For everybody who thinks that with new items Tryndamere and Yasuo will be the bringers of Armageddon

Lately everyone seems to be losing their minds over how Tryndamere and Yasuo interact with the new items, particularly the new IE true damage passive. Can we take a minute, put away the pitchforks and think about this for a second before jumping to conclusions? Let me give some thoughts on why these champions are going to be actually worse off with these new ad itemization changes.

Yasuo: Let me address the "OMG 36% TRUE DAMAGE YASUO CRITS WTF" discussion first (if you can consider what has been going on in these boards a discussion). The higher armor penetration a champion gets, the lower the value that the champion can extract from the true damage conversion. Yasuo gets 50% armor penetration from his ultimate. This is actually insane armor penetration and, if you are a squishy, you might as well not have any armor against him. In that situation, his damage output has been severly reduced because he misses the 50% critical damage amp that the old IE gave compared the true damage conversion which is wasted on such armor penetration. Hence he is worse at killing squishies, even without landing his ultimate. If he does not want to attack a squishy but instead wants to focus the tank with enough armor so that the true damage means something then he can simply be killed by the carries before he can kill the tank, especially since his life steal is nerfed because it does not heal ff true damage. Now, lets say you are the tank here and want to deal with that yasuo. It is not a bad idea whatsoever to build ninja tabis and randuins somewhat early against a team comp with a yasuo + a crit adc. Lets see what that means for a yasuo with 100% crit chance late game build. Ninja removes 12% of basic attack damage, randuins another 10% and Yasuo's own passive another 10%. If they stack additively this means 32% less critical damage, giving a 136% damage on critical strikes, 142.6% if they stack multiplicatively and even less on q, and these apply before the true damage conversion. Missing the critical damage amplification on IE yet? 1v1ing yasuo as a tank was already unwinnable, but in fights when yasuo jumps on the backline he will have less damage against them which will give them a greater chance to survive, making him teamfight worse.

Tryndamere (I'm repeating what I already said in a couple of comments here): He actually got nerfed in most relevant situations because when splitpushing he can 1v1 anyone not named Jax, particularly tanks regardless of their armor (its just a matter of how long it will take him to kill the tank and the difference will not be enough to say add another rotation from another lane), and when he teamfights he dives the back line (if he wants to hit the frontline he will get melted and kited forever), in which case his burst has been significantly reduced against the squishies he tries to kill. So his splitpush is more or less the same and his teamfight potential, which was already dependant on him one or two shotting a squishy, is reduced thanks to the lower burst.

Now there are complains about how to itemize against these champions now. Well, if you are a tank, ninja tabi + randuin is a good mitigation answer. If you are squishy well, you are better off anyways because of the lack of amplification from IE. Now, there is a grey area here somewhere in between, where bruisers live. In many cases tanky bruisers have a trade off here. They have a bit more time to deny these champions before their items come online because of their higher cost. Many of bruiser fights are decided not by raw stats alone but playmaking (at least for the majority of us mortals that are not challenger). Jax vs trynd/yasuo is decided by playing around cc, fiora vs yasuo is decided by parry timings and ultimate dancing, irelia vs them is decided by the disarming ultimate, the stun and if they are dodged. And so on with other bruisers. Basically, a slight increase in damage (we are assuming an increase in damage because they have more armor than aquishies but not too much because they do not build as many resistances as tanks) will not mean much in many situations, but playing the fight a bit better will have much more impact for these kind of champions. For mages, well, it all depends on kiting, and for squishy mages they will have a bit more of a window to kite them or land cc, because burst has been reduced. If they get to the mage, however, they are in trouble regardless of the true damage.

What I wanted to say is that, can we stop with these mindless complaining cycles and maybe stop to think about context before rushing to the pitchforks? RIOT will not take any of us seriously or value our suggestions until we do a calm analysis. Now, maybe I'm wrong and the numbers on the items are too high, maybe I have not taken other things into account, but I can see where these changes come from and not a lot of people seem to have taken time to think about context and circumstances before rushing to arms. I believe this is the right direction and maybe some number tweaking is needed, but that is why these changes are being tested. Have a nice day.