Malphite needs 400 Armor to gain 120 Armor from his W passive

Z3Sleeper·Nov 11, 2018·68 votes·15,254 views

Graves needs 5 ranks in his E.

54 Comments

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 201876 votes

Malphite also has that passive armor permanently, tripled while his shield is up. Graves has it for a duration, has to use his mobility move to access it, and then has to stack it up. Malphite is a super tank with damage scaling on armor for two effects, while Graves needs survival tools to survive in close range while being incentivized to build offense.

I'm not saying that Grave's amount is correctly tuned (I don't have the data I'd want to properly assess that), but comparing these two is...deceptive. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison in up-time, ease of application, scaling, and build/role.

D357R0Y3RNov 11, 201815 votes

yea it's hilarious how nobody is talking about the amount of time Graves needs to get 120 armor while malphite has it from sec 0 in the fight

McsquzzyNov 11, 20183 votes

honestly graves armor only feels overwhelming during urf

Z3SleeperNov 11, 20184 votes

Sadly that's the case for every comparison between two champions. They all have vastly differing kits so no "fair" comparison can really be made.

To make the comparison less deceptive-looking though (given the time it takes to stack), it takes 100 armor from Malphite (while shield is down) to gain armor equivalent to that of Graves with a rank 5 E dashing towards a champion once.

Edit:

Malphite does take base armor into consideration though as well. So he gains 30 purely from base stats alone. So if we include that then it takes an extra 100 bonus armor to match the bonus armor Graves gets from using E twice.

Also Malphite's base armor is 101 while Graves' is 91. The guy is pretty loaded with armor.

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 20183 votes

{quoted}To make the comparison less deceptive-looking though (given the time it takes to stack), it takes 100 armor from Malphite (while shield is down) to gain armor equivalent to that of Graves with a rank 5 E dashing towards a champion once.

And that seems much more reasonable, given that Malphite's post-initiation role is to spread damage around while NOT being completely invulnerable (and that he scales his damage off of armor, making giving him even more than he's already incentivized to build frustrating) and Graves is a close-range carry who needs some survivability but scales terribly with most survival items.

Z3SleeperNov 11, 20181 votes

Malphite's E ratio isn't too bad. The W ratio and the ratio granted by Bramble/Thorn can get kind of nutty though if he's ahead (15% on-hit, 10% armor when hit).

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Malphite's E ratio isn't too bad. The W ratio and the ratio granted by Bramble/Thorn can get kind of nutty though if he's ahead (10% armor when hit, 15% on-hit).

The E is 40% armor on a 7 second cooldown, which is often just 4.2 seconds. It's usually more nutty than his E by a large margin, due to the AoE and the burst follow-up to his ultimate.

VerxintNov 12, 20183 votes

You can never compare two champions individual skills in a vaccum without the rest of their kits. For example, Camille's E is basically better than Xin's E by every metric, but it's stupid to ignore the other 3 abilities and passives.

Blackii7Nov 12, 20182 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-11-11T18:20:50.285+0000)

Malphite also has that passive armor permanently, tripled while his shield is up. Graves has it for a duration, has to use his mobility move to access it, and then has to stack it up. Malphite is a super tank with damage scaling on armor for two effects, while Graves needs survival tools to survive in close range while being incentivized to build offense.

I'm not saying that Grave's amount is correctly tuned (I don't have the data I'd want to properly assess that), but comparing these two is...deceptive. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison in up-time, ease of application, scaling, and build/role.

Or in another words, Graves is broken. There is no situation where you should get 120 armor from graves E.

TwitchInMyPantsNov 12, 20182 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-11-11T18:20:50.285+0000)

Malphite also has that passive armor permanently, tripled while his shield is up. Graves has it for a duration, has to use his mobility move to access it, and then has to stack it up. Malphite is a super tank with damage scaling on armor for two effects, while Graves needs survival tools to survive in close range while being incentivized to build offense.

I'm not saying that Grave's amount is correctly tuned (I don't have the data I'd want to properly assess that), but comparing these two is...deceptive. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison in up-time, ease of application, scaling, and build/role.

I'm pretty sure its represented this way on purpose though

Even if its Apples to Oranges it screams volumes if a full offense champion is allowed to have a defense steroid that rivals an endgame Malphite who alongside Rammus is one of the two champs that has an identity of being an armor stacking tank. Even Sejuani passive at its worst was not this powerful of a steroid.

Personally though I think the issue with Graves has a lot less to do with him being in a fight for 5s and being tanky temporarily and moreso to do with the fact he treats the jungle like its made of paper, bullies every other jungler with ease, and easily oneshots people in a combo. They could cut back True Grit but given his intended playstyle of being in your face I'd rather him have to reload his gun to finish someone rather than removing his ability to survive dashing in. But given True Grit refreshes on jungle mobs, its basically permanently on in jungle duels and it makes camp damage pretty irrelevant so it might actually be the correct thing to tune.

SangreDeNocheNov 12, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-11-11T18:20:50.285+0000)

Malphite also has that passive armor permanently, tripled while his shield is up. Graves has it for a duration, has to use his mobility move to access it, and then has to stack it up. Malphite is a super tank with damage scaling on armor for two effects, while Graves needs survival tools to survive in close range while being incentivized to build offense.

I'm not saying that Grave's amount is correctly tuned (I don't have the data I'd want to properly assess that), but comparing these two is...deceptive. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison in up-time, ease of application, scaling, and build/role.

Graves will obviously use it when it needs using though and the cooldown isn't anything crazy. He has other avenues for mitigating damage as well. Saying it's apples to oranges is itself deceptive.

AlzonNov 12, 20181 votes

Malphite item 3046 item 3047 item 3812

AaravosNov 11, 201818 votes

But Graves is a tank, while Malphite just a stone.

JackMcSnipeyzNov 11, 201813 votes

And he needs to stack it in combat over time and has a small duration to do so, while malph builds armor regardless and keeps his armor. 🤔 same thing right?

jocomotionNov 11, 201811 votes

This is an excellent point. There’s also the fact that the more armor you already have the less effective it becomes at actually reducing physical damage.

Critmaster GarenNov 11, 201822 votes

{quoted}

This is an excellent point. There’s also the fact that the more armor you already have the less effective it becomes at actually reducing physical damage.

this isnt true.

1% of armor equals to a 1% effective health increase of your maximum health, against physical damage. there is no drop off.

for example if you have a 1000 health and 100 armor, its effectively the same as having 2000 health and 0 armor, against physical damage. 200 armor would increase that to 3000 health, and 400 armor would increase it to 4000.

the formula in the tooltip just works weird. it effectively compares the increase you get from your next point of armor to the total amount of effective health you already have.

of course the more points of armor you get, the smaller the next increase looks compared to your existing pool of effective health, but you always get the same absolute value out of every point of armor. it doesnt matter if its your first or your 400th. armor is always worth the same amount.

its like if you have 100 health and buy another 100 health, your "damage reduction" through that extra health is 50% because half of the damage you take compared to your total hp is absorbed by that extra 100 health. but if you buy another 100 health, your "damage reduction" is 66%. youre only gaining a 16% increase this time, but youre still gaining 100 health every time.

Z3SleeperNov 11, 20182 votes

Yeah it only feels that way because AD's effectiveness scales multiplicatively through far more factors than Armor's does.

In reality the value of armor purchases remains a semi-constant (Health + Armor, some exceptions like AS reduction and Omen's Crit reduction). It's just that the value of the enemy AD scales better (AD, AS, Crit, AD ratios, Armor Penetration, Armor Reduction, rank-scaling base damages/ratios).

BlinkZZ182Nov 11, 20182 votes

You obviously have no idea how armor is translated into physical damage reduction. The formula is reduction = armor / (armor + 100).
At 0 armor you have 0% damage reduction, at 100 you have 50% at 100 armor you have 50% reduction, at 200 armor you have 66%.

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 201813 votes

[{quoted}](name=UVM ZhaoRiTian,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=000000000001,timestamp=2018-11-11T18:51:47.111+0000)

You obviously have no idea how armor is translated into physical damage reduction. The formula is reduction = armor / (armor + 100).
At 0 armor you have 0% damage reduction, at 100 you have 50% at 100 armor you have 50% reduction, at 200 armor you have 66%.

I'd recommend taking another look at the second half of the wiki page where I assume you pulled that formula from. Specifically, this part:

#Stacking armor Every point of armor requires a unit to take 1% more of its maximum health in physical damage to be killed. This is called effective health:

Effective health=(1+Armor100)×Nominal health Example: A unit with 60 armor has 60% more of its maximum health in effective health, so if the unit has 1000 maximum health, it will take 1600 physical damage to kill it.

What this means: by definition, armor does not have diminishing returns in regard of effective hitpoints, because each point increases the unit's effective health against physical damage by 1% of its current actual health whether the unit has 10 armor or 1000 armor. However, health and armor have increasing returns with respect to each other.

Example: A unit starts with 1000 health and 100 armor giving it 2000 effective health. Now, it increases its nominal health from 1000 to 2000, thereby increasing its effective health from 2000 to 4000. Increasing the unit's armor by 100 at both nominal health levels would yield +1000 effective health and +2000 effective health, respectively. If we were to consider two nominal armor levels and then increase both by a static amount of health, we would see a similar increased return of effective health for the same nominal health. Therefore, buying only armor is gold inefficient compared to buying the optimal balance of health and armor. It is important to not stack too much armor compared to health or else the effective health will not be optimal.

When a unit's armor is negative because of armor reduction or debuffs, armor has increasing returns with respect to itself. This is because negative armor cannot reduce effective health to less than 50% of actual health. A unit with -100 armor has 66.67% of nominal health (gains −33.33%) of its maximum health as effective health.

Crispy0SnakeNov 11, 20181 votes

If you have 2000 health and 100 armour and sivir hits you for 500 premit phys dmg then she will need to take 8 hits to kill you.

"""""" 200 Armour """"" then she will need 12 hits to kill you. 2000/(500*(1/3))

If there were no diminishing returns to buying armour she'd need to hit you 16 times to kill you because you doubled your gold investment in armour so she should need to double hers in hitting you. That's not the case though. There are CLEARLY diminishing returns on spending gold on armour if you look at the damage nominally, which is what actually matters.

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 20186 votes

{quoted}If there were no diminishing returns to buying armour she'd need to hit you 16 times to kill you because you doubled your gold investment in armour so she should need to double hers in hitting you.

Not at all.

In your previous example, where you have 2000 health, it takes her four hits to kill you with no armor.

When you buy 100 armor, it takes her 8 hits to kill you (+4 hits, +2000 effective health).

When you buy 100 more armor (200 total) it takes 12 hits to kill you (+4 hits, +2000 effective health).

In each case, 100 armor provides the same 100% increase in your effective hit points. You gain the equivalent of 100% of your total hit points for every 100 armor. The way you have it suggested would mean that armor GAINS efficiency as each 100 armor would not only give you 100% of your base effective health, but 100% of whatever your previous durability (including armor) was.

Crispy0SnakeNov 11, 20181 votes

I mean what you're saying is true but you never buy the 100 armour to begin with, and you count from 0 here. Going from 100 to 200 is a decision I often have to take and it's like "this 100 bonus armour is trash, what I have is enough, it'll be better for me to get hp here"

When I double my armour it feels garbage in game.

ModThe DjinnNov 11, 20186 votes

{quoted}When I double my armour it feels garbage in game.

That's a different issue from how the math works, and is usually a result of having a damage split on the enemy team (or a lot of armor penetration).

Against a pure AD team, 100 armor is worth as much as your entirely health bar again in health. It may not feel like that, but that's how valuable it actually is.

Critmaster GarenNov 11, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=UVM ZhaoRiTian,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=000000000001,timestamp=2018-11-11T18:51:47.111+0000)

You obviously have no idea how armor is translated into physical damage reduction. The formula is reduction = armor / (armor + 100).
At 0 armor you have 0% damage reduction, at 100 you have 50% at 100 armor you have 50% reduction, at 200 armor you have 66%.

srry, but youre wrong. let other people explain it to you if you dont belive me.

youre just looking at the multiplier.

i already explained it. the 50% damage reduction is just an effective doubling of your health, since compared to your total health pool, taking 50% damage is the same as having twice the health and taking regular damage. taking 33% damage (66% damage reduction) is effectively the same as having three times the health.

lets say you have 100 health and being dealt 100 damage. it means youre at 0% health.

if you buy another 100 health (200 total), youre now 50% health after taking 100 damage.

if you buy another 100 health (300 total), youre now at 66% health after taking 100 damage.

this is what armor effectively does. every 1 point of armor increases your health by 1% against physical damage. there is no diminishing value. every point of armor is worth the same amount of effective health.

LordGeovanniNov 12, 20181 votes

effective health is a stupid way to look at it when armor is is used for damage resitance. the effective health comparasion is like saying i have 1 tbs of water and some one takes 20% i still have 80% of my water and then saying i have 1 cup of water and some one takes 20% of water i still have 80% of my water then being like in both cases they took 20% And left 80% so they are both equal. you trying to talk about the effectiveness of armor as a whole isntead of talking about the effectiveness of one set of armor (they early points) versus the effectiveness of another set of armor the late points. if all points of armor were the same champs like garen and darius would never build damage because in theory they could last for the same amount of time to do the same amount of damage just buy building more armor. instead of stopping when they have about 300 armor to get damage (the order of building damage or armor first doesnt matter what does matter is the buying of damage instead of more armor)

Critmaster GarenNov 12, 20181 votes

{quoted}

effective health is a stupid way to look at it when armor is is used for damage resitance.

effective health is mathematically exactly the same as damage reduction.

using effective health just makes it more obvious to understand why armor is a health multiplier and doesnt have diminishing returns. there is no diminishing value when you have armor and buy more armor.

of course its more efficient to keep a balance between health and armor to get the maximum value of effective health, but every point of armor is still always worth the same 1% increase of your health pool.

LordGeovanniNov 16, 20181 votes

Againt ima put this real simple Effective health. = entire armor/ magic resist number thus you cant differentiate one armor point from another gold value wise. Damage reduction (@ 100 armor/magic resist, @200, @300) = sections that you can then measure against each other.

Crispy0SnakeNov 11, 20183 votes

I play Malphite a lot, I really like the champion. Malphites E can reduce attack speed by 50% at rank 5 so if you're vs a lethal tempo ADC, all the gold they put into attack speed is halved in value, while still having all of his bonus armour for free... Twitch comes out of stealth and R's=you just ult E him and he does 0 damage and dies...

This is really comparing apples and oranges. Graves is strong right now because of his massive level 1 smokescreen slow and because he has a natural synergy with red buff level 1 making him super strong early game. It's not his true grit passive that he has to work up to the 120 Armour after he's level 13, and he's probably dead or killed someone by the time he reaches 4/8 stacks.

BlinkZZ182Nov 11, 20183 votes

Rammus only needs 120 armor with W for the additional 120 armor.

LordGeovanniNov 16, 20181 votes

im pretty sure that he isnt getting 120 scaling from 120 armor pre pressing w

Bobloser3555Nov 11, 20183 votes

your point?

ArvDaBeastNov 12, 20183 votes

And thats only if stacks the ability a whopping 8 times, and his e has mid length cd that only gets lower as he AAs, by the time he gets 8 stacks in a row th enemy should already be dead....

LordGeovanniNov 12, 20181 votes

mid length. ha and i bet lucain jax and ezreal have long cooldown dashes too

ArvDaBeastNov 12, 20181 votes

They kinda do it just that it resets because of Lucian passive and Ezreal Q.

BjørnetjenestenNov 12, 20183 votes

Every champ with cc can get 120 armor with aftershock? Every melee bruiser can get 20% true dmg

Whats your point?

charge attackNov 12, 20183 votes

Small brain post. Try again.

AYuumiIsFineTooNov 12, 20182 votes

You only need item 3075 item 1031 item 3026 to get 120 armor :^)

Warlord RhinarkNov 12, 20183 votes

{quoted}

You only need to get 120 armor :^)

No? That's 160 Armor.

Feel free to "whoosh" me if I don't get the joke.

AYuumiIsFineTooNov 12, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Warlord Rhinark,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=lw2EUO6r,comment-id=00070000,timestamp=2018-11-12T11:28:57.847+0000)

No? That's 160 Armor.

Feel free to "whoosh" me if I don't get the joke.

Might of messed up the numbers then, was just making a joke of armor items needed to get 120 armor

Warlord RhinarkNov 12, 20183 votes

{quoted}

Might of messed up the numbers then, was just making a joke of armor items needed to get 120 armor

Just a Thornmail and Chain Mail alone is enough.

Pika FoxNov 12, 20182 votes

Graves is a short ranged champ who builds squishy. Malphite is a tanky bruiser who doesnt get more than 1 offensive item.

LordGeovanniNov 16, 20181 votes

exactly and thus either graves shouldnt have as much defense as malphite does in scaling or maphite and champs like should get damage like graves in building straight defense. If you build squishy you should be squishy. Otherwise make him a ranged juggernaut like Urgot.

Pika FoxNov 17, 20181 votes

Graves should get more defense. Again, he is a short ranged champion who builds relatively squishy who cannot even build AS. Malphite gets compounding resists and defensive steroids innately. Graves gets a slow stacking thing he needs to manage that is also literally all of his mobility.

Same reason Yasuo's windwall is a better braum shield; it physically needs to be for the champions to work.

LordGeovanniNov 17, 20181 votes

graves gets about 130% attack speed value from attack speed from his supposed need to reload the same as jhin which also gets extra from crit chance for the same reason and both of their reloads scale into being almost not there with super fast attack speed jhin scales with levels and graves scales with bonus attack speed If you know that you are gonna be a champion is close range you build defense. because your excuse just justified a full ad darius with no defensive items not being instagibed. I am fully okay with Yasou's windwall being better than braums shield because it has its own drawbacks in that people can walk around it as long as yasou doesnt get a free massive shield also. he needs to have one or the other. Just like graves getting tons of defense and getting 133% auto attack damage in close range.

Pika FoxNov 17, 20181 votes

Not really how that works. Especially since most of the time graves wont have max armor.

Yasuo gets both because he physically needs both to function.

LordGeovanniNov 18, 20181 votes

to function as he does yes which is completely unhealthy. Graves getting max armor is not a concern but rather him getting tons of defensive stats while building full damage. you cant even pay for the amount of defense he is getting in one slot. IF YOU ARE BUILDING FULL DAMAGE YOU SHOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT TO KILL. very simple concept

Pika FoxNov 19, 20181 votes

The difference is that he doesnt get attack speed to deal consistent damage with his damage, and he has no range to back it up, so he gets safety to function, same as literally every other melee type champion in the game.

Not to mention graves is the only champion in the game where you can literally bodyblock his auto attacks.

LordGeovanniNov 20, 20181 votes

he gets compensated for being in short range with 130% damage and yes attack speed past 1.5 almost negates his reload time all together. And not every melee champion in the game gets free 120armor for being in combat and using a spell they have to pay and build that defense which takes up slots and eats out of the offense they could otherwise be building just like graves is doing.

Pika FoxNov 20, 20181 votes

Yas has a shield and a windwall, trynd has literal invulnerability, jax has dodge, fiora has ability dodge+CC reflect, irelia has % damage mitigation, xin has ranged attack nullification and healing, akali has a shroud....

I could go on.