8.7 Ninja Tabi math

It's hard to estimate from the patch notes in which cases Ninja Tabi is now stronger and which it is now weaker. At first glance you might think the 2% makes up for 10 armor. But let's see when that's true and when it isn't. It depends on your armor. I chose the following armor values kind of arbitrarily but it should shed some light on what the changes actually did.

50 armor without tabi: You take 66.6% damage from attacks (ie. you have 33% reduction) 8.6 tabi (you have 80 armor + 10% reduction): You take 55.5% x 0.9 = 50% from basic attacks 8.7 tabi (70 armor, 12% reduction): You take 58.8% x 0.88 = 51.8% from basic attacks

Result: at 50 armor, it was nerfed vs basic attacks. Your damage taken is 51.8% instead of 50%. So it was nerfed even for basic attacks for low armor users. Rejoice, Draven mains!

80 armor without tabi: You take 55.5% 8.6 tabi (110 armor + 10%): You take 47.6% x 0.9 = 42.9% 8.7 tabi (100 armor + 12%): You take 50% x 0.88 = 44%

Result: Still a nerf vs autoattacks at 80 armor.

150 armor without tabi: You take 40% 8.6 tabi (180 armor + 10%): You take 35.7% x 0.9 = 32.1% 8.7 tabi (170 armor + 12%): You take 37% x 0.88 = 32.6%

Result: STILL slightly nerfed, but you can see we're very close to the break-even point.

Basically it's only a buff vs autos if you are a tank/jugg or you just stacked a ton of armor. Even then it's still a nerf vs everything that's not a basic attack.

If the enemy has % armor pen it brings the break-even point a bit lower but it will still be rather high. This would be a slight buff in edge cases that have a ton of armor shred going on and you're worried about autoattacks, but you wouldn't survive either way probably since we're talking about differences of like 1-2% damage taken.

So there you have it.

Conclusion: It matters a lot against physical damage abilities since you lost 10 armor and got nothing (Riot's expressed intent) however, It's worth noting that it is not a buff vs autoattackers in most cases.