Attack Damage scales exponentially while Armor scales linearly

Another thread looking at the disparity between damage and resistance, using some math to explain everything

Hypothetical champion A (Let's call him "Knight" ) has 100 base AD and 50 base armor Hypothetical champion B (Let's call him "Needler" ) has 90 base AD and 50 base armor They both have the same base attack speed.

Needler is an ADC, building mostly attack damage: . Totaling 325 AD and 50 AR for 10200 gold Knight is a tank, building mostly armor: . Totaling 100 AD and 355 AR for 11200 gold

Needler mitigates 33.33% of Knight's auto attack damage, causing him to do 66.67 damage with his attacks Knight mitigates 78% of the 325 AD, causing Needler to deal about 71.5 damage with his attacks.

Despite Knight having higher base stats, a full item above Needler, 1000 extra gold spent, and 7 times Needler's armor with only a third their AD, Knight will lose auto trades every time (in terms of damage taken).

I chose the items I did since they have the highest stats of their category just to look at the raw values, but obviously the health and lifesteal and grievous wounds all come into play in reality, as do abilities. That said, we all know which wins the interaction between and , let alone with a added, so even outside of the raw stats, AD gets the advantage.

It gets worse as AD goes up. Needler with 400 AD and 50 AR vs Knight with 100 AD and "n" Armor. "n" must be a value that causes 400 AD to deal the same 66.67 damage as the 100 AD does against 50 armor. That is 83.33% physical damage mitigation, or 500 armor.

Needler can reach 400 AD easily with an additional AD item, or effectively that much with a zeal or other AS boost. You tell me what armor item gives 145 armor though. That's without getting into costs of the items, which Knight needs to purchase two of to match Needler's one. This is what people mean when they say tank itemization is horribly slot inefficient.

But hey, tanks can buy a single MR item and the enemy mages become dead weight. As if Caster didn't have it hard enough getting right clicked to death themselves.