Why I feel Armor pen is currently extremely toxic to league

zavinzag·Sep 22, 2016·8 votes·1,030 views

Why armor pen is extremely toxic to league of legends. * /r/League_Of_Legends_

(I made the same post to reddit) With the armor pen build having been around a while now I've become increasingly frustrated with it, the problem with it is that it's making armor an extremely inefficient stat. At 400 armor your damage reduction is 80% but once we apply the 5 armor pen items to a champ that has 100 base armor we have a character with 159 armor. Black cleaver (400x 0.7)=280, lord doms /mortal reminder, ((280-100 base armor) x 55) = 99 +100 = 199 - 40 flat pen = 159 now your 6000 gold worth of armor is now 1180 gold worth of armor. Not to mention at 159 armor your damage reduction is ~61% so at this point you have almost half the effective health you did before. Idk What do you guys think.

11 Comments

LuggSep 22, 20162 votes

The problem is that there are too many armor pen items and too many champs with % max health damage and true damage as well.

Tychusfindlay919Sep 22, 20162 votes

They should change the formula to apply flat pen before % pen. Kill off pen build assassin adcs once and for all.

ZephyrDrakeSep 22, 20161 votes

uhh... what champion is building every single armor pen item in the game? even the ones who heavily invest in it usually only get two or three of them

zavinzagSep 22, 20163 votes

lucian mf graves gp (most ad assassins) can they normally won't because they don't need to but that doesn't mean that can't build all of them when there's a lot of armor. I think what is a big part of the problem is that black cleaver just takes off your armor so even when it is only built by one champ on the team(the top laner) if they can effectively apply it, it's a large amount of gold's worth of armor lost

I Like TeemoSep 22, 20161 votes

unless you are rammus or malphite i don't see why anyone would build that much armour.. and sure korean mf exists and zed is a champion but they are focused targets by these tanks anyway... armour pen is only a problem if people just let it melt them

ZephyrDrakeSep 22, 20161 votes

{quoted}

lucian mf graves gp (most ad assassins) can they normally won't because they don't need to but that doesn't mean that can't build all of them when there's a lot of armor. I think what is a big part of the problem is that black cleaver just takes off your armor so even when it is only built by one champ on the team(the top laner) if they can effectively apply it, it's a large amount of gold's worth of armor lost

there is no point in building that much armor pen ever, you would end up doing much more damage with just a item 3035 item and then crit items (with maybe a flat armor pen item thrown in) than pure armor pen. Not even assassins like Zed want to build that much armor pen since it's just pointless regardless of how much armor the enemy has. The most anyone should ever be building is 2~3, maybe a 4th if you really want to cheese but after a while it just becomes a waste of stat since you could just increase your damage with other items

Very Hard EngageSep 22, 20164 votes

but you will against tanks.

all ad pen items are technically efficient damage items.

the problem here is that building full damage vs full pen you still kill the squishies either way with a full combo, only now you also deal more damage to tanks too.

dont get me wrong, your "total damage dealt" is less, because you're not criting and clearing minion waves/trash/objectives. but against champions there is no recognizable difference in building pen vs full ham damage.

and when you ace the enemy team you get the objective for free.

its why tryndamere absolutely refuses to build pen items, its because hes split pushing and taking objectives, not team fighting.

ZephyrDrakeSep 22, 20161 votes

{quoted}

but you will against tanks.

all ad pen items are technically efficient damage items.

the problem here is that building full damage vs full pen you still kill the squishies either way with a full combo, only now you also deal more damage to tanks too.

dont get me wrong, your "total damage dealt" is less, because you're not criting and clearing minion waves/trash/objectives. but against champions there is no recognizable difference in building pen vs full ham damage.

and when you ace the enemy team you get the objective for free.

its why tryndamere absolutely refuses to build pen items, its because hes split pushing and taking objectives, not team fighting.

i don't need a stupid amount of armor pen in order to deal with tanks, it's called not being stupid and trying to 1v1 a tank and be close to my teammates so they can peel for me. You will kill squishies just the same with crit or full armor pen or just pure AD, the difference in taking down a tank that's not fed is insignificant when in a teamfight since your team is supposed to be there peeling for you, kiting back and then engaging when it's the right time. A single item 3035 item is more than enough to deal with the problematic amount of armor that the tanks would get and if your team is purely AD based to the point that all the enemy team has to do is build armor and HP no amount of armor pen is going to save you the farther the game goes which means you should have won the game before the enemy had the time to build an obnoxious amount of armor and health

Darth ValerSep 22, 20161 votes

I'm a fan of armor penetration, and as such I will lobby for it by downvoting every post such as this. The only change I'd be in favour of is the limitation of item 3034 and item 3036 passives to autoattacks, so that AD Casters and Assassins would have a rougher time late game (although Zed is the main offender).

KiharonSep 22, 20161 votes

The same argument could also support a position that armor is "toxic" to League of Legends, especially in a hypothetical world where armor pen was removed. At 100 armor, you have 50% damage reduction, which cuts the value of the offensive stats a marksman or physical damage caster is buying by 50%. It's a two-way mechanic, where each group has a way to "negate" the other's purchases.

You didn't specify if you were referring to marksmen or AD casters or both building these items. Trying to determine if it's the optimal build for AD casters is more work than I want to do, as it will depend on ratios and bases. For marksmen who are primarily autoattacking, this is not the optimal full build in your scenario. Trying to determine which has better powerspikes is also beyond the amount of effort I want to put in, so I'll stick to full build analysis.

The rest of this post is to show my numbers and reasoning for my marksman claim

Assuming a 100 AD without items marksman that took the 7% armor pen mastery and Fervor of battle vs the aforementioned 100 base, 300 bonus armor,

The "full penetration" build item 3147 item 3142 item 3156 item 3071 item 3033 item 3006 (assuming a fully stacked cleaver, which is not fast for many marksmen) does 117 per auto with Fervor of Battle doing 5.6 per stack up to 162 damage per auto with fully stacked Fervor

The more standard marksman build item 3031 item 3085 item 3072 item 3033 item 3006 (notice this is not a full build either) does 148 per auto on average (more or less depending on crit luck) with Fervor of Battle doing 4 per stack up to 180 per auto with fully stacked Fervor, for 26% to 11% more damage per auto.

The "standard" build has

40% attack speed all the time instead of only during the Ghostblade active
lifesteal that can give effective health in the form of a shield
can apply a 25% base + full Fervor to up to 2 other targets
another item slot left to put anything else

The penetration build has

a damage proc
more movespeed
more health
MR and a magic shield defense

I picked Mortal Reminder over LDR both to have one less thing to worry about calculating. If I had included it, it either doesn't change the outcome because the target has enough health or swings slightly in the favor of the standard build because of it's lower actual health.

ZT XperimentorSep 27, 20161 votes

Part of the problem is that riot has become obsessed with players dying as fast as possible, thinking that's exciting. They never stop and consider that surviving is exciting too, let alone more entertaining. So tanks become more frail; while assassins cheese & marksmen lifesteal through more focus-fire than most tanks get to survive. Which leaves us with the problem of season 6, burst beats everything!