League of Legends Designer Comments on Black Cleaver Stacking

League of Legends players have adopted a new trend that involves building a couple of Black Cleavers to gain some serious power from the new runes, but it's not looking like too strong of a strategy just yet according to a League designer.

The strategy was made possible through the new Transcendence rune, a rune that grants bonus damage whenever you go over the cooldown cap. Those who typically use Black Cleaver to their advantage have found success with incorporating a couple of Black Cleavers into their builds to amass more damage, but Riot Meddler says it might not be as rewarding of a strategy as some would think.

"Black Cleaver stacking hasn't looked at all out of line so far," Riot Meddler said in a response to a question within a post on the League boards. "If anything, it's often looking like quite a poor choice, given you're spending quite a lot for that HP/AD and not getting any of the unique benefits other items could be offering you (compare to say a Titanic Hydra instead of an additional BC)."

Outside of the Black Cleaver, players have also been experimenting with stacking other weapons to work in their favor. If you enjoy playing Malphite but want to have the best of both tank Malphite and an AP mountain, you've likely tried stacking items like Frozen Heart into heavy-AD comps. The popularity of the strategy in different builds has resulted in Transcendence being looked at for possible changes, but whether those will happen or not remains to be seen.

"Transcendence seems to be getting a lot of conversation at the moment and we've been looking at a range of item builds suggested using it," Riot Meddler said in the main post. "Some seem good, but not out of line, some seem interesting but probably not effective choices. A few look really strong, especially in certain situations (looking at you Malphite), things should have contexts in which they're really strong sometimes though. Doesn't seem like the Rune's inappropriately tuned at present overall, keeping a close eye on it though in case any of the edge cases become really abusive."