Was probably just going to be a blog about League anyway. Topical, the new item Sanguine Blade.
Legit realtalk: I think that if Riot leaves it as-is and doesn't either remove it or gut it, that in season ten it will be a must-buy of literally every AD champion in the game, Ashe included--as either their first or second item, but no later than their third.
It is ridiculously cheap. It costs only 3,000 gold--for comparison, Blade of the Ruined King, an item which works very very similarly, costs an extra 200 gold.
It gives 50 attack damage--again, for comparison, Blade of the Ruined King, a more expensive item, gives only 40.
It gives 15% lifesteal at all times--again, for comparison, Blade of the Ruined King, a more expensive item, has only 12%.
In a 1v1, it gives the highest attack speed of any item in the game--the highest of another item is 50%, but at a high enough level, Sanguine Blade can give 100%. How ridiculous is that boost? Some champions who have abilities which increase attack speed (I believe Kennen might have one, Kled definitely has one, and oh yeah...Ashe does, too! As a far from complete list), can with JUST Sanguine Blade and literally no other attack speed item (and no attack speed runes!), begin to get close to the natural attack speed cap. Add in, sayyy, Blade of the Ruined King and Runaan's Hurricane as an example, and you're basically at it regardless of champion. (I don't think there's any champion where those three items or similar doesn't take you to like 2.4 or so in a 1v1 duel.)
It also gives lethality. I admit--I actually don't have a clue how lethality works. Apparently, lethality basically works as armor pen?
Okay so what that means is basically, the main thing you'd build to try and counter sanguine blade's lifesteal, a brambleback vest building into thornmail? Sanguine blade helps puncture through anyway. (If what my 30 second google of what lethality is, is correct, at least.) An item giving lethality (which apparently works as armor pen), and lifesteal, and the highest attack speed in the game.
You can counter individual elements of that. You can't counter all three.
And again.
It's cheaper than the similar item, Blade of the Ruined King. BotRK does give a couple things that Sanguine Blade doesn't--the active is a big one, and the passive max health damage to help shred through HP bars are among them. I legit think that Sanguine Blade shouldn't replace Blade of the Ruined King, but rather augment it, with both being built for anyone who is looking to splitpush/duel in 1v1s.
Basically, pfft, Spear of Shojin was broken? Hah. Sanguine Blade is ten times more broken than Spear of Shojin ever was. They could gut it because it's preseason, there's still time to radically nerf the item into oblivion--but as is, the item is just so ridiculously broken on just about any champion who deals most of their damage through autoattacks (or abilities which don't use AP, abilities which scale with attack damage).
Ashe included.
Which is again, why I want to try it out. I'm again, not sure when it should be built. I'm thinking that those three items are in fact my core Ashe items, Runaan's, BotrK, and Sanguine Blade. The question isn't if to build them, it's what order to build them in. (After that, depends on my runes. If I'm running my for fun lifesteal troll runes, then Bloodthirster comes next and I finish with Mercurial Scimitar, with boots of course being Mobi boots because I hit the attack speed cap without Berserkers. If I'm playing more seriously, probably Essence Reaver into Trinity Force, again with Mobi boots, for the CDR, mana, and 50% crit.)
The only reason I can think of to not run those three items is if I am instead running the new energized items. RFC+Statikk Shiv + Stormrazor gives 75% crit and every energized effect in the game, which Riot just reworked, and quite a bit of attack speed. And even then, while I probably wouldn't build all three of those items, I'd still probably build 1-2 of them. (Honestly, I don't actually know what to build for the Energized Items build beyond the three. I'd have to see what the attack speed is to see what boots to use, for instance.)
Mind you. Is the three item combo unbeatable? Oh heck no. Someone as incompetent as I am can screw it up and die, repeatedly, especially when I go into 1v2s or 2v2s where Sanguine Blade doesn't have the extra attack speed/lethality. I am not a good player.
But do I think that Sanguine Blade basically will be such a good item that it's trolling to not try and build it except in very specific situational builds? (Like, obviously, there will always be times where you need six specific items in tandem with one another and Sanguine Blade could feasibly not be among them for that very specific time.) I do. There will always be specific times where building it isn't possible for various reasons, but in 90+% of situations, it's just such a good item that it's a must buy for every ad character who autoattacks/uses abilities that scale with ad.