Is lethality exactly the same as armor pen just with a different name (and 1 lethality = 1 enemy armor point mitigated)? The tooltip says it works better the lower a champion's armor is though, and I thought the whole point was to overcome the resistance of a player who's stacked lots of armor, rather than to boost damage against a champion with weak defenses.
(Why the heck would anyone downvote a legitimate question?)
Mysticman892 votesLethality is armour pentration that scales with the enemy level. At level 18 1 point in lethality=1 armour pentration, but before that it's just a fraction.
(flat) Armour penetration/lethality has always actually been best against those who weren't building armour due to the way the damage calculations are done, as your attacks get very close to doing true damage against unarmour targets when you have enough armour pen.
Against heavily armoured targets, you want % arm pen, such as provided by last whisper and black cleaver (technically armour shred rather than pen).
Tahngarthor1 votesThanks! That helps a lot.
Since you said it's less effective before level 18, are the amounts of lethality higher than the amounts of armor pen were on items? or are they the same, making this essentially a nerf to early game use of armor pen?
Mysticman892 votesYes there is more lethality on lethality items/runes than flat armour pen previously.
Before level 12 or so it's weaker, after it's stronger.