Just a small foreword of who I am: I did four years of accounting stretched across both High School and College. I was accused of cheating on math tests twice by authorities. I completed Stats 2040 in College when I was 18 years old and haven’t touched math as a subject in school since. I have played League since beta. I love everything dealing with numbers and good discussion. If I have a mistake in here please point it out. I would much rather discuss items and their value than have false information up here and be leading people astray! Thank you, and enjoy!
I recently saw Executioner’s Calling be built in a tournament game and I felt a bit sheepish. Of course I know what it does! It’s the lifesteal crit chance one. Sure, it’s cheap. Is it cost effective? How should I know? I’ve never bought it before!
I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. It doesn’t provide any real defensive stats, so it can’t be considered a bruiser item. It only costs 1350 gold to finish, so it can’t be a late game carry item. It doesn’t look like it fits a class, so I disregarded it completely and forgot that it exists.
Now that I’ve learned the error of my ways I want to do a bit of math to see if I can justify this purchase on an AD carry. I picture this item on Draven. The crit chance matches perfectly with his passive. The damage over time matches perfectly with his passive. The life steal is extremely high for the gold cost. So let’s do math and see what we can find.
First, let’s just see if it’s gold efficient. Life Steal as a stat costs 45 gold per 1 percent Life Steal, or 450 gold for 10% Life Steal on a Vampiric Scepter. Brawler’s Gloves are slightly less gold efficient than Cloak of Agility (gloves are 50 per 1%, cloak is 46.11 per 1%), but are close enough that value isn’t lost. The adjusted values for Life Steal and Crit Chance are 42.27 and 45.55 per 1% respectively.
The completion cost of the item is also quite low at only 500 gold, putting the completed item at a measly 1350 gold.
Now I’m going to be looking at the 117th line of this spreadsheet (you may have to pick a tab at the bottom) that I graciously thank rayshu86 for. He says that the item has efficiency of 94.03. To take a closer look at this let’s multiply the values that Executioner’s Calling gives by the values that we know the values for.
18% Life Steal X 42.27 = 760.86 gold
and
15% Crit Chance X 45.55 = 683.25 gold
which is 1444.11 gold. So, this item is actually worth more than you pay for it, and that’s probably where the high efficiency rating comes in.
Something else I wanted to mention that probably not many people know: Life Steal and Crit Chance are the two most expensive stats that a player can purchase in League of Legends with their respective values. The next closest is Attack Damage at 38.61 and Cooldown Reduction at 32.95. You’ll notice that this is dropping surprisingly fast compared to the 42 and 45 costs we used in our equation.
I can’t make any conclusive findings with this simple math that I’ve done. Eventually the item only sells for 945 gold, which means that if you do buy it and end up selling it you would lost 500 gold. However, one cannot argue the value of Life Steal as popular carries have recently been rushing to get a Bloodthirster to have that added lane sustain and traction in a duel. Also, with relatively new changes to key items I believe that Life Steal has more value than we give it credit for. It’s up to you whether or not Executioner’s Calling makes a comeback into our current bot-lane meta.
