Another excellent sale (for me at least)

Up to this week, I'd been missing Caitlyn, Miss Fortune and Graves, the three ADCs that are probably best for my play style. Earlier this week, Caitlyn went on sale. Tomorrow, MF goes on sale. With any luck, I'll pick up Graves next week!

Caitlyn in particular is a good purchase for me as her range allows her a certain farming edge and she really encourages the "attack from range" concept very well. My problem is that I tend to want to jump in and focus on someone. ADCs really need to stand back and hit whomever is in range and kite if need be. I tend to want to get that one last hit on the Carry I'm targeting but, frankly, that isn't the role of the ADC. Let the bruisers do that. I should focus on the best target of opportunity while staying safe.

Miss Fortune brings an ult with a ridiculous range and AoE so she also really works for that particular play style.

Also excited about picking up Lulu. She's a really fun support with a great variety of abilities and an Ult that can really change a fight (plus looks awesome on a fully pumped up Cho'Gath).

Still stuck in Bronze II but haven't really played much. Got trolled in one game and then just got beat in another (played with a friend in Silver IV so played "tougher than normal" opposition). Still playing a fair amount of Dominion.

Finally some new champs to buy

You know me. I'm an alt-asoraus. A strange animal with a need to play lots of different characters in any game I play. Currently, of the 111 champions available in League of Legends. I own 86 of them. I've been "smart" about the purchases. I've purchased two champions with IP. One champion at full price. 40 champions through champion bundles (total cost ~$30) and the rest when they've been on sale. All told, I've put about $140 into the game and I've gotten far more out of it than that.

So I've been a bit disappointed the last few weeks that none of the champions I've wanted to buy have been on sale. Then, I open up my browser today and low and behold. Not one. Not two. But three shiny on-sale champions for me to buy!

Caitlyn: The three ADCs that I'm "best" with are ones I don't own (Caitlyn, Graves, Miss Fortune). That changes tonight. Hurray!

Maokai: Another jungler for me to play with. Maokai has a completely different jungling style so this might take some getting used to but it'll be nice to have a good AP option since Amumu is basically perma-banned in ranked.

Vi: Another champion I've been dying to play. Everyone loves a crazy, dashing, ganking, punching monster. Vi delivers.

So I'll be dropping another $35 tonight to buy some more RP for these champions. This should be the last I spend on a game that I've loved more than any other game (I can't think of a game that's held my interest for 6 months like this, ever). I have no real intention of buying any skins and the few champions that are remaining (plus new releases) will easily be purchasable with IP.

Woot! Bronze II

Played two games last night and crushed in both to get my promotion to Bronze II easily. That puts me at 6 straight wins and 9 of the last 11. I was a bit disappointed to not get vaulted to Bronze I, especially since the second game consisted of me being the ban selector (indicating that my MMR was the highest on my team) but everyone on my team was Silver V or Bronze I/II. Seems a bit silly to me.

The first game, I played as Hecarim and had the mid Akali and top Fiora so happy that they were pledging to have my little horsey babies. It was just one of those games that felt like everything was going right. I made a couple mistakes by getting too aggressive at one point but overall just flat dismantled the enemy team. The highlight for me was when I ghosted through the top tower to chase down a fleeing Singed and then ran into a Jarvan jungler who I soloed from half health, picking up two kills and certainly causing the enemy team to go nuclear on each other. Fun game. The ending was especially funny. We were planting ward coverage in the river after the last team fight and Akali and Fiora were with me (with our support/adc close by). I went ahead and checked their blue buff to see if it was up and started it. Jarvan jumped across the wall into me and the rest of his team followed on. I clobbered Jarvan and Fiora got a quadra kill for the ace. All because we baited them into a stupid attack (at that point, I had Iceborn and Randuin's... so Jarvan was a non-threat to me anyways... but his team probably thought they were picking up a quick kill on the annoying horse... lol).

The second game was less dominating by me but, playing as Sona, I had some really clutch Crescendo's that locked the other team down hard. The best one was near the tower on bot early on. Cait and I were struggling a bit against an MF who had managed to get fed (partly by us and partly by bad Shaco ganks). Shaco said, "Sona, Ult" and I thought, good idea. So I flash ulted into MF just as she hit her own ult trying to get four of us (dumb luck). I locked down 3 of them and we proceeded to annihilate them under tower. They killed me but we got 3 kills and pushed down two towers giving us a huge pushed lane and a huge gold lead. Focusing the support is such a stupid idea in most situations. There's always this temptation to shoot at the person that is charging you but oftentimes, the more dangerous opponent is the girl with the giant rifle BEHIND the scary keyboard lady. It was a really good game but we were ahead in kills but behind in towers for much of the game until we got a bit geared up. I'm also learning to love the power of Aegis of the Legion + Locket of the Iron Solari. These two items make your team ridiculously more resilient in team fights.

One other thing about the second game that was interesting was that it was a chance to fully implement my banning strategy. In most drafts, Malphite/Shen/Blitzcrank/Amumu get banned out of sheer momentum. What I've started doing is "forcing" one of them if I have first pick. So I'll ban something like Elise first and if they ban one of the "power 4" then I'll just skip banning the really good champs (instead banning Darius and Miss Fortune). This guarantees that I'll get one of the power 4 (all of which I can play... though I'm not great at Shen). Worst case scenario, they figure out what I'm doing and leave a 2nd one open so that we both get one. But even then, I'll get to choose first so that's okay too.

So in the second game last night, I forced Malphite and they got Shen. But the only person who knew how to play Shen played him as a jungler and that's not exactly optimal (he has horrendously slow clear times). It's a strategy more people should employ. On a side note, the counter strategy for the purple team is to ALSO not ban a power 4 champ. This forces the blue team to have to ban a power 4 or risk giving the purple team 2 of them.

Having said all that, this is a low league strategy. These champions are powerful not because they're just inherently OP but because they're very good against less skilled people (and, conversely, relatively easy for low skilled players to play).

Best article yet!

16 hours after publication and I've already hit 23,000 hits (4,000 better than my previous best which took a week to accumulate and good enough now for the 4th slot on the "best of this month" list). Link is found here. I'm at like +43 on reddit with it as well which is pretty awesome for me. Still haven't found a reliable way to drive that kind of traffic (I thought the article on "how to push your lane" would be a bigger hit but it never took off... )

Also, I'm up to a promotion series in Bronze III now. I've won 4 in a row and 7 of my last 9. Focusing on Support Sona and Jungle Hecarim (who's now drawing heavy bans... bleh) has been great and I'll have another article going up today or tomorrow regarding bans that will (hopefully!) draw significant page views.

Good times.

Climb to Gold

I've set my goal this year to climb up to gold in ranked play. I've already won a promotion series to get to Bronze III. Currently, I'm sitting on 56 points in my division. The way the Match Making Rating (MMR) works is a bit odd right now but, essentially, as you beat expectations, your rating will increase. Your rating relative to your division determines the number of points won or lost in the division. If the system thinks you're "over skilled" for your division,  you'll earn more points and therefore be eligible for promotions faster. If you're "under skilled" for your division, you'll earn fewer.

Currently, I'm sitting on 54 points in Bronze III after two wins (28 and 26 points respectively). I suspect that two more wins will get me a promotion series into Bronze II. The promotion series are a tricky thing. Because you have to win your final game to get INTO a promotion series, they effectively require you to win 3 out of 4 (for division promotions) and 4 out of 6 for league promotions. It's not horrible but when confronted with a system that is designed to gravitate to a 50/50 win rate, it can be frustrating.

My current plan is to main the following

Jungle: Hecarim (Nocturne / Diana backup)
Support: Sona (Nunu backup)
ADC: avoid at all costs (Vayne or Urgot right now but hopefully one of Caitlynn / Miss Fortune / Graves will suit me better)
Mid: Kassadin (Talon / Diana backup)
Top: Yorick

I can also play three of the power 4 (Blitzcrank, Malphite and Amumu) and will try to learn Shen just for completeness

Primarily I'm going to try to focus on Jungle and Support. My twitch reflexes aren't up to par with a lot of the better players but being smart can make up for those significantly in the jungle/support roles. By focusing on a few champions and positions, hopefully I'll also find myself improving significantly in those areas.

One thing I've discovered in solo queue is the power of pink wards as a jungler/support. A pink ward essentially guarantees you a ganking lane and/or a clean teleport target. Why more supports don't throw down a pink ward in the river to clear vision for their jungler or an advanced pink ward in the bottom bush as a teleport target is beyond me. It's so easy to do and for a cost of simply 50gp, it seems like a no brainer.

World's most idiotic idea? Yup!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/19/cyprus-bank-deposit-tax-reduction/1998741/

This has got to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard. There are at least three reasons why this is a bad idea.

A) Taxing deposits discourages savings
B) The Banks will have a massive run on their deposits (like 100% for large investors but even many small individuals will pull out rather than pay a 10%). You have timing issues as well (why not just pull my money out before the tax is levied?)
C) Asset taxing looks a lot more like the government "taking" than income taxes. Why would anyone ever deposit money in Cyprus again.

Hybrid Malzahar

As I've mentioned before, I keep a running list of "things I'd like to try". The newest entry on that list is "Hybrid Malzahar". The idea came to me when I discovered Banner of Command is a percent damage boosting item and Malzahar's pets scale off of AD.

A build that looks like this would be really interesting and fun, I think.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity (Captain)
Hextech Gunblade
Guinsoo's Rageblade
Iceborn Gauntlet
Banner of Command
Manamune

You generate AD of 200+ (depending on runes and masteries) which translates into voidlings doing 300 damage per hit. That's actually very good. The voidlings are somewhat easily controlled with Malefic Visions. You'd have to do the math to figure out whether you're doing more total damage but it's relatively easy for Malzahar to get two Voidlings out during a team fight (lead into the fight with 3 spell stacks of your passive, then cast Malefic Visions, Null Zone, Call of the Void, Nether Grasp and Ignite/Gunblade/Promote or wait for another Malefic Visions. There are some very real challenges with this build.

1) You're squishy as all hell. Iceborn Gauntlet gives you some armor and Hextech gives you some sustain but you're still pretty vulnerable. The plus side is that someone who rushes Blade of the Ruined King will being doing squat for damage to you. AP champs are going to crush you.
2) You're not particularly effective at split pushing due to not having an escape. This is somewhat mititgated by your pets which provide a real nuisance to anyone chasing you. But you're no Shen. Still, Banner of Command means your minions will be hitting people hard so if they try to send a support or non-tanky character to harass you away, you can still get a kill.
3) You don't really hit a critical mass until you get most of the items. You have to rush Banner of Command to get the most out of it but that leaves you somewhat ineffectual while you build the pieces.
4) It's expensive. The full build costs 15,610 and because of #3 above, you're probably not going to be doing crazy damage until later.
5) You're going to go OOM REALLY quick with the Muramana active on. I don't know how it interacts with Malefic Visions but at 3% per single target spell and per attack, you're going to be chunking through it quick. That's okay though because your alpha at the beginning of the fight will be insane and when your mana gets lower, you go ahead and ult to finish someone else off.
6) Auto-attacking isn't conducive to your channeled ult.

The ideal opponent comp would be AD tanky bruisers (Vi, Kha-Zix, etc) with limited mobility and an ADC who's going to rush Blade of the Ruined King (Tristana). It's a fairly niche composition but one that will still get punished severely by this build (I think).

I'm going to try it tonight against bots and intentionally farm slowly to try to get to full build (or close to it). It may not be good. But it'll sure be fun.

Banning strategies

The ban list seems to be nearly locked in in many games. Invariably, it goes like this:

Bans: Shen, Blitzcrank, Malphite, Amumu, Darius, Elise...

There's a bit of wiggle room on Elise and Darius but in 90% of the solo queue games I've played, the first four are dependable. Why is this?

First, there's insufficient time to talk about who you want to take to make targeted bans. If I want to play Heimerdinger mid, Lux is a must ban. But there's not time to do that.

Second, the champions above are probably the "swingiest" champions in the game. Shen allows split pushing that requires good communication to counter. Blitzcrank only needs to land one hook to completely change a game. Malphite's ult is the best initiate in the game, hands down. Amumu's is only slightly behind him. Darius is widely considered OP against less experienced players (i.e. us lowly bronze leaguers). Elise is a bit of a strange case but has % health damage for both current health and missing health so presents a good choice in the current meta.

But I wonder why teams don't pay attention to who's picking first before doing this.

When I have the lead pick, I invariably pick Elise first. She's good in the meta and it doesn't tip my hat. But once my opponent starts picking Shen/Blitzcrank/Malphite/Amumu, I'll often pick other picks. They can only ban one of those four and we've got first pick. What the other team SHOULD do at this point (and they don't often) is to stop banning the conventional picks. Once it's clear that I'm going to force them to give us a good pick (once I ban Nidalee, for instance), they should ensure they get a good pick second and third. But they rarely do this. It doesn't happen often, but you can frequently get yourself one of the "premium" picks without giving up any. The worst that can happen is that they get one and you get one but I've found that to be rare. In fact, I've played a number of times where we got two of the top picks because they lacked the champion pool / knowledge base to switch champions around. So maybe they had Amumu but either weren't good with him or their jungler was picking last and no one could switch. So we got Blitzcrank and Amumu...

Anyways... Pay attention to your bans.

Been practicing with Kassadin on Dominion with smartcasting

I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately with a specific goal of getting better with Kassadin. I love the champ. He's super mobile, has really high burst but also a fair amount of tankiness (especially against a team with a lot of AP). His silence is one of the longest in the game and you just can't escape from him once he decides to kill you.

So Dominion is a great game mode for practicing all this as well as the new realm of smart casting (which is fan-frickin-tastic!!). I've gotten to the point where I'm always top three in a Dominion game and very often 1st place in BOTH kills and tower caps (which is an awesome feeling).

I realize that a big part of this is that I'm playing one of the wildly OP Dominion champs (Kassadin) but it's fun nonetheless. If you decide to play Dominion and want to win, I'd suggest any of the following:

Kassadin: Widely regarded as one of the three most OP champs in dominion. I love him.
Teemo: Shrooms will get hit far more often in Dominion. Build massive AP and watch people melt.
Heimerdinger: Can handle bottom solo against 2 or even 3 people once he gets Zhonya's. Played right, the bottom becomes an untakeable target.
Gangplank: The ult will prevent a cap of a tower for the length of time it takes (7 seconds). Very nice.
Malphite: So tanky. You can't play him in draft summoner's rift now. But you can play him in Dominion. Awesome.
Kha'Zix: High burst and a leap makes him mobile and dangerous as a wanderer in the middle. Lots of fun.
Evelynn: Wandering the jungle stealthed is fun. 'Nuff said.
Amumu: Tanky with a scary ganking ability. He works great for generating quick 2v1 kills on bottom and then wandering back to hold top forever.
Blitzcrank: Pulling from out of a tower to create a 4v1 that can leverage to a 4v3 is fantastic... Make sure your team is ready to instagib the poor helpless target.
Skarner: The ability to ult and pull people out of tower or ult and pull people into YOUR tower is fantastic. He gets tanky and burst all at once. A lot of fun.

Dominion isn't "League of Legends" the way it's supposed to be played. But it's a different game and for developing your skill set with a new champion, it can be really useful. Just remember, you can't cast that much in a regular game!

Narrowing my champion pool

I realized the other day that I was allowing myself to get spread too thin across a number of champions. My mechanical skills are "ok" but I need to get "good" with a narrow selection of champions before branching out. So I've set myself a goal of establishing two champions at every position that I feel like I should try to be "good" at.

ADC:
Vayne: A fairly straightforward champion. She has a decent escape with a super low cooldown. Her condemn gives her a second type of escape and she has a reasonably straight forward build path.
Urgot: Builds tanky and more of a "caster ADC" rather than an auto-attacker.

Mid:
Kassadin: I've gotten fairly good with him. He's naturally resistant to magic attacks and has fairly high burst with good AP scaling. He's ridiculously mobile with his ult on a short cooldown and has a massive aoe stun and great mana sustain.
Diana: I've always liked her. They rebuffed her back to where she's good again. She also can serve as a jungler which allows me to further consolidate my champion list. Can build tanky or full burst.

Top:
Yorick: I've always liked him. Has a natural tankiness and creates annoying obstacles for a number of champions. Doesn't get played a lot so should make some people uncomfortable.
???: Looking for suggestions. I've tried Elise and I'm not good with her. Malphite is permabanned so a bad choice.

Jungle:
Hecarim: I love him! He's, by far, my best champion at the moment (though close with Sona, I suppose). He has great ganks. Can build tanky and DPS (often at the same time) and has a powerful ult that will change the face of a game. I really want to play a game sometime with Singed top and Malphite mid so I can go full hybrid damage with him and see how it works. Really a fun champion.
???: I've played around with Nocturne but I'm not sold. I'm good with Amumu but he's a permaban. For now this slot will be Diana but would like a dedicated jungler to learn.

Support:
Sona: My best / second best champ. I love the poke from her combined with the sustain. She has a number of different builds allowing me to stay full support or transition to dealing damage. I like building mana manipulator on her right out of the gate because it combines well with an Ezreal or Miss Fortune who tend to be mana hogs early.
Taric (though maybe should be Nunu): Both these supports are good. Taric offers a stun and maybe could be my top laner (giving that tack some appeal). Nunu offers good harass and an awesome buff as well as self-sustain (and could, theoretically, be my jungler).

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Feeling like a hero

I played a game of League the other night that I completely dominated. Playing as Hecarim (my current favorite champ), I was able to crush in the jungle. The best moment came when I ganked top. Our Teemo had been struggling with Olaf for the first 10 minutes of the game (which is odd because Teemo should actually be decent in that matchup) and I came up to relieve pressure. I came charging in from the river and Olaf popped his Ult (which makes him immune to CC). I did a bunch of damage (took him down to half) but, without the knockback from my charge, there was no way I was going to catch him before he got to tower.

Our Teemo types, "I hate Olaf. Fricking impossible to kill."

So I went back into the jungle and saw that Olaf came back (and I think warded the river crescent bush). At that point, the lane was roughly frozen at the half way point. So I circled back and went into his tri-bush (he was red side) and came charging through between minion waves. This time my charge landed, knocked him towards Teemo. He was still tanky enough (and I think popped ghost) to get back to his tower but Teemo and I could easily tower dive him at ~10% health and kill him.

I typed, "Not impossible to kill. Just requires effort ;)"

Hecarim brings so much to the game and fits me really well. Some hints to playing him.

Smite, Ghost is the way to go. Flash isn't really needed and ghost works nearly as well for escapes given how fast you are. Ghost will make your ganks really powerful (increasing your AD by a fair clip) while allowing you to get around the map a lot quicker.

I've started building Zephyr. It gives you AD, attack speed, move speed and tenacity. All things which you really want to have as Hecarim. It's relatively cheap and easy to build (small cost components). The attack speed is SLIGHTLY wasted on Hecarim but not so much that I think it's worthless and while STACKING attack speed on him is bad, getting just a little bit is about perfect. Don't rush it though. My typical build is Spirit of the Elder Lizard -> Iceborn Gauntlet -> Sunfire Cape -> Zephyr.

Having said that, vary your build according to the circumstances. If you need to carry and your team has a lot of CC, Tri-force can be better than Iceborn. You may need to go tanky with a Warmog's or you may need a Runic Bulwark for the magic resist. You want to have 10 or so items that you "wish" you could buy and then choose accordingly based on the game. The enemy team's damage type will play a big role but so will yours. Here's the items I've built on Hecarim that I think are worth considering:

Any Hunter's Machete upgrade: I've honestly built them all. USUALLY I build Spirit of the Elder Lizard for the AD but you can make an argument for any of them. A note about Spirit of the Spectral Wraith. Building AP on Hecarim may look odd but Hecarim with Spirit of the Spectral Wraith (20% spell vamp), Iceborn Gauntlet and Rod of the Ages can be a frighteningly tanky monstrosity. I don't do this often (typically I want "burst tanky" not "sustain tanky") but if both teams are tanky, the fights can last really long and you may want to consider it.

The Black Cleaver: Black cleaver applies when physical damage is dealt. Shredding the armor of three members through your use of Rampage is a common thing and you'll often do it two or three times in a fight. Cleaver gives you AD, health and CDR which are all nice on Hecarim as well. Buy this if your team is heavy on AD.

Boots of Mobility vs. Boots of Swiftness: I've been buying the boots of Swiftness but I think I'm going to go back to the mobility. The boost to your alpha and the map movement more than compensates for the lack of escape speed and slight damage hit in longer fights.

Abyssal Scepter: Not a frequent buy but if I find myself initiating a lot and the other team is heavy magic damage, this is probably worth it.

Aegis / Runic: I typically leave this to the support to buy but if they don't, I'll pick it up.

Blade of the Ruined King: Hecarim auto-attacks enough to make this OK if the enemy team has a couple ultra health champs. Don't discount this simply because you're not the ADC. Not an ideal item however.

Frozen Heart: An awesome item for a champion that wants to be in the fight. If they other team has a dominant ADC and/or melee champs that rely on auto-attacks (Darius, Shaco, etc) this can be a really powerful item.

Hextech Gunblade: An interesting option on Hecarim. It's "OK" but not generally as good as tri-force if you want raw damage. Nevertheless, the sustain it provides is powerful and if you find yourself needing that, it might be worth it.

Manamune: I've never actually tried this but if you build a frozen heart often you should maybe consider this. The AD boost should be easy to max out given how frequently you rampage around. I think I'll try this tonight.

Youmuu's Ghostblade: Gives surprisingly good stats (30 AD, 15% crit, 10% CDR, 20 flat armor pen). The crit is a bit wasted on Hecarim but the other stats are all good and the active (20% movement speed and 40% attack speed for 6 seconds every 45 seconds) is very powerful with him. Just make sure you use it!

Your ult is NOT an initiate. It just isn't. Stop using it that way. It is longer range than Malphite and if you hit it at max range and aim for the MIDDLE of the enemy team, you're going to be isolated with enemies randomly scattered around you ready to clobber you after 1 second. People think of it as similar to Malphite's ult because, superficially, it is. The difference is that A) you're not as tanky as Malphite B) the bulk of the damage comes in the charge and not the end point and C) it doesn't freeze people in place it forces them to scatter. The better play is to use it after the fight starts. Charge through a bunch of enemies and get to the other side of them. If you do it right, you can force the ADC on the other team to run in fear TOWARDS your team. This will likely throw a bunch of damage on the enemy and, more importantly, force the ADC to both stop attacking and move closer to your team.

I've typed enough now but hopefully you can see the joy of being a powerful pony!

ADC itemization

I was originally going to write this about the relative value of Blade of the Runed King, Infinity Edge and Bloodthirster. But once I got into the numbers, I quickly realized that the advantage goes to Blade of the Runed King on virtually every ADC and even a fair number of AD casters. The old Blade of the Runed King was a push on someone like Graves. The new Blade of the Runed King is a slam dunk over every other big ticket item (the fact that it's cheaper then Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge only makes the case stronger).

Here's the rough math:

Assume a low health target (~2000 hps is relatively standard):
BotRK strikes based on current health. So 5% of current is ~ 2.5% max (alpha strikes probably skew this slightly higher but let's keep it here for the analysis).

So against a target with 2000 health, BotRK now increases damage by 30 + 2.5% * 2000 = 80
Bloodthirster is 110 AD (fully stacked)
Infinity Edge is 70 AD

But there's other factors here.

BotRK now gives 40% attack speed.
Infinity Edge gives 25% crit chance and 250% crit damage (normal crit damage is 200%).

So BotRK is increasing DPS by 40%
Infinity Edge by 37.5% (25% chance to crit * +150% crit damage)

So the Infinity Edge has a very, very slight edge if you're total AD is less than 400 and all your opponents are 2000 health (or less)
Bloodthirster is only a better item (when measured as DPS) when your AD is lower than 53.3 (i.e. never) as compared to IE or 75 as compared to BotRK.
Bloodthirster has a weird edge in lifesteal but it's deceptive. 20% vs. the 15% on new BotRK. But BotRK has 40% attack speed. So here's the breakdown for various combinations of AD and opponent health.

100 AD - 2000 health: 38.6% health steal edge for BT, 20% DPS edge for BotRK
400 AD - 4000 health: 5.9% health steal edge for BT, 45.5% DPS edge for BotRK

Here's the normalized numbers with IE mixed in (1 attack per second with IE and BT):

70 AD - 1000 health: 180 DPS, 36 sustain for BT - 175 DPS, 22.5 Sustain for BotRK - 192.5 DPS, 0 Sustain for IE
100 AD - 2000 health: 210 DPS, 42 sustain for BT - 252 DPS, 30.3 Sustain for BotRK - 233.75 DPS, 0 Sustain for IE
300 AD - 3000 health: 410 DPS, 82 Sustain for BT - 567 DPS, 73.8 Sustain for BotRK - 508.75 DPS, 0 Sustain for IE
400 AD - 4000 health: 510 DPS, 102 Sustain for BT - 742 DPS, 96.3 Sustain for BotRK - 646.25 DPS, 0 Sustain for IE

While IE provides a big ticket bump early on in the game, BotRK is definitely the better item mid to late game. If you get fed early, rushing the IE is probably a good decision but if you get bogged down, BotRK is better for you and is actually a lot easier to purchase because it doesn't force the awkward 1550 gold for BF sword

so as you get more powerful and you transition more the late game, the BotRK becomes more and more dominant.

Now you have to consider your AD scaling. I think BT might still be better for someone like Talon who scales his abilities off AD at ratios well in excess of 1.0 and doesn't make all that many auto-attacks. But on the ADCs it's clearly better to go with BotRK. This is especially true for the champions that that either lack AD scaling abilities (Tristana) or have attack speed scaling abilities (Vayne's Silver Bolts). And, of course, all the number above are based on an average 2.5% of health bump to damage. If your typical ADC pattern is to cleanup at the end of a fight, you might not realize those first damage shots. Alternatively, if you're constantly attacking low health squishies (sub 1500 health) then the IE might bet the better item. On the other hand, if they've built at all tanky and/or you're going to get lots of shots in (because you have long range like Caitlyn / Tristana for example) then BotRK is for you.

I suspect that this, plus the attack speed buff that Tristana just got, is going to make Tristana the new flavor of the month ADC... I'm glad she's one of the few that I'm vaguely confident with... Gonna try playing with her tonight, I think.