Talk:Will of the Ancients/@comment-3529242-20131227050609/@comment-8468980-20140110213146

"but lategame if you want any sort of self sustain, you need this item."

Generally speaking, late game ap carries like malz get more from outright evaporating the enemy and staying out of scenarios where they may need to sustain instead of buying spellvamp.

Sustain is most valuable during the laning phase for them when they take poke damage and all-ins won't neccessarily 100% kill them. After that, it becomes weaker and less useful since they either kill their opponent outright in team fights or need to escape or simply die. The sustain they get from WotA won't help them survive an assassin or an ADC or wrench a Bruiser off of them, in these instances harder damage stats or AP defensive items with special passives and actives help them out far greater.

Lategame, a weaker AP item like this is more of a detriment to hard carries than anything else. The exception to this rule is probably Ryze since he basically cheats with spellvamp, deals damage primarily over time, and builds tankier.