No ADC is building armor penetration, why is this not talked about?

D357R0Y3R··89 votes·21,596 views

https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=rekkles https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=FNC+xMatty https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=FYN+Hogane

Take any challenger adc player You can see that when they're not playing Veigar botlane, and pick an adc THEY NEVER BUILD ARMOR PENETRATION DESPITE GOING TO LATE GAME

How is this not a problem? They manage to deal so much damage without wasting a slot to build armor penetration

what's the point of this thread?

if armor is shreded by conqueror, bruisers (renekton E for instance), black cleaver then ADC don't need to build armor pen Riot fix your game

195 Comments

HP Crookshanks91 votes

Because armor is useless

Silent Reaper15 votes

Exactly. Take a look at the League of Damage/Mobility meta for the last 2 years. Notice the lack of tanks?

Ragnaveil6 votes

*year and a half Tanks existed beginning of S8 (or was it S7, either way beginning of runes reforged season) up until midseason.

PB4UAME8 votes

Was still league of damage and mobility. that doesn't change just because two tanks had above 5% playrates . . .

Ragnaveil3 votes

It wasn't just two tanks. 4 of them were viable.

PB4UAME8 votes

Oh fucking wow, that doesn't change the point of what I said, and from what I'm seeing looking it up, the other two may have been viable, but had less than 5% playrates, which is what I was talking about . . .

ArtumisPrime2 votes

I would argue this has been going on since the introduction of keystones in S6.

Yes, there was a tank meta at the time, but not because tanks were tanky. It was because they could survive the initial burst of anyone while dealing the same amount of, if not more than carries, damage in return.

As such, tanks were played but because of damage, not tankiness.

Ragnaveil2 votes

It was a bit of both. What Riot should have done instead of converting % bonus pen to total was just up the % number. Being able to ignore base armor just lets assassins ignore any armor and allow burst mages (and some DPS mages) to one rotation shot people with 0 counterplay (Zoe with two pen items and a Ludens can destroy a 90+ mr Hex Talon)

It was a terrible mistake to do that in the first place. Especially now that ADCs can just kill tanks with minimal effort with no need of a LW apparently.

Also, tanks were played mainly because everyone had to play second support to the kings of the rift during that meta, ADCs. Why pick anything else when the ADC can do all the damage you need?

DragonShea14 votes

[{quoted}](name=HP Crookshanks,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MAgU5oOj,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-07-08T16:04:20.325+0000)

Because armor is useless

Or rather, Physical damage is too high.

ChaosReyn12 votes

honestly, it's partly both. AD is supposed to be sustained damage...yet half the AD (barring assassins, of course, they're supposed to) fucking explode you like a burst mage...and there's nothing you can do about it, cause armor is worthless.

They need to address both.

ArtumisPrime2 votes

Both, really. Among a ton of other factors.

The lowering of defensive stats on items while making offensive items more powerful AND creating stronger hybrid offense/defense items has kind of rendered tank itemization in a bad state.

Someone made a post in the last year about gold efficiency of completed items. Damage items were between 100-120% gold efficient without their passives. Meanwhile defensive items hovered at around 70-80% gold efficiency. Some items may have varied a bit since that post was made, but the gap between offense and defense is still prevalent.

Heos002 votes

Both, Riot nerfed a shit ton the defense stats and buffed any type of damage, like plain AD-AP buffs or CDR buffs...

Tahminatrix 38 votes

I still have Vietnam flashbacks where the enemy mages who have voidstaff get VASTLY out damaged by the adc despite me having item 3047 item 3143 item 3110 and only item 3065 as my mr item.

While the mages had item 3135

And the adc (Tristana) didn't have lord dominiks...not even full crit yet.. (all of her damage still came from basic attacking)

No, im not joking....I know mages arnt supposed to do a lot to tanks but this is best case scenario for them to hurt me more than the adc and it disgusts me that none of these factors matter.

And the lack of adcs needing to build armor penetration has been a thing for 2 seasons ATLEAST.

Anime Fizz4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tahminatrix ,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MAgU5oOj,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2019-07-08T16:19:19.659+0000)

I still have Vietnam flashbacks where the enemy mages who have voidstaff get VASTLY out damaged by the adc despite me having item 3047 item 3143 item 3110 and only item 3065 as my mr item.

While the mages had item 3135

And the adc (Tristana) didn't have lord dominiks...not even full crit yet.. (all of her damage still came from basic attacking)

No, im not joking....I know mages arnt supposed to do a lot to tanks but this is best case scenario for them to hurt me more than the adc and it disgusts me that none of these factors matter.

Void staff is around 20 times better than the LW items, and so is the mage itemization for the most part.

So idk what you're talking about, tanks get destroyed by mages with void staff much harder than by bruisers with conqueror or adcs (and adcs are supposed to kill tanks).

Tahminatrix 12 votes

Whatever you are talking about must still be on paper, Im just repeating events that happened in game.

I already know voidstaff is strong, you are just helping my point.

Anime Fizz3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tahminatrix ,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MAgU5oOj,comment-id=000500000000,timestamp=2019-07-08T16:23:33.959+0000)

Whatever you are talking about must still be on paper, Im just repeating events that happened in game.

I already know voidstaff is strong, you are just helping my point.

MR itemization is much worse than armor.

Void staff is 10 times better than the arpen options (other than maybe black cleaver).

Thanks to the cdr creep every mage nowdays can do decent DPS and lost chapter/ludens solves any kind of mana issues.

Result of all of the above = Mages can easily dps/shred tanks down with no issue, while being safer than adcs thanks to their range and CC.

Tahminatrix 17 votes

Sad truth is despite all of those things, adcs can still out damage mages, even when the tank focuses on building armor and the adc neglects lord dom.

Anime Fizz6 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tahminatrix ,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MAgU5oOj,comment-id=00050000000000000000,timestamp=2019-07-08T16:35:12.469+0000)

Sad truth is despite all of those things, adcs can still out damage mages, even when the tank focuses on building armor and the adc neglects lord dom.

Mages are literally the strongest class in the game, wtf are you talking about?

Holy shit boards.

D357R0Y3R24 votes

Hm no they aren't, stop trying to point out a "strongest class" because this just isn't the case atm, we have a lot of champions from a lot of classes being played

However just like someone pointed out before, tankiness is garbage, the only reason tanks are relevant sometimes are because of insane damage (tahm kench hello)

tankiness is still garbage

and thaminatrix is right, adc without LW is still outdamaging mage with void staff against tanks, doesn't mean mages are weak

Bronzsuo1 votes

well, someone still has to be in front line to "tank" all the dmg though. A team without someone to "tank" all the dmg still get rolled over by someone who does.

The Kombinator2 votes

{quoted}

well, someone still has to be in front line to "tank" all the dmg though. A team without someone to "tank" all the dmg still get rolled over by someone who does.

But if the tank is worthless, then it just gets ignored until it's the last man standing. At least by a good team. So real "tanks" are the bruisers who gets defense from offense stats, or can simply become invulnerable for long period. Hecarim, Darius, Diana, Riven, Jax are far better for "tanking" the enemy, than Rammus. And that is quite a problem.

Yets424028 votes

40% magic pen, with 70 AP is somehow 20x more impactful than 35% armor pen with 45AD (equivalent to between 75 AP, btw), or 25% armor pen, 40% reduced healing, regen, lifesteal, spellvamp, and omnivamp, and 45 AD (equivalent to between 75-80AP, btw)? In what fucking world?

From the gold efficiency alone, we get a void staff that is 57.45% gold efficient before its passive, which is worth 72g, per 10 MR of the target, breaking even against targets with over 90 magic resist. A number that requires at least one MR item purchase to obtain for every champion in the game. Even against a 300MR, magic resist stacking tank, its only worth an extra 864g, and will remove 120 MR.

For LDR we have more gold worth of AD, but a slightly higher cost making the item a similar 57% efficacy without its passive, but wait, people tend to have MUCH higher armor values, and armor costs 11.11% more per point of it than magic resist, making armor pen already 1/9th more cost effective per point than MR. LDR's passive is worth 70 gold per 10 armor, even at 35% armor pen (1/8th less pen, but each point penetrated is worth 1/9th more) and as a result, LDR is cost effective against targets with only 88 armor a stat that EVERY tank, and juggernaut gets beyond purely from their base stats alone Do you see the fucking problem? A % armor pen item is already cost effective EVEN IF YOUR TARGETS GET NO ADDITIONAL ARMOR FROM ANY-FUCKING-WHERE, BE IT RUNES, ITEMS, THEIR ABILITIES, OR ALLIES BUFFS The same CANNOT BE SAID FOR ANY OTHER PEN ITEMS IN THE ENTIRE GAME

Against a lategame armor stacking tank, who has between 400-450 armor, LDR removes an astounding 140-157.5 armor, worth a total of 2,800-3150g, WHICH IS AS MUCH OR MORE THAN THE COST OF THE ENTIRE FUCKING ITEM

BUT WAIT! Champions like Malphite and Rammus, actually have %increased armor steroids, and I have seen a Rammus in DBC legitimately get between 800-900 armor at full build (DBC increases armor by 100%, so 400-450 armor = 800-900) at which point that poor son of a bitch is losing between ***5,600-6300 MOTHERFUCKING GOLD WORTH OF ARMOR, WHICH IS WELL OVER FUCKING DOUBLE THE COST OF LDR TO BEGIN WITH, BEFORE FACTORING IN THE EXTRA 45 FUCKING RAW AD IT GIVES, WORTH AN ADDITIONAL OVER 1,500G.  NAME TO ME ONE FUCKING OTHER ITEM THAT CAN BE WORTH 7,900G BY ITS SELF***
And here, you have the utter gall to lie straight to everyone's face about a topic you clearly know NOTHING AT FUCKING ALL ABOUT when there is easily accessible information available, where other people such as myself have already done all the maths for you.
Tahminatrix 17 votes

You should make a thread about this lol

An item that crushes tanks so hard, yet its not even needed.

Fëalnort2 votes

Oooffff.

Damnit, too bad we are not on reddit, answer worthy of /r/MurderedByWords

AlterMordred2 votes

I know its not much since your at -16 but I will leave my small meaningless upvote here....

PB4UAME6 votes

Read Yets' reply, and you can see why it deserves all the downvotes his comment has. Its factually inaccurate and spreading pure bullshit.

Sire Hippington19 votes

Because people talk about damage beeing to high and tankiness, especially armor, feeling usless. (important to not that his is NOT the same as tanks beeing usless, CC always is relevant, it just means there is no point in haveing tanks in a gold heavy position) This includes tanks dieing quickly despite adc not getting armorpen, or even no ADC comps. if tankiness overall is rather irelevant, why would i invest gold to deal with tankiness? And again, the general issue of tankiness feeling irelevant is talked about. Since years even. Riot just doesn't give a damn...

BLIGHTBRINGER13 votes

Reason why that is (or atleast what I think it is)...

  • There's almost no strong presence for tanks in teamfights. With so much high damage, true damage and general high penetration in the game it's hard for them to front line, not to mention almost everyone is running with tons of CDR allowing everyone to just spam spells without the thought of being punished for missing.

  • Critical Strike Items are busted again, I don't care that Infinity Edge doesn't increase Crit Damage to 250% and only 225% now. With this additional damage to Crits they can get away with not buying Armor Pen. Crit Items are also busted in the sense that they will always have higher DPS than those who build heavy Attack Speed alongside On-Hit items, not to mention Crit Damage benefits from Lifesteal whereas On-Hit damage doesn't so therefore Crit Marksman will always have the upper hand in both DPS and Survivability against those who don't really build into Crit properly and build On-Hit items instead (aka: Varus, Kog'Maw, maybe even Kalista).

Overall, nerf Crit Items would be my suggestion. Every Marksman who is a Crit User is statistically doing really well, as those who aren't happen to be in the worst place.

Best case scenario they are meant to be late game hyper carries, so they could at least make IE bonus damage on Crits scale with level as the game progresses.

D357R0Y3R12 votes

sounds like you're trying to indirectly buff your main Varus

I don't think crit is op, just armor being garbage

VentusKing7 votes

I had 200 armor on Mordekaiser and got oneshot by kai sa from 3000 hp and a 1000 health shield. KaiSa went full crit btw. Armor is so fcking pathetic that you dont even need armor pen to beat tankyness in lategame.

Daddy Ants3 votes

[{quoted}](name=PaG VentusKing,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MAgU5oOj,comment-id=0016,timestamp=2019-07-08T19:25:20.924+0000)

I had 200 armor on Mordekaiser and got oneshot by kai sa from 3000 hp and a 1000 health shield. KaiSa went full crit btw. Armor is so fcking pathetic that you dont even need armor pen to beat tankyness in lategame.

I doubt that.

Yets42406 votes

Not one shot, maybe, but a three item Kaisa can deal over 2k DPS premitigation. If they had 4-5 items, they could burn through those stats (and assuming 125 MR, note that Kaisa does a metric fuckton of free magic damage while building full AS/AD/crit) in under 2 seconds.

Disembark2 votes

Except Kaisas most meta build is mostly AP items but ok.

Ayzev2 votes

First item is always AD, second is always Rageblade, third is either a Zeal or Nashor. That's half AP at most, definitely not "mostly AP"

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/items/kaisa

Ionian Vulpix7 votes

Why build the pen if no one is building armor?

Flawless Fetus7 votes

Sure, but you're missing the bigger issue? Lol. The match history for all of those players is full of games that ended at 3 items, or games where they faced teams without tanks. Adcs not buying pen in their first 3 items makes sense. Adcs not buying anti-tank items when there are no tanks being played also makes sense.

People are talking about this issue all the time. "Tanks are weak and don't get played". That's why adcs rarely buy anti tank items. Because they're rarely facing tanks. Lol.

Critmaster Garen6 votes

conqueror doesnt shred armor.

it seems to me like adc damage is just simply too high for them to not need armor penetration items. if you want to fix this, then nerf adc latetegame scaling to a point where theyre forced to build last whisper items to get the same result.

GigglesO7 votes

You are right, it just allows you to straight up ignore it.

Critmaster Garen5 votes

{quoted}

You are right, it just allows you to straight up ignore it.

it allows the bruisers to ignore some of the tanks armor. but this is an entirely different problem, no?

its completely unrelated to adc not needing armor pen to shred a tank.

this is just what happens, when you nerf crit itemization, then hand out compensation buffs to almost every marksman multiple patches in a row, and then two month later revert crit items without reverting the marksmen buffs aswell.

Tristana q is buffed from 80% to 110% attack speed at rank 5 as a result of crit item nerfs, then the items are reverted but she keeps the extra 30% attack speed, and people wonder why they scale so hard into lategame that they can just ignore last whisper items in their builds.

GigglesO5 votes

I would say that it is all related.

Riot buffed: non-adc damage Adc-damage Rune Damage

Riot Nerfed: Tank runes Tank items

Now I'm not saying that riot isn't also working on buffing some of those back up as with the randuins omen but its still nothing...

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

I would say that it is all related.

Riot buffed: non-adc damage Adc-damage Rune Damage

Riot Nerfed: Tank runes Tank items

Now I'm not saying that riot isn't also working on buffing some of those back up as with the randuins omen but its still nothing...

cleaver and armor shred in fighter kits exists since season 3 and previous though. they didnt just stop buying armor pen back then because they still needed it to scale.

damage buffs to the other classes are still unrelated imo. other champions dealing more damage doesnt make marksmen deal so much damage, that they can just forfeit armor pen for another crit item.

imo they just way overcompensated with marksmen lategame buffs when the crit item changes happened, and never reverted those when they buffed marksmen midgame back up with the crit revert.

GigglesO7 votes

Last wisperor didn't upgrade. Flat Armor pen (lethality) wasn't as easy to purchase. Armor pen formula was less efficient. It used to be flat pen then percent pen. Now its the more efficient percent pen then flat pen.

other champions dealing more damage doesnt make marksmen deal so much damage, that they can just forfeit armor pen for another crit item.

It makes it so that adc's don't have to be as large of a chunk of team damage. Adc's don't have to shred tanks if other classes can now assist instead of just being a meat wall. Look at garens spin armor pen and how much that + black cleaver can fuck an enemy team.

AlienPrimate6 votes

I only see a single non Kaisa game of Rekkles that went to full build and he had a Trundle on his team to ult the enemy Sejuani.

PaffWasTaken6 votes

The amount of buyable + base damage versus defenses presently in the game is almost comically unbalanced.

Add in the fact that pretty much every single ADC but Ezreal has some way to melt through armor (true damage, AAs with incredential damage. %health damage, all of those at once, etc). But even Ezreal has a good deal of magic damage to go through it so yeah. Way too much damage + ADC kits being waaaaaaaaaay too fault-proof against defenses pretty much makes the game one-sided

1 516 735 35086 votes

{quoted}

https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=rekkles https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=FNC+xMatty https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=FYN+Hogane

Take any challenger adc player You can see that when they're not playing Veigar botlane, and pick an adc THEY NEVER BUILD ARMOR PENETRATION DESPITE GOING TO LATE GAME

How is this not a problem? They manage to deal so much damage without wasting a slot to build armor penetration

what's the point of this thread?

if armor is shreded by conqueror, bruisers (renekton E for instance), black cleaver then ADC don't need to build armor pen Riot fix your game

You are wrong. Rageblade is a % pen item.

Lethality builds are a thing on some champs.

Sukishoo5 votes

I see item 3124 's in some of those, that gives both Armor and Magic Pen.

Anime Fizz4 votes

Because LW items are really bad outside of mortal reminder vs healing champs (and its not even being bought by the arpen).

And idk what you're talking about tbh, of course full build adcs will kill tanks no matter what, even without LW items, thats literally their job, if adcs (the highest scaling dps class) need LDR to kill tanks late game it means literally no other class can even come close to killing them, and we do not want tanks to be this broken again.

D357R0Y3R22 votes

And idk what you're talking about tbh, of course full build adcs will kill tanks no matter what, even without LW items, thats literally their job

if they do, this proves to me that tanks are garbage right now

Moody P27 votes

No, the game has been balanced around armor eventually being countered by penetration. If we are at a point where ADCs don't need it to punch through durable targets then there's clearly a problem.

Sp33d Zer04 votes

Ok, lets take a look at their last 20 games.

Rekkless has

  • 2 games of Corki who does not build armor pen because of his high magic damage split.
  • 1 game of Ezreal who has a high magic damage split
  • 1 game of Draven where it could be even considered, but Olaf is literally the only tank
  • 1 game of Hybrid Kaisa who would never want to build Armor pen because hybrid
  • 1 game of Ashe that ends at 2 items
  • 1 game of Caitlyn where it could be considered (if Mordekaiser wasn't ulting the sejuani in every fight to remove the mega teamfight tank) where the enemy sivir who HAD good reason to get it (see 12 armor items on the enemy team) and did get it
  • 1 game of ashe where the only armor was one chain vest
  • Fuck ton of mage bot lanes

Ok maybe that's a fluke. We'll look at your other two links.

Matty has ONE game of ADC (Lucian, who already falls off late game, around the time you would BUY a LW item) go past 3 items where the other team even HAS a tank (and the tank is a bruiser. And he lost.)

Ok maybe that's TWO flukes. Let's look at the last one.

Hogane has ONE game with a tank (Lucian vs amumu) where he picks up Black cleaver (an armor pen item) that goes anywhere near resembling a late game. The rest of them are against comps like Nidalee Karma Kennen (boy I wonder why he didn't buy last whisper) and Yasuo (who last I checked got armor pen on his Ultimate for crits).

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