So Let Me Explain How the Thornmail Changes Affect Me
So with the recent Thornmail changes in 5.16, I was wondering how exactly it would effect my gameplay, particularily against AD Carries and Hypercarries like Yi or Yasuo. I was afraid that Thornmail would fail at doing the initial reason that I always get thornmail, which was negating the effects of lifesteal. In short, the changes are as follows:
Thornmail Costs more. Reflects less damage back to attackers, but scales with armor.
Another major outlier in terms of effectiveness, Thornmail is at its strongest when you can comfortably stack health. While we aren’t rocking that particular boat today (armor + health is kind of always good), we’re tossing in a hook to make the item also scale with armor-stacking, but in a different way. This also creates neat synergies for champions with on-demand armor buffs (like Leona or Rammus) which is pretty OK by us.
Important to note - if for any reason you experience a decrease in armor % (say, a stray black cleaver to the face), Thornmail will ignore that when calculating its damage. Way to be, Thornmail. TOTAL COST 2100 gold ⇒ 2300 gold REFLECT DAMAGE 30% of the attack ⇒ 15% of the attack NEWREFLECT RATIO Additionally deals .25 of your bonus armor as damage to the target
I provided a sample of one game, but, what I'm writing about is just my general experience about the changes now in all the games that I've bought thornmail in. Please feel free to examine my match history, as it provides some of the context to which I'm about to talk about.
What changed mathematically.... So now that 30% of the damage is no longer reflected, I did some quick math and found out that a 600 Crit now does roughly 90+(5-40) damage back to the attacker. If an ADC is running the typical lifesteal amount, usually 20%, then the lifesteal amount may be 120.
Feel free to play around with a graph using the following functions in Excel: f(x) = dmg x lifesteal g(x) = idmg x 15 + .25(bamr)
dmg = Actual Received Damage (idmg x damagemultiplier) idmg = Incoming Damage bamr = Base Armor - Bonus Armor damagemultiplier = 100 / (100 + Armor)
If you do get a graph out of this, please share it. I'm ready to get right back into a game, and if this really moves along then I'll just tighten up and make the graph/sheet.
In-Game Experience. In the game I played a Vayne, she had 30% lifesteal, and my bonus Armor (Which I built exclusively) allowed me to reflect 60 bonus damage. Vayne was still able to punch through all of my armor with her true damage, heal despite me having thornmail, and kill me much quicker than I could kill her. Now I always singled her out because I was able to run through the enemy team, or because she always ran too far into our team and never used strategic positioning. That said, she wasn't a very good player but the fact that she had a really good carry allowed her to play on the same level as me.
So at 30% lifesteal, and 600 crit damage, 180 HP was sent to Vayne, while my damage to Vayne from Thornmail was 90+60=150. Vayne effectively negated my thornmail's ability, and needless to say she could out-trade me very easily.
What was the difference? Thornmail negates some, but not all of Lifesteal's effects, and late game is an item that is just better left un-bought. The increased cost, and low effectiveness makes this item worthless as an item and expensive as a prop. I say it's a prop because the Graves in the previous game avoided me because I rushed Thornmail, but after he saw how bad the trades were going with me and Vayne he decided to get in on some of the action.
Another ADC other than Vayne So let me talk about my experience with Graves. The general fear of killing yourself trying to attack the Tank with Thornmail still exists, but people will all soon realize that thornmail is pretty much a joke. Graves was able to punch through my armor and out-trade me and still effectively heal. The enemy team wasn't very good in teamwork at all so singling out Graves was just as easy as Vayne. Graves pretty much was able to dominate me, keep me at a distance without much of a response from me.
This was not just my problem Both Graves and Vayne were able to tear through Mundo and Thresh, who also had Thornmail. In fact, the post-game chat had Vayne calling out the fact that we had thornmail by saying, "2 Thornmail ain't shit!" I'm sure other people are having this issue in their games as well.
General Experience with Hypercarries So far, with hypercarries like Yi, there is just absolutely no stopping him now. If he wants to dive your team, he will. He doesn't have to avoid the guy with thornmail anymore because thornmail just isn't effective. Yasuo needed to apply on-hit items to make himself effective as well, and now thornmail just no longer effects him, or his decision making in any way. Warwick can just tear through people with his ult, heal like crazy and there is just no stopping him at all. Don't even get me started on Tryndamere.
Verdict: Thornmail is no longer effective as an option for bruisers or tanks
I come to this conclusion based on the original reason that I get thornmail, which is to negate lifesteal. Thornmail does not negate lifesteal, or pose any obstacle to AD Carries. Thornmail is only effective if your attacker has less than 16% lifesteal. Stacking armor does not help the effectiveness of thornmail.
What to do about it?
Riot never reverts changes, so I'm not going to even talk about it. Increasing the damage reflected would help, but I foresee that if any changes are going to happen, they are probably going to be in the Armor Bonus ratio. I don't know what would be an effective bonus armor ratio, maybe you guys could offer some suggestions.
For right now, I would recommend moving onto other armor items like 
, 
, or 
since they are still effective against AD carries.
