As much as I love building armor pen on Talon it is broken. I have been playing Talon in the jungle and it has come to the point that I would have more armor pen then the enemy adc had armor. I had the blue smite, brutalizer, youmous, and runes. I had 59 flat armor pen. I still hadn't even build last whisper or black cleaver and I had more armor pen then they had armor.You can build up to 70 flat armor pen which is disgusting.
Lord Dusteon2 votesYou'd also have to itemize entirely for armor penetration, skipping out on quite a lot of damage and survivability to do so. Assuming you went jungle, you'd get UP to 50 flat armor penetration (warrior enchantment + brutalizer + black cleaver + ghostblade) from items. As in, you'd use up 4 items slots just to get that armor penetration.
ccseancc1431 votesTalon doesn't really need alot of AD. Just like Zed who build BoTRK,Youmous and only get like 1-2 ad items.
Kuroi861 votesThat's due to the % damage on Bork, the AD on Lw and the bonus AD he gets on his W.
ccseancc1431 votesYou would be surpirised that Talon only really needs 1-2 AD items since Talon is also a champ who abuses crits to do massive damage. His Q AA damage can crit making his q do over 1k on targets and the Talon combo always has two AA and Youmous and IE give 40% and more than often you will crit once out the two AA's and even then you dont need the crit to kill squishes.
Kuroi861 votesOy, Talon does sound scary. From what I've seen though Zed doesn't rely on crits though. Granted, I've only played him a few times and assassins really aren't my thing. Zed heavily relies on the active damage from Bork during his ult, without it he'd have a much harder time assassinating people.
ccseancc1431 votesvery true, the active literally amkes it so easy to hit your shuriken cause the slow and not to mention the damage.
JustMyBassCannon1 votesWhile the build is not so practical, I do agree that Flat Pen is broken redundant.
Because, fundamentally, Flat Pen has the same job as just buying the core offense stat; it increases your damage output, with greater effect against targets with low resistances.
Kuroi861 votesIsn't that the intent? Or has something changed that was not originally intended?
Rebonack1 votesIsn't that the intent? Or has something changed that was not originally intended?
Massively powerful flat pen allows items like Whisper to become horrifying damage amplification tools against soft targets since it becomes that much easier to reduce them down to 0.
It's part of the reason why Whisper and Voidstaff are so stupid right now.
Riot really needs to change the Pen formula back to what it was in Season 1/2.
Barring that, remove the flat pen from Brutalizer (while buffings its AD) and then make a new AD item that grants flat pen and make it unique like Eyes of Pain. That would make AD/CDR itemization far less stilted whilst also addressing the issue of Pen stacking.
Kuroi862 votesWhisper isn't flat pen, it's %.
I don't know about removing the pen from Brutalizer, it's the opening item for it anyways. Just make it a unique passive so flat pen stacking with BC, Youmuu's and Warrior can't be done.
B3ER1 votesHe knows Whisper is % pen, which is his point. Season 3 pen changes reversed the order of pen application. It used to be flat first, % second. It is now the other way around. In other words, if you have 35% and 50 flat, squishies get true damage and tanks end up with about 50 resist points.
Kuroi861 votesSorry, the way he worded it sounded like he was calling Whisper and Void Staff flat pen.
And reverting that change could help the situation. What about making penetration unique? I know this would really only hurt assassins the most, but what about making the penetration on different items unique so stacking BC, Ghostblade, Warrior or LW won't grant additional penetration?
JustMyBassCannon1 votesI...misused broken. Goddammit. *slap*
It's redundant. The purpose of Flat Pen is the same as AP or AD. The deciding factor for choosing which one is the scaling ratio. If something scales at 100%, flat penetration is generally worth less. If it scales 50%, it's still better to build damage over flat pen if they have more than 100 resistance.
ccseancc1431 votesI was also in a game with a Nasus on the other team and I was playing jungle Talon. He had 280 armor and I had last whisper +70 flat armor pen. Since % comes before flat and you get 39% I believe from lastwhisper+masteries. 39% of 280 is 110= 170. 170-70= 100. Alot of flat pen+Last whisper gives so much armor shred it is ridiculous.
Kuroi861 votesThat makes more sense. I always figured flat pen was best for those with high base damage early on, allowing them to maximize their early game damage, where as mid and late game AD/AP would become the stat to go with. Flat pen is actually a little cheaper than high AD (comparing Brutalizer with BFSword, though that might be a bad comparison) In return though, you have slightly less of a mid game because while you've flat pen, you don't have as much AD.