League Analysis: Ionian Boots of Lucidity (or a Glance at Cooldown Reduction)

A couple months ago, in response to "maximum Cooldown Reduction being easy to fall into," Cooldown Reduction itemization was altered to be in multiples of 10% or 20% so that a player could effectively build Cooldown Reduction aggressively if so desired. However, while nearly every item that had Cooldown Reduction was affected by this change, one item was left out...

No, I'm not referring to changing boots like here.

The Ionian Boots of Lucidity. In addition, while Cooldown Reduction runes were adjusted shortly after, masteries were not. Thus, in this article, I will briefly go over why this lack of normalization can be an issue and how to resolve it.

Thinking This Through (i.e. Problem and Solution)

The issue, when looking at Ionian Boots of Lucidity alone, seems pretty simple. Given that other CDR-granting items now grant CDR in multiples of 10 (in terms of percetage reduced) and Ionian Boots of Ludicity grants an odd 15% CDR, the immediate reaction is to adjust the CDR because otherwise the result is CDR will end up being wasted.

However, this presents an issue. If the CDR is increased to 20%, then it essentially grants more CDR than probably intended (especially since the cost of the upgrade overall was reduced by 50 gold recently) and, furthermore, it would be by far the cheapest way to get 20% CDR in the entire game. Reducing the CDR to 10% also presents an issue because then the overall cost for the CDR is poorly budgeted compared to other CDR items and the fact additional movement is granted on top of that isn't really sufficient compared to other boot upgrades.

With this said, other methods to adjust the CDR come to mind, such as runes and masteries. The runes provide a sufficient amount of Cooldown Reduction (particularly Quintessences, which can give 5% CDR at the max tier and fill in the "gap"). This leaves masteries as a potential area to change CDR granted.

There are two CDR masteries: Intelligence and Sorcery. They grant 6% and 4% CDR at max rank respectively. These are very uneven values and the only way to get an optimal amount of CDR is to somehow rank both of these masteries. With that said, the solution would be to adjust the max rank CDR for both masteries to 5% (have them grant a linear amount of CDR with each rank, i.e. 1.67% and 1.25% respectively).

Final Statement

This may have implications for any champion that benefits from CDR because now 5% CDR is easily accessible and another 5% can be gotten through Quintessences or 15% can be gotten by building the aforementioned boots. On the other hand, the design of CDR capping will look polished and it's possible to achieve without necessarily overcapping or being 1-5% CDR short.