Talk:Deathfire Touch (Season 2016 Mastery)/@comment-4167645-20160113201914/@comment-26071360-20160114003056

Liandry's was never a must buy every time item as, just like Deathfire Touch, it has especial synergy with DoT mages (Malzahar, Brand) and champions with reliable single target damage (Vlad), especially as they could also easily itemize Rylais for additional damage. A champion like Veigar has synergy neither with Thunderlord's nor with Deathfire. This is because Veigar lacks a reliable way to proc Thunderlord's in lane (Lux only needs to hit a spell and weave an auto, for example), which is what makes Thunderlord's so powerful: If you can reliably land it on your opponent, you gain immense bullying power. It is true that Thunderlord's helps his burst, but not being able to make full use of it off-cd hurts him significantly. Veigar lacks synergy with Deathfire as well since all his basic damaging spells are AoEs and only his ultimate is single target, and carries a large cooldown to boot.

Now, do you see the pattern? If AoE mages (Ziggs would be a good example here) could reliably burn several members on the enemy team, of course they would pick Deathfire Touch over Thunderlord's, their poke cooldowns are much lower than Thunderlord's internal cooldown. In many cases in league, as soon as a spell can hit multiple targets its power is significantly increased, and that has to be balanced around.

tl;dr: It makes perfect sense for AoE abilities to have reduced effectiveness with Deathfire Touch just precisely because they are AoEs.