Make Lethality unique and it will no longer be a problem.
For those who fail to understand, I am talking about the time before Black Cleaver built from Brutalizer and Warrior was not yet added to the game.
dunder kill28 votesYou must not remember the most oppressive stat stick in the game.
The Brutalizer
Irelia Bot11 votesWhich built only into ghostblade.
dunder kill2 votesAnd warrior
Irelia Bot6 votesWhich was not around back in my day.
dunder kill4 votesWait...... didnt Butalizer build into the old Black Cleaver?
EDIT: Yup!
V1.0.0.152 Rework New recipe: The Brutalizer + Ruby Crystal + Gold 1188 = Gold 3000 +250 health +50 attack damage +10% cooldown reduction +15 armor penetration Passive: Dealing physical damage to an enemy champion reduces their armor by 7.5% for 4 seconds. This effect stacks up to 4 times.
Irelia Bot8 votesGo back farther to the days when it had no health and was only AD, armor reduction (not penatration) and attack speed.
V1.0.0.108 New recipe: B. F. Sword item.png B. F. Sword + Dagger item.png Dagger + Gold 795 = Gold ??? Old recipe: B. F. Sword item.png B. F. Sword + Long Sword item.png Long Sword + Gold 800 = Gold ??? Damage reduced to 55 from 75. Now adds 30% increased attack speed. UNIQUE PASSIVE: Now shreds 15 armor per stack from 12 but has a maximum of 3 stacks from 5.
dunder kill2 votesYeah but it built into BC for like 5 seasons lol
Hinagiku331 votesStill not the time he was referring to. He's referring to the time some of us were around for when you had 1 item (Ghostblade) that had flat armor penetration. Because armor penetration felt a lot healthier back then, when you only had 1 option for flat armor penetration and the penetration formula made it inefficient to try and stack multiple types of armor reduction together. It was just, buy Ghostblade to kill ADCs and Mages or buy Cleaver to kill Tanks and Fighters.
I think old Last Whisper was around then too, but it was still a much better buy against Tanks than squishy classes because of the old armor pen formula.
dunder kill2 votesSeason 1 was NOT balanced. Not even remotely close. You're letting the nostalgia get the better of you
EndlessSorcerer2 votesIt wasn't uncommon to see people purchase a second Brutalizer after finishing Youmuu's Ghostblade.
They would just sit on it until they needed the slot for a completed item.
Irelia Bot7 votesAnd it wasn't uncommon to see fighters buying Wit's end.
Anidan5 votesBack in my day we had exciting things like Lightning Shen with Ionic Spark! Paired with Wit's End for FASTER LIGHTNING!
I feel old.
TotalJerk1 votesAnd Black Cleaver
Irelia Bot2 votesThat was season 3.
I am talking about season 1 and 2.
dunder kill1 votesIt built into BC from season 1 till season 4 or 5? Whenever the juggernaut update happened they changed BC. Can't remember if it was 4 or 5.
Irelia Bot2 voteshttp://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/V1.0.0.152
Before the Nami patch at the start of preseason 3 Black cleaver built from a BF sword and a dagger.
Jefftiffy2 votesYou must not remember the most oppressive stat stick in the game.
The Brutalizer
We have that now 
but it's 237 less gold. I wonder why lethality is so fucking broken. Oh wait.
dunder kill8 votesNot even close dude. First off, its flat armor pen, NOT lethality. Second, it also gave 10% cdr
is shit compared to Brutalizer
50000000000000002 votesJust before anyone comes and says is a strong item, this guy knows that.
Brutalizer was simply even stronger than Serrated Dirk.
Irelia Bot2 votesI don't think anyone is going to argue that Dirk is in any way 1337
Mizaya10 votesBut LW back in the day also had total % armor pen rather than % bonus armor pen. So pretty much any heavy AD champ was getting it. Now it's useless for killing squishies.
Irelia Bot12 votesBut tank items were more powerful as well.
I miss you 1300+ health Warmogs.
Also 40% Voidstaff combined with the 15% MR pen mastery if I recall correctly.
Mizaya8 votes[{quoted}](name=Irelia Bot,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=62EhMZFE,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2017-02-18T18:25:32.172+0000)
But tank items were more powerful as well.
I miss you 1300+ health Warmogs.
Also 40% Voidstaff combined with the 15% MR pen mastery\ if I recall correctly.
rip force of nature
Irelia Bot7 votesAnd let us not forget the more powerful attack speed slows from Frozen heart and Omen.
WoonStruck2 votes64% (36% reduction) total attack speed from attackers. RIP.
And Randuin's slowed the MS of attackers.
And gave a lot of HP5. And CDR.
Let's not forget Phil Stone, HoG, and Reverie.
Irelia Bot2 votesReverie is kinda still around but I miss the others.
WoonStruck2 votesIts nowhere near what Reverie was with the HUGE HP5/MP5 it offered, 15% CDR, team-wide MS buff on a low CD, and 500 HP.
Ahristocats7 votesback when league was good
armor wasn't nerfed mr wasn't nerfed then nerf them force bruisers into atmog, then nerf hp and atma
lmfao
Arsenic Sulfur12 votesThe old days were shit too. You lost if you went a melee that wasn't Irelia, busted champion releases every TWO WEEKS, falling behind meant is was over due to everyone being a stat-checker, Kayle was a common pick, Win Nhao, and everyone looked ugly AF.
Ahristocats8 votesi'm not an irelia main, and i prefer before
i could play vlad rumble shen olaf xin(post rework) gp and like 20 picks
WoonStruck4 votesI'm willing to bet more than half of the people that upvoted him started playing season 5 or later.
hhaavviikk4 votes[{quoted}](name=Arsenic Sulfur,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=62EhMZFE,comment-id=00030000,timestamp=2017-02-18T20:52:34.035+0000)
The old days were shit too. You lost if you went a melee that wasn't Irelia, busted champion releases every TWO WEEKS, falling behind meant is was over due to everyone being a stat-checker, Kayle was a common pick, Win Nhao, and everyone looked ugly AF.
saying everyone looked ugly is simply subjective, personally I find ivern to look worse then some of the older champions, but then again that's all personal opinion
Critmaster Garen6 voteslethality items are designed to be stacked with each other. thats why duskblades passive increases in damage the more lethality you have.
the issue isnt assassin builds that focus on lethality.
the issue is when people stack 80 lethality with a cleaver, or last whisper and just shred through absolutely everything and reduce even 300 armor on a tank to dust, while dealing true damage to more squishy opponents.
look at it like this. even a squishy champion will have a decent amount of armor left after base armor, armor runes, and a single defensive item like 
even when an assassin stacks every lethality item in the game.
however, as soon as that assassin picks up a 
he deals literally true damage.
what needs to change is that 
shouldnt be allowed to stack with each other on the same champion.
Irelia Bot2 voteswhile and could in theory have this work works differently. Armor pen ignored armr and is a personal stat but Armor reduction of black cleaver applies to the enemies armor stat making it harder to throw a unique passive name that is the same as LW and ghostblade without some kidn of drastic change to the system.
Yes this means A Darius, Garen or Illaio who has a black leaver is in effect able to improve their teams physical damage to a target they hit.
The other option I can think of would be to put some kind of lockout on items like we see with support items where only one of them can be owned. This would still have Garen and Darius going for Black cleaver while assassins like Rengar and Talon would go for Lethality but the real interesting one would be champs like Riven who would have to pick between all three fairly early on.
Critmaster Garen2 votes[{quoted}](name=Irelia Bot,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=62EhMZFE,comment-id=000a0000,timestamp=2017-02-19T01:08:47.354+0000)
while
Yes this means A Darius, Garen or Illaio who has a black leaver is in effect able to improve their teams physical damage to a target they hit.
The other option I can think of would be to put some kind of lockout on items like we see with support items where only one of them can be owned. This would still have Garen and Darius going for Black cleaver while assassins like Rengar and Talon would go for Lethality but the real interesting one would be champs like Riven who would have to pick between all three fairly early on.
yes, cleaver works differently. but imo its still not a difficult goal to accomplish.
someone who has cleaver and ghostblade in his inventory would simply be allowed to apply cleaver stacks, but ghostblades lethality passive is disabled.
on the other hand, if an allied champion would shred an opponents armor with a cleaver and you were to attack him with a ghostblade, the two would synegize with each other.
imo all we need to do is give cleaver, ghostblade and last whisper same name passives so they dont work at the same time when stacked in the same persons inventory. this would limit mixed penetration builds. it wouldnt affect how armor shred is applied, or how it interacts with lethality as a stat.
ProfDrDeath1 votesWhat would already help with the synergy between and would be if Cleaver's reduction would target bonus Armor first.
Currently, if you have 10 base and 10 bonus Armor, full Cleaver stacks reduce that to 7 base and 7 bonus Armor.
How it could work if you wanted to break the synergy: If you have 10 base and 10 bonus Armor, 20 total, full Cleaver stacks reduce that to 14 total, in the form of 10 base and 4 bonus.
SpecterVonBaren5 votesWhat if they changed lethality back to armor pen and made it only work on base armor and then made it so all percentage pen and armor reduction only works on bonus armor?
Irelia Bot3 votesPotentially.
I use to usually get Frozen heart as a second item a lot of the time but with how much armor pen is in the game I have had to give up on it in favor of Omen in basically every situation.
Armor pen with reduction being everywhere with no real tradeoffs most of the time is making buying armor only items feel more like a trap then anything else.
Junkο4 votesI don't understand why they don't make assassin and AD caster itemization AD and cooldown instead of AD and armor pen based. Making champions who already excel at snowbaling have the main stat something that counters what they should be weak against is just plain stupid.
Steel Blossom4 votesBack in my day, Youmuu also gave crit, and most of our penetration came from Last Whisper. Us AD assassins could get those two, an IE, and a lifesteal item, and all be tiny Master Yis after we've popped our CDs. It was fun. For us, of course. Not for the ADCs and the tanks trying to avenge them. I'd like that back too.
Paradise Proxy2 votesbrutalizer ;-;
Matake2 votesOMG ITS IRELIA BOT. Does Renekton Bot still even exist?
Irelia Bot2 votesHaven't seen him on the forms for a really long time but he still plays league ince in a really great while. But I am guessing he got burned out on the game much like I sometimes do.
Mythic pepe2 votesMake lethality usable only if your Autos are melee ranged
Should be simple to do and stops adc from lethality abusing?
(Edit) like how hydras passive doesnt work as an adc
Envoy of Melody2 votesIt doesn't, because that's not what makes lethality so overpowered. It's not the basic attacks of a Marksman, it's the outrageous amount of flat damage their skills deal. Most ADC ults are flat damage burst ults that deal INSANE amounts of damage because lethality shreds every single percentage of armor at times. 90 Lethality Caitlyn? Have fun with that shit if your ADC has 60 armor in the late game. They won't even be able to survive a single bear trap.
ltmetal1 votesWhen you say "make lethality unique," are you suggesting that lethality from runes/masteries can't stack with items, or are you saying we should give Serrated Dirk a named passive?
Irelia Bot2 votesI am talking about the items only.
Since getting 3 of them seems to be a large part of the issue.
Having 30 to 35 from an item and masteries is not so much the issue.
It is when someone is able to get 80+ lethality on top of a LW a nd black cleaveritem resulting in ignoring often times 70%+ of a tanks total armor and doing true damage to squishes.
basic example of how the calculation works from my understanding (I might get something out of order since I am a bit rusty on when black cleaver is applied.)
Armor is 100/(100 + base armor + bonus armor) and 1 armor is an effective 1% more of your max health. armor penetration and reduction is as follows 100/ (((base armor*(1-armor penetration)- flat armor reduction)+((bonus armor *.55 for LW item *1(-% armor reduction)-flat armor reduction)))-lethality)
So a tank with 90 base armor and 160 bonus armor armor would have 100/(100+90+160) = .2857 of damage taken. in other words this tanke has effective 3.5 multiplyer on it's health pool.
Against a enemy with 60 lethality a LW item and a black cleaver fully stacked from another ally they will have 100/(100 + (90*(1-.3)+160*.55*(1-.3))-60)= 100/(100+ 63 + 61.6 - 60)= 100 /(100+64.6) = .607 of damage taken. This tank only has a 1.646 multiplyer on it's effective health.
In this example
It is more a case of all the armor penetration easily works together that is proving to be the problem and since games are decided faster on average the nthey use to be crit is not evne really mentioned due to this being a more optimal early game damage option. It is a case of synergy being to fast and easy to get.
While Crit has a potential to outscale these armor pen builds it requires more items overall.
AninLegions7771 votesAnd you forgot about the old last whisper which was probably more OP than Lethality,
Irelia Bot7 votesAnd armor was more abundant, the attack speed slows from Omen and Frozen heart were stronger.
Warmogs was not capped at 800 health.
WoonStruck4 votesNot only that, but regen inflated the values of having armor and MR significantly.
Anyone with innate healing had a large EHP advantage for the same reasons.