How Do You Counter Thornmail When You Are AD?

Last whisper and lifesteal.

The better question would be: How do you counter Last Whisper and Lifesteal? It's not even possible

Thornmail is always a case of who is more fed. If you have a 4,000 gold lead, you won't even feel the Thornmail, but if your opponent has the gold lead you have no way of catching up. In that case you just need to focus other opponents in teamfights and only use abilities on the thornmail holder.

+ = there's your sign

BotRK, the bonus damage doesn't proc Thorn. Buy Whisper. Grab some magic resist.

I love picking against and building as my first item <3

There's this thing called magic resist. Build it.

For an ADC hurricane and life steal. Your hurricane will steal life from nearby minions while you attack him. For a melee champ hydra does the same thing. Finally there is using spells (skills) instead of just auto attacking.

If it was Nasus, you should try to avoid fights with him. His damage potential and anti-carry skills make him a less than stellar person to fight. Better off trying to take out other targets.

Life Steal, Armor Penetration and Magic Resist

Someone on your team grabs Aegis, you grab lifesteal

Lifesteal doesn't work: The healing required to counteract even a pure thornmail user is absurd.

Arm.Pen. is where it's at: The damage you take barely changes while the damage you deal becomes significantly better.

Get your casters to deal with it.

It's ridiculous how all due to someone buying an extremely, cheap, easy item, you are forced to buy 1 or 2 large items that can cost over 3,000 gold or you simply can't attack that target without killing yourself.

There should be items that stop fed AD Carries like Banshee's Veil or Spirit Visage is really strong against fed AP Carries, but Thornmail does more than that and even if you're not fed it still counters you very hard. I've seen Thornmail do 800 damage many times, and it's just ridiculous. I'm fed as an AD Carry because I did really good, and I shouldn't have that ended simply because a person bought a cheap item.

Now if something like Cinderhulk and Gromp buff didn't exist, my opinions on Thornmail would probably change a bit. But still, regardless the item is overpowered. I give Riot credit though they did really good with item balance and not really anything is outstandingly "overpowered". Some might be better than other's obviously, but not overpowered with the exception of Thornmail in my opinion.

Thornmail should just have the passive damage cut in half and cost 200 more gold. It's so cheap to get and it does insane damage to the point the ADC is basically fighting a 1v2 if they ever attack you.

The best ways to counter Thornmail is Bloodthirster, Mercurial Scimitar, and Blade of the Ruined King, but those are all legendary items that can be extremely expensive. 2 of those items are even built out of a BF Sword. Even if you build just one of them, the effects of Thornmail will still be noticable and I've personally gone to the extremes of building Bloodthirster and Mercurial simply due to Thornmail alone, not for any other reason.

MR is the only way... people say lifesteal but if u do the math it doesnt work bcs lifesteal applies after armor. Think of it this way... if someone is building thornmail and randuins/FH then they will be sitting at 200 armor at least, which is what 70% reduction? If u are doing 400 dmg an attack then ur only lifestealing after armor. They, on the other hand, dont factor in the armor - thornmail returns the dmg before armor s oeven if they have 50000 armor it will still do 35%

Armor pen > mr > lifesteal

In that order as far as raw counter.... You're still prob better off getting your mr item last either way though.

Just shoot them harder. It's pretty amazing to kill the enemy tank and your self in one go. Nothing quite like killing your self and the enemy naut jungler by outdamaging not just his health but your own health and his damage. Pretty funny death recaps ^.^

By hoping the rest of your team can kill them.

There are two mechanics in a Thornmail, the damage return, and the armor. Lifesteal counteracts damage return, they're literally the negative and positive effects of each other, as for armor, armor pen is the obvious answer. If the tank in question is a rammus with gromp, maybe double up with a BT if you got BotRK, or vice versa.

Armor pen, Lifesteal, magic resist.

Thornmail applies 30% of damage taken from auto attacks before resists are taken into account as magic damage.

Lifesteal calculates after resists are taken into account. So because thornmail has high armor it reduces the effects of lifesteal pretty significantly.

Armor pen increases the damage dealt so that your lifesteal becomes more effective. Magic resist reduces the damage dealt by thornmail.

As someone has already said, Armor pen, Last whisper's passive, and lifesteal. Although sometimes you just can't counter itemize. If you're an AD carry you're gonna take damage from Thornmail regardless.

The way I see it, if you are auto attack focused, they have a thornmail, and you don't have a lead, you are better off keeping your wave pushed up then roaming to help mid and Teleporting to help bot.

Warning: Not the greatest idea as enemy jungler can catch you while you are pushing up wave and your enemy laner could force you out of lane while you are pushing, making the roam more difficult/impossible.

TL;DR, Thornmail is countered by MR. In the meantime, enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QPluhuKabQ

*Varus vs Renekton with thornmail