Lethality Overhaul Concept

The shift from Armor Penetration to Lethality is healthy in that it scales up over time, enough to keep even with base armor growth, so that will not be changing. That’s not the thought process behind this post. The idea here is instead to make Lethality function like Magic Penetration in that if you want to fully invest in it, there WILL be tradeoffs in CDR and raw damage.

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”Serrated Dirk is currently a must-rush for any AD assassin outside of the jungle. Its low cost is meant to make it more accessible to melee champions who get zoned off of CS. However, most of these champions, upon buying Dirk, are the ones doing the zoning. Instead, the cost these assssins have to pay to reach that first Lethality spikes going up, with its overall damage threat decreasing and the assassin’s ability to weather return fire increasing. Marksmen who pick up Dirk will find their purchase is much less effective in lane than before, but the staying power will help them farm for bigger items. Overall, this change is meant to feel less efficient for raw burst, both incoming and outgoing.”

NEW Recipe - + + 400 gold (1400 total)

+15 Attack Damage +200 Health +50% Health Regeneration

UNIQUE: +10 Lethality

UNIQUE: While your health is below 30%, your next damaging spell deals 40 bonus physical damage to all enemies it hits (30 second cooldown).

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”Ghostblade is the historical gotta-go-fast item of the Lethality trio. The added slow resistance and ghost effect should help solidify this item’s niche without weakening the effectiveness of hard lockdown. Additionally, veteran assassin players will be glad to see the return of the active’s Attack Speed component (albeit in a weaker form).”

NEW Recipe - + + 725 gold (total cost 3000)

+40 Attack Damage +225 Health +100% Health Regeneration

UNIQUE: +20 Lethality

UNIQUE Active: Gain 25% movement speed, attack speed, and slow resistance and ignore unit collision for 6 seconds (45 second cooldown).

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”Duskblade of Draktharr has long been a hotly-debated item, mainly for the lack of skill expression in its usage but also for its vision denial. For now, the Blackout passive is being kept, as hiding in the shadows is a unique quality innate to the Assassin archetype. However, the burst damage and single, crippling slow have been exchanged for True Sight and brief, lesser slows on dealing damage for a few seconds against a single designated target. This allows for more outplay potential while lessening raw burst. Champions who can weave in and out of sight to reapply Nightstalker can choose to refresh its duration on the same target or switch to a new one.”

NEW Recipe - + + + 1000 gold (total cost 3100)

+40 Attack Damage +225 Health +100% Health Regeneration

UNIQUE: +25 Lethality

UNIQUE: After being unseen for at least 1 second, your next basic attack against an enemy champion marks them and grants Nightstalker for 4 seconds. Lasts 5 seconds after being seen by an enemy champion and removes previous marks.

UNIQUE - NIGHTSTALKER: Gain True Sight of the marked target, and your abilities and melee basic attacks slow them by 50% for 0.25 seconds.

UNIQUE: When spotted by an enemy ward or trap, gain BLACKOUT over a 400-unit radius for 8 seconds (90 second cooldown).

UNIQUE - BLACKOUT: You disable surrounding wards, as well as exposing stealthed wards and traps. The effects linger for 2 seconds after you walk away. Melee basic attacks instantly kill wards or traps revealed by Blackout. Blackout does not extend over terrain.

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”Edge of Night is a more defensively-oriented sibling to Ghostblade and Duskblade. With Lethality items all switching to being more defensive, however, EoN has both kept ahead of that curve and laid claim to the map mobility of Youmuu’s Ghostblade with the Point Runner passive. Edge of Night is now geared for longer tower dives, leading to more tense and drawn-out high moments.”

NEW Recipe - + + 700 gold (total cost 3000)

+25 Attack Damage +250 Health +200% Health Regeneration

UNIQUE: +20 Lethality

UNIQUE - HONOR AMONG THIEVES: +30 Armor

UNIQUE - POINT RUNNER: Builds up to 20% bonus movement speed over 2 seconds while near turrets, fallen turrets, and Void Gates.

UNIQUE - NIGHT'S VEIL: Channels for 1.5 seconds to gain a spell shield that blocks the next enemy ability within the next 7 seconds (40 second cooldown). Damage will interrupt the channel. You can move while channeling. If the channel is interrupted, the item is put on a reduced 5 second cooldown.

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The removal of Cooldown Reduction from the Lethality tree is meant to reduce their efficiency for waveclearing and zoning ranged lane opponents, while giving enemies larger windows to capitalize on mistakes. It also helps counter the addition of more defensive stats to the tree by both lowering the chances of getting off more than one combo in a drawn-out all-in and providing more incentive to build over defensive boots. Additionally, fighters can choose to opt into these items more easily versus squishy opponents.

The addition of more Lethality across the board is meant to ensure that these items can still deal consistent damage to enemies with low Armor, while being worse than before against tankier foes. The extra Lethality when coupled with the loss of Attack Damage also allows for more wiggle room, enabling assassins to purchase non-Lethality damage items such as (hi Zed Mains).

Darius with these items could pose a rather large problem, as the defense and utility they offer could be enticing enough for him to build them and easily deal 100% true damage. Apprehend ignores 35% Armor before Lethality, meaning a level 18 Darius with all three Lethality items will ignore armor entirely on anything with 100 armor or less, 132 with fully stacked. However, this is a decently expensive build that leaves him much less bulky than a more traditional build and would therefore not be meta. Hopefully.

Another possible issue is assassins building and becoming unkillable - but they won’t have much Lethality if they build this early, and they can always use a bit more scaling late game. Same with .

All in all, I feel like this Lethality overhaul would be much healthier and conducive toward a slower, less burst-heavy meta. One thing I intentionally left out was , which should be catered more toward marksmen but would be fine in its current state with these Lethality item changes.

So, what do y’all think...