Why the Sterak's nerf isn't so bad

So Sterak's Gage got nerfed, -100 HP from what it was originally. Oh no, Fighters are fucked, ADCs are still going to abuse the anti-burst, yada yada now let's think of this with math and logic.

First, Armor Penetration. This may sound really off point but just stick with me here. I'm pretty sure it's common knowledge by now but if you need a refresher, Flat Penetration is stronger against enemies with little armor and % Penetration is stronger against enemies with a lot of Armor. I graphed this out if you need a visual representation (Green is Flat Penetration, Red is "AD", Blue is % Penetration, and the x axis is enemy Armor). What I want to point out with this example is that this applies to all stats. If you have low base Movement Speed, a Flat MS buff or slow has dramatically greater effect than a % change, and vice versa if you have high base Movement Speed. If you have little health, a Flat HP buff is rather substantial to you.

You should be able to tell where this is going. ADCs do not build that much health, and if they do build Sterak's Gage, it tends to just be Sterak's Gage. On the other hand, Health Fighters often stack nothing but Health items when they can. Can you tell me then, between the 2500 HP Marksman or the 5000+ HP Juggernaut, who's going to notice the Flat HP loss the most.

And I mean I get that some Health Fighters will be effected. However, the three "Official" Juggernauts that regularly use Sterak's anyway () already have sub 50% win rates, and according to champion.gg, are well below average in overall categories (which yes, includes other factors like Damage Dealt and KDA instead of just factoring win rate) for their lane with the exception of Darius who is just straight down the middle of top lane's overall performance. Quite frankly, this simply looks like that if HP Fighters using Sterak's are underperforming, the problem lies in the champions themselves instead of within Sterak's. Hell I'd argue this is a good thing since that means they more rightfully deserve compensatory buffs to deal with the loss to their already underperforming power budgets/gives them less of a balance crutch on their kit since their itemization isn't as powerful.

So what does this mean?

The Sterak's nerf is doing its job in hurting the squishy ADCs abusing them over the HP Juggernauts that the item is intended for. Furthermore, as the Juggernauts who use Sterak's anyway are underperforming even before the nerf, and since the nerf to Sterak's shaves off the top of their power budgets, this opens up the door to fair compensatory buffs without accidentally going overboard (for example if their kits AND their items are too powerful). All in all, good things in general from Sterak's.

Of course this more or less means the complaining about Sterak's should turn into complaining about the weak Juggernauts that happen to use Sterak's, but hey, at least we'd be complaining about the right things then.