Ignoring Armor and Magic Resist (Last Whisper and Void Staff) has become over popular!

Schwaiges·Nov 28, 2014·8 votes·1,728 views

I am starting this discussion Because ever since season 4 has started, I have noticed that every one is building either Void Staff or Last Whisper (depending if they are AP or AD). I main tanks, and lately I have noticed that every one is building either of these items, making tanks useless. I understand that there needs to be a balance and a way to counter tanks, but there seems to be an over use and over powered feeling to these 2 items. What I would suggest is just reducing the percentage. By how much? Who can say, but would it be too much to ask for it to be reduced by 5%, its already at 35% (I think that's a little much). This causes the item to be a must have. Just play 3 games of league, I am sure you can observe and detect this pattern of over use.

14 Comments

Sire HippingtonNov 28, 20145 votes

You are a bit late to the party, LW and Void are over popular since season 1(atleast for thinking players) In S1/2 it wasn't as bad as now(still bad though) as it atleast had some tradeoff by not stacking as great with flatpen and therefor not doing as much vs squishies. But still, LW and VS are the most powerfull and costefficient damage items at lategame(usually even mid game) I think just reduceing the % would probably leave them to weak and armor tanks evt to strong, especially if they get a midgame lead. Imo two things have to be done:

change the penetration stacking back to S2
let LW and Voidstaff work as selfish blackcleaver, that means u gain a stacking %pen vs targets, so if u focus a target for a longer time u get a nice %pen, but u don't have it on unfocused random poke/aoe or for burst.

This way there would be a meaningfull tradeoff, u have to decide if u want flat pen to burst squishies or %pen to take down tanks.

AtheosisXNov 28, 20143 votes

They are too good, regardless of whether or not they are used too much.

SchwaigesNov 28, 20142 votes

I had hoped that some one would see the little joke where I put over popular, short hand being OP, can you see it, hahahaha. LeeSin "no I cant" but anyways yes that's what I am getting at. I didn't want to sound over zealous by straight out saying they are OP.

Nausicäa Nov 28, 20142 votes

LOL? This has to be a troll.

SchwaigesNov 28, 20144 votes

No, its not.

RebonackNov 28, 20142 votes

Assuming your target has more than 50 resist they're basically the most powerful items in the game if you feel like dealing damage to things.

SchwaigesNov 28, 20143 votes

A character's BASE armor is around 80 and magic resist is around 40 by level 18. This means that fighting someone with out any armor or magic resist, you are having around 28 armor penetration or 14 magic penetration. This is more than most of the flat amount items for armor penetration and about equal for magic penetration items. However, even though the magic penetration item is almost equal, why would you get the flat amount item when its more penetration for tanks, and the same amount for none tanks.

Done25Nov 28, 20142 votes

I've been hating on penetration items for a while.now, but always got downvoted I to oblivion.

Does no one remember the true damage cancer that was 60 arpen Olaf when his R still gave like +30 penetration for free?

SchwaigesNov 28, 20142 votes

Yes we all remember those days. That's why times have changed, and its now time for another change. We need to speak up if we want Riot to do something about it. If you have friends that play league and agree that this is an issue, tell them to leave a comment, up vote the discussion, or just tell them about this discussion in general. Viva La Revolucion!!

SchwaigesNov 28, 20142 votes

If Riot really reads all these discussions, I would love if a member from Riot would give their input on the matter! Give us your thoughts on the subject. Those deep and dark thoughts. LeeSin "Is it dark in these thoughts or is it just me?"

RebonackNov 28, 20142 votes

The best option would be to remove percentile penetration from the game and then rebalanced defensive stats accordingly. There's no way to make these items optional to a damage-dealer unless you just utterly gut them due to how percentile penetration works.

MahnigguhNov 28, 20142 votes

i was actually thinking a great way to balance the game and encourage teamwork would be to remove them completely (being dead serious....they are toxic items that need to be gone)

KynamiNov 28, 20142 votes

Honestly? All penetration flat or percentile should only work against bonus resists and not total.

Makes tanks healthier because their base stats from their levels and natural scaling before active abilities, passives, items, masteries, and runes are added aren't counted against them... and additionally makes it so that squishy characters are just that little bit extra harder to delete at a moment's notice.

This still leaves penetration as a way to deal with people stacking armor or magic resist items.

Jungle Lux GodNov 28, 20141 votes

I agree with this sentiment. I too play a lot of tanks, and it's discouraging to see myself being shredded by carries who build what should, ideally, be niche items.

Season 5 helped indirectly lower their impact by having them not affect minions at all, but it still doesn't solve the problem of tanks dying too fast because your opponent bought a single item. Even in season 4 we had severe problems with the penetration items being too strong, where some players rushed Void Staff on AP champs if they fell behind, while I distinctly remember Overpow rushing Last Whisper on his Pantheon builds.

There are several ways we could solve this problem. Some of the more reasonable solutions:

Reduce the penetration so that it only get cost efficient when the opponent stacks a single resistance type. This is perfectly appropriate for the anti-tank nature of these items.
Change the penetration formula to apply only on bonus resists. This makes it so that you deal more damage against tanks but lose damage against squishy champs, and would make it a larger tradeoff to buy penetration. This is also in line with the bonus armor penetration on Yasuo's ultimate. With a change like this, you don't even need to change the penetration either, as long as the tooltip is adjusted to reflect it.
Reduce the damage stats so that either don't gain any stats more than what the component items give so that there is a tradeoff in damage if you buy it. You should deal more damage if you buy another damage item, but these items would still help you deal with tanks better. I think it would even be appropriate for these items to have less stats than their components to account for how strong penetration is.