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So I was told the Lethality build sacrifices damage against tanks for killing squishes faster.

MissingKayo··5 votes·5,243 views

Level 18 Nautilus has 90.2 base armor, 9 armor from runes, and 225-230 armor with standard full build (5 armor difference being Zz'Rot vs Randuin's).

Ghostblade, Duskblade, Edge of Night, Cleaver, and Lord Dominik's Regards make up the full penetration/shred build. Up to 24 Lethality in runes is generally attainable (marks + quints). 8.5 more from Cunning Tree mastery. This adds up to 82.5 Lethality, 30% total armor reduction, and 45% bonus armor penetration.

After all the flat armor penetration, armor reduction, and percent armor penetration is calculated, Nautilus is left with 82.907 (Randuin's)/84.832 (Portal) armor. Just barely more than an average glass cannon's base armor.

To put this into better perspective, it means 241.293 (Randuin's)/244.368 (Portal) armor was removed. AKA, literally every single point of armor has been taken from his items. And then some on top of that. Basically making it as if his items collectively gave him -16.293 (Randuin's)/-14.368 (Portal) armor instead.

To put this into even better perspective, a level 18 Lux has 86.7 armor.

A GLASS CANNON MAGE HAS MORE BASE ARMOR THAN A FULL TANK CHAMPION AFFECTED BY LETHALITY/REDUCTION/PERCENT PENETRATION.

Bye Nautilus.

Now what about Lux? Wait, Lux? What do you mean Lux? What Lux? Oh, you mean that minion that died from someone standing in a mile-wide radius near them because it had 0 armor? The minion that took as much damage from physical damage as it would from true damage?

I sure see the trade-offs. Yeah. Sacrificing damage against tanks for bursting down squishy ones. Yeah.

An argument I heard is the lack of attack speed and crit severely hamper killing a tank. Good thing AD casters rely more on their autoattacks than AD scaling abilities to kill people, right? That's why they're called AD casters right?

Good thing that someone like Jayce's autoattacks that do 100% AD do less than a non-Gate Q for 320 + 120% Bonus AD, right? And less than his 40% damage amplified Gate-Q, right?

Good thing he picked the Lethality option that's weaker against tanks so he'd have to break through 82.907/84.832 armor instead of autoattacking me to death with crit/attack speed/LDR build when I'd have only 218.9/221.65 armor.

Good thing 45.33%/45.9% physical damage reduction is better than 68.64%/68.91% physical damage reduction.

Hah, time to sit back and laugh because he can't do any damage to me because he spent almost all his money on flat armor penetration which is only good against squishy champions.

I AM NOT SAYING TANKS SHOULD TAKE NO DAMAGE. BUT SOMEONE BUILDING FLAT PENETRATION MEANT FOR SQUISHY CHAMPIONS AGAINST A TANK INSTEAD SHOULD NOT MAKE A TANK SQUISHIER THAN AN ARMORLESS SQUISHY CHAMPION.

20 Comments

RexSaur6 votes

Yep tanks should be invulnerable to damage, if someone build 5 penetration (glass cannon damage full build) items they should do no damage!

Thanks gameplay and bronze!

MissingKayo3 votes

Shitposting and not even right and using a strawman argument. Nice. It's almost like I never said tanks should be invulnerable or anything close.

I don't see the problem with tanks being squishier than glass cannons. When someone builds flat penetration items against them. You know, the ones meant to kill squishy champions, not tanks.

Thanks shitposting Gameplay! And thanks Rexylexy~ I can always count on you to shitpost something funny.

Jinzo Torrance5 votes

{quoted}

Now what about Lux? Wait, Lux? What do you mean Lux? What Lux? Oh, you mean that minion that died from someone standing in a mile-wide radius near them because it had -21.81 armor? The minion that took more damage from physical damage than it would from true damage?

Learn the game before making posts. Armor penetration can't bring someone armor below 0, that's flat armor reduction (Corki's E has that).

MissingKayo3 votes

Black Cleaver is 30% total reduction and applies first. And then Lethality. Take your own advice buddy.

  1. Flat reduction
  2. Percent reduction
  3. Percent pen
  4. Flat pen
Jinzo Torrance3 votes

[deleted]

MissingKayo2 votes

The one who has a hard time reading is you.

Why would their armor be below 0 from point 1 when there was no sources of flat armor reduction? I never mentioned Corki.

And yes I made a mistake with the armor penetration vs reduction. Thanks for pointing it out, that was a legitimate mistake on my part. But you should learn to read if you're going to even attempt to criticize others on it. :)

Jinzo Torrance1 votes

Order in which armor shred is applied:

  1. Flat armor reduction (Corki's E)
  2. Percent armor reduction (BC, Jarvan Q, Urgot E)
  3. Percent bonus armor penetration (LW & company)
  4. Flat armor penetration (Lethality)

How can you not see that Lethality comes after all of that? If someone's armor is brought below 0 is only because of the flat armor reduction (and Corki's E, Nasus E and Rammus E are the only flat armor reduction in the game IIRC.)

Take my advice seriously this time buddy.

I reposted this because apparently I was too offensive the first time.

MissingKayo2 votes

Again, you yourself are mixing up the terms.

Only flat armor REDUCTION and 100% armor REDUCTION can drop it to 0 or below. Corki's E/Nasus E/Rammus E is REDUCTION.

I also literally said myself I made a mistake because I misread the Wikia entry on treating the target with 18 armor and 20 REDUCTION as -2 armor as PENETRATION. Which is why I acknowledged my fault and thanked you for pointing it out since I made a legitimate mistake.

But if you can't even read properly, you shouldn't be criticizing others or attempting to act superior.

And you know full well you were incredibly toxic, no need to act coy buddy.

Jinzo Torrance1 votes

First, percent armor reduction can't bring someone armor below 0.

Second, percent armor reduction stack multiplicatively, so you can't achieve 100% armor reduction ever.

Third, why make a post if you don't know shit about what you're talking about and don't bother informing yourself?

Fourth, me acting superior? Me? Look at your comment history buddy. Single senteces as response with no explanation.

MissingKayo2 votes

Which is why I said 0 or less. Max percent reduction is 100% which sends it to 0. Only flat reduction can send it below 0. Again, learn to read.

100% reduction sends it to 0 theoretically. I never said you could attain it. Again, learn to read.

Oh man I missed one small point that barely matters, I should totally quit and re-evaluate my life. Oh wait. Learn to stop splitting hairs just because you have no actual meaningful points.

I am generally correct. Should an intelligent person not educate the lesser so? If so, my dearest apologies, oh lovely madam or mister.

Jinzo Torrance1 votes

{quoted}

Learn to stop splitting hairs just because you have no actual meaningful points.

Your title talks about lethality then in your explanation you add a BC and a LW upgrade to your calculations, uh uh. Seems like you are the one with no actual meaningful point.

Nautilus remaining armor with only lethality being used is 142/147. Lux's 4.

Seems lethality is doing his job. Of course if you then add a BC and a LW upgrade you can make your point seems much stronger by completely making BC and LW upgrade do most of the job (Naut lost 174 armor by those in the Zz'rot case, Lux only lost 26 from BC).

Care to explain how are you correct on this, that lethality is reducing Naut armor to actually 70/72, less than somebody base armor?

MissingKayo1 votes

Gee maybe because every single Lethality ranged user will eventually get LDR and most likely Cleaver?

And without Lethality, it hurts far less because Lethality is calculated AFTER the percent reduction from Cleaver and the percent penetration from LDR? Instead of after Cleaver but before LDR?

Cleaver is another problem, but calculating flat pen after percent is just toxic design because it takes a stat meant to harm squishies and harms tanks extremely well.

Care to start trying to make actual points?

Jinzo Torrance1 votes

Gee, the title says Lethality is good against squishy and bad against tanks. Let's ignore that and prove a total different thing, like that a BC + LDR + Maximum Lethality also shreds tanks.

What the hell are you saying? Naut loses 83 armor from just lethality but he loses 171/174 to only BC + LDR. Clearly Lethality is doing less here, but yeah, in your eyes it's reducing the most important points of armor after BC and LDR have done all the job.

That change was made when Brutalizer was the only item that had armor penetration (10 flat, it wasn't lethality, just flat pen), it was QoL buff back then, now it could be considered troublesome. It was also made to how Magic penetration worked.

Care to see that only lethality can't make Tanks feel like paper and admit that the user has to invest in building a BC and LW upgrade first?

MissingKayo1 votes

You do realize Nautilus is still tanky without the Lethality reduction afterwards?

And the point isn't for AD casters to focus tanks. They get Lethality and obliterate squishies. Build Cleaver as a fourth, LDR as a fifth. Now they obliterate everyone. They would focus the carries first obviously, but shredding the tanks afterwards isn't difficult.

Just make Lethality calculate before LDR.

ValyrianBlade3 votes

Except he didn't build flat pen - he built the two percent armour reduction/pen items available.

I.e. he bought stuff to counter both tanks and squishies.

And despite that, your 90 remaining armour nautilus is taking 47.5% reduced damage from his abilities while having a massive health pool (and shielding abilities) to draw from as well.

Of course something looks OP on paper when you ignore all of the options the opponent has. That Jayce is full glass cannon (merely 300 health and 0 armour/mr from items). Meanwhile nautilus can easily tank many rotations from Jayce, and also withstand all of his ally's physical damage and not be bursted by magic damage either, and can lock down any target he wants, and can deal back a reasonable chunk of damage himself.

The build works as intended on Jayce. It works as intended on casters who can blow up squishies with the true damage. It works as intended (aka doesn't work) on Marksmen who can't deal sustained damage due to severe lack of attack speed, crit, raw ad, and even lifesteal, in that build. Especially if there's a randuins or frozen heart in the picture - with no AS items they won't be doing much damage.

Ok sure but why1 votes

im saying tanks should deal no damage imo

MissingKayo1 votes

The only reason they deal this much is because of damage creep which affected everyone. Damage masteries being nerfed to half levels should help.

Ok sure but why1 votes

it's all the tank items that do damage tho

that and grasp

Darth Pixy Misa1 votes

To be completely fair, since this is a full build adc you should be comparing to a full build Naut, and Lux

SO item 3068 item 3111 item 3025 item 3065 item 3143 item 3026 + runes and masteries

Naut base ar 90, mr 53, Bonus ar 244, mr 135, total ar 334 , mr 188 vs Leathality MF poping out of a bush and doing 4 hits, 50 lea, 0%,5%,10%,15%, bonus armor 134 > total 224, MF ad 357 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +7% armor shread 108 ar, 172 , 20% bonus dmg - 34 - total 281 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +12% armor shread 97 ar, 181 , 20% bonus dmg - 36 - total 292 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +17% armor shread 86 ar 192 , 20% bonus dmg - 38 - total 305 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +22% armor shread 75 ar 204 , 20% bonus dmg - 40 - total 319

Lux base ar 86, mr 30, Bonus ar 54 mr 10 total ar 140 mr 84 vs Leathality MF poping out of a bush and doing 4 hits , 50 lea, 0%,5%,10%,15%, bonus armor 30 > total 106, MF ad 357 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +7% armor shread -1 ar, 361 , 20% bonus dmg - 72 - total 508 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +12% armor shread -7 ar, 384 , 20% bonus dmg - 76 - total 535 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +17% armor shread -12 ar 406 , 20% bonus dmg - 80 - total 561 75 true dmg, 200% lea, +22% armor shread -17 ar 430 , 20% bonus dmg - 86 - total 591

IMO Duskblade is the real issue, that item should be 300 - 400g more expensive...

Kiharon1 votes

Basically making it as if his items collectively gave him -16.293 (Randuin's)/-14.368 (Portal) armor instead.

This is an inaccurate statement. His effective armor with the items is 84. His effective armor without these items would be 0. Therefore they gave him 84 armor. There is plenty of reduction but also still plenty of benefit.

To the titles point, you were told correctly.

Let's compare two builds versus our hypothetical Nautilus. For simplicity, I will assume a base AD of 95, a base AS of 0.658, and a total AS/lvl of 56.6%. (These are Ashe's stats, but they seemed kinda middle of the pack. I will be using only these base stats and no buffs from abilities in the calculations.)

A lethality build: item 3147 item 3814 item 3142 item 3071 item 3033 item 3006

Nautilus effective armor: 84.8 Total AA DPS before armor: 479.1 Effective AA DPS: 259.2

A crit build: item 3031 item 3085 item 3072 item 3508 item 3033 item 3006

Nautilus effective armor: 209 Total AA DPS before armor: 1218.3 Effective AA DPS: 364.3

So with the crit build, abilities do about 60% of the damage, but AA's do 152% the damage as compared to the lethality build. The question then becomes what the distribution of damage is between abilities and AA's. If you will only ever use abilities, then absolutely the lethality build is better. However, a marksman is generally expected to be applying consistent autos to the enemy during teamfights, especially the front line tanks, which would make the crit build better.

As a bonus, the numbers on our hypothetical Lux are:

Lethality build Lux effective armor: 0 Total AA DPS before armor: 479.1 Effective AA DPS: 479.1

Crit build Lux effective armor: 80.6 Total AA DPS before armor: 1218.3 Effective AA DPS: 674.5

EDIT: I originally miscalculated the base critical damage as 50% not 100%.

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