I really don't like what you've done to Last Whisper.

Desiderium··3 votes·321 views

40% Bonus armor penetration?

Last Whisper is one of three core items in my offtank Zed build. Last Whisper, Bork, and Black Cleaver. I buy these 3 items together because they scale with each other in so many multiple ways that they remain decent sources of damage throughout the entirety of a game, and thus allows me to buy tanky items.

If you change Last Whisper to this...thing, then I lose out on a lot of RELIABLE damage. You guys already nerfed flat penetration by 20 for most assassin builds when you took Brutalizer out of Black Cleaver's build path, and now you're making it even LESS convenient for assassins to penetrate a squishy's armor? Why?

Last note: I recall CertainlyT saying, back in the day when he first suggested making Last Whisper do bonus pen instead of total pen, that he would like to add power into the item that it lost in transferring to bonus armor pen, since bonus armor pen would be the better design choice but he wanted it to still retain its strength. Well now it's a shit item and one of the two items it builds into is shit, and the other item is purely for tank busting.

I don't want to go back to building crit Zed. I personally find it extremely cheap for my enemies to play against. I have shit tons of success with an offtank build but you are going to destroy that if you tear apart Last Whisper like this.

4 Comments

Miraweave5 votes

That's the entire problem. Armor penetration, especially percentage penetration, is intended to make you more effective against things that are building armor. Because of the way armor scaling works, LW is just efficient against literally everyone past the ~25-30 minute mark.

It's not supposed to be an item that's effective against squishy targets. Since ranged champions don't get MR/level, Void Staff actually accomplishes this role by being less effective than other items at killing targets who aren't building MR. With this change to LW, it's in the place an armor penetration item should be in, instead of just being optimal against everyone 100% of the time.

EDIT: Yes, I understand that you almost exclusively play ad assassins and like using flat penetration items, but the fact is that when the game allows you to prioritize flat pen over AD in terms of killing squishy targets, it's incredibly unfair to play against, since picking up defensive stats often doesn't actually do anything. The difference between this and magic pen is that magic resistance is (for the most part) static on midlaners, so buying flat pen increases your damage by the same amount on most midlaners against most midlaners, and it's impossible for an AP champion to end up with more penetration than a target has armor, or anywhere close to that. Might I remind you that before BC lost it's flat pen, a champion with LW, BC and Ghostblade would damage a target with 100 armor as if it had 0 armor. That just isn't good balance.

Rebonack2 votes

Whisper was changed as a massive nerf to ADC itemization. Making it an anti-tank item instead of an anti-everything item means an ADC is really kicking their DPS in the balls against soft targets if they buy it.

It just so happens that AD caster-y Assassins are also getting caught in the mix.

BUT NEVER FEAR!

Yomama's Ghostblade is getting a huge AD increase and Maw has armor pen now, so you'll still be able to get armor pen elsewhere. And if you want to take on Tanks, suck it up and buy Cleaver faster.

Oh, and there's a flat Armor/MR pen mastery now, too. You can snag it along with that 200 damage burst nuke one at the top of the utility tree.

Desiderium1 votes

Not sure if I want to go so deep into Utility as Zed >3<

Desiderium1 votes

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