Talk:Rabadon's Deathcap/@comment-207.81.32.143-20110105053553

Building for Zhonya's Ring used to be a very, very risky plan that could possibly ruin the game before the item even gets finished. You needed to have a LOT of gold saved up for the Large Rod, which meant you did less damage and far squishier compared to everyone else who could buy lower-priced recipe items. The lack of any stats other than AP doesn't help.

However, once the Ring was actually complete, you had both weaknesses covered right away; the Active could prevent any 'finisher' abilities from killing you with a proper timing, or do wonderful things with non-channel active abilities like Kennen's ultimate. And you also had the massive AP boost.

Now... it's pretty much the same deal as Zhonya's Ring as I described, except you're STILL just as easy to kill, whether or not you finished the item. You have about 40~80 more ability power than with Zhonya's ring, but does that damage matter at all when you could be negating several hundreds' worth of damage done to you, and live to nuke someone else?

I believe that the Hourglass will now take over the spot of Zhonya's Ring from now on, within any average games that last less than 1 hour and no one gets particularly fed.