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I feel like there is alot of mis-information going about on how the AP items are getting nerfed.

WeirWulf·10/31/2015, 10:25:50 AM·7 votes·983 views

EDIT: Turns out a bunch of the tanky items are getting their numbers changed aswell, so some of the stuff i have posted here is wrong as I had not seen the changes. However the point still stands that AP items are not getting nerfed.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/y9c2V7f6-item-changes-as-far-as-tanky-champs-are-concerned

At first glance, things might appear that way, but you need to look at the whole picture to get a better idea on what's going on. I feel like since alot of the AD items are getting reworked/changed it's muddying the water and people dont get what's happening.

Lets look at the some examples;

Firstly, deathcap. Currently, ignoring any extra AP you get from other sources, the item alone gives 162 AP at a cost of 3500. This gives us a gold efficiency of 100.67%.

162*21.75/3500=1.0067... (21.75 is gold per stat for AP derived from amp tome).

The new deathcap will have it's price as 3800 so the new efficiency will be;

162*21.75/3800= 0.9272... 97.72% efficient.

100.67% to 97.72%. A drop of about 3% So that's bad right? Well before me make any conclusions lets look the changes to IE aswell.

Old IE had a gold efficiency of 102.11% (without it's passive). The new one will give 15 less AD but will be 300 gold cheaper. So the new efficieny will now be 95.43%. This is a drop of about 6.5%

We could do the same for the new Essence Reaver; Old Efficiency =117.08%, new efficiency would be 104.46% a drop of about 12.5%

And this happening across the board, not just with AP items but with AD items too. Blood Thirster, Ravenous Hydra, Trinity Force, Youmoo's Ghostblade... etc etc

And this is just comparing the current season to the new one. With the prices changes to long sword and brawlers glove, AD and Crit will change the gold efficiencies of both of these stats. This means that AD and crit will be cheaper to get, but ultimately lowers the slot efficiencies of the premium tier items.

So what does this ultimately mean? Well it means overall this will be a buff for those buying defense, since those stats aren't getting messed with.

That said, the new Last Whisper looks like it might be very strong. 1300 gold for 25 ad and 30% armour pen on bonus armour. The AD will be worth 825 gold, and so the armour pen costs 425 gold. This means the enemy will only need to have 21.25 bonus armour for Last whisper to become gold efficient. And this only gets better the more armour the enemy has. This is without even considering Last whisper's new upgrades.

However, last whisper won't do much stuff agianst stuff with no bonus armour. So it's actually all quite clever. AP will have a slightly harder time with tanks, but will still be doing damage as much damage as their taking compared to other damage dealers. AD champs can build the new last whisper to deal with tanks a lot easier, but this will hurt their damage against other squishy targets.

TLDR: All offensive items are getting nerfed, except last whisper, which is only good against tanks now

15 Comments

Rebonack10/31/2015, 11:10:37 PM4 votes

Compared to the old Whisper the new version is a huge kick in the balls to an ADC's damage against everything. For 40% bonus armor pen to break even with 35% total pen, the target needs to have seven times as much bonus armor as base.

In realistic terms, you're talking about a total armor of 640. Which... doesn't happen. Ever.

All ADCs are losing 10 or so base AD over the course of leveling up. That's in addition to the flat AD masteries and the %Bonus AD masteries being removed. Combined with the nerfed AD values on most AD items, an ADC is looking at about 60 less total attack damage with a full build.

Summarized, Riot nuked the raw stats of ADCs from orbit and paid them back with improvements to their kits and interesting new item effects.

ProfDrDeath10/31/2015, 11:13:45 AM2 votes

So what does this ultimately mean? Well it means overall this will be a buff for those buying defense, since those stats aren't getting messed with.

Not necessarily. Defense items in general also get slight cost adjustments/lower premiums. See here: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/y9c2V7f6-item-changes-as-far-as-tanky-champs-are-concerned

Vistha Kai10/31/2015, 10:52:10 AM2 votes

All offensive items are getting nerfed. That's why an average ADC build will consists of 50% lifesteal and 90% crit chance with just as much AD as they get now.

7ha7guy77710/31/2015, 11:16:08 PM2 votes

RoA actually got buffed. Cost up 300, AP up 20. If they didn't change amp tome, then that's 435 gold in ap for only 300 more gold.

Abyssphere10/31/2015, 11:40:08 PM2 votes

The problem to me seems that they're quite heavily raising the amount of AP mages across the board need to successfully 100-0 an ADC, while making it ever more difficult to reach those thresholds. The recent AP item pass reducing Luden's and Zhonya's to 100 AP really did a number on the amount of AP you'd max out at, and with Zhonya's now dropping to the 80 AP threshold, it's a big deal. At the same time as this, Banshee's and Spirit Visage have received more health and more magic resist, so an ADC going 5 offensive items + one of those is harder to kill than before. On top of that, Maw of Malmortius has been buffed to be significantly more powerful on AD assassins because it now has magic pen, and the Phantom Dancer rework just flat out makes you take 12% less damage from targets who you've auto-attacked. This means you take 12% less damage from every mage's full combo unless they're Leblanc and can kill you before you respond with a single auto attack.

At the end of this extensive list we reach Death's Dance, which makes you take only 80% of the damage you normally would instantly, and applies the remaining 20% over a few seconds instead. During those few seconds you can lifesteal a huge amount and probably kill the mage/assassin whose only means of not dying to you is killing you before you kill them. In situations you would have died, you do not. The enemy dies instead and a minion wave later you're at 100% HP and ready to destroy towers.

Combine this with supports that heal being able to give their ADCs resists and tanks/tank supports being able to take 8% of the damage the ADC would take themselves (multiple tanks with this mastery will stack) and... I don't get how this isn't a giant nerf to AP mages and assassins. ADCs and to a lesser extent AD assassins are significantly tankier than they've ever been while AP is easier to itemise against than it was and AP items give less damage than they used to. Given a lot of the time the only way for a mage to actually survive an ADC/AD assassin is to kill them before they can be killed, I really can't express how monumental a change this is.

Depending on the tuning, the pre-season patches could see AP burst characters in the gutter while ADCs reign supreme bot (as ever) and share mid and maybe top with AD assassins.

NoBootsAllowed10/31/2015, 11:03:14 AM1 votes

black cleaver is actually enough... but if i see a tank gets out of controll i would build lw

thumbnail911/1/2015, 11:46:03 AM1 votes

At the same time a lot of ADC's become complete drain tanks as they will now easily build 2 life steal items and hurricane.

At the same time some masteries make it easy to deal with.