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Why is Armor Penetration even a primary stat?

Mira Arya Enthe··26 votes·1,399 views

In most games, getting penetration, penetrating bullets, taking the penetration talent or whatever. Is usually a tradeoff, a choice. It is something you do so your damage is not mitigated as much by heavy targets who have defenses, but in exchange you usually lose damage, rate of fire or some other stat for it.

Yet oddly, here in LoL, Riot has decided Armor Penetration is a primary stat like AD, AP, HP are. This doesn't make sense to me, I am not sure why any class, including assassins, should be designed primarily around building armor penetration as their primary stat. This entire concept is just begging for disaster in balancing the entire armor and tank system. Armor penetration should be a choice buy people pick up when enemies have too much armor and it is mitigating their damage too much.

If any champion/class in particular requires armor pen to function in all scenarios, maybe you should consider you know... adding it to their kit. Or perhaps lethality/armor pen should be added to their base stats.

In my eyes, purchasing Armor Penetration should be like purchasing Magic Penetration. There should be some options for shred item 3091 item 3071 An option for % reduction so tanks aren't OP item 3035 item 3135 And an option or two for mild amounts of flat penetration item 3136 item 3020 item 3142

Leave these as optional buys for when the enemy stacks resistances or squishies actually buy a defensive item. And that is it. Rebalance these items with the lack of flat armor pen in mind. Rework/Remove EoN into a less toxic item and remove/repurpose Duskblade. Rework Wit's End because it is mostly crap, make it the AP version of BC, keep it useful for AA champions but maybe make it useful on casters as well. Add flat pen/lethality to assassins who really need it for their kit, so they can be individually tuned.

I don't know if everyone necessarily agrees with me, but I do feel armor penetration and magic penetration/shred both should be limited to "a choice" when the enemies stack resistances and a utility that champions who regularly buy item 3091/item 3071 bring to their team, and should not be a primary stat that any class buys and relies on. If assassins need some incentive to buy non-crit items, how about looking into why crit items are a problem and why there are less pure AD options that outclass them(other than lethality) these days.

Personally, I miss building AD for the sake of AD.

15 Comments

Big Lincoln5 votes

% pen still skews the value of armor. Far more than lethality, actually

the best way to balance assassins around lack of pen would probably be to give some of them hybrid damage, which is strong early and mid but falls off late game, fitting for an assassins power curve.

Mira Arya Enthe3 votes

The thing about % pen is it shouldn't be a huge %, and it should only apply to a % of bonus defenses, with the upcoming rebalanced tank stats this would let % pen counter massive resistance stacking without countering tanks entirely.

Big Lincoln4 votes

Also that the LW item upgrades into slot efficient items

doing bonus damage just cos you have less health is retarded

Mira Arya Enthe2 votes

That too indeed. The reason Void Staff is usually okay is the lower %(yes it applies to base MR but you know) plus Void Staff doesn't really offer much, only pen and a mediocre amount of AP. Meanwhile LW upgrades offer either GW or % damage amp based on HP.

Spoofghoul2 votes

voidstaff isn't as much a problem because most mages are far more burst oriented anyway

it's still just as annoying on brand and cassiopeia

but there is usually just one or so of them on a team and they aren't likely to focus the tank above all else in most scenarios

and the rest fo the mages usually focus on hitting squishies

the lower % also helps especially since base mr's are low so it's mostly bonus mr to shred anyway in which case only a third of it is reduced as opposed to half

and the only other big ap item with pen is liandries which isn't desired on all mages especially if the enemy has only one or 2 beefy targets usually being the support tank and lane/jungle tank who aren't much of a threat to them as long as you kill the squishies first

but AD's arent as mana or cooldown gated and their pen items are overloaded with utility stats or other damage amps whilst not sacrificing much ad for it meanwhile they can also hit hard with basic attacks as well

i still think even for mages flat pen should apply before % pen to reduce the effectiveness of stacking

because it's gross, i sometimes do it on brand and then its liandries rylais voidstaff with sorc boots pen runes and masteries and 2 defensive items

and i still melt teams while running around with 3.5k health and decently high resistances it's really dumb how effective penetration is these days

Penns3 votes

Tbf in most games being tanky is also a tradeoff and you cant just basically kill backliners in 1 combo with a tank tree or a tank grill that has a giant hammer lul.

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

I imagine the large variety of armor pen is becuase unlike Magic Pen, its primary resistance universally increases among all champions.

However the issue with Armor pen is that there are infinitely more ways to apply armor pen than Magic Pen becuase one applies on abilites while the other applies on abilities AND autoattacks.

Do you think that if Armor pen/lethality was reworked to only apply on abilites like magic pen it would be helathier?

Mira Arya Enthe1 votes

I feel this might make it too strong on casters and too weak on AA champions. I feel the big thing is, % armor/magic pen needs to exist to counter tanks, that said it needs to otherwise be slot inefficient and only for that purpose. Flat pen needs to be rare and just optional to counter when a squishy gets a GA or something or to make Squishies a tiny bit Squishier. Shred needs to be a utility champions bring to their team. BC should be bought because Darius can bleed the armor out of his enemies for his team, not just because x champion wants a free pass on beating all tanks and squishies into a pulp.

These are my opinions at least.

TyrekGoldenspear2 votes

It makes sense. It seems that you're fine with armor pen, you just want it to work like this.

You want armor pen? Cool, buy this. No you won't get any extra features, the armor pen is what you paid for, you shouldn't need any more incentive to get the item.

Mira Arya Enthe2 votes

Basically. Like S2 last whisper. It wad considered crap as a full item but was purchased against armor stacking. Basically like void staff.

Skias1 votes

{quoted}

It makes sense. It seems that you're fine with armor pen, you just want it to work like this.

You want armor pen? Cool, buy this. No you won't get any extra features, the armor pen is what you paid for, you shouldn't need any more incentive to get the item.

Some items have been too efficient for a long time, I'm surprised they got changed at all. cough black cleaver cough

Arsenic Sulfur1 votes

It's primary for 2 reason:

  1. It makes sure that AD assassins kill their target.
  2. Armor provides really good reduction even if you have just 1 full item. You get around 70% or so reduction from 200 armor. And on ADCs full pen builds late game make them god awful at killing tanks so there is trade off.
Bobovich1 votes

Well put... completely agree with this post.

Lethality stacking equates to a better form of AD than AD itself, so it seems.

There's no DPS meta anymore, ranged ad casters rule bot lane abusing items designed for assassins.

Want to avoid being one shot as ADC? Pick a ranged ad caster, build assassin, sit back, then do the oneshotting yourself.

MunchCrunchLunch1 votes

I will tell you why. because armor numbers are more than twice the base MR for every champion on average. and because ad casters do not benefit from crit and they have to make the most of base damages. they need armor penetration.

tho ad carries should be balanced without it.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

Because else Assassins would be too good against bruisers/tanks?

Assassins have much less damage than mages (or they should), which is done by the smaller amounts of AD on Lethality items, but make up for it by penning armor and thus having it reduced by less. This in turn makes it equally effective against squishies and much less effective against tanks.

That's the idea around flat pen, anyway. Theoretically, ap Assassins should have an option for Magic Pen, for the same reason, but Rito apparently hasn't come up with a way to give ap Assassins something which mages wouldn't abuse, so instead ap Assassins are stuck with mage itemization. Penetration is simply better than flat out damage against squishies, and as mages will never really have problems with tanks due to how well they can kite, not doing as much damage to a tank is negligable.

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