With how easy it and health are to stack now, as well as the existence of 
this pile of middle fingers to mages, it's even more difficult for mages to take out tanks. Can mages get something?
For comparison, there are 3 Magic penetration items in the game 
While there are 
The Yetii Rider11 votesThe entire reason we got new MR items was because tanks were taking more magic damage than Riot wanted them to.
SpecterVonBaren20 votesNo, It's because there were only two MR choices for solo lane tanks and they only ever bought one of them, Spirit Visage.
Joxcab2 votesTo be fair, the other was so situational and bad it was barely even considerable a choice. But yeah I agree.
The Yetii Rider1 votesNo, It's because there were only two MR choices for solo lane tanks and they only ever bought one of them, Spirit Visage.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-79-notes
Source. Read Adaptive Helm. "Tanks are struggling to deal with sustained magic damage."
Voluug136 votesAnd its useless for anything else.
Also ''sustained magic damage'' who??? Cass? Because aside cass there arent any mages with strong anti-tank magic damage. At least not strong enough to make AH ever, ever worth it.
The Yetii Rider1 votesAnd its useless for anything else.
Also ''sustained magic damage'' who??? Cass? Because aside cass there arent any mages with strong anti-tank magic damage. At least not strong enough to make AH ever, ever worth it.
Sustained magic damage: Akali, Evelyn, Elise, Diana, Malzahar, Singed, Kayle, Teemo, Ekko
Fondling Gems1 votesThrow Brand on top of that too, he is a huge tank shredder and his passive ticks over time meaning a lot of his damage is sustained.
Inting Pillow5 votes
I'm surprised Azir who has as much sustained damage as an ADC has been forgotten
Divewing1 votesShurima's Lost Emperor
RainXBlade1 votesIn the near future, Riot will fix ruin his kit even further when they try to re-work him w/o removing his theme.
Variks the Loyal1 votesThere's also Syndra; Adaptive reduces the damage taken from her ultimate and repeated hits of her Q.
Bob the Toastr1 votes
Voluug132 votesRyze is trash outside LCS.
Teemo is a borderline troll pick that doesnt even build full magic damage anymore, Teemo AS/Hybrid is better.
I concede on Rumble. But that makes it 2.
RainXBlade1 votesI don't recall Rumble being a spammy champion considering he's gated by his Heat silencing him. Then again, he's pretty obnoxious to fight when he's ahead and that good heat management allows him to spam his Q and E w/o any drawbacks.
Voluug131 votesHis play pattern (slow with harpoons -> flamethrower) makes AH kind of a good pick.
Problem is AH does very little against the rest of his team, specially since AP means AD top/jg.
OP Garen Support1 votesTanks are melting to ADC's not to mages. If riot cared about tanks melting they would have nor overnerfed the armor items. There was a lack of magic resist option so they created some.
GayFluffyUnicorn2 votesSo true. I don't even build mr on any champ at all. Even on kled where i pretty much build full tank the health from the armor items and titanic was more than enough to not even get tickled by the mage.
SteelMankind11 votesVoid Staff >>>> LW upgrades. Also, magic pen available on boots is much easier to itemize than a low gold-efficiency lethality tem
Morgan le Fey2 votesYeah. What most people don't realize about the two is that LW items only bypass bonus armor. Any base resists stay at their full values. Basically, armor from runes, masteries, items, and abilities is reduced (to hurt tanks - ADCs are designed to be the designated tank-killers), but built-in armor is untouched. Since flat applies before percent and, IIRC, flat applies to bonus armor first, this also means that flat lethality is less useful. If you take off 10 armor with lethality, and you have Last Whisper, you would've already ignored 4 of that 10 armor you removed. It's not taking it out of bases - you're making a %change to a smaller number.
Magic pen has the same issue with redundancy to some extent, but Void Staff bypasses bonus and base MR. That means the overall pool you're reducing is larger, and the percentage of the pool that you're taking off with flat pen is relatively smaller while still being the same in terms of actual value. Now, the numbers on Void Staff are a little smaller from a pure percentage standpoint, so LW's upgrades (just going to call them both Last Whisper from now on for simplicity's sake) are in theory better vs. tanks that build lots of bonus armor, but Void Staff helps against everyone rather than just resist-builders.
As a metaphor, imagine you're dealing with Kled, and you magic/armor penetration is %max health damage. Void staff would be like fighting Kled normally. It counts the combined health bar - both of Skarl's and Kled's together - as Kled's maximum health, meaning it does much more damage thanks to the much higher maximum health. Meanwhile, Last Whisper doesn't care - it only scales off of Skarl's HP, and ignores Kled's altogether. That said, it's bigger numbers, so when Skarl builds a lot of health, Last Whisper is better - thus, ADCs kill tanks well. However, when Skarl doesn't build much health, or, worse, when it's just Kled alone and he never even has Skarl (aka vs squishies), it's pretty much useless. It does nothing against Kled himself. Void Staff, despite its smaller numbers, does take Kled's HP into account when figuring out how much %max health damage to do. Thus, mages kill squishies really well.
LankPants2 votesReally? As a tank player I can tell you that in almost all cases I don't give a fuck about Voidstaff. A mage with Voidstaff still isn't ever going to burst me down, I'd have to misplay massively to get killed by them. LW is a completely different animal. If an ADC or even someone like Riven gets one it feels like all of my bulk is completely fucking worthless.
SteelMankind3 votesWhen it comes to mages, burst and artillery are pretty shit at killing tanks, and probably aren't even targeting you specifically, so any damage you do take from then is just random AOE/blocked skillshots.
Battle Mages on the other hand, will destroy tanks with their 
. That's the entire reason for the existence of 
- before that item, battle mages would tear through 1 MR item tanks like nothing
LordOfTheLeague1 votesMost people don't make a difference between let's say 
who is a burst mage that is totally not made to deal with tanks and 
or that have the dps to kill them almost as fast as a marksmen.
invisiblecat17 votesNot to mention the desired stat of and , which cost 1100 gold, and 3100 gold respectively can be completely canceled out by the 450 gold 
, while still giving 10 MR
ThePikol1 votesBoots and Mask gives 15 magic pen, so 30 for both. Mantle gives 25 MR, so they aren't completely canceled, but I totally agree. 4200 gold shouldn't be negated by 450g item
BLACK REALM GOD1 votes
720
invisiblecat11 votesI was talking about how separately, once you get sorcerer shoes, the enemy can immediately just but Null-Magic Mantle, and save money
Ralanr6 votesMages are kinda meant to suck against tanks. You should be asking for more flat pen because now ADCs have MR (which was the reason imo why there were so few MR pen items).
LegendmakerGX1 votesI don't think so I feel like mage are the thing that does most damage on tank reason being most of the time Top/ADC/Jungler and some times support are AD which tank would always build Armour to counter the 3 AD while ignoring 1 AP person which is mages. Just me opinion tho.
Ralanr2 votes... Mages are burst. Tanks counter burst. That's why mages are not massive threats to tanks.
An Undead brat6 votes
and I left out many DPS mages because they actually have burst, too.
Ralanr3 votesAnd usually dps mages can hurt tanks well since resistances are better against burst than dps.
An Undead brat1 votesWell that's not true either now since exist, this item simply removes a champion, Idk why noone builds it, it's actually busted and was not necessary.
Voluug133 votesBecause teams dont have more that 1 champions its useful against, so its a worthless pick thanks to its extreme niche power.
Visage will always be better because its more generalistic and STILL helps against sustained damage.
Salron6 votesChampions naturally gain far more base Armor than MR, it's only logical that we have more armor pen in the game Lethality as a flat stat is also weaker than magic pen due to it's scaling nature
With and 
you already penetrate 30/30 of range champions' lvl 1 MR
Factor in Magic pen Marks and the Precision mastery and you have 43 flat total pen, which cuts through the majority of magic resist a ranged champion will have at level 18
Voluug133 votesErrr, everyone gets natural scaling MR since the patch that also added AH.
SirTeemoMushroom5 votesvoid stuff has 35% magic penetration though ..
while you need 3 ad items for 30% of lethality .
plus are armor penetration items not lethality which is kinda different thing
DJMason883 votesLethality works very differently from magic pen though
Chibi Zephyr3 votesFor the upteenth time, penetration is stronger v. targets with low resistances. For targets stacking resistances you're far better off focusing someone else. Voidstaffs %pen can still be moderately useful and torment's %hp burn will usually be helpful against resistance stacking champions too, since they normally build HP as well. Despite that, the penetration is much stronger v. those who do not have MR.
Violet Fields1 votesAnd for the fact that they nerfed Precision just because it had too much lethality on it, riot didn't even think of the magic penetration being removed aswell.
GayFluffyUnicorn1 votesSame as riot fucked DFT. When it was introduced i had so much fun taking it on a champ like ahri because the poking playstyle fit me into certain matchups or when they had too many tanky champs. Instead DFT gets a higher AD scaling and gets nerfed in the AP scaling as well because it is too stronk on jhin. topkek. It was essentially one or two mages "abusing" it. Brand and malz. That's it. Instead of nerfing them make the entire keystone trash for everyone.
SpecterVonBaren1 votesRemove 5 flat pen from Sorcerer Shoes and Haunting Guise, adjust their prices accordingly and make a new AP item with 10 flat magic pen.
Bwuceleeroy1 votesummmm 
ThePikol2 votes is not good for Mages, nor is Mask.
Bwuceleeroy1 votessays who?
ThePikol2 votesIdk, everyone? Have you seen 
buy any of these?
BLACK REALM GOD1 votesyes. karthus and malzahar especially. then there's the fact that lux can yoink 5 magic resist every time she basic attacks to pop her illumination.
OP Garen Support1 votesI main Malzahar and I never bought those troll items.
This is a build : 
Tell me where you see these items:
BLACK REALM GOD1 votesI main Malzahar and I never bought those troll items. This is a
Tell me where you see these items:
as in 1 of many.
this is also a malzahar build
not saying it's a good build, but it is a build.
is another one.
OP Garen Support1 votesHey ultimate bravery challange item builds dont count :P
OP Garen Support1 voteswtf :D Have you seen any mage building those? I main mages since season 4 from silver to platinum and never seen anyone building on mages. I seen that item used like 5 times over the years on auto attack based champion like old 
and maybe 
.
This is a tipical mage build :
