Riot, lets discuss the stat linking you spoke about back in one of the updates especially for ADCs

WALL OF TEXT!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!! TLDR at the end

so back in the day, riot stated that they are going to hard link some stats to certain archetypes. I cant find the page. But someone asked riot if they were going to link certain stats to archetypes and it was as follows:

tanks > health and defense stats ADCs > crit and attack speed Assassins > armorpen/lethality and damage mages > ability power, CDR, and mana regen fighters > damage, health, and CDR with some defense stat items while some others go for life steal (think jarvan and fiora)

etc

and riot said yes we are going for that direction.

now my main grief here is the ADC... combined with last whisper's changes (from total armor to bonus armor) and why every ADC now started building armor pen aka and

attack speed and crit are luxury secondary stats. they dont offer much on their own unless you combine them with other things. and why i say that?

because, armor exists and limited inventory slots.

stacking damage with attack speed and crit (unless you are vayne ) is mostly a waste of gold. especially when you realize that a tank will always be on top of your head, and you cant kill him unless you have armorpen on you. even against other ADCs and roles that dont build armor. having around 70 to 100 armor on a mage or adc is more than enough to render crit builds useless.

because thats around, as the formula for damage multiplier goes like this for all armor above 0:

damage multiplier = armor / (armor +100) meaning if you have 100 armor only just 100 armor! you are cutting damage by 50% how so?

well 100 / 200 = 50% and thats your damage. its half of what you have.

lets take a generic crit build how much damage does this build net you? well given varying attack damage gains and base damage on different characters you have about:

140 from 2 items 15 from runes almost 95 damage on level 18 and a situational 64 damage from fervor that is if you can pull off 8 autos but lets say you went for warlords. and leave fervor out of the equation. (btw its just as bad)

so almost 250 damage and with crit and IE, it escalates to 500 with crit, and 625 with IE. reduce that by the base armor of characters at probably 70 thats 70 / (70 + 100) and thats 41% reduction. so basically, you are losing the crit damage to armor and dealing the normal value against base armor!!! BASE ARMOR! you lose close to 50% of your damage. and that build is expensive and only comes online so late in the game!

that late in the game everyone's HPs are around 1700 to 2000 on squishies that is. so it basically takes 1700/250 = 6.8 autos to kill someone. which can be done in almost half the number if you have enough attack speed to reach 2 attacks per second.

given you can get to the squishies as the ADC... lol.

but what about the tank who is stacking so much armor? who has armor that hits as much as 200 to 250 armor late game? and with items that can help him get to 4k to 5k HP? (yes i have seen so much 5k HP tanks)

thats where the last whisper changes kick in. if i understand last whisper correctly with the whole bonus armor reduction. for the sake of argument lets say a tank has 100 base armor. (so your damage is already cut by 50% forever with the generic crit build) and he builds 150 extra armor with so much HP. btw 150 armor is gained from like what? 3 items? and its about 1600~ HP extra too! wow!

now last whisper changes and these items only cut 45% of the bonus armor and this is where i want to get one thing clear

does it remove 45% of total armor but stops reducing it at the end of bonus armor or it only takes the bonus armor number and cuts that by 45%?

meaning

is it 250 - (250 * 0.45) = 138 armor left? but it never goes below the 100 since the 100 is base and Last whisper doesnt go below that?

or is it 150 - (150 * 0.45) = 100 base + 83 and you are left with 183 armor?

now in both cases you are going to have to deal with over 50% damage reduction on a build that does not offer you that much damage to begin with, and against an opponent that has about 3.5k HP... so thats 3500/330 = 10 auto attacks to kill a tank (its not its actually more because its 50% + damage reduction not exactly 50% ) so 5 seconds with at least 2 attacks per second? lets not forget that randuin reduces your attack speed and maybe someone else has frozen heart and tanks have high health regen so yeah! good luck. thats a 3 slot tank vs a 6 slotted ADC. if the tank is 6 slotted it will take WAY LONGER. 4.5k HP and about 300 armor yeah and courage of the colossus.

and lets not forget that crit does not benefit your abilities!

so why are lethality builds running amok at the moment? well they offer way more damage and armor pen than crit builds. (30% from 45% on the bonus armor from or and well about 70 flat armor pen that can take a hit on the base armor of enemy champions from and ) AND all the damage you get from these items buffs your abilities as well.

with these builds you can get a tank to well below 50% damage reduction, and enemy ADCs and mages? pfff hell they lose all armor and you are basically doing TRUE DAMAGE TO THEM. thats what it means to have 0 armor its basically true damage! now remember what i said about vayne is the only exception? yeah thats because she already has true damage and doesn't need any armor pen.

also you can replace either edge of night or dusk blade for a life steal item and still be good.

where in the generic crit build! you either have to get life steal to sustain yourself or buy armor pen to have a chance of killing someone. so tank support? tank jungler? tank top? yeah you only have 2 targets in which 1 you cant get to cause he has the same problems as you and the other is just BEGGING you to get close to him so he can 1 shot you. that is given you went for the generic crit build.

so this is what i can come up with in case of why armor pen builds are on the loose for everyone including ADCs and why crit builds are rarely seen.

what do you think?

TLDR: people who go for the crit build always have to deal with 50%+ reductions to their damage done in a build that doesnt offer much damage and 3 slots (2 crit items and boots) are lost on attack speed and crit with 0 contribution to damage.

vs

people who go for the armor pen build have better abilities, higher damage, TRUE DAMAGE vs squishies, and a chance vs tanks. and higher damage over all and way better against towers.

am i right? am i wrong? and should riot do something about crit builds? i literally climbed with MF from S4 to G5 doing nothing but buying lethality items and armor pen. i tried crit builds on her a couple of times but failed so hard. now i did play some jinx games which i do go for crit but usually end up not doing so much damage to the tanks and focus on split push and early game because late is just impossible with no armor pen. so finish early or lose.