Rito: "Haunting Guise is kept deliberately niche because +15 M Pen can easily become 'mandatory'."
I feel like this might be a contributor to why it's at the power level it is at. +Flat Penetration is a deceptively crazy stat. More than that, it's just 'weird' for the defensive tech against ap burst item to have this quality.
Abyssphere3 votesArmour pen has to be a lot more prevalent than magic pen because ADCs exist. I'm sure Riot would rather they didn't have as much flat armour pen in the game as they currently do but armour pen is pretty much the only AD-relevant stat you can put on an item that's attractive to casters without being just as attractive to ADCs. AD casters have never really had their own itemisation in the past because ADCs have always been able to buy into it but Riot wanted to change that in season 6 so AD casters weren't reliant on borrowing ADC itemisation to function.
Saianna2 votesThen why did they try to make Maw work with everyone? Like.. if it has armor pen, then why it also has decent AD?
Riot should have choosen between MR + Shield + AD or MR + Shield + Arm pen. Not both..
Abyssphere1 votesThen why did they try to make Maw work with everyone? Like.. if it has armor pen, then why it also has decent AD?
Riot should have choosen between MR + Shield + AD or MR + Shield + Arm pen. Not both..
Well I mean AD casters kind of need AD, they can't live entirely off of armour pen. If you think AD assassin items should have no/hardly any AD then they need enough armour pen to be doing true damage to everyone they look at.
I don't know how much you know about how stats work but MR + Shield + APen would just not ever be a functional item. It'd only be used by physical damage tanks with super high bases, like Poppy.
Saianna1 votesI don't know how much you know about how stats work but MR + Shield + APen would just not ever be a functional item.
I meant increasing Maws armor pen up to 15 or even 20, while removing its AD part. If player has not stacked armor pens from other items, then damage would be +/- weaker than what we have right now, which in turn would change Maws niche to AD casters who do stack armor pen.
ADCs who buy Maw would have their damage slightly reduced because of no raw AD, AD casters would be happy.
Imo this would have been better than what we have now:
MR + Shield + AD + Apen + Life steal. Right now Maw is so overloaded that it's gross to look at.
IcyPepper2 votesArmor penetration is supposed to be an assassin stat, while crit and attack speed are for the carries.
Which would be fine if a similar philosophy applied to AP items. Or any philosophy, really. While zhonyas has its own issues, it'd be nice if mages had other options to better handle AD assassins similar in power to Maw, an item with a strong passive perhaps.
Borror2 votesI believe the real reason is that lots of squishy glass cannons like mages and marksman don't have any or little scaling magic resistance so they end up having much more armor than they have magic resistance late game. This makes magic penetration much more effective than armor penetration a lot of the time and is also probably why there magic resist and ad items ( counter building) and not any armor and ad items ( they already get more armor late game)
Saianna2 votesImo it's much harder to get armor than MR for both mages and ADCs.
The only reason why MR is here'n'there in ADCs builds is to counter mages. That's all.
And The reason why there's little to no armor in Mages builds is so ADC wouldn't have too much problems while killing mages.
J Epstein1 votesI wouldn't compare Maw to haunting guise, they serve two different purposes.
That being said, Maw has armor pen because it fits perfectly with a build path for 
. It is not enough it has MR, AD, and an auto magic shield, it also needs armor pen. Zed shouldn't have to decide between AD, defense, or armor pen. Also, I guess mages rushing zhonyas to counter his damage had too much armor.
Hyrum Graff1 votesThe reason is completely different, though. +15 M Pen makes a huge difference in your ability to burst squishies. It still makes a huge difference in your ability to burst tanks, because of how few premier MR items there are. By contrast, a tank can easily stack several hundred armor; 10 flat armor pen on a marksman is not that much.
If you're talking about AD assassins, then... yeah.
RocketRelm1 votesI'm pretty sure that's not so much that there aren't as many or good options against MR, it's that there's not enough AP threats that tanks need to bother itemizing against the AP side. Especially when Spirit Visage's current iteration allows you to "one and done" mr itemization and then fill the rest of your slots with armor.
Wînter Fox1 votesI still can't believe they threw on Armor Pen and Attack Speed (before the nerf). Riot was pretty much begging every AD champ to (ab)use this item
