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Why does Ghostblade give more flat pen than it's component items while Liandry's doesn't?

TNHA Baritone··34 votes·2,260 views

#Youmuu's Ghostblade 3,200 Gold

  • 60 Attack Damage
  • 10% Cooldown Reduction

Unique Passive: +20 Armor Penetration Unique Active: Grants +20% Movement Speed and %40 Attack Speed for 6 seconds (45 second cooldown).

#Liandry's Torment

3,200 Gold

  • 80 Ability Power
  • 300 Health

Unique Passive - Eyes of Pain: +15 Magic Penetration Unique Passive: Spells burn enemies for 3 seconds, dealing bonus magic damage equal to 2% of their current Health per second. Burn damage is doubled against movement-impaired enemies.

Haunting Guise gives 15 magic penetration which means you only get 55 AP, 100 HP, and the second Unique Passive for upgrading it. Meanwhile, Youmuu's gives double the penetration of it's building items. I just think that Liandry's can be underwhelming at times and a small Magic Penetration buff could make it a bit better.

Edit: Okay I think my comparison wasn't the best (so my bad) however the main point of this is to make Liandry's better than it currently is.

67 Comments

NotCounter24 votes

I don't even understand Liandry's as an item. The flat magic pen and percent health damage seem to give opposite implications for what it's supposed to be used for. Typically targets who have a significant amount of health also have enough MR to where 15 flat pen is nothing, and targets that would get wrecked by the pen are squishy enough to where a rotation of abilities should make the current health percentage afterwards amount to nothing.

Auz the Ripper4 votes

Liandry's has one purpose and that is to stop people from stacking nothing but health like what happened back in season 3.

Back then 5 warmog's and some sort of boot was the meta build for most tanks and riot did not like that so now BotRK and liandry's are a thing

Serpents Embrace1 votes

That's not what he's saying, though. That is the purpose of the passive, but it's not congruent with the stats the item gives. The health and AP, maybe, but flat magic penetration is something that targets squishies, abusing the fact they don't stack MR by shaving off a flat amount instead of a percentage (which would be almost nothing to someone with next to no MR). Which gives it a problem, it's not particularly good at either of those things because it can do both.

Auz the Ripper1 votes

5 warmog's gives very little magic resist so flat penetration is more effective and Liandry's is tailor made to kill that build

Serpents Embrace1 votes

I'll remember that the next time even one Warmog's is in any meta build.

LordOfTheLeague1 votes

Maybe It's not made as a major Ap caster item but for special builds like for brand. For Ap tanks that don't have said burst and with aoe CC (impaired movement) Liandry's can add a lot of damage and with add some HP.

Depárt7 votes

Two items that serve entirely different purposes and fill roles on entirely different types of champions, you can't compare them purely because they both have penetration stats.

TNHA Baritone4 votes

You're right in the sense that they fill two different roles but they have a common denominator. They both give flat penetration and Liandry's is rather lackluster for a Magic Pen item while Youmuu's is the exact opposite for an armor penetration item.

Depárt2 votes

Liandry's has 15 flat magic pen because there are boots that also give 15 magic pen, putting too much magic pen on Liandry's means that combined with sorc shoes, it's oppressive.

There's generally slightly less magic pen overall but more per item slot for most cases.

Zero Skill Tank8 votes

Implying that Youmuu's is not an oppressive item ATM.

Depárt1 votes

I didn't say or imply that anywhere in my statement, I firmly believe ghostblade needs it's active cooldown extended to 60-75 seconds.

I simply stated why Liandry's has 15 magic pen.

Serpents Embrace1 votes

The active honestly isn't the problem, though. It's the armor penetration. If you extend the cooldown on the active you have the exact same problems that just occur slightly less often.

Depárt1 votes

The problem with ghostblade isn't the armor pen, it's supposed to have that as it's designed for assassins.

The only real problem I can see in it is with a 45 second cooldown on the active, it feels like you're never really making a choice when you use it. You can rely on it to be up almost always when you want it.

Serpents Embrace1 votes

I'm not saying they should remove the armor penetration, but the armor penetration is the problem. It's not the amount of AD it gives, it's not the movement speed/attack speed active (at least not primarily). Giving 20 armor penetration is what's wrong with it. It's a cheap item and it doubles the amount of penetration you have when you upgrade it.

Consider the other problem item here: Duskblade. When you upgrade it, the armor penetration remains the same as Serrated Dirk. Reducing the amount of armor penetration Youmuu's gives you would address the Jhin/MF problem more directly and be less painful to assassins, who need to utilize the active to get in to position to deal damage whereas the ADCs using it don't need it to function, it's just icing.

Jhin UItd JFK2 votes

{quoted}

Implying that Youmuu's is not an oppressive item ATM.

But AD champs don't have armor pen boots.

xd

TotalJerk1 votes

Considering the fact that everyone's armor scales but not everyone's MR does, buying a mixture of item 3136 item 3020 and item 3001 can potentially mean you're penetrating ALL of a target's resistences. 15 magic pen is effectively superior to 15 armor pen.

Pew Pew Lasers5 votes

You are comparing apples to oranges here. item 3151 passive can burn a lot of hp and its always up. On a dot champion it is even more ridiculous because it stays up while the poison is in effect and then 3 more seconds after. You could take 10% of someone's hp just for hitting them with a spell.

TNHA Baritone4 votes

Youmuu's is good on nearly every AD champion because of the active and then the Armor Pen just helps that so much. However, Liandry's isn't good on every champion. As you just said it's especially effective on DOT champions.

Beoridas5 votes

ad and ap is a whole different world.

but liandries being highly ineffective is nothing new. and it used to give 50 ap. lol

Keepe4 votes

Don't tempt Riot. They might make Liandry's a support Item. RIP Chalice.

Trundle Bundle2 votes

The sad thing is I've always liked the idea of it being a poke support item. The way the DoT is built screams "put this on a champion that wants to maintain some sort of meaningful damage contributions later on, without really building much into damage." It's just rarely a reasonable item to budget.

If haunting guise got a more mage relevant upgrade along with the switch, it wouldn't be terrible (although if Liandries took on mana regen or the like, Rumble's going to be significantly less fun).

Keepe1 votes

item 3174 : Build me!

Sona : Can't. I have other things I need to build. item 3504 item 3092 item 3050 item 3060

item 3070 item 3174 item 3070

Of course I personally prefer Eye of the Watchers for the support item. =P

Marshbouy1 votes

I'd trade chalice for banner of command against a full AD or a heavily AD team.

Keepe1 votes

Full AD, item 3157 .

Most Sonas prefer the burst. =P

Marshbouy2 votes

Those sonas are the sonas i do not like to play with.

BloodyTompon1 votes

Where has the lichbane gone?

Princess Emma3 votes

A small magic penetration buff on item 3151 for champions who can use the item efficiently will be a larger pain in the hind-quarters to deal with, item 3142 Is also an assassin oriented item, an ADC building it does not change it's purpose.

Penetration is a stat both these items have in common, but that doesn't necessarily put them up for comparison.

Their active and passive on both item are vastly different and comparing the other stats (health and cooldown reduction), they do not have much in common.

rtbf761092711 votes

If its purpose was "do AD = rush this item" then yes, working as intended

Anu3isII2 votes

Magic Penetration is crazy good in any moment of the game, especially against squishy targets/carries.

An important thing to note is that every champion starts with 30 Magic Resist, and most of the damage dealers will only have that and some runes.

While I agree Liandry's isn't wonderful, it is a decent item with some abuse cases (Brand, Cassiopeia, Swain?), so it is particularly difficult to balance without making it a a core item for too many champions.

Targon2 votes

I play mostly AP champions and I almost always feel obligated to buy item 3020 because of how valuable magic penetration. Sorcerer's shoes are somewhat of a double-edged sword. It's nice to have easy access to early magic penetration in tier 2 boots but because of the lack of flat magic penetration items, it's almost mandatory to purchase these boots and ignore the other tier 2 boot options.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

Because you have magicpen boots and voidstaff?

TNHA Baritone9 votes

Void staff is percentage penetration. That's not what this is about. If that was the case I could easily say:

Because you have item 3147 item 3142 item 3156 item 3033 item 3071 item 3036 while mages item 3020 item 3001 item 3135 item 3151

GULAG 4 U1 votes

Yeah but you get more armour than magic resist and ap scalings are higher too man.

TNHA Baritone6 votes

Precisely why I said

That's not what this is about. If that was the case I could easily say:

Nuparu4 votes

you know most ranged characters have 30 mr the entire game unless you build MR, right?

30 MR - 30 flat pen = 0 MR

just saying

Meta Phyton1 votes

I think that .. it may have to do with the fact that it is very common for AP champs to end up with 400-700 AP by the end of the match, meanwhile AD champs tend to max out at around 250-300 AD. Plus with sorcerer's shoes giving an additional +15, it is very easy to rack up more magic penetration that makes Veiger's death ball massively powerful as one example.

Physical penetration items max out at +30 when combined too don't they? the purple sword giving +20 and .. the other one giving +10?

NineTailedMystic1 votes

Youmuus is +20 Flat pen, Duskblade is +10 Flat pen, and Maw is +10 Flat pen.

AP champs get more AP, but AD champs have auto attacks to fall back on.

TNHA Baritone1 votes

Maxes at 40.

Critmaster Garen3 votes

{quoted}

Maxes at 40.

mr values and mr item options in this game are generally much lower than armor values. pls dont expect to overall end up being able to stack the same amount of magic pen as armor pen.

as an example, the largest mr item in the game right now is banshees with 70 mr, followed by abyssal and spirit visage with 60 and 55 mr.

the largest armor items in the game are thornmail with 100 armor, then frozen heart with 90, and randuins with 60 armor. also, higher base armor values and armor/lvl values on almost all champions compared to their mr.

a whole LOT of champions in this game have scaling armor/lvl while they have flat 30 mr at all lvls with no scaling at all.

it all adds up to a massive difference to how much armor you can stack up in the game vs. stackable mr. hence the amount of stackable magic pen is more limited aswell.

im honestly surprised that void staff still gets 35% total magic pen and they didnt give it the same treatment as last whisper to only affect bonus magic pen.

BloodyTompon1 votes

im honestly surprised that void staff still gets 35% total magic pen and they didnt give it the same treatment as last whisper to only affect bonus magic pen.

Having lower base MR means that the change to bonus would be less influential. Those with higher base MR are often champs that mages have more difficulty taking down because mages multiplicative stats aren't as powerful. The ubiquitous presence of ADC creates a large bias towards physical damage so if void was changed to %bonus, it would often be optimal for tanky champs to forgo MR at all and buy purely into armour.

One of the main differentiators between AP pen and AD pen was/is auto-attacks. You give physical pen and large amounts of AD they are a threat to everybody because of auto attacks. You give magic pen and large amounts of AP and (often) they are not a threat to everybody because of cool downs.

Golden Tager X1 votes

Because it is easy to hit 38+35%+25, magic pen total, which against someone who has not built much magic resist means that you are hitting near true damage.

NineTailedMystic3 votes

Assassins can also hit an easy 40 from items (20/10/10 from Youmuus, Duskblade, Maw), and then 30% Armor reduction from Cleaver

Golden Tager X1 votes

let me simplify this, it is possible for mages to get 63 FLAT magic pen, and 35% TOTAL magic pen, that isn't even calculating having something like an amumu or item 3091 , making it possible to hit levels of pen ad people can only dream of.

NineTailedMystic4 votes

I don't know how you're getting 63 flat. I'm assuming you're including Abyssal's 15-25 MR reduction which is different from straight pen, and makes Void less efficient. I'm guessing you're saying Sorc Shoes (15) + Liandrie's (15) + Abyssal (25) + Precision (~8)? And Void Staff may hit Total MR, but it's a lot less efficient than old LW because every champion has an Armor Growth, but not even champion has an MR growth.

It's also worth noting that one of those sources of pen is garbage (Liandrie's), and not every champion can make use of Abyssal's Aura.

Golden Tager X1 votes

It is also worth noting that most champions that can build item 3151 , also itemize very well with item 3001 so if they decide to buy item 3020 , things become a problem with item 3068 .

Like an example of a build for Amumu, Akali, Ekko, Galio, Katarina, and Diana could be something like this item 3025, (can be swapped for item 3078 ) item 3001, item 3068, item 3151, item 3020, and item 3091 . Which on Diana, since she has not been nerfed because no one has tried something like this on her, can be pretty disgusting.

The problem with magic pen is that the majority of items that deal damage deal it in magic damage, you give too much magic pen, those items damage gets too powerful.

Verdade1 votes

MRP marks+quints+sorcs+Liandry+void makes you ignore up to 80 MR. Add MRP glyphs for extra 10 MR on this treshold. Adding abyssal increases it by further 25 MR

Meep Man4 votes

It should also be noted that Magic Resist is typically in shorter supply than Armor. With the biggest Magic Resist item giving 70 and the biggest Armor item giving 100. There is also more common armor items used than Magic Resist items.

Dominick Destine2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pqfQhG9i,comment-id=000a00000001,timestamp=2016-08-13T23:04:43.448+0000)

the biggest Armor item giving 100.

That item is complete garbage and only gives armor alongside a terrible passive.

Whereas Banshee's Veil is legit usable by any champion and has great overall stats.

Verdade3 votes

What? BV is trash tier since they changed its passive...

Maw/scim for AD Abyssal/hp sponge for AP Spirit Visage/ZZ for tank, plus most tanks/bruisers can utilize abyssal or maw very well. Mercs and GA are universal, also Aegis aura for entire team

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