

The Synergy

If Hurricane has any weak points, it is its lack of synergy with other typical AD Carry items and playstyles.

First, it refuses to scale with Crit Chance. Since auto attacks are multiplicative, the more items and stats you get, the more problematic this gets. But to the Kog'Maw player who now does 6% of three different target's maximum healths per hit, that's probably a very small drawback. However, the main problem I see with this item is what it does to positioning and the ability for an AD Carry to 1v1 bruisers. There are certain bruisers who can simply dive onto AD Carries (namely Irelia and Olaf and Mundo). The loss of single target damage makes it harder to deal with these champions diving you. So probably don't get it vs them.

Second, this really changes how AD Carries approach team-fights, as to maximize damage, they have to hit three targets, making their current strategy of 'attack the guy who's safest and probably far away from his team' pretty weak, which I think actually will make the item very weak against some compositions.


Creativity - A

The game doesn't really have anything like this, so it's good to see.

Damage - A

No seriously the dps on some champions will be crazy. Please don't 5-man dive the Kog if his team has AoE CC. Speaking of AoE CC it will be great with this item on your AD Carry

Utility - It depends

Doesn't bring any utility of its own, but amplifies any utility the AD Carry already has. And I guess you lose some lifesteal.

Practicality - B

Requires a whole new type of positioning which may not be safe, depending on your allied and enemy team composition. Bust out the AoE CC and Spray and Pray (oh god wait does it apply to that, too?).

Execution - C

We meant to buff AoE ADs, and instead, we buffed on-hit ADs, especially Kog'Maw.

Synergy - It depends

Do you have an on-hit effect? Well then enjoy synergy and maybe build on-hit if that's what you're into. But do you like Crit Chance/lifesteal/Armor Pen like most AD Carries? Sorry, you're sort of left out in the cold

Overall - B+

You know what I actually think this item actually is? It's basically that unique build path so many people have always wanted on Kog'Maw/Teemo; the one that used to have Madred's Bloodrazor in it and made everybody sad. Except instead of single target brutality, it brings the AoE pain. And it maybe breaks utility on some champions.

So what champions do I like Runaan's Hurricane on?

Caitlyn - her long range will let you get 3 stacks of his headshot consistently.
Kog'Maw - long range and good on-hit ability; lack of mobility could hurt him.
Teemo - :(
Twitch - True damage everywhere
Varus - more stacks for more AoE % Health Damage (plus on-hit)

Summary from Xypherous:

Quote from Xypherous

So, if you go the typical IE/PD build with critical strikes, these secondary bolts are going to be far less than 50% of your average main attack damage.

If you go raw Hurricane / BT, builds for example - you will be life stealing more - at the cost of not taking advantage of the multiplicative power of critical strike and critical damage for the multiplicative power of Area of Effect attacks.

Basically - do you want to hit everyone a lot of times for a moderate amount of damage? Or do you want to hit one person a few times for tons of damage? But in the end, the amount you life steal actually kind of ends up to be around the same.

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