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The Real Balance Issue, The one you haven't heard of.

Azeranth··2 votes·354 views

So I had until this very morning thought that Lethality was designed for killing tanks, and overcoming armor. The idea was you build damage to simply deal damage, and you have to trade that off to do damage against tanks. There was supposed to be trading one for another and that was the idea behind itemization but I was watching a guide on Riven, by Exil (summoner name California Boys) and I realized that this was so wrong.

Basically, he was describing building Riven towards being a late game assassin for squishy targets such as the ADC or other Assassins and he said something that jumped out "You primarily want to take Lethality in your runes, because Lethality is the counter to enemies being squishy" but the one thing I don't understand is: Why?

I realized he's right. i looked at the champions that build lethality. Jayce, Riven, Talon, Pantheon, Zed, and Yasuo. They are very high burst champions that destroy squishies. There is nothing more terrifying than one of them getting on top of you unexpectedly and not having some really good peel. But then that leaves my question for Riot "If Lethality is the way you deal high damage to squishy targets, what is the point of building AD"

AD to my understanding is just raw damage. In order to make good use of this damage is to trade it off in exchange for something else that improves you (or your teamate's) ability to deal damage. Some examples may include

Bruisers, like Darius Fiora Illaoi and Kled build raw damage stats, CDR, and on hit effects/mobility in order to assure they can extend the fight and use their abilities, which scale heavily off AD

Marksman like Caitlyn Draven Lucian and Varus who build a combination of attack speed and damage to assure they can do their damage constantly and without sacrificing time between movements when they constantly must reposition to avoid enemies

Tanks like Galio Poppy Maokai and Nautilus Who depend solely on CDR and resistances to assure they can peel for carries and put out CC at a faster rate.

All of these have some trade off they make instead of taking raw damage. There is a trade off. Sure the full AD Darius can kill absolutely anyone that walks into him especially those that duel him, but he is susceptible to kiting or burst. Those are his balancing points, but I struggle to see the trade off distinguishes assassins and tank shredders. The fact that lethality simultaneously allows the Jayce to just drop his load on a squishy champion and just murder them while also having the necessary stats to fight the full tank Nasus running at them or guarding that very same squishy.

The thing is, lethality is not whats broken. Because tanks will almost always outscale any form of raw damage, because Nasus, Poppy, and Maokai will always eventually be able to kill the AD Darius, or 100 to 0 the ADC if they're caught out there has to be a way to defeat them. Lethality, is and should be the way to defeat tanks, to overcome their resistances, therefore penetration stats MUST exist, and they must be fairly significant.

The breakdown of the issue is that full lethality is a fully valid build for oneshotting squishy champions.

But It shouldn't be, and to understand why you have to understand one of the most simple parts of the entire game, base stats. The reason that lethality is so useful against even squishy champions is because it ever goes to waste. A standard full lethality build ignores somewhere in the area of 90 Armor . Evelynn, who is an assassin and typically a fairly squishy character has a base armor of 91.1 at level 18. That means that the same lethality which was useful against the Full tank Maokai is Equally effective against the squishy Evelynn. Even Caitlyn, who is an ADC, has a base armor of 90.1, wtill 100% effective against her. Basically, there is never a time where a bruiser is required to build AD. Giving them the same oneshotting power of Full AD, but still being fully capable of fighting the Tank bearing down on them. The counterplay to Assassins is Tanks, with lots of lockdown, but it is fully irrelevant if that same assassin can DPS the tank down, or worse poke them out with large chunks and their own CC.

Naturally, these high armor values stem from the need of all characters to have some resistance to deal with some characters having high base AD and AP stats. You may wonder to yourself, "Why are these base damage stats so high?" well the answer is simple, the META.

Because Riot wants a steady easily balanced game environment, and a consistent META they have to enforce them. Combined with their desire to tone back scaling as a means to assure a reduction in snowballing and hopeless games base stats are raised in order to lower the dependence on reaching gold markers, itemization, and the niche champions. Raising base stats on champions more narrowly predisposes them to be more effective in one role than other. Not just by their design, kit, or inherent playstyle but also by their mathematical predispositions to those roles.

There are very few truly over loaded kits in League of Legends. Jayce might be the closest to it, and Riot balanced him around his mana costs and dependence. It was a healthy balance, that encouraged Jayce to build things like Manamune which made him more sustainable and to more accurately fit his role of a poke siege champ with large zone control and powerful AoE. A very simple champion, with a very understandable kit doing a very good job of doing what he does. The thing is, Jayce could still go Full one shot Jayce way back three seasons ago. It was possible. He could also play ADC, and even jungle. BUT it still required Jayce to sacrifice and make trade offs. Full AD one shot Jayce lacked the sustain needed to poke tanks out of lane, and lacked the resistances to go mid. Jungle Jayce was to mana reliant. There was a healthy core limitation placed on Jayce, but the changes to these base stats allows Jayce to gain the benefts of Full AD Jayce without giving up his Tank fighting ability.

Its not only annoying, but its honestly unbalancable for other champions. The moment that thing which is not designed for someone with a kit as loaded as Jayce is changed, the alteratipons ripple out across other champions in ways that compound Riots original issue of an unstable Meta. League is and has been suffering from a very bad case of Power Creep, and it need to be fixed. The numbers on EVERYONES base stats need to come down, even if it makes games feel more snowbally. GOOD thats what this game is. The game shouldn't be predetermined by the balance team and champ select.

6 Comments

Asayake 5150glow2 votes

Lethality is complete shit against tanks, and tanks do not, I repeat, do not outscale in damage of any form unless it's 1) burst and 2) lacks %penetration.

Lethality is not intended to be used against tanks, period. It is intended to be used against squishies. It is NOT the way to take out tanks, and that is precisely where you are wrong. The more armor one has, the less effective each point of armor is, due to the damage reduction formula (100/(100+armor) is the %damage you take of everything that comes at you, say 50 armor, you take 66.6% damage). Because of this, penetrating a mere 15 armor when a target has 200 lowers their damage reduction from 100/(100+200), 66% (they take 33% damage, meaning they have 66% damage reduction) to 100/(100+185), 65% damage reduction, a mere 1 %.

When a target has 60 armor, and thus has 100/(100+60), 37.5% damage reduction, the 15 flat pen is far more effective, reducing it to 100/(100+45), 31% damage reduction, an entire 6% damage increase.

Going raw AD, or rather, the attackspeed/AD/crit ADC's use, or the AD/CDR/health/lifesteal that bruisers do, combined with %penetration gives much better DPS which is much better for taking out tanks.

AD to your understanding is indeed raw damage. AD+crit+attackspeed is the best form of raw damage possible. However, armor is incredibly effective against it.

%armor pen is a stat which allows people, often the ADC's using AD/crit/AS or the bruisers using CDR/AD, to ignore a portion of a tanks armor, thus reducing the effectiveness of a tanks damage reduction by a large amount.

Flat pen, also known as Lethality, is a stat used to amplify someones damage against squishy targets, nearly negating their armor at all. It is far more effective against low armor targets.

The build allowing a Jayce to murder squishies will do jack shit against an armor stacking Nasus. His 30 Lethality, at level 18, will probably give him a grand total of 3% extra damage. Meanwhile, he lacks CDR (only 10% from Youmuu's), attackspeed, and any form of defenses which usually allow him to get multiple rotations off on a tank without dying.

A Jayce with Cleaver, Death's Dance, and BT gives him %pen, 30% CDR, 400 health, 35% lifesteal and 15% healing on his physical damage abilities, and will probably stomp a not stacked Nasus into the ground.

That being said, it is only possible to get 90 Lethality by running full Lethality runes (and even then it's not a sure thing). You can only get 45 from items, and 6 from masteries.

Azeranth1 votes

Thats the thing, That isn't how it should be. That system doesn't build a series of counters and tradeoffs, and it entirely skews the system of Opportunity cost. Armor penetration SHOULD NOT amplify your damage against squishies. Or rather, if it does, it should be effectively capped. Penetration should serve as the counter to armor. That is its design. Anything other than that erodes that economy. In the situation you are describing between the two separate Jayce builds, I am sorry you are simply wrong. Jayce has a heavily loaded kit that is designed to be played around that system % pen, tank shredding and a bruiser like mix of resistances. That is the hallmark of bruisers, a high number of abilities with scaling. Jayce still has the class utility to kite out, CC, poke, and chase down tanks. He has the things he needs to do damage from a safe position and not commit entirely to a fight in order to have any hope. That is where the issue comes in. The flaw with Lethality's effectiveness against squishies and the maintained usefullness against tanks is Jayce, Fiora, Kled all of them have kits designed to be overbearing in the ways of constantly doing combos and rotations. A tank lacks the time to kill to prevent those combos, an assassin can be one shot or poked down because they lack resistance. Brisers who abuse lethality are receiving the best of both worlds.

Also, your math is totally wrong.

Using the 1% and 6% analogies from above consider that a 1% in 65% reduction is not so drastically different from 6% in of 31% reduction the difference actually breaks down to only being half as impactful as you claim. The economy of it is therefore not negative.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

Thats the thing, That isn't how it should be. That system doesn't build a series of counters and tradeoffs, and it entirely skews the system of Opportunity cost. Armor penetration SHOULD NOT amplify your damage against squishies. Or rather, if it does, it should be effectively capped. Penetration should serve as the counter to armor. That is its design. Anything other than that erodes that economy. In the situation you are describing between the two separate Jayce builds, I am sorry you are simply wrong. Jayce has a heavily loaded kit that is designed to be played around that system % pen, tank shredding and a bruiser like mix of resistances. That is the hallmark of bruisers, a high number of abilities with scaling. Jayce still has the class utility to kite out, CC, poke, and chase down tanks. He has the things he needs to do damage from a safe position and not commit entirely to a fight in order to have any hope. That is where the issue comes in. The flaw with Lethality's effectiveness against squishies and the maintained usefullness against tanks is Jayce, Fiora, Kled all of them have kits designed to be overbearing in the ways of constantly doing combos and rotations. A tank lacks the time to kill to prevent those combos, an assassin can be one shot or poked down because they lack resistance. Brisers who abuse lethality are receiving the best of both worlds.

Bruisers who use Lethality lack the tank stats to deal with bruisers.

Playing Jayce into a tank who stacks armor while you go Lethality is possible the worst thing you could ever do, as long as the tank has a decent gapcloser. You will be gapclosed on, locked down, and then you can either switch to melee and immediately E them away, doing an ok amount of damage but taking much more from the tank, or you can trade back and do basically 0 damage with your entire combo, Thunderlords and melee W/E being most of it (as it's magic damage).

Fiora is made to kill tanks as well as anyone else, but lifesteal is far more effective as Lethality items tend to have less flat AD. Same with Kled, although without Cleaver and going full Lethality he will be dumpstered by tanks.

That is also not the hallmark of bruisers. Bruisers often have a few great scalings, high base damages, and the rest into tankiness or utility.

Lethality is nearly useless against tanks unless stacked in large numbers and accompanied by at least 1 %pen item. If you take a Kled, build Duskblade, Youmuu's, and Edge of Night, and pit him against a Poppy with an Iceborn Gauntlet, Sunfire Cape, and Randuins Omen, Poppy will not only win, she'll stomp the shit out of Kled.

Also, your math is totally wrong.

Using the 1% and 6% analogies from above consider that a 1% in 65% reduction is not so drastically different from 6% in of 31% reduction the difference actually breaks down to only being half as impactful as you claim. The economy of it is therefore not negative.

Fine, have it your way.

33% damage to 34% damge is a 3% damage increase.

However, a 63% to 69% is a 9% damage increase.

That's still a very noticable difference in effectiveness.

Also, that's in relation to your damage. In relation to damage reduced, and in flat percents (where you consider 1% as to be 1% of current damage, instead of 1% as in 1% more damage, as in 101% total damage), my math was perfectly fine.

Azeranth1 votes

What is armor pen for other than to overcome Armor, like on tanks? The stat is highly misleading

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

What is armor pen for other than to overcome Armor, like on tanks? The stat is highly misleading

That's why they fucking renamed it LETHALITY

Azeranth1 votes

For anyone who has read this, and is either confused or thinks I was unclear look up the Economics concept of Opportunity Cost. There is a trade off for everything, and the decisions made in that way are the ones determining efficiency and potential for any particular situation. Once you understand this, here is the TL;DR: Base stats and power creep have created a system where opportunity cost places no economy on AD opposed to armor pen, due to its abundance in base stats of bruisers, and the armor in squishy champions

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