Talk:Zeal/@comment-24971427-20180630144802/@comment-7765731-20180726180950

@Tashikoma; You're partially correct. For most marksmen it is a bit more efficient to build a BF sword before finishing your Zeal, mostly for their abilities which you already mentioned. However, the difference isn't as large as you might imagine, and there are clear benefits for the Zeal item rush aswell. Most of the time you could just make the call based on if you feel like you need more trading power or more dps (zeal also offers a bit of mobility), because while your abilities normally scale on AD, they also have base damage. For most marksman you're maxing your damaging ability first, which means that while a BF sword would give it more power unlike a Zeal, the relative difference in power isn't that big. As with everything, there are exceptions and this is just a generalization.

I find it interesting you would bring up Kai'Sa, because she rarely builds crit to begin with. If you would, however, much like many other cases it would be more a matter of need and preference to which choice would be more efficient. For almost any marksman, attack speed in particular is on top of being a dps stat also what you might call a "feel good" stat. What I mean by that is that most (not all) marksmen have relatively long AA wind-ups, which is how long it takes after starting their AA animation before a projectile actually fires. For most of them, it isn't as extreme as it taking all of their AA timer, but it is usually near, or just past the middle of it. One of the biggest exceptions would be Kalista, she doesn't fire her projectile until near the end of her AA timer - she's a bit of a special case though, because she can't manually cancel her AAs to begin with.

Now, let's paint a picture - imagine you have 0.5 AA/s - no marksman have starting AS' that low really, but it makes for an easier example - On paper, that means that you need 2 seconds to fire one autoattack. However, for anyone that has played marksmen especially you'll be well aware of the concepts of animation canceling, which in the case of autoattacks seek to cut your AA animation off as soon as your projectile actually fires and avoiding the AA wind-down animation as much as possible. So let's say the wind-up before their projetcile actually fires is roughly half their AA timer. In the example we're using that would mean you need to be locked in your AA animation for 1 second before your projectile fires, doing anything else before this second has elapsed would cancel your AA. However, as soon as your projectile has fired you can cancel and move right away. Doing so will not cause your next autoattack to be ready sooner, but it will allow you to use the time (roughly 1s) to move around or use abilities instead while waiting for your next autoattack to be ready. Doubling your AS to 1 AA/s would effectively halve your wind-up time, meaning you're free to move and reply to what happens around you sooner.

As I already mentioned, no marksman really has 0.5 AS without AS slows, but it gives a clearer example. AS lowers the time needed for all animations tied together with an AA, though it is worth mentioning that it might not be an even spread for wind-up and wind-down for all champions - Thresh is a bit of an odd-ball here. Mostly because his wind-up is massive, just pop him into the practice tool and try canceling his AA animation at different levels of AS.

The bottom line of this whole line of thinking is that increasing your AS makes your AAs feel cleaner and smoother, allowing you faster reactions and answers. The only exceptions really are those champions that have almost no wind-up - which for balance purposes are almost none of the marksmen - I believe Corki may have the shorterst wind-up of any marksman. However, Zyra is one of the champions that has the shortest, and is one of the clearest examples. Try hopping into a practice tool game and build no AS, then play around with her AA animation - you'll find that her projectile fires almost immediately and she has to spend almost no time locked into her AA animation.

That got pretty drawn out, but it's hard to briefly explain why AS is a feel-good stat, and also the tactical benefits of building AS apart from just sheer DPS. That benefit is smaller on Corki with his short wind-up, so if he wasn't building Triforce he should probably focus more on AD than AS. For anyone else however there is real merit to building AS apart from sheer dps (whch is probably going to be slightly higher with a BF sword early). On top of that, finishing Zeal items also offer other benefits, in range, damage, damage mitigation and/or waveclear.

That said, it should still be more efficient most of the time to just build atleast a BF sword early, but the bottom line is that finishing the Zeal item first very much is a valid option, even if not necessarily the best option all the time (I already mentioned the benefits of not needing to save up 1300g briefly in my last post). Just look at any statistical site like lolalytics and you will also find that while they don't sport the highest winrates as the first item, if finishing Zeal first was downright detrimental then it would have winrates far below 50% as a first item (on a champion with 50%+ winrate otherwise). Now, it obviously isn't THAT simple reading the numbers - there are other underlying factors, but it still holds mostly true - the winrate for Zeal rush would be downright bad if there wasn't merit to it.