Is Voidstaff worth it?

Ryucopasetic·11/11/2014, 5:08:43 AM·2 votes·1,318 views

Ok so first of all, take pity on me. Im barely starting to get into the groove of league and excuse me if my math is faulty. I was talking to one of my friends who pointed out that Rabadons, Athenes, and void staff were pretty much the staple of all mid AP champs. My question is, with Rabadons deathcap, isnt it more efficient to pick something else with high AP gain? If the enemy doesnt build much MR, Void staff isnt as efficient, making it a far more useful late game item. But I see many champs completely ignore it. So, lets just say that an enemy champ has 30 MR, voidstaff wouldnt impact as much as if the enemy had 100 MR right? My argument is that I want to get something with more AP so that it stacks better under the rabadons 30% boost if my enemy isnt building any MR. Any input is greatly appreciated!

12 Comments

Lord Dusteon11/11/2014, 5:30:04 AM5 votes

If the enemies literally built no MR, then yes, more AP or flat magic penetration is better.

However, melee champions get MR per level, most mages get a chalice (and many supports do to, or build tanky), making only MAYBE the adc not have any extra MR. Either way, Void Staff gives great AP and makes it so you won't be doing very tiny damage to the tanks, so it's a great buy 99.9% of the time.

Kuroi8611/11/2014, 6:45:32 AM4 votes

If an opponent has build no mr, then either building flat AP or building Sorc boots/Haunting Guise is better than Void Staff.

Void Staff is considered core due to most teams having at least one tanky champ that builds MR, this is who you are getting Void Staff against.

67chrome11/11/2014, 9:34:26 AM3 votes

Is voidstaff still a good item against enemies that dont build MR?

Yes. Because you're not 100% toast if they do turn around and build something like a Banshee's Veil or Quicksilver Sash.

"Wait for 10 minutes while I get Voidstaff so Vayne can't face-tank my entire combo and still kill me because Scimitar " <-- Not an optimal strategy.

Void Staff also adds a bit of psychological warefare, adding a feeling of hopelessness in regards to counter-building working.

Linna Excel11/11/2014, 7:31:56 AM3 votes

It's a cheap item to finish and the break even point is pretty low. It's not hard to get there.

Yandere Carry11/11/2014, 10:37:03 AM2 votes

Here's the secret. As far as single item purchases go... Even at BASE mr... The most damage you get per gold, the top three items in order are:

Deathfire Grasp
Voidstaff
Deathcap

So, yes, it's always worth.

MPendragon11/11/2014, 5:32:03 AM2 votes

Voidstaff grants 70 Ability Power and a unique passive of 35% magic penetration.

While yes, if your opponents are building Magic resistance, this will scale tremendously, and should be the primary focus after your first initial power surge (Rabadons / Deathfire Grasp)

If your opponents don't build any magic resistance and they don't have any magic resistance runes; assume that their MR is approximately 15 - 20. Whatever it is, mostly irrelevant.

Your magic resistance and your armour resistance scales higher the lower it is. The difference between 15 MR and 35 MR could very well be 10% reduction. I don't think you get 65% reduction until you hit approximately 200, but it is not linear. Because it is not linear, it actually has a greater effect when someone has less resistance. If you penetrate 35% of 20 MR, it's going to leave the person with 12 MR, which is probably a reduction of about 10%. 10% less of their resistance means 10% more on your damage.

Now you're more than likely going to encounter people who will build appropiately, for example:

Anyone who isn't an AP carry is most likely going to have either static MR blues, or scaling MR blues. So they're either +12 or scaling from 1-27+. On top of that, anyone who isn't an AD carry is probably going to have Mercury Treads if they're going to be susceptible to crowd control, so they're going to require some early game tenacity.

That's another 25 MR to worry about.

So we've got potentially 67 MR (15 initial start, 27 scaling at max level, and 25 for merc treads). A 35% penetration on that will leave them with 42 MR, and that's probably going to be about a 10% increase on your damage.

Or, could believe what wikipedia has to say about it. http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Void_Staff

I generate my arguments based off logic, and not raw evidence.

Either way, I would strongly suggest Void Staff as your 3rd core item.

FantasySniper11/11/2014, 10:10:57 AM2 votes

Void Staff is cheap, easy damage. Buying it is not hard, and the components are not going to put you through any kind of suffering.

The only time you wouldn't buy it is if they are all glass cannons with no MR, in which case you would get Liandry's instead for the flat pen and health.

More AP into more damage sounds simple, but at the point where you already have damage, you want to ensure it with multipliers.

Ale non è male11/11/2014, 11:12:57 AM1 votes

No if you are going to build Rabadon, Yes if your champ doesn't build Rabadon anyway

Every champ has base MR and melee champs also have scaling MR/level, so %magic penetration always give you higher damage than the raw AP damage out of the single item, and Void Staff difference in raw AP vs the other main damaging AP items is so little to basically always justify its purchase BUT when Rabadon's passive kicks in, then the things change. Upon Rabadon passive, Rabadon worth like it gives 156 AP, Zhonya like it gives 156 AP, Deathfire Grasp like it gives 156 AP, Rylai like it gives 130 AP, Seraph like it gives 117 AP by itself without even counting the AP you get from the base mana pool of the champ + other possible sources of mana...With Rabadon passive, Void Staff gives only 91 AP and the AP difference vs the other single damage items grow by 10-15 AP, and this is not even counting Archmage mastery that multiplicatively stacks with Rabadon passive and enlarge even more the AP difference between Void Staff and the other main damage items

IwfiKe3qjM11/11/2014, 3:38:19 PM1 votes

I always check the most of enemies armor when they're shown in map to see if i can buy Last Whisper when i'm playing AD...

and check their MR too see if i can buy Void Staff when i'm playing AP...

maybe it's just conditional situation...

SouL1ess11/11/2014, 8:41:48 PM1 votes

Resistance works by logarithmic scales: the less MR Void Staff ignores, the MORE % reduction in damage the enemy loses.

However you should be buying Sorcerer's shoes and Haunting Guise - these two items give you damage equivalent to Deathcap against low MR targets, and decreases MR more effectively than Void Staff does at low MR values. I always buy Void Staff in conjuncture with Sorcerer's and Haunting Guise.

I should also note that I consider percentile resistance penetration to be unfair and overpowered - there is only a small number of scenarios where NOT building Void Staff or Last Whisper would be better for your damage.

Saelani11/12/2014, 9:49:02 AM1 votes

I saw some math on this a while back. this individual went through every champion with an AP ration and compared a first buy Rabadons to a first buy void staff. In his comparison the WORST case scenario was that void staff was better than Rabadons in all situation if the enemy has more than ~50 MR.

Obviously there are more factors to include, but the math is complicated to compare the two empirically if you want to account for all combinations of AP/MR.

Point is, void staff is great, even against low MR targets. Take 15, which is the most flat pen you can get on one item.

15MR/35% = 43MR

So simply, at 43 MR void staff is = the armor reduction of a single flat pen item. Past that void staff is the obvious winner. Then you have to think about the AP you are also getting with void staff.

Compare AD champions who build LW. Everyone gets LW, even if the enemy has no armor items because ignoring 35% armor is ridiculous.

Matthevv11/12/2014, 10:21:56 AM1 votes

You build void staff once you see the enemy team start to build mr. If the opposing team is dumb and they don't build mr then don't bother with void staff yet. Regardless of whether or not your opponents build mr you should have a void staff by the time you are full build.