User blog comment:Tinhboe/Elder Lizard vs Feral Flare/@comment-24309189-20140814094836

Wait what? What does this have to do with me? Do I know you? Your username doesn't look familiar...

On topic

The Flare was never good on champions that didn't auto attack a lot, have skills that apply on hit effects, or low clearspeeds. Flare is a lategame investment, something like a Sword of the Occult or a Mejai's Soulstealer... without the loss of stacks on death. It takes time to make it worth its money. The super long range ward is very useful. The 30% increased gold on monster kill is actually a huge amount if you're playing someone like Udyr, Master Yi, Nocture, etc. Easily reaching 30+ stacks and more than 1000 gold from the Flare's gold passive in a 30-ish minute game.

Elder Lizard, like all Spirit Stone items is an early game investment, like the Doran's series of items. It provides superior health sustain compared to the Flare and provides mana sustain that the Flare does not. The Spirit Stone items Conservation passive provides far less gold when farming the jungle. It's for ganking and interacting with your team. With its superior health and mana sustain and the gold stacking over time passive, it's the perfect item to run into a lane, gank, take some damage, spend some mana, go back into the jungle, spend your stacks, and recover your HP and MP. Its usually sold late game unless your team lacks the damage to take a Baron quickly enough or if you're using a shit ton of mana trying in team fights.

The reason Lee Sin makes such use of the Elder Lizard is because he jumps off a cliff late game. He's an early game champion meant to get himself and his team snowballing in the early and mid game before he jumps off that cliff into a sea of hungry water dwelling Mega Gnars. The Flare is the exact opposite, it is an item that is made for the late game.

Pantheon makes use of the Elder Lizard because he's an ability based melee champion, that uses a ton of mana. Kha'Zix and Jarven 4 for the same reasons.

I suppose it all comes down to preference in the end. Do you want to play for the late game? Or do you want to play for the early/mid game?