Everything Wrong With Itemization Ever

Hey guys! I will be starting long post in which i will go into detail about many of the problems with itemization in LoL currently and some solutions to these problems, because I really believe that some better itemization options could solve many of the balance issues which the game faces. I will be updating it as often as possible, as I can't write it all in one chunk.

Armor Penetration

When a niche stat becomes something that is always worth buying, there is clearly a problem with it. Percent Armor Pen is supposed to be the counter to armor-stacking, which Flat Armor Pen is supposed to be for amplifying damage to squishy targets. However, Percent Armor Pen is more effective in nearly every scenario.

First, I want to figure out at what point Percent Armor Pen becomes statistically more effective than Flat Armor Pen. For this I will be using the most common value of Flat Armor Pen, 35% on , and the most common value of Percent Armor Pen, 20 on . Note this is not a comparison of the two items, but a comparison of their Armor Pen stats.

Here we set the armor with Percent Armor Pen applied to the armor with Flat Armor Pen applied and solve for the armor value.

(0..65Armor) = (Armor - 20) (- 0.35Armor) = - 20 Armor = 57.1

So, 35% Armor Pen becomes more effective than +20 Armor Pen when the target has more than 50.1 Armor. Just about every single champion in the game will have this much by the time the enemy has enough gold to buy the item. Thus, Percent Armor Pen is nearly ALWAYS more effective than Flat Armor Pen; there is really no choice to make between the two. Keep in mind that is also a cheaper item than , making it more cost-efficient as well.

Thanks for reading! There is much more to come.

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