Talk:Taric/@comment-29964258-20170915124924/@comment-4091261-20170916155052

Q>W>E is a good situational alternative. However, it's situational due to one small thing: it doesn't have an ratio.

While it may seem small, when building a heavy item, the gains from having greater uptime with  and even more   is too great of an opportunity cost to pass up.

The situation where Q>W>E is a good max is when you are dealing with a support mage alongside a poke heavy enemy team. It makes for the strongest mid-game teamfighting sustain and shifting investment to items early game, since  won't protect against magic damage, will ensure greater prominence of the healing.

Maxing forces laning phase to be much more passive since waiting for it to charge to full stacks, or not even using it at all at some ranks, is more  efficient. That said, the scenario where it is most effective isn't usually a scenario where you would get.

You may find it passable to max Q>W>E while building something like or, but you will find that  performs much better with Q>W>E if he's rushing the core support items, i.e. , , or , in the early game.