Talk:Lich Bane/@comment-10880231-20140415040517/@comment-1330314-20140415044241

I think Riot tuned this item so that it only truly meshes well with AP champions that have a strong source of autoattack-based damage. Sure, you could get this on or, but at least you don't get crazy ratio increases: Prior to the nerf, they could easily add  to their already-strong ratios while performing their full combo, which would lead to  and  ratios on their burst respectively. The fact that it could proc every 2 seconds also meant that you'd end up with champions that specialized in burst also having extremely potent sustained damage capabilities.

It's also fairly easy to outdamage 's Spellblade proc with Lich Bane: if you're or, with a base AD of 129.7 at level 18 (the highest around), one TF proc gives you 259.4 bonus damage. If you're, with the lowest level 18 base AD in the game at 85.6 AD, you deal a base of 104.2 damage with this item alone, and outdamage Trinity Force on Skarner with 311 AP, which you can get from a and a. From then on, any extra AP you buy will significantly outdamage the TF proc. If you pick a more reasonable situation when you're an actual AP damage dealer, you can get far more damage out of a LB than out of a TF with just a Rabadon's, and then subsequently deal far more damage as you build AP.

I also don't think it would be a good idea to remove the base AD ratio and add AP on top: the base AD ratio is there so that your damage scales as you level up, and not just when you purchase AP. A big problem with pre-nerf Lich Bane is that your damage output would spike massively every time you purchased another AP item, and getting lots of AP early on would lead to overwhelmingly strong procs. Conversely, if you fell behind then the proc from this would fall off extremely hard. The base AD ratio is there to trade off snowballing potential for a smoother power curve.