"What exactly are you trying to say?"
"I'm not playing AD anymore, Diao Shen!" With that, Luo Zhen directly locked in the Tiamat from the shop.
This build immediately made the commentators, who had just been about to catch their breath and take a break, stare so hard their eyes nearly popped out.
Tiamat!?
Why the hell was a Nilah buying that thing!?
In fact, Nilah had indeed enjoyed a period where Tiamat builds were popular, but that had only happened during the S13 preseason after Hydra got buffed. Before that, whether it was Ravenous or Titanic, Tiamat's upgrades had never offered particularly impressive stats.
Then why buy it!?
Because Luo Zhen wasn't switching to the Eclipse-Serylda's Grudge lethality build. He was switching to an armor penetration burst build centered around Prowler's Claw and Manamune. Tiamat was for waveclear speed. With it, EQA or QAA could basically clear an entire wave, greatly easing the awkwardness of getting poked while last-hitting due to Nilah's Attack Range.
Of course, another reason was that V5's Composition currently had no particularly strong way to fight head-on. Nocturne and Kennen definitely needed to stay hidden, Sejuani could only soak damage, and Braum could only heal them a few times. They couldn't exactly have Nilah slowly Auto Attack people one slash at a time, could they?
Although Tiamat somewhat delayed the build progression, itemization was something that had to remain flexible and adapt to circumstances. League of Legends had never had a single build that was set in stone.
Of course, none of that was the real reason.
No matter how much someone acted cool or swore oaths, even claiming they would never accept another loss, it was less useful than winning the next game with real results. The same went for builds. You could build