Multiple Doran Blade Miss Fortune?! Who Else Does This Work On?

Multiple Doran Blade Miss Fortune

Using the old Klepto build (rest in peace feat 9.23), players began utilizing multiple Doran Blades late in the patch to dominate the early game. Generally speaking, players tend to avoid building multiple Doran Blades in order to avoid losing money on selling. However, Miss Fortune naturally dominates laning phase, which allows her to snowball harder through the mid-game using three, four, or even five Doran Blades.

Is this really the way to go though? If it is, should we be using this build on other marksmen? Let's dive into the facts.

Multiple Doran Blade Miss Fortune

Using the old Klepto build (rest in peace feat 9.23), players began utilizing multiple Doran Blades late in the patch to dominate the early to mid-game. Generally speaking, players tend to avoid building multiple Doran Blades in order to avoid losing money on selling. However, Miss Fortune naturally dominates laning phase, which allows her to snowball harder through the mid-game using three, four, or even five Doran Blades.

Is this really the way to go though? If it is, should we be using this build on other marksmen? Let's dive into the facts.

Is Doran Blade Gold Efficient?

Doran Blade provides: +8 damage, +80 health, +3% life steal.

From a gold efficiency perspective, Doran Blade is computed at a 134.63% gold efficiency according to the League wikia, which is computed using items with base stat values.

In comparison, common AD items have the following gold efficiencies:

• Infinity Edge: 105.88% gold efficient without the passive
• Essence Reaver: 114.65% gold efficient without the passive
• Zeal: 92.68% gold efficient
• Rapid Firecannon: 67.21% gold efficient without the passive

Disclaimer: The passives on these items have value, but cannot be specifically valued. Additionally, certain champions have specific synergies via their passives such as Kai'Sa, Ezreal, etc. The values above only reflect the base statistics.

All-in-all, it seems like any champions that are "standard" marksmen and could benefit from Attack Damage, Lifesteal, and Health would be good candidates for multiple Doran Blades.

How Much is Lost By Selling Doran Blade?

Doran Blade costs 450 gold and sells for 180 gold. At the average rate of 20 gold per minion, this comes out to about 13.5 minions loss per Doran Blade that is sold for a 270 gold loss. 

On average, games end with marksmen holding between 2 to 4 items. Including boots, this leaves 1 to 3 slots for Doran Blades.

If you're really maximizing your Doran Blade abuse and maxing out with five Doran Blades, this means in any given game you'll be selling between 2 to 4 Doran Blades for a total 540 to 1,080 gold loss.

For reference, this translates to 1.8 to 3.6 kills or 27 to 54 minions worth of gold loss.

If you can reliably get 2 to 4 kills or 30 to 55 minions extra from your Doran Blades, the build is worth it.

Why It Works on Miss Fortune

We've concluded above that Doran Blade looks good on paper...unless the specific champion has features that require specific conditions to activate or benefits from specific synergies.

Let's see Miss Fortune's core attributes that allows her to focus on the +8 damage, +80 health, and +3% lifesteal Doran Blade provides.

Miss Fortune's Core Attributes:

• Early to mid-game duelist;
• Built-in attack speed steroid;
• Auto-attack heavy;
• No multiple-on hit benefits outside of Love Tap;
• Not mana-hungry;
• Built-in move speed; and
• Synergy with Klepto [Removed in Patch 9.23]

Potential Alternative Champions

Potential Candidates:

• Lucian - This build could potentially work very well on Lucian. He's an early game lane-bully that's up close and personal. The extra health and life steal from Doran Blade would allow him to duel harder and more often. However, five seems excessive since Blade of the Ruined King will already give you lifesteal.
• Tristana - Similar to Lucian, Tristana tends to be a lane-bully that jumps in to maximize her damage. Although she also goes attack speed to proc her explosion, an early extra Doran Blade could be helpful to snowball her lane.
• Draven - This one is somewhat up for debate. Draven utilizes attack damage extremely well, and for most games BF sword may still be your best bet for cashing in your gold. Doran Blade build could be better if you have an enchanter support instead of an-all-in support though. Either way, too many would be moot since most players go Bloodthirster.

Neutral Candidates:

• Caitlyn - Lane bully that's a decent candidate, but gets a lot of value through Infinity Edge as a result of her passive.
• Jinx - Potential candidate, but generally isn't going to be very strong early game and will want to play relatively passive.
• Kog'Maw - Somewhat in the middle, he has a built-in attack speed steroid and a range booster, so he could honestly be a lane bully if he wasn't so squishy. Obviously, you'll still want his standard core items but I could see this being useful for staying alive and farming up.
• Senna - This might work. We're definitely not optimizing Senna's current build paths right now given how early in her release we are, but she does seem to be a decent lane bully and could potentially snowball with early Doran items.
• Sivir - I've seen some Sivir players snowball without getting Essence Reaver, so this build is potentially something that could work. On the other hand, she's not much of a lane bully. Where this would come in handy would be for surviving jungle ganks while constantly pushed in.
• Twitch - Twitch can be somewhat hit-or-miss as far as lane-bullying goes. Generally the thought is that he should really stack as much damage as possible so he can open up with his burst before getting targeted, but a few extra Doran Blades could help in tough lanes.

Bad Candidates:

• Ashe - Could potentially be a lane bully, but generally wants to apply attack speed and slows via Hurricane.
• Ezreal - Too mana-reliant to stack pure damage.
• Jhin - Receives too much bonus AD from the attack speed + critical strike items to make this build viable. He also tends to be somewhat mana hungry earlier in the game and 
• Kai'Sa - Requires 100 to 72 attack damage for her first evolution, five Doran Blades would only give +40 AD.
• Kalista - Attack speed is what makes her viable.
• Varus - Attack speed is generally the main Varus builds nowadays, and stacking simple damage doesn't seem very effective for him.
• Vayne - Triple shot with W is too valuable to pass over for simple attack damage.

Other Non-ADC Champions to Test

Thinking along the same lines, there could be some other champions where stacking Doran Blades could be effective using the same criteria as before, which can really be distilled down to the following:

1. Strong early game
2. Non-reliant on attack speed
3. Heavy Duelist

Here are a few quick brainstorm ideas just looking at the champion pools:

• Doran Blades Riven
• Doran Rings Heimerdinger
• Doran Blades Aatrox
• Doran Blades Darius
• Doran Blades Pantheon
• Doran Rings Singed

Overall, most marksmen look like they have more optimal build paths. However, I think out of the non-marksman alternatives I would consider Heimerdinger with three Doran Rings quite good as a result of his permapush strategy, and lane bullies would do well with multiple Doran items against other lane bullies.

Either way, I suggest limiting the number of Doran items you build on any champion to three, as anything in excess of that you're almost guaranteed to be selling some items before the game ends.

Thoughts on champions that Doran stacking would do well on? Comment below!