Luden’s is good on burst mages because of flat magic pen, the proc damage is just a bonus. One of those items that doesn’t feel particularly satisfying but is actually very effective.
For a champ like Lux, it's really the best mythic. And the pen is great and all. It isn't garbage in general. I'm just saying from a damage standpoint when compared to other items, it underwhelms. It's best when you're going against low MR opponents. That's all I'm getting at. Not saying it needs to be all powerful, just more equitable when compared to similar items.
Magic pen is exactly as useful against high mr opponents as it is against low mr opponents.
If the active proc on ludens was actually good, it’d be bar none the best mythic in the game. It’s already pretty up there simply because it gives literally everything an ap champion needs as well as magic pen which is very difficult to get.
As a damage dealing ap champ, ludens and rocket belt are the two gold standards. Anything else is a compromise on damage. Even champs like malz and brand who have big synergies with liandrys will actually lose out on damage after 2-3 items when compared to ludens due to the raw power of magic pen.
The second and third paragraphs are right, but the first one is wrong. The more MR you have, the less effective each MR point is worth, making it so taking away 50 from 200 MR is barely tickling, but taking 50 away from 100 makes it practically true damage.
Diminishing returns on armor/mr is a fallacy that's been around since league first came out, and it isn't true. When you look at armor/mr as 'effective health', you'll notice that the 1st and the 101st point of armor give exactly the same amount of tankiness.
This ALSO means that decreasing armor from 501 to 500 is the same effective health damage as decreasing armor from 1 to 0.
You might be misconstruing the concept of flat pen being less viable against tanks WHEN COMPARED TO % PEN. It isn't true in isolation that flat pen is not good against tanks. It's only when comparing it to % pen.
The relative increase of effective HP from more armor is decreasing the more armor your have.
By that I mean: While going from 0-100 armor gives you the same amount of extra eHP as going from 100-200 Armor, the first increase doubles your tankiness, while the second increase only increases your tankiness by 50%. (By tankiness I pretty much mean the time needed to be killed).
I'm pretty convinced that my math is correct (please tell me if I made a mistake), and my take from this is that increasing armor is becoming worse the more you have of it.
And the most important part: health is also in the equation.
+50 armor +50% health => 225% effective health (-10 armor => 210%)
+200 armor +50% health => 450% effective health (-10 armor => 435%)
The first one costs you 6.6 % of your total effective health the second one 3.3%
But why are we looking at damage in terms of a % of total health?
Do you look at Demonc Embrace and notice that it's damage deals the same % of total health against squishies as it does against tanks and conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness?
No of course not! You are able to mitigate the tankiness and get the same %of damage against them, you are clearly being a bigger detriment to tanks.
For that matter we could also look at AP (or AH) in the same way: So I have some kind of Ability ratio, let's say 2.3 in my combo and I buy 100 AP. That is 230 damage in the combo.
I am now going to be hitting two different targets, one with 2300 health and one with 4600 health (and they have the same MR) - I deal twice the %hp to one target, does that mean that my build is catered to dealing with squishies or at least lower health targets? Again, obviously no! My build increases damage against both targets and if we looked at the % my damage increase against both targets with the purchase it should be the same.
We are just seeing that someone that itemizes tankiness will be less susceptible to getting damage. Shocker I know.
There is a bit more going on, but this is already getting too long, so I'll jump ahead.
What Pen does is honestly quite simple: Over the course of dealing their entire healthbar in damage you are essentially getting a % of their maxhealth as bonus damage.
10 MPen against 1000 Health deals 100 damage.
10 MPen against 2000 Health deals 200 damage.
MPen against squishies is better in so far that all damage is better against squishies: Tanks generally do not care about you dealing X amount of damage to them once, they care about you dealing X amount of damage to them 3 times a second for 10 seconds.
So, despite this very long comment: Yes, you often want MPen against squishies, but your reasoning for it was bad and more generally: MPen deals bonus damage against tanks just fine, Voidstaff is just so much better that it makes Shadowflame or Sorcs look like they aren't contributing anything.
>But why are we looking at damage in terms of a % of total health?
Because that's what determine how long it will take to kill a target.
>Do you look at Demonc Embrace and notice that it's damage deals the same % of total health against squishies as it does against tanks and conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness?
Yeah and Duskblade will do a larger % damage to squishy than tank, what's your point?
>I am now going to be hitting two different targets, one with 2300 health and one with 4600 health (and they have the same MR) - I deal twice the %hp to one target, does that mean that my build is catered to dealing with squishies or at least lower health targets? Again, obviously no! My build increases damage against both targets and if we looked at the % my damage increase against both targets with the purchase it should be the same.
You will take as twice as long to kill the 4600 hp, your build is meant to kill the squishy first. In a teamfight if you can hit both, hit the squishy it will be more effective for the team most of the time.
>Because that's what determine how long it will take to kill a target.
That is true, but it doesn't explain why it is a better tool to use than flat damage numbers.
>Yeah and Duskblade will do a larger % damage to squishy than tank
What are you referring to? Duskblade's flat damage has been removed and is on Prowler's now. Do you mean the %damage increase based on how low the target is? Just it's stats? Not clear at all what you mean by this, not that it matters that much, because...
>what's your point?
Well I thought I had stated that very clearly: *Do you conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness?*
There are two ways to respond to this, either you correctly identify that it isn't agnostic to the tankiness of its target and is in fact more effective when dealing with tanks.
In that case you once claim that X%hp on a squishy and on a tank are equivalent and once that they aren't equivalent: So clearly something is wrong with your framework.
Alternatively you could say that Demonic Embrace doesn't care about how tanky its target is and is is equally efficient against every kind of opponent. This is just wrong, I'll leave it at that, since I don't think anyone would take this position, if you do want to take that position, go ahead.
Altogether I brought up Demonic as a tool to show why %hp on squishies and on tanks are not created equal and as a result why the comparison isn't valid.
>You will take as twice as long to kill the 4600 hp, your build is meant to kill the squishy first.
You are correct that killing someone with more health takes longer, but get this: that is true for every build. Even if I go Liandry's + Void; my build is clearly designed to deal with tanks, but squishies will still die quicker (some exceptions for draintanks or tanking through heavy shielding). Removing more MR via Void still leaves them with more MR left over. Getting 12.5% bonus damage because they have bonus health via Liandry's doesn't matter when the tanks have 100% more health which obviously has a bigger impact than 12.5% bonus damage.
Again: People that itemize tankiness are less susceptible to damage, shocker.
The point isn't whether tanks are tankier than squishies (of course they are), it is whether building penetration has a smaller impact on your burst (or DPS) against them than it has on your burst (or DPS) against squishies.
I dont think you quite understand how percentage works.
Let's say that the opponents take 5 seconds to kill you with 0 armor, and double that with 100 armor. Then the next 100 armor would increase that number to 15 sec. Even tho its only a "50%" increase from the 10 seconds, in absolute numbers each 100 armor is equally worth 5 sec survival time. Its a linear increase. If however you wanted a doubling in time with each 100 armor, it would be an exponential increase, and the last armor point would be much more worth than the first
I don't understand the point your trying to make.
We both agree that armor has a linear increase. I say that linear increases get worse over time (extreme example: If I already would have 10k HP, getting 1k more doesn't change a lot, although doubling it will make a relevant difference).
If Armor would be scaling exponentially, it wouldn't be worse relatively but it would be better absolutely, as you say. My point is that absolute increase are irrelevant, and you telling me that I don't understand percentages was not enough to convince me that I'm wrong.
Linear increase does not get worse over time. That is why it is linear... Adding 1k to 10k or 2k gives you the same outcome. It keeps you alive for the same amount of extra seconds. Staying alive for 2 seconds instead of one or staying alive for 11 seconds instead 10 is the same increase and is equally worth.
Your math is right, but you cant think in terms of relative scaling. If 200 armor gave you double tankiness compared to 100 armor, then it would have increasing returns (exponential returns in fact). 300 armor would 8x your effective HP. 400 armor would be 16x effective HP. You probably see why this is not balanced whatsoever.
Armor/mr have linear returns. Every 100 armor/mr gives you 100% of your health bar as effective HP against the respective damage type.
Why do they have linear returns? Because damage also has mostly linear returns. If an ability has an 100% AP ratio, getting 100 ap would make it deal 100 more damage. And so would the next 100 ap. And the next, etc. % damage increase goes down, but numerically the damage increase is the same.
Ergo, buying more and more armor/mr does not make it worse. There's just a point where you would rather buy items with more HP since that increases your effective HP more than resist heavy items would. If I were to use the AP analogy, at some points magic pen becomes more valuable for damage than just buying pure AP, since magic pen scales with your AP.
Im trying to answer your paragraphs separatly:
1. I think that it is necessary to look at relative scaling. I get that if we wanted a system which convinces me that every point of armor is not worse than the previous, we could use the system you suggest. I was not trying to suggest that we need a system like the one you suggested, so unfortunately I dont really get the point youre making. Feel free to pick this up again.
2. We agree on that, and I hope you understand thats nothing new to me.
3. I admit that I have not thought about it that way, but ofc youre right here. I dont yet really see how it is directly relevant, because I think it is enough to compare two different states of survivability to one source of DPS (or similar).
4. From my current point of view, "HP becomes better than MR with a lot of MR" and "MR becomes worse with a lot of MR " is pretty much the same. I can not really tell the difference between what I was saying and what you are saying here.
Sorry if I missed any connection between the things that you said.
1. The point is that every point of armor gives you the same amount of ehp. No matter if you're going from 0 to 1 armor or 1000 to 1001 armor. Or to put it more simply, every single point of armor increases the time enemies take to kill you by the same amount.
2. Was just for clarity.
3. Well, would you think that AP/AD has diminishing returns? By your own logic they indeed have diminishing returns. Armor/mr scales the way it does because it has to match how AP/AD scale. In the end doesn't matter what you would call it, if armor/mr scaled any better, tank builds would just dominate since they'd become nigh invulnerable.
4. The point is that MR gains are not getting any worse. HP gain is just getting better. Same applies to HP, the more you get, the more MR gain gets better.
You ignored what I said in 1, and yes, buying the 6th bf sword will be way worse than a similar amount of stats of AS/Crit(/AH). Obv bad for other reasons, but it's not really possible to make that example with full items because they generally do give different stats. And if the best thing one can buy is another stat, thats because the 'main' stat became worse.
I think generally that's what people mean, there's just an unsaid "compared to buying a mix of resists and hp" after "buying armor/mr has diminishing returns"
Sure, that's just misusing the term 'diminishing returns'. Diminishing returns implies less bang for your buck, but you get the same +ehp increase for every single armor point you get up to infinity.
People just don't think it through and what they imagine would be the linear increase (ehp doubling every 100 armor) is actually an exponential increase.
Diminishing returns would kick in if each armor point would give you less and less ehp as you go up in the numbers.
No, it's actually pretty accurate - you proportionately receive a smaller benefit as you invest more in to it. When looking at ehp the percentage increase in overall toughness decreases, and doesn't for resist + hp because they scale with each other.
What you said is correct, however your conclusion is not.
Imagine if it wasn't the way you are describing, let's imagine going from 0 to 100 armor doubles your tankiness and then going from 100 to 200 armor doubles your tankiness again.
Your claim is that now each point of armor is worth the same amount, but that clearly isn't the case, I go from 2000 eHp to 4000 eHP and the next time from 4000 eHP to 8000 eHP. That is a gain of 2000 or of 4000 eHP, that doesn't seem very linear to me.
By definition if we are continuously multiply out tankiness we are scaling exponentially.
The most common way to think about it is this: With no resistances your eHP is just your HP. Each point of resistance increases your eHP by 1% of your HP, which is a totally linear behaviour when considering just resistances and penetration.
What it does mean is that resistances become better as you get more health and health gets better as you get resistances, so a build like Warmog's, Heartsteel, Anathema's is almost always terrible.
The argument over it has certainly been around since league first came out yes, whether it is true is still up to debate.
Technically it is correct to say that resists do not give diminishing returns of effective health, for a specific definition of diminishing returns (which is a whole other debate). The problem is that 'effective health' is an artifical variable used to simplify certain comparisons like "should i buy resists or health", for which it is very useful, but it is not the actual outcome variable. Pointing out it does not have diminishing returns does not actually mean very much in the overall context, it is just a quirk of statistics. If you instead work out effective damage done/reduced then you very much get a pattern of diminishing returns.
That is why people refer to diminshing returns; because in the actual context of the game resists do suffer from it.
What do you mean by "It isn't true in isolation that flat pen is not good against tanks?" This is completely irrelevant. The whole point of comparing these different stats is to figure out which item/stat is the optimal buy over other items/stats in each situation. Not only is it worse compared to %pen, its also worse when compared to ability haste or ap. So if you ignore the item passives, the stats on items like cosmic drive, everfrost, liandries, and rabadons will be better and better compared to mpen stats as the enemies get more mr. It usually isn't by much, but there still are diminishing returns when compared to other stats, which is the only thing that actually matters.
Well, the conversation started with OP trying to argue that flat pen isn't good against tanks, which is a myth. In the example used, we're talking about Luden's, which has no %magic pen equivalent, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here?
These stats all scale with each other multiplicatively, so what you're saying isn't actually true either. Ability haste is best when you already have high AP and magic pen, similar to how attack speed makes your AD and crit chance more valuable, or how health is good when you have high resists already. Magic pen works the same, because you can picture it as simply having more AP.
But he's right. flat pen IS worse against tanks because obtaining it includes the opportunity cost of not getting an item which has percentage magic pen.
Also it's just mathematically true. Assuming a base hit of 100 magic damage and 50 flat pen, the pen deals
33.33(2d.p) extra damage to the 50MR target
6.67(2d.p) extra damage to the 200 MR target
The decrease however is consistent in terms of reducing effective health.
It's true that armour and MR scale linearly in terms of effective health, but scaling both resistances and health leads to a exponential scaling. Taking into account that damage also scales exponentially with multiple stats and variables, and a linear scaling actually becomes regressive in terms of real survivability.
> an item which has percentage magic pen.
Which mythic does this exactly? If we're talking about opportunity cost, you have to compare it to the example (luden's) which is a mythic. You COULD argue we can buy void staff first, but I don't think you're going to do that.
Liandrys gives %15 damage bonus which vs high mr targets will always be maxed out since you're assuming they built mr+HP items, and that %15 damage bonus will always outperform any flat pen provided by ludens vs high mr targets. You can do the match to figure out how little mr you need for ludens to win again but this point completely refutes your point that there is no other mythic good vs high mr targets.
Can you explain your math? I'm not challenging you, but I have a completely different understanding of it though it wouldnt surprise me if I was wrong.
The formula for damage if MR >= 0 is:
dealt damage = pre-mitigation damage * (100 / (100 + MR))
(armour is identical, just replace MR with armour)
Each point of Mpen reduces the target's MR *in the calculation* by 1.
----
Scenario 1a: We hit for 100 magic damage, with *no* mpen. The target has 50 MR.
100 * (100 / (100 + 50)) = 100 * 2/3 = 66.666....
66 (2/3) real damage taken by the target.
-----
Scenario 1b: Now we obtain 50 mpen without attaining AP, meaning we do the same hit, but treat the target as if they had 0 MR.
100 * (100 / 100 + 0) = 100
100 damage taken by the target. We're effectively doing true damage.
-----
Scenario 2a: We hit for 100 magic damage, with no mpen. The target has 200 MR.
100 * (100 / 100 + 200) = 100 * 1/3 = 33.333333...
33 (1/3) real damage taken by the target.
---
Scenario 2b: 100 hit, 50 mpen. Target has 200 MR. This means our hit treats the target as if they had 150 MR.
100 * (100 / 100 + 150) = 100 * 2/5 = 40
40 real damage taken by the target.
----
Scenario 1: 50 Mpen increased our damage from 66.666... to 100. Increase of 33.333... (50%)
Scenario 2: 50 Mpen increased our damage from 33.333... to 40. Increase of 6.6666.... (20%).
Ergo conclusio: flat Mpen is worse the highest the target's MR is.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the actual game and whether or not luden's is good compared to other items. Itemization in league is complex because of the mythic system, item passives, multiple stats on each item, and how it all interacts with each champions kit.
But you're wrong though when you say that flat magic pen not being good against tanks is a myth. It's easily provable in a hypothetical where you can only choose between increasing flat magic pen, or increasing any other mage stat, like ap or ability haste.
Let's say that an enemy champ has 1000 hp with 20 mr. This means that they can take 1200 magic damage before dying. If your champion can deal 100 dps, it takes 12 seconds to kill the enemy champ. Increasing magic pen by 20 allows you to kill them 2 seconds faster. Increasing ap or ability haste by x amount raises your dps by 10%, allowing you to kill them about 1 second faster. When the enemy has low mr the flat magic pen clearly outperforms the other stats.
But if we look at a situation where its 1000 hp with 230 mr, its completely different. Increasing flat magic pen by the same amount decreases the time it takes to kill from 33 seconds to 31. Increasing ap or ability haste by the same amount decreases the time to kill from 33 seconds to 30. When the enemy has high mr the ap or ah clearly outperform the magic pen.
When it comes to choosing which item is best, the actual stats the item has is only a small part of the decision. Often times the item passive will have a much bigger impact on if an item is good. But please stop spreading false information though, the math undeniably says that flat mpen, IN COMPARISON TO OTHER STATS LIKE AH OR AP, gets worse and worse as the enemies build more mr.
mr does have diminishing returns as a % eHP increase. This is why there's a HP to resistances sweetspot you want to hit depending on the enemies damage composition, buying the first 100 mr is better than the next 200 because you would have become tankier by buying hp instead.
The same is true for pen, buying flat pen is better against low mr targets but ap or % pen is better against high mr.
The diminishing return is very real
Because you have to compare it to other options like AD/AP , cooldown, attack speed, crit, % pen. You mentionned % pen, but other options may give more dps than flat pen if you do the calcul.
There's also a diminishing return of armor/mr relative to HP.
No, the 1st and 101st point of armor and MR do not provide the same effectiveness.
If I have about 70 or 80 armor (can't remember the exact amount), that gives 50% physical damage reduction before armor shredding/piercing effects come in. So for someone with 0 lethality/armor pen, I get the full 50% physical damage reduction.
However, to get another 25% physical damage reduction, I would need to add another 200 armor on it. Going from 0-70 and 70-270 is not the same leap
Yes it does. Each point of mr or armor increases Effective hp by 1%. Effective hp is the amount of damage you would have to do if the mr simply added hp and your spells did true damage.
So, fighting a 2k hp target with 50mr, you would need to do the same amount of damage as to a 0 mr target with 3000 hp.
At 75 mr and 2k hp, Effective hp rises to 3500. You still gain 20 points of Effective hp per point of magic resist, but though you gained 25mr, 3500 is only 16.66% more than 3000. That is what the diminishing return on %reduction means. Your Effective hp increases by the same amount with each point 1% of your actual hp, but with each point that flat growth is a smaller percentage of your total Effective hp.
https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/6hhh0o/reminder_resistance_dont_have_diminishing_returns/
https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/luuhx4/mythbusting_x_has_diminishing_returns/
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/h1qpp/attention_there_is_no_such_thing_as_diminishing/
There are more examples, these are just the first few I found on 2 seconds of googling.
Visualise the difference between 0% dmg reduction and 1%. Now visualise the difference between 99% and 100%. 100% is *infinitely* bigger than 99%. It's the same % difference, but one is so large it's quite literally unobtainable, while the other is quite simply 1% reduction in damage.
So that we don't have to do brain tricks to try and visualise the difference, we created the concept of effective health to do it mathematically instead, which is what I referred to in the post you responded to.
Common sense test: If you have 5k gold at lvl 1, will you take physical damage attacks better if you buy 0 hp and stack 6 chain vests, or if you buy 1 giants belt and 5 chain vests? Obviously the latter.
So your claim that it's a fallacy fails even the common sense test.
Actual reason: Your standard is effective hp *per gold*. Not effective hp per armor. Your opportunity cost is hp that the gold can buy. You're not just adding armor in a vacuum.
If you have 1000 hp and you have 0 mr you have 1000ehp against magic dmg. Lets say you add 100 mr. Now, you have 2000ehp against magic damage. This first 100 mr you added gave you a 100% increase in overall tankiness against magic damage. Adding a second 100 mr, making your total mr 200, gives you 3000ehp. This second 100 mr you added gave you a 50% increase in overall tankiness. Essentially the more mr you have the less of a % increase, 1 mr is going to make.
Magic pen works the other way round where if an enemy is low mr the % increase in dmg from say 5 pen is going to be higher if the target has 40mr than if the target has 100 mr.
Depends on what your goal is.
Each MR point is just as effective when considering the amount of effective health. The multiplier is linear. In contrast, it has decreasing effectiveness in percentage of effective health.
So taking away 50 MR from someone at 50 MR takes away 100% of their raw hp in effective hp, same as 50 compared to 200. But it only takes away 50% of their effective hp if they had 50, while it takes away 20% if they had 200.
The equation for armor and mr is such a way that each point is 1% effective health against that type of damage. At 50 mr you take 66%. At 100 it's 50%. At 150 40%. some math with 1000 as the baseline. You'd take 1500 magic damage to die the first number. 2000 at the second, and 2500 on the last.
If your damage isn't penetrating enough with ludens, sorcs and let's say void staff, then they probably are very vulnerable to your team's ad.
Magic Pen is extremely important because it has the same relationship with lethality interacting with armor when you get % magic pen. This makes ludens (while a squishy dominating mythic) actually much stronger against tanks than most lethality mythics in comparison because not only is magic resistance pretty bad right now, you can get FAR more value from magic pen than lethality because it's always a lower stat and you have a much higher % pen item
> Magic pen is exactly as useful against high mr opponents as it is against low mr opponents.
Yes, but actually no.
+1 MR = +1% effective health. If you get sorc shoes, it's -18MR.
If they have 1,000 hp and 40 MR they have 1,400 effective hp. Sorc shoes changes it to 1,220.
If they have 1,000 hp and 100 MR they have 2,000 effective hp. Sorc shoes changes it to 1,820.
So yes, you're technically right, it's "as useful" in both cases because 18 mpen reduces effective health multiplier by 18% (in this example: -180 hp.)
But: the **proportional value** of that -180 hp is lower.
1,220/1400 is 87%. Meaning that your sorc shoes lowered their total effective health by 13%. 1,820/2000 = 91%. Meaning that you have lowered their effective health by only 9%.
**The more magic resist they have, the lower the % of effective health you are reducing**. And that's not even factoring in health (because tanks usually have more MR *and* more health) which makes it even worse.
That’s not true, flat magic pen is more effective against low mr targets (until mpen >= mr).
The MR formula is: Percent magic damage taken (or dealt) = 100/(100+MR). Note that this MR is effective MR, i.e after mpen.
Let’s use ‘y’ as shorthand for ‘percent of base magic damage dealt’. Now for some calculus.
y = 100/(100+MR) -> y = 100(100+MR)^-1
Let u = 100 + MR -> y = 100u^-1
du/dMR = 1, dy/du = -100u^-2 = -100/(u^2)
dy/dMR = dy/du * du/dMR = -100/(u^2)
dy/dMR = -100/[(100+MR)^2]
‘dy/dMR’ means ‘how much y changes when MR changes’. From that equation, dy/dMR is always negative, meaning that MR decreasing will always increase y. MR decreasing will also decrease dy/dMR (make it more negative), meaning that y will increase more quickly as MR decreases.
Adding mpen is equivalent to decreasing MR, so it’s evident that mpen increases your damage more against lower MR targets.
EDIT: fixed a sign
I spend as much of my life trying to avoid doing math as possible, so I'll let the wiki do it for me.
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_resistance?so=search#Stacking_magic_resistance
From the wiki:
"... each point of magic resist increases the effective health pool against magic damage by 1%, formally:
Effective health = ( 1 + (R/100) ) × Nominal health
Example: A unit with 60 magic resistance has 160% of its maximum health in its effective health, so if the unit has 1000 maximum health, it will take 1600 magic damage to kill it.
By definition, magic resist **does not give diminishing returns of effective health**. Each additional point of magic resist increases the effective health pool (against magic damage) by 1% of your maximum health. This is not changed by any amount of magic resist already held."
That’s just a different interpretation of the same maths.
For the defender, who wants to know ‘how much damage can I take before dying’, the effective health interpretation makes sense.
For the attacker, saying ‘20 MPen means I reduce my target’s effective HP by 20% of their actual HP’ is awkward and unintuitive. It makes more sense to say ‘20 MPen multiplies my damage by a certain amount’. That multiplier is larger at lower MR values.
If your target has 20 MR, 20 Mpen increases your magic damage against them by 20%. If your target has 120 MR, 20 Mpen increases your magic damage against them by 10%.
Why are we looking at %damage? It falls into the same problems as %damage reduction.
As you say, effective health is unintuitive and seems to go contrary to the normal logic of this stuff. This is why we created it. Our brains aren't wired to comprehend the way %reductions work. Effective health unequivocally proves that there are no diminishing returns on armor/MR, which by extensions proves that every single point of flat pen is as valuable as the last, and is always equally as effective no matter how high their resists are.
What you say is true on the %damage increases, but it falls into the same trap. That 10% damage increase is exactly as valuable as the 20% damage increase in your example. It's hard to picture it, so we have effective health to mathematically prove it.
> Why are we looking at %damage? It falls into the same problems as %damage reduction.
When you buy flat magic pen or lethality, your goal likely isn't to slightly-more-aggressively tickle the targets stacking resists. The champions who buy these stats are typically interested in being able one-shot something in one ability rotation, rather than increasing their overall damage done over a longer period of time.
This is why I dislike the tunnel vision on effective health. Just because something is mathematically true does not mean it's true in a practical sense. League doesn't play out like a spreadsheet where you measure these things over time.
> What you say is true on the %damage increases, but it falls into the same trap. That 10% damage increase is exactly as valuable as the 20% damage increase in your example. It’s hard to picture it, so we have effective health to mathematically prove it.
If you do the math on effective health you will reach the same conclusion. Yes, you will *remove the same flat amount* of effective health. But that is less valuable against champions that have higher effective health.
As a real world example: if I take $5 from you and you have $10, I just took half your money. If I take $5 from you and you have 1 million, I took .0005% of your money. The $5 is the same amount in both cases, but it's far more impactful if you have less money.
Using +% damage just simplifies the maths. I’ll do one with some numbers for you.
Say my spell does 500 raw magic damage. It hits four targets, one with 20 MR, one with 70 MR, one with 120 MR, and one with 1,000 MR.
The 20 MR target takes 500*100/(100+20) = 416.7 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 500 damage (+83.3).
The 70 MR target takes 291.1 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 333.3 damage (+39.2).
The 120 MR target takes 227.3 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 250 damage (+22.7).
A target with 1,000 MR would take 45.5 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 46.3 damage (+0.8).
So following your interpretation AP/AD, health and attack speed all have diminishing returns?
If I have 100 AP then buying 50 more is a 50% increase, but if I have 500 AP it's only 10%. Same for most other stats in the game.
No, I’d describe that as linear returns. If you hold all other variables constant, one point of AD increases your damage by the same amount, no matter how much AD you already have.
If you hold all other variables constant, one point of MR increases your damage reduction vs magic by less than the previous point. That’s diminishing returns. But, it increases your effective health vs magic by the same amount with each point, which is linear returns.
One point of MPen increases the damage you do by more than the previous point, which is compounding returns.
And the fact that your way of thinking leads to the obvious contradiction that the same stat has diminishing, linear AND compounding returns doesn't make you reconsider anything?
If the person building MR gets linear returns, then building mPen, which is just negative MR, must also have linear returns. Alternatively, if building mPen has compounding returns then building MR must have diminishing returns. Any other interpretation is just nonsense.
What makes it a contradiction? MR gives you different types of returns on different things.
It gives you linear returns on effective health, aka ‘how much raw damage can I take before I die?’.
It gives you diminishing returns on damage mitigated, aka ‘what portion of raw damage do I actually take?’. (Compounding returns on mpen is just because mpen is the opposite of MR).
These are two different things that have different implications. To demonstrate, back when I used to play WoW, tanks cared about both eHP and damage mitigation. A tank with high eHP but low mitigation would easily soak up big bursts of damage and have health leftover, but they’d also require a lot of healing and drain their healers’ mana quicker. A tank with low eHP but high mitigation would require less healing, but ran the risk of getting oneshot by a parry thrash or something.
Which of those two tanks has more ‘tankiness’? Well, it depends on how threatening the boss’s damage spikes are, and how much mana your healers have. In League, it’s the high eHP one for sure, so it’s reasonable to say ‘tankiness = eHP’. But mitigation still exists, and MR still gives diminishing returns on mitigation.
Not quite true, once you get voidstaff, flat magic pen loses effectiveness because it is calculated before the % reduction.
For instance, at 250 mr, void reduces it by 100, leaving you against 150 Mr.
If you have max ludens plus sorc, that is 44 flat pen taken first, reducing to 206. Now void only reduces 82, leaving you contending with 124 mr. Only 26 of your 44 pen was effective.
From the wiki:
"Magic penetration and magic resistance reduction are considered in the following order:
* Magic resistance reduction, flat
* Magic resistance reduction, percentage
* Magic penetration, percentage
* Magic penetration, flat"
As you can see, what you're talking about is only true for magic resist reductions. Magic pen is calculated last, and does not reduce the effectiveness of your void staff.
I remember it was earlier :
void staff wiki
V1.0.0.152
Magic penetration reduced to 35% from 40%.
Void Staff is now applied before flat magic penetration.
?
do you really want more splash damage so they need to decrease the pen to balance?
view it as RoA, it's there to give stat, everything else is just a bonus
If Luden's has best in class damage on the proc as well as the flat magic pen it would be the best item in the game. Obviously the power budget for Luden's is in the pen so there's no way the effect can be on the same level as other items.
Well you have to compare how easy it is to proc and and etc aswell. You can proc it was easier than heartsteel for example and heartsteel has a good proc DMG sure but in general this time give you 0 DMG, only health. Ludens gives a lot of AP more than some of the other AP mythical and pen. Which equals more DMG. If you go heartsteel you will deal less DMG on mages cause you have no AP, so it is not only about the activ. I mena we used to have a strong activ on an AP item in the past called deathfire grasp i think.if you combine a activ on AP item that deals high amount of DMG with good stats then it becomes to op you can't have both cause mages already have burst so high burst activ with high stats would mean you oneshoit everything.i mean people used to play AP Janna that throw broken the item was cause you could q deathfire grasp w delete someone.
You're misunderstanding I think. The point is that the power budget assigned to the active is not the same across all items. Just because the damage numbers you see the Luden's active doing are low, does not mean that the item is weak. Because it very well could be that the overall damage you are doing because of the pen is still best-in-slot.
Luden aint weak, u first of all cant compare ap items to tank or ad items, tanks might deal dmg with heartsteal but only once and ad champs cant get 1000 ad like ap can. Ludens is in a great spot rn and needs no changes at all. Ik its hard to see everything getting changed rn except for mages (had the tank changed at the start of the season, adc changes now, assassins too etc) but ap items are completely fine. If something needs a change than nerf roa. Thats it
Although it falls under the burst category, ludens is for waveclear. It helps in champion combat mostly because of the magic pen it gives and pretty high stats, but for pure burst damage night harvester is better.
However, the tradeoff from ludens to night harvester is mana and magic pen for more damage and more ability haste, so take your pick.
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The worst part of these "new" buzzwords is giving idiots extra tools for being even dumber.
You're here just completely derailing any sensible discussion on the topic itself. Go troll somewhere else.
I think it makes sense for Heartsteel to deal more item damage, considering also the cooldown of the two and that Ludens provides additional movement speed.
Heartsteel is meant for tanky champs since it scales with HP. Health in itself doesn't do damage obviously, and heartsteel simply acts as a way to convert it. Ludens on the other hand scales with AP. If you're using Ludens on an AP champ (which you most likely would), it would be OP if Ludens deals around the same amount of damage as Heartsteel because champs who use Ludens already have a way to make use of AP as damage.
I play a lot of Xerath, and Ludens is always my first item. I had games where my Ludens-enhanced Q deals about 70-90% of the opponent's squishy (I remember doing 90% to a Seraphine once). It's that strong because my Q is already enhanced by AP anyway. Imagine now if Ludens scales as much as Heartsteel. It would make a lot of mages broken. Not to mention it only has 10 sec cd, and is reduced whenever you use an ability.
You are just being argumentative looking at the chain. Keep the discussion civil.
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as for Liandrys, the percent health damage can be neutralized with enough resist. And it doesn't help that Liandrys add Ability Haste instead of Magic Penet as mythic bonus (which if you would notice, Ludens has). In theory Liandries would do more damage, but half of its benefits come in the form of DoT, which tbf has its place with battlemages and DoT mages, but outside of that the damage provides time for the opponent to counter it with defensives. Ludens' damage is more burst in form, and it could just be the extra push you needed for your combo to kill the target.
This isn't to say one is better than the other, but it's a response to the claim that Liandrys does much better than Ludens in terms of damage. Each of them has their strengths, and it would depend on the champion and matchup.
Remember when the original's Ludens came out? It was considered incredibly strong, and it wasn't much different than what it is now. Now you have items all around you doing like 1/3 of the dmg of a champion. Ludens is just a remnant of a better time
The mov. speed Ludens gives is very underrated IMO. Cant count how many times it saved me when I was playing Syndra but maybe its also cause she doesnt have cast time in every skill like other mages.
Typically I don't mind cast times in mages.... except for the self root on Lux Shield that annoys the fk out of me. Thing gets me killed more than it saves me lol.
Would make sense. It's supposed to be a shielding ability but typically does more harm than good.
I'd honestly like her W to be reworked into something else
The main reason it works for burst mages is the magic pen, the actual proc damage is negligible. Also your math isn't right because the proc damage splashes to 3 enemies. So assuming there are enemies close enough it does atleast 300 damage before adding any ap ratio.
Other items have the same thing. Take Liandries you hit an AOE ability which most champs that build it have you can hit every champion and nearby minons/jg camps. You're right on the magic pen though. Just multiple target thing is applicable to a lot of other items as well, which is why I was going single target only for each.
But that's the thing, to apply liandry on many targets, you need to hit many targets. Luden procs even If you hit Just one enemy, it's a Splash damage. The biggest thing going for luden is it's ridiculous magic pen and shit ton of AP, it's a stat stick.
Also you were comparing luden to other AD itens, you need to remember that armor gives a higher % damage reduction on top of most characters having more armor than MR. It's really easy to get 100 armor and half ALL physical damage, and while you can still build MR, it's not as common as armor.
I don't see your point. Force of Nature is supposed to do that, It be weird If a Full MR tank got shrreded Just because the enemy has a luden and a pen boot.
What I meant was on normal circunstances against enemies that aren't a tank, cuz a tank is always going to be hard to kill unless your name is vayne or fiora.
My point is you build that one item and most mages can't do diddly squat to you. Don't disagree with you on the Ludens and sorc shoes thing. Or tank thing really. I'm just saying I've had every single pen item going against a Cho with only FoN for MR and did almost no damage, I know that burst mages aren't supposed to do much to tanks but nothing at all is kinda wtf at the same time. So if you want to cuck every mage who doesn't have %hp damage, just build FoN and maybe Stoneplate if the rest of your team is feeding you're pretty well set. One to two items, and you pretty much make it so the mage in question doesnt get to play the game. That's all.
That's why they nerfed it. Though I don't think it changed much tbh. You pretty much need an adc to kill tanks at all. Except for swain and cass, maybe. I guess thats the tradeoff, though, as most adcs don't have as much cc,range,poke,or zone control as mages can provide.
Tanks do well against burst champs, crazy. Champs like Amumu completely hamstring assassins and burst mages, it’s just how it is. DPS champs shit on tanks as a result.
I dont think mages are strong when pro teams are playing tank mid almost every game. Maybe in 13.10 mages are better. The biggest advantage to having magic dmg is just that enemies won't build full armor. However, adcs and most ad champs can build pen/bortk/divine and deal with tanks. Building liandries doesn't even really deal with tanks for mages like any ad champ can.
My opinion is it's fine. You can't expect to kill the 5k hp force of nature tank as syndra and zoe, so you need to play with your adc and look to burst squisher targets. If you kill the enemy adc or fed enemy jungle by 1shotting them as these champs, it can outright win the fight/game.
However it's also a problem of how to work mages into the game like this, if tanks can just go mid and tank all your damage while clearing the wave and shoving you under tower where can mages even exist in the game? There aren't very many that are safe toplane, and considering the strength of adcs, you aren't sending them botlane very often. I think maybe mages need more mana. It should be possible to force a tank out of lane at least before running oom. Playing a mage vs most tanks feels hopeless right now, you are just stuck under tower and hope your botlane wins, if you manage to take lane control or shove the wave out you are probably oom and can't impact the game very much.
idk if you've ever played other roles but Tanks being a problem is not a mage problem its a tank problem. Tanks are dominant through most of the game until ADC hits full build or if they fall behind. Mages have been good in the mid lane for the past 3 years. Mages were never meant to bring down tanks and used range and wave clear to beat them in lane if it ever came to it. Now tanks like Sion and Mundo can hit insane AD amounts with 1 item because of how tanks are. Riot if anything need to nerf tank damage, not buff mages.
Just for your information, voidstaff did fuck all to old FoN, now that its bonus is bonus Mr it does work. But voidstaff did not reduce %magic dmg reduce!
Yes mathematically Void Staff lost 25% of its effectiveness, but so what? The other 75% of damage not mitigated by that passive still was affected. You still need to be able to deal damage one way or the other as a damage dealer. Staying in the lurch isn't gonna help you.
What's the better alternative? Crying in all chat? Starting a rant post on Reddit?
Try to consider the whole item, not just one part of it. Also try to only compare it with items it's most similar to, because there's a whole lot of factors to consider.
Let's take liandrys for an example because they both offer almost the same stats(the difference is pretty big actually which is 6 pen), cost the same price, and almost similar item components. One of their primary differences is the mythic passive. Luden's 5 pen is actually insane compared to most items(if not the best in the whole game), and certainly compared to 5 ability haste. That alone is the reason why I tend to build it. Also consider the fact that luden's offers movement speed and its cooldown is reducible by item haste and ability casts. Luden's also has more waveclear.
Rocketbelt has no mana and it has a 40 sec cooldown. Luden's has a less than 10 cooldown.
Avoid comparing it to ad items because no champion really chooses between luden's and stormrazor.
The comparison you're doing is literally just a single factor out of so many others.
Ppl tend to forget that ludens is also a gameplay enhancing item, move speed procing off minions like fleet footed is like extremly op and undervalued in general, it makes ur champ completely different and allows u to hit and not get hit
Luden proc cooldown is lower than any other item (10 seconds). It also reduces its cooldown on hitting spells (up to 3 seconds per spell).
The most important part is also the magic pen.
I don't know what you're on about
Why are you comparing a 10s or lower cd poke damage to items with 40s+ cooldown.
Stormrazor deals 25(+65% AD)(50% AP) damage. At 1 item that's ~110 damage.
Ludens at 1 item deals ~110 damage.
The AP ratio is pretty low tho ur right and the damage number by itself will fall off but I believe the mythic passive and other magic pen is supposed to make it still scale. Out of crown and everfrost it's def the option with the most damage.
According to leagueofitems tierlist it's doing fine compared to other AP items. Some AD items are just hard outperforming AP items atm but dw they're getting nerfed next patch.
Saying Liandrys is better than Ludens is like saying Armor is better than MR. Ludens does more damage than Liandrys to squishy targets, while the other to tanky targets. As always, you choose your items according to what you're facing and if you face a lot of tanks, Ludens will not be your prime choice.
a lot of mages can proc it multiple times with one spell rotation... and the movespeed boost is good for kiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDJyQqdgaqo
Ludens is for wave clear not burst. You build it because it gets you through lane phase with plenty of mana and helps you clear waves upon completion, then gives magic pen for legendaries which is a strong stat and hard to come by otherwise in the game.
Night harvester has more ap, more ability haste, a higher damage proc and a bigger speed buff to keep you on a target or get you out after bursting someone.
The problem is the NH build path cripples your landing phase on any mage with mana and puts you in a weird situation where you likely won't be able to burst anyone because you'll be behind.
Every time I build Ludens on Karthus Jungle I groan from how slow my Jungle clears is without Liandries
Even in lane Liandries burn is just better with the E
Ludens is weak by comparison. Comparing it to ad mythics or tank mythics just makes it look so pathetic. But the again, if you objectively look at items for the past couple years, with a few exceptions ap items in gerneral have always been shit overall
I feel like I haven’t built ludens in ages because of this. Why would I take a minimal bump in damage and miss out on the utility and versatility of the other mythics.?
Lux, Xerath, Vex champs like those. Swain is rather strong right now. Though usually see him with either Liandries or ROA. Never thought of Ludens on him. Seen it on Brand.
Swain main here, ROA liandries radiant and helia are all good on him, never built ludens tbh. dunno why anyone would unless theyre up against a really squishy comp, swain uses the others so much more effectively
Luden work if you figure out that magic pen will be more useful than %health burn, which is insignificant against lifesteal or Resistance or shields.
I feel Swain is in a good spot right now; his Q got some weight to it as it should’ve always had.
ironically i saw LS talk about this with another pro player, and after the math is all said and done in 9/10 situations its more efficient than ludens.
Ludens also gives movement speed and can easily proc multiple times in a fight. For example with brand, he'll do more damage with full combo with ludens than with liandries on targets with less than like 3000 health and part of the reason is that ludens will trigger twice on the same target due to his passive. And then if enemies are close together, it'll bounce to them. On top of all that, it gives you a lot of magic penetration which really adds up when combined sorcs + void staff
AP has higher scaling than ad, so comparing them just makes you look foolish. Most AP items with scaling have lower scaling because average ap items give 70-80 where ad mythics give 70 the rest giving 50-60. Yes there are AD champions with high scaling but they still do less damage than mages overall and mages late game compared to adc's whose primary damage is AA is about even if both players are of the same skill level.
I mean comparing to Galeforce that has an 80 odd second CD whilst ludens has like what 10-15 second ?
You can apply it 3-4 times a teamfight. You ain't galeforcing twice in one fight.
Heartsteel is Melee only right ? So you have to get on top of the enemy and not 1000 units away. Plus you have to be near them for 4 second first.
You see my point they have all advantages and disadvantages.
You realize it isn't about the splash damage that makes it the damage mythic right?
It's the only mana mythic that gives you flat pen on every item. That is what makes it the damage mythic. The splash is mainly for wave clear then actual dps
That's the same I feel with Liandry. Don't get me wrong, the item deals good damage, to everyone but tanks. The burn is a joke on tanks. But the extra damage on targets with high HP is nice.
It's an early game item for early game champions so it isn't supposed to scale that good. Also, it gives wave clear which basically none of the items you mentioned give. I do think luden's should be adjusted tho (not flat out buffed).
Imo, the problem with ludens is a problem many ap items have. It doesn't specialise too hard in one area. This is a bigger problem with ap items in general. AP items are vastly less than ad items but still have to be shared by ap bruisers, ap tanks, artillery mages, burst mages, battle mages who all want slightly different stats and passives. Luden's damage has an 8 second cd and it gives MS and 20 haste. These are properties that should be given to items built on champions who prefer to stay in fights for an extended period of time. However, the lack of scaling on the damage, the pen passive and pen on the item itself lends itself toward burst mages.
So what ends up happening is a "burst" item tries to also be available to be built on non burst champions. The 8 second cd is attractive to artillery mages (and also battlemages and ap bruisers). The movespeed is attractive to battlemages and ap bruisers. The haste is attractive to battle mages and ap bruisers. The pen and early burst damage is attractive to burst mages. The item is just stretched out too far.
If they want to make it a better item for burst champions they can increase the pen, increase the cd of the dmg but increase its amount, maybe lower the ap and haste to make it less attractive to battle mages and remove the ms for similar reasons (which allows the power budget to be put elsewhere). But if riot want to do this, they have to make other items for the champions that just got kicked off of building luden's. Then they'd have to compensate by making other items more specialised too, which would lead to each type of mage or ap champ building the same mythic every game. They have to overhaul the whole ap item system to make way more items for the different classes. Only then can we see a change like that to luden's.
You're comparing a burst damage mythic to tank mythics and DPS mythics. They aren't really in the same class. Better to compare Luden's with Eclipse or Duskblade.
Luden’s is good on burst mages because of flat magic pen, the proc damage is just a bonus. One of those items that doesn’t feel particularly satisfying but is actually very effective.
For a champ like Lux, it's really the best mythic. And the pen is great and all. It isn't garbage in general. I'm just saying from a damage standpoint when compared to other items, it underwhelms. It's best when you're going against low MR opponents. That's all I'm getting at. Not saying it needs to be all powerful, just more equitable when compared to similar items.
Magic pen is exactly as useful against high mr opponents as it is against low mr opponents. If the active proc on ludens was actually good, it’d be bar none the best mythic in the game. It’s already pretty up there simply because it gives literally everything an ap champion needs as well as magic pen which is very difficult to get. As a damage dealing ap champ, ludens and rocket belt are the two gold standards. Anything else is a compromise on damage. Even champs like malz and brand who have big synergies with liandrys will actually lose out on damage after 2-3 items when compared to ludens due to the raw power of magic pen.
The second and third paragraphs are right, but the first one is wrong. The more MR you have, the less effective each MR point is worth, making it so taking away 50 from 200 MR is barely tickling, but taking 50 away from 100 makes it practically true damage.
Diminishing returns on armor/mr is a fallacy that's been around since league first came out, and it isn't true. When you look at armor/mr as 'effective health', you'll notice that the 1st and the 101st point of armor give exactly the same amount of tankiness. This ALSO means that decreasing armor from 501 to 500 is the same effective health damage as decreasing armor from 1 to 0. You might be misconstruing the concept of flat pen being less viable against tanks WHEN COMPARED TO % PEN. It isn't true in isolation that flat pen is not good against tanks. It's only when comparing it to % pen.
The relative increase of effective HP from more armor is decreasing the more armor your have. By that I mean: While going from 0-100 armor gives you the same amount of extra eHP as going from 100-200 Armor, the first increase doubles your tankiness, while the second increase only increases your tankiness by 50%. (By tankiness I pretty much mean the time needed to be killed). I'm pretty convinced that my math is correct (please tell me if I made a mistake), and my take from this is that increasing armor is becoming worse the more you have of it.
And the most important part: health is also in the equation. +50 armor +50% health => 225% effective health (-10 armor => 210%) +200 armor +50% health => 450% effective health (-10 armor => 435%) The first one costs you 6.6 % of your total effective health the second one 3.3%
But why are we looking at damage in terms of a % of total health? Do you look at Demonc Embrace and notice that it's damage deals the same % of total health against squishies as it does against tanks and conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness? No of course not! You are able to mitigate the tankiness and get the same %of damage against them, you are clearly being a bigger detriment to tanks. For that matter we could also look at AP (or AH) in the same way: So I have some kind of Ability ratio, let's say 2.3 in my combo and I buy 100 AP. That is 230 damage in the combo. I am now going to be hitting two different targets, one with 2300 health and one with 4600 health (and they have the same MR) - I deal twice the %hp to one target, does that mean that my build is catered to dealing with squishies or at least lower health targets? Again, obviously no! My build increases damage against both targets and if we looked at the % my damage increase against both targets with the purchase it should be the same. We are just seeing that someone that itemizes tankiness will be less susceptible to getting damage. Shocker I know. There is a bit more going on, but this is already getting too long, so I'll jump ahead. What Pen does is honestly quite simple: Over the course of dealing their entire healthbar in damage you are essentially getting a % of their maxhealth as bonus damage. 10 MPen against 1000 Health deals 100 damage. 10 MPen against 2000 Health deals 200 damage. MPen against squishies is better in so far that all damage is better against squishies: Tanks generally do not care about you dealing X amount of damage to them once, they care about you dealing X amount of damage to them 3 times a second for 10 seconds. So, despite this very long comment: Yes, you often want MPen against squishies, but your reasoning for it was bad and more generally: MPen deals bonus damage against tanks just fine, Voidstaff is just so much better that it makes Shadowflame or Sorcs look like they aren't contributing anything.
>But why are we looking at damage in terms of a % of total health? Because that's what determine how long it will take to kill a target. >Do you look at Demonc Embrace and notice that it's damage deals the same % of total health against squishies as it does against tanks and conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness? Yeah and Duskblade will do a larger % damage to squishy than tank, what's your point? >I am now going to be hitting two different targets, one with 2300 health and one with 4600 health (and they have the same MR) - I deal twice the %hp to one target, does that mean that my build is catered to dealing with squishies or at least lower health targets? Again, obviously no! My build increases damage against both targets and if we looked at the % my damage increase against both targets with the purchase it should be the same. You will take as twice as long to kill the 4600 hp, your build is meant to kill the squishy first. In a teamfight if you can hit both, hit the squishy it will be more effective for the team most of the time.
>Because that's what determine how long it will take to kill a target. That is true, but it doesn't explain why it is a better tool to use than flat damage numbers. >Yeah and Duskblade will do a larger % damage to squishy than tank What are you referring to? Duskblade's flat damage has been removed and is on Prowler's now. Do you mean the %damage increase based on how low the target is? Just it's stats? Not clear at all what you mean by this, not that it matters that much, because... >what's your point? Well I thought I had stated that very clearly: *Do you conclude that it is agnostic to the targets tankiness?* There are two ways to respond to this, either you correctly identify that it isn't agnostic to the tankiness of its target and is in fact more effective when dealing with tanks. In that case you once claim that X%hp on a squishy and on a tank are equivalent and once that they aren't equivalent: So clearly something is wrong with your framework. Alternatively you could say that Demonic Embrace doesn't care about how tanky its target is and is is equally efficient against every kind of opponent. This is just wrong, I'll leave it at that, since I don't think anyone would take this position, if you do want to take that position, go ahead. Altogether I brought up Demonic as a tool to show why %hp on squishies and on tanks are not created equal and as a result why the comparison isn't valid. >You will take as twice as long to kill the 4600 hp, your build is meant to kill the squishy first. You are correct that killing someone with more health takes longer, but get this: that is true for every build. Even if I go Liandry's + Void; my build is clearly designed to deal with tanks, but squishies will still die quicker (some exceptions for draintanks or tanking through heavy shielding). Removing more MR via Void still leaves them with more MR left over. Getting 12.5% bonus damage because they have bonus health via Liandry's doesn't matter when the tanks have 100% more health which obviously has a bigger impact than 12.5% bonus damage. Again: People that itemize tankiness are less susceptible to damage, shocker. The point isn't whether tanks are tankier than squishies (of course they are), it is whether building penetration has a smaller impact on your burst (or DPS) against them than it has on your burst (or DPS) against squishies.
I dont think you quite understand how percentage works. Let's say that the opponents take 5 seconds to kill you with 0 armor, and double that with 100 armor. Then the next 100 armor would increase that number to 15 sec. Even tho its only a "50%" increase from the 10 seconds, in absolute numbers each 100 armor is equally worth 5 sec survival time. Its a linear increase. If however you wanted a doubling in time with each 100 armor, it would be an exponential increase, and the last armor point would be much more worth than the first
I don't understand the point your trying to make. We both agree that armor has a linear increase. I say that linear increases get worse over time (extreme example: If I already would have 10k HP, getting 1k more doesn't change a lot, although doubling it will make a relevant difference). If Armor would be scaling exponentially, it wouldn't be worse relatively but it would be better absolutely, as you say. My point is that absolute increase are irrelevant, and you telling me that I don't understand percentages was not enough to convince me that I'm wrong.
Linear increase does not get worse over time. That is why it is linear... Adding 1k to 10k or 2k gives you the same outcome. It keeps you alive for the same amount of extra seconds. Staying alive for 2 seconds instead of one or staying alive for 11 seconds instead 10 is the same increase and is equally worth.
/u/Theonetrue 's comment demonstrated the point perfectly. You're misunderstanding what people are trying to tell you.
Your math is right, but you cant think in terms of relative scaling. If 200 armor gave you double tankiness compared to 100 armor, then it would have increasing returns (exponential returns in fact). 300 armor would 8x your effective HP. 400 armor would be 16x effective HP. You probably see why this is not balanced whatsoever. Armor/mr have linear returns. Every 100 armor/mr gives you 100% of your health bar as effective HP against the respective damage type. Why do they have linear returns? Because damage also has mostly linear returns. If an ability has an 100% AP ratio, getting 100 ap would make it deal 100 more damage. And so would the next 100 ap. And the next, etc. % damage increase goes down, but numerically the damage increase is the same. Ergo, buying more and more armor/mr does not make it worse. There's just a point where you would rather buy items with more HP since that increases your effective HP more than resist heavy items would. If I were to use the AP analogy, at some points magic pen becomes more valuable for damage than just buying pure AP, since magic pen scales with your AP.
Im trying to answer your paragraphs separatly: 1. I think that it is necessary to look at relative scaling. I get that if we wanted a system which convinces me that every point of armor is not worse than the previous, we could use the system you suggest. I was not trying to suggest that we need a system like the one you suggested, so unfortunately I dont really get the point youre making. Feel free to pick this up again. 2. We agree on that, and I hope you understand thats nothing new to me. 3. I admit that I have not thought about it that way, but ofc youre right here. I dont yet really see how it is directly relevant, because I think it is enough to compare two different states of survivability to one source of DPS (or similar). 4. From my current point of view, "HP becomes better than MR with a lot of MR" and "MR becomes worse with a lot of MR " is pretty much the same. I can not really tell the difference between what I was saying and what you are saying here. Sorry if I missed any connection between the things that you said.
1. The point is that every point of armor gives you the same amount of ehp. No matter if you're going from 0 to 1 armor or 1000 to 1001 armor. Or to put it more simply, every single point of armor increases the time enemies take to kill you by the same amount. 2. Was just for clarity. 3. Well, would you think that AP/AD has diminishing returns? By your own logic they indeed have diminishing returns. Armor/mr scales the way it does because it has to match how AP/AD scale. In the end doesn't matter what you would call it, if armor/mr scaled any better, tank builds would just dominate since they'd become nigh invulnerable. 4. The point is that MR gains are not getting any worse. HP gain is just getting better. Same applies to HP, the more you get, the more MR gain gets better.
You ignored what I said in 1, and yes, buying the 6th bf sword will be way worse than a similar amount of stats of AS/Crit(/AH). Obv bad for other reasons, but it's not really possible to make that example with full items because they generally do give different stats. And if the best thing one can buy is another stat, thats because the 'main' stat became worse.
I think generally that's what people mean, there's just an unsaid "compared to buying a mix of resists and hp" after "buying armor/mr has diminishing returns"
Sure, that's just misusing the term 'diminishing returns'. Diminishing returns implies less bang for your buck, but you get the same +ehp increase for every single armor point you get up to infinity. People just don't think it through and what they imagine would be the linear increase (ehp doubling every 100 armor) is actually an exponential increase. Diminishing returns would kick in if each armor point would give you less and less ehp as you go up in the numbers.
No, it's actually pretty accurate - you proportionately receive a smaller benefit as you invest more in to it. When looking at ehp the percentage increase in overall toughness decreases, and doesn't for resist + hp because they scale with each other.
But that's the same for literally every stat. Resistances/HP aren't unique there.
What you said is correct, however your conclusion is not. Imagine if it wasn't the way you are describing, let's imagine going from 0 to 100 armor doubles your tankiness and then going from 100 to 200 armor doubles your tankiness again. Your claim is that now each point of armor is worth the same amount, but that clearly isn't the case, I go from 2000 eHp to 4000 eHP and the next time from 4000 eHP to 8000 eHP. That is a gain of 2000 or of 4000 eHP, that doesn't seem very linear to me. By definition if we are continuously multiply out tankiness we are scaling exponentially. The most common way to think about it is this: With no resistances your eHP is just your HP. Each point of resistance increases your eHP by 1% of your HP, which is a totally linear behaviour when considering just resistances and penetration. What it does mean is that resistances become better as you get more health and health gets better as you get resistances, so a build like Warmog's, Heartsteel, Anathema's is almost always terrible.
The argument over it has certainly been around since league first came out yes, whether it is true is still up to debate. Technically it is correct to say that resists do not give diminishing returns of effective health, for a specific definition of diminishing returns (which is a whole other debate). The problem is that 'effective health' is an artifical variable used to simplify certain comparisons like "should i buy resists or health", for which it is very useful, but it is not the actual outcome variable. Pointing out it does not have diminishing returns does not actually mean very much in the overall context, it is just a quirk of statistics. If you instead work out effective damage done/reduced then you very much get a pattern of diminishing returns. That is why people refer to diminshing returns; because in the actual context of the game resists do suffer from it.
What do you mean by "It isn't true in isolation that flat pen is not good against tanks?" This is completely irrelevant. The whole point of comparing these different stats is to figure out which item/stat is the optimal buy over other items/stats in each situation. Not only is it worse compared to %pen, its also worse when compared to ability haste or ap. So if you ignore the item passives, the stats on items like cosmic drive, everfrost, liandries, and rabadons will be better and better compared to mpen stats as the enemies get more mr. It usually isn't by much, but there still are diminishing returns when compared to other stats, which is the only thing that actually matters.
Well, the conversation started with OP trying to argue that flat pen isn't good against tanks, which is a myth. In the example used, we're talking about Luden's, which has no %magic pen equivalent, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here? These stats all scale with each other multiplicatively, so what you're saying isn't actually true either. Ability haste is best when you already have high AP and magic pen, similar to how attack speed makes your AD and crit chance more valuable, or how health is good when you have high resists already. Magic pen works the same, because you can picture it as simply having more AP.
But he's right. flat pen IS worse against tanks because obtaining it includes the opportunity cost of not getting an item which has percentage magic pen. Also it's just mathematically true. Assuming a base hit of 100 magic damage and 50 flat pen, the pen deals 33.33(2d.p) extra damage to the 50MR target 6.67(2d.p) extra damage to the 200 MR target The decrease however is consistent in terms of reducing effective health. It's true that armour and MR scale linearly in terms of effective health, but scaling both resistances and health leads to a exponential scaling. Taking into account that damage also scales exponentially with multiple stats and variables, and a linear scaling actually becomes regressive in terms of real survivability.
> an item which has percentage magic pen. Which mythic does this exactly? If we're talking about opportunity cost, you have to compare it to the example (luden's) which is a mythic. You COULD argue we can buy void staff first, but I don't think you're going to do that.
Liandrys gives %15 damage bonus which vs high mr targets will always be maxed out since you're assuming they built mr+HP items, and that %15 damage bonus will always outperform any flat pen provided by ludens vs high mr targets. You can do the match to figure out how little mr you need for ludens to win again but this point completely refutes your point that there is no other mythic good vs high mr targets.
Can you explain your math? I'm not challenging you, but I have a completely different understanding of it though it wouldnt surprise me if I was wrong.
The formula for damage if MR >= 0 is: dealt damage = pre-mitigation damage * (100 / (100 + MR)) (armour is identical, just replace MR with armour) Each point of Mpen reduces the target's MR *in the calculation* by 1. ---- Scenario 1a: We hit for 100 magic damage, with *no* mpen. The target has 50 MR. 100 * (100 / (100 + 50)) = 100 * 2/3 = 66.666.... 66 (2/3) real damage taken by the target. ----- Scenario 1b: Now we obtain 50 mpen without attaining AP, meaning we do the same hit, but treat the target as if they had 0 MR. 100 * (100 / 100 + 0) = 100 100 damage taken by the target. We're effectively doing true damage. ----- Scenario 2a: We hit for 100 magic damage, with no mpen. The target has 200 MR. 100 * (100 / 100 + 200) = 100 * 1/3 = 33.333333... 33 (1/3) real damage taken by the target. --- Scenario 2b: 100 hit, 50 mpen. Target has 200 MR. This means our hit treats the target as if they had 150 MR. 100 * (100 / 100 + 150) = 100 * 2/5 = 40 40 real damage taken by the target. ---- Scenario 1: 50 Mpen increased our damage from 66.666... to 100. Increase of 33.333... (50%) Scenario 2: 50 Mpen increased our damage from 33.333... to 40. Increase of 6.6666.... (20%). Ergo conclusio: flat Mpen is worse the highest the target's MR is.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the actual game and whether or not luden's is good compared to other items. Itemization in league is complex because of the mythic system, item passives, multiple stats on each item, and how it all interacts with each champions kit. But you're wrong though when you say that flat magic pen not being good against tanks is a myth. It's easily provable in a hypothetical where you can only choose between increasing flat magic pen, or increasing any other mage stat, like ap or ability haste. Let's say that an enemy champ has 1000 hp with 20 mr. This means that they can take 1200 magic damage before dying. If your champion can deal 100 dps, it takes 12 seconds to kill the enemy champ. Increasing magic pen by 20 allows you to kill them 2 seconds faster. Increasing ap or ability haste by x amount raises your dps by 10%, allowing you to kill them about 1 second faster. When the enemy has low mr the flat magic pen clearly outperforms the other stats. But if we look at a situation where its 1000 hp with 230 mr, its completely different. Increasing flat magic pen by the same amount decreases the time it takes to kill from 33 seconds to 31. Increasing ap or ability haste by the same amount decreases the time to kill from 33 seconds to 30. When the enemy has high mr the ap or ah clearly outperform the magic pen. When it comes to choosing which item is best, the actual stats the item has is only a small part of the decision. Often times the item passive will have a much bigger impact on if an item is good. But please stop spreading false information though, the math undeniably says that flat mpen, IN COMPARISON TO OTHER STATS LIKE AH OR AP, gets worse and worse as the enemies build more mr.
Bad at maths AND league gg
mr does have diminishing returns as a % eHP increase. This is why there's a HP to resistances sweetspot you want to hit depending on the enemies damage composition, buying the first 100 mr is better than the next 200 because you would have become tankier by buying hp instead. The same is true for pen, buying flat pen is better against low mr targets but ap or % pen is better against high mr.
The diminishing return is very real Because you have to compare it to other options like AD/AP , cooldown, attack speed, crit, % pen. You mentionned % pen, but other options may give more dps than flat pen if you do the calcul. There's also a diminishing return of armor/mr relative to HP.
No, the 1st and 101st point of armor and MR do not provide the same effectiveness. If I have about 70 or 80 armor (can't remember the exact amount), that gives 50% physical damage reduction before armor shredding/piercing effects come in. So for someone with 0 lethality/armor pen, I get the full 50% physical damage reduction. However, to get another 25% physical damage reduction, I would need to add another 200 armor on it. Going from 0-70 and 70-270 is not the same leap
Yes it does. Each point of mr or armor increases Effective hp by 1%. Effective hp is the amount of damage you would have to do if the mr simply added hp and your spells did true damage. So, fighting a 2k hp target with 50mr, you would need to do the same amount of damage as to a 0 mr target with 3000 hp. At 75 mr and 2k hp, Effective hp rises to 3500. You still gain 20 points of Effective hp per point of magic resist, but though you gained 25mr, 3500 is only 16.66% more than 3000. That is what the diminishing return on %reduction means. Your Effective hp increases by the same amount with each point 1% of your actual hp, but with each point that flat growth is a smaller percentage of your total Effective hp.
https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/6hhh0o/reminder_resistance_dont_have_diminishing_returns/ https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/luuhx4/mythbusting_x_has_diminishing_returns/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/h1qpp/attention_there_is_no_such_thing_as_diminishing/ There are more examples, these are just the first few I found on 2 seconds of googling. Visualise the difference between 0% dmg reduction and 1%. Now visualise the difference between 99% and 100%. 100% is *infinitely* bigger than 99%. It's the same % difference, but one is so large it's quite literally unobtainable, while the other is quite simply 1% reduction in damage. So that we don't have to do brain tricks to try and visualise the difference, we created the concept of effective health to do it mathematically instead, which is what I referred to in the post you responded to.
Oh yeah the difference between multiplicative and additive damage reduction i forgot. You're right
Common sense test: If you have 5k gold at lvl 1, will you take physical damage attacks better if you buy 0 hp and stack 6 chain vests, or if you buy 1 giants belt and 5 chain vests? Obviously the latter. So your claim that it's a fallacy fails even the common sense test. Actual reason: Your standard is effective hp *per gold*. Not effective hp per armor. Your opportunity cost is hp that the gold can buy. You're not just adding armor in a vacuum.
If you have 1000 hp and you have 0 mr you have 1000ehp against magic dmg. Lets say you add 100 mr. Now, you have 2000ehp against magic damage. This first 100 mr you added gave you a 100% increase in overall tankiness against magic damage. Adding a second 100 mr, making your total mr 200, gives you 3000ehp. This second 100 mr you added gave you a 50% increase in overall tankiness. Essentially the more mr you have the less of a % increase, 1 mr is going to make. Magic pen works the other way round where if an enemy is low mr the % increase in dmg from say 5 pen is going to be higher if the target has 40mr than if the target has 100 mr.
Depends on what your goal is. Each MR point is just as effective when considering the amount of effective health. The multiplier is linear. In contrast, it has decreasing effectiveness in percentage of effective health. So taking away 50 MR from someone at 50 MR takes away 100% of their raw hp in effective hp, same as 50 compared to 200. But it only takes away 50% of their effective hp if they had 50, while it takes away 20% if they had 200.
The equation for armor and mr is such a way that each point is 1% effective health against that type of damage. At 50 mr you take 66%. At 100 it's 50%. At 150 40%. some math with 1000 as the baseline. You'd take 1500 magic damage to die the first number. 2000 at the second, and 2500 on the last. If your damage isn't penetrating enough with ludens, sorcs and let's say void staff, then they probably are very vulnerable to your team's ad.
No. It stacks linearly as an increase to base stats. 200mr is a 200% increase to your base resistance
Magic Pen is extremely important because it has the same relationship with lethality interacting with armor when you get % magic pen. This makes ludens (while a squishy dominating mythic) actually much stronger against tanks than most lethality mythics in comparison because not only is magic resistance pretty bad right now, you can get FAR more value from magic pen than lethality because it's always a lower stat and you have a much higher % pen item
> Magic pen is exactly as useful against high mr opponents as it is against low mr opponents. Yes, but actually no. +1 MR = +1% effective health. If you get sorc shoes, it's -18MR. If they have 1,000 hp and 40 MR they have 1,400 effective hp. Sorc shoes changes it to 1,220. If they have 1,000 hp and 100 MR they have 2,000 effective hp. Sorc shoes changes it to 1,820. So yes, you're technically right, it's "as useful" in both cases because 18 mpen reduces effective health multiplier by 18% (in this example: -180 hp.) But: the **proportional value** of that -180 hp is lower. 1,220/1400 is 87%. Meaning that your sorc shoes lowered their total effective health by 13%. 1,820/2000 = 91%. Meaning that you have lowered their effective health by only 9%. **The more magic resist they have, the lower the % of effective health you are reducing**. And that's not even factoring in health (because tanks usually have more MR *and* more health) which makes it even worse.
That’s not true, flat magic pen is more effective against low mr targets (until mpen >= mr). The MR formula is: Percent magic damage taken (or dealt) = 100/(100+MR). Note that this MR is effective MR, i.e after mpen. Let’s use ‘y’ as shorthand for ‘percent of base magic damage dealt’. Now for some calculus. y = 100/(100+MR) -> y = 100(100+MR)^-1 Let u = 100 + MR -> y = 100u^-1 du/dMR = 1, dy/du = -100u^-2 = -100/(u^2) dy/dMR = dy/du * du/dMR = -100/(u^2) dy/dMR = -100/[(100+MR)^2] ‘dy/dMR’ means ‘how much y changes when MR changes’. From that equation, dy/dMR is always negative, meaning that MR decreasing will always increase y. MR decreasing will also decrease dy/dMR (make it more negative), meaning that y will increase more quickly as MR decreases. Adding mpen is equivalent to decreasing MR, so it’s evident that mpen increases your damage more against lower MR targets. EDIT: fixed a sign
I spend as much of my life trying to avoid doing math as possible, so I'll let the wiki do it for me. https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_resistance?so=search#Stacking_magic_resistance From the wiki: "... each point of magic resist increases the effective health pool against magic damage by 1%, formally: Effective health = ( 1 + (R/100) ) × Nominal health Example: A unit with 60 magic resistance has 160% of its maximum health in its effective health, so if the unit has 1000 maximum health, it will take 1600 magic damage to kill it. By definition, magic resist **does not give diminishing returns of effective health**. Each additional point of magic resist increases the effective health pool (against magic damage) by 1% of your maximum health. This is not changed by any amount of magic resist already held."
That’s just a different interpretation of the same maths. For the defender, who wants to know ‘how much damage can I take before dying’, the effective health interpretation makes sense. For the attacker, saying ‘20 MPen means I reduce my target’s effective HP by 20% of their actual HP’ is awkward and unintuitive. It makes more sense to say ‘20 MPen multiplies my damage by a certain amount’. That multiplier is larger at lower MR values. If your target has 20 MR, 20 Mpen increases your magic damage against them by 20%. If your target has 120 MR, 20 Mpen increases your magic damage against them by 10%.
Why are we looking at %damage? It falls into the same problems as %damage reduction. As you say, effective health is unintuitive and seems to go contrary to the normal logic of this stuff. This is why we created it. Our brains aren't wired to comprehend the way %reductions work. Effective health unequivocally proves that there are no diminishing returns on armor/MR, which by extensions proves that every single point of flat pen is as valuable as the last, and is always equally as effective no matter how high their resists are. What you say is true on the %damage increases, but it falls into the same trap. That 10% damage increase is exactly as valuable as the 20% damage increase in your example. It's hard to picture it, so we have effective health to mathematically prove it.
> Why are we looking at %damage? It falls into the same problems as %damage reduction. When you buy flat magic pen or lethality, your goal likely isn't to slightly-more-aggressively tickle the targets stacking resists. The champions who buy these stats are typically interested in being able one-shot something in one ability rotation, rather than increasing their overall damage done over a longer period of time. This is why I dislike the tunnel vision on effective health. Just because something is mathematically true does not mean it's true in a practical sense. League doesn't play out like a spreadsheet where you measure these things over time.
> What you say is true on the %damage increases, but it falls into the same trap. That 10% damage increase is exactly as valuable as the 20% damage increase in your example. It’s hard to picture it, so we have effective health to mathematically prove it. If you do the math on effective health you will reach the same conclusion. Yes, you will *remove the same flat amount* of effective health. But that is less valuable against champions that have higher effective health. As a real world example: if I take $5 from you and you have $10, I just took half your money. If I take $5 from you and you have 1 million, I took .0005% of your money. The $5 is the same amount in both cases, but it's far more impactful if you have less money.
Using +% damage just simplifies the maths. I’ll do one with some numbers for you. Say my spell does 500 raw magic damage. It hits four targets, one with 20 MR, one with 70 MR, one with 120 MR, and one with 1,000 MR. The 20 MR target takes 500*100/(100+20) = 416.7 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 500 damage (+83.3). The 70 MR target takes 291.1 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 333.3 damage (+39.2). The 120 MR target takes 227.3 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 250 damage (+22.7). A target with 1,000 MR would take 45.5 damage. If I had 20 Mpen, it would take 46.3 damage (+0.8).
So following your interpretation AP/AD, health and attack speed all have diminishing returns? If I have 100 AP then buying 50 more is a 50% increase, but if I have 500 AP it's only 10%. Same for most other stats in the game.
No, I’d describe that as linear returns. If you hold all other variables constant, one point of AD increases your damage by the same amount, no matter how much AD you already have. If you hold all other variables constant, one point of MR increases your damage reduction vs magic by less than the previous point. That’s diminishing returns. But, it increases your effective health vs magic by the same amount with each point, which is linear returns. One point of MPen increases the damage you do by more than the previous point, which is compounding returns.
And the fact that your way of thinking leads to the obvious contradiction that the same stat has diminishing, linear AND compounding returns doesn't make you reconsider anything? If the person building MR gets linear returns, then building mPen, which is just negative MR, must also have linear returns. Alternatively, if building mPen has compounding returns then building MR must have diminishing returns. Any other interpretation is just nonsense.
What makes it a contradiction? MR gives you different types of returns on different things. It gives you linear returns on effective health, aka ‘how much raw damage can I take before I die?’. It gives you diminishing returns on damage mitigated, aka ‘what portion of raw damage do I actually take?’. (Compounding returns on mpen is just because mpen is the opposite of MR). These are two different things that have different implications. To demonstrate, back when I used to play WoW, tanks cared about both eHP and damage mitigation. A tank with high eHP but low mitigation would easily soak up big bursts of damage and have health leftover, but they’d also require a lot of healing and drain their healers’ mana quicker. A tank with low eHP but high mitigation would require less healing, but ran the risk of getting oneshot by a parry thrash or something. Which of those two tanks has more ‘tankiness’? Well, it depends on how threatening the boss’s damage spikes are, and how much mana your healers have. In League, it’s the high eHP one for sure, so it’s reasonable to say ‘tankiness = eHP’. But mitigation still exists, and MR still gives diminishing returns on mitigation.
Not quite true, once you get voidstaff, flat magic pen loses effectiveness because it is calculated before the % reduction. For instance, at 250 mr, void reduces it by 100, leaving you against 150 Mr. If you have max ludens plus sorc, that is 44 flat pen taken first, reducing to 206. Now void only reduces 82, leaving you contending with 124 mr. Only 26 of your 44 pen was effective.
From the wiki: "Magic penetration and magic resistance reduction are considered in the following order: * Magic resistance reduction, flat * Magic resistance reduction, percentage * Magic penetration, percentage * Magic penetration, flat" As you can see, what you're talking about is only true for magic resist reductions. Magic pen is calculated last, and does not reduce the effectiveness of your void staff.
Oh, I have thought wrong for 10 years then. Thank you for correcting me.
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I remember it was earlier : void staff wiki V1.0.0.152 Magic penetration reduced to 35% from 40%. Void Staff is now applied before flat magic penetration.
Void staff is applied before flat mpen. Flat shred is applied first, but that’s just corki, rell, and abyssal.
In a high mr game it's better to go void staff. The comparison shouldn't be magic pen vs no pen but magic pen vs different item with same gold
This. Luden's + Sorcs is pretty much true damage to anyone who didnt itemize MR.
? do you really want more splash damage so they need to decrease the pen to balance? view it as RoA, it's there to give stat, everything else is just a bonus
If Luden's has best in class damage on the proc as well as the flat magic pen it would be the best item in the game. Obviously the power budget for Luden's is in the pen so there's no way the effect can be on the same level as other items.
Well you have to compare how easy it is to proc and and etc aswell. You can proc it was easier than heartsteel for example and heartsteel has a good proc DMG sure but in general this time give you 0 DMG, only health. Ludens gives a lot of AP more than some of the other AP mythical and pen. Which equals more DMG. If you go heartsteel you will deal less DMG on mages cause you have no AP, so it is not only about the activ. I mena we used to have a strong activ on an AP item in the past called deathfire grasp i think.if you combine a activ on AP item that deals high amount of DMG with good stats then it becomes to op you can't have both cause mages already have burst so high burst activ with high stats would mean you oneshoit everything.i mean people used to play AP Janna that throw broken the item was cause you could q deathfire grasp w delete someone.
You're misunderstanding I think. The point is that the power budget assigned to the active is not the same across all items. Just because the damage numbers you see the Luden's active doing are low, does not mean that the item is weak. Because it very well could be that the overall damage you are doing because of the pen is still best-in-slot.
Luden aint weak, u first of all cant compare ap items to tank or ad items, tanks might deal dmg with heartsteal but only once and ad champs cant get 1000 ad like ap can. Ludens is in a great spot rn and needs no changes at all. Ik its hard to see everything getting changed rn except for mages (had the tank changed at the start of the season, adc changes now, assassins too etc) but ap items are completely fine. If something needs a change than nerf roa. Thats it
Although it falls under the burst category, ludens is for waveclear. It helps in champion combat mostly because of the magic pen it gives and pretty high stats, but for pure burst damage night harvester is better. However, the tradeoff from ludens to night harvester is mana and magic pen for more damage and more ability haste, so take your pick.
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> manslplained ludens ???
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I don’t think you understand what “mansplain” means.
If you weren’t so loud and stupid people wouldn’t “mansplain” you as much lmao
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The worst part of these "new" buzzwords is giving idiots extra tools for being even dumber. You're here just completely derailing any sensible discussion on the topic itself. Go troll somewhere else.
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how do you mansplain something when nobody knows the others' gender and when OP literally asked a question.
I think it makes sense for Heartsteel to deal more item damage, considering also the cooldown of the two and that Ludens provides additional movement speed. Heartsteel is meant for tanky champs since it scales with HP. Health in itself doesn't do damage obviously, and heartsteel simply acts as a way to convert it. Ludens on the other hand scales with AP. If you're using Ludens on an AP champ (which you most likely would), it would be OP if Ludens deals around the same amount of damage as Heartsteel because champs who use Ludens already have a way to make use of AP as damage. I play a lot of Xerath, and Ludens is always my first item. I had games where my Ludens-enhanced Q deals about 70-90% of the opponent's squishy (I remember doing 90% to a Seraphine once). It's that strong because my Q is already enhanced by AP anyway. Imagine now if Ludens scales as much as Heartsteel. It would make a lot of mages broken. Not to mention it only has 10 sec cd, and is reduced whenever you use an ability.
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as for Liandrys, the percent health damage can be neutralized with enough resist. And it doesn't help that Liandrys add Ability Haste instead of Magic Penet as mythic bonus (which if you would notice, Ludens has). In theory Liandries would do more damage, but half of its benefits come in the form of DoT, which tbf has its place with battlemages and DoT mages, but outside of that the damage provides time for the opponent to counter it with defensives. Ludens' damage is more burst in form, and it could just be the extra push you needed for your combo to kill the target. This isn't to say one is better than the other, but it's a response to the claim that Liandrys does much better than Ludens in terms of damage. Each of them has their strengths, and it would depend on the champion and matchup.
I feel like Ludens isn't underpowered, just the other items are overpowered.
That may be it. It just feels so underwhelming compared to others nowadays. Like its been power crept.
Remember when the original's Ludens came out? It was considered incredibly strong, and it wasn't much different than what it is now. Now you have items all around you doing like 1/3 of the dmg of a champion. Ludens is just a remnant of a better time
Correct regarding tank items.
The mov. speed Ludens gives is very underrated IMO. Cant count how many times it saved me when I was playing Syndra but maybe its also cause she doesnt have cast time in every skill like other mages.
Typically I don't mind cast times in mages.... except for the self root on Lux Shield that annoys the fk out of me. Thing gets me killed more than it saves me lol.
Honestly it would be a nice QoL change to her w to have no cast time. I don’t even like the champ but an ability like that it would be good.
Would make sense. It's supposed to be a shielding ability but typically does more harm than good. I'd honestly like her W to be reworked into something else
The main reason it works for burst mages is the magic pen, the actual proc damage is negligible. Also your math isn't right because the proc damage splashes to 3 enemies. So assuming there are enemies close enough it does atleast 300 damage before adding any ap ratio.
Other items have the same thing. Take Liandries you hit an AOE ability which most champs that build it have you can hit every champion and nearby minons/jg camps. You're right on the magic pen though. Just multiple target thing is applicable to a lot of other items as well, which is why I was going single target only for each.
But that's the thing, to apply liandry on many targets, you need to hit many targets. Luden procs even If you hit Just one enemy, it's a Splash damage. The biggest thing going for luden is it's ridiculous magic pen and shit ton of AP, it's a stat stick. Also you were comparing luden to other AD itens, you need to remember that armor gives a higher % damage reduction on top of most characters having more armor than MR. It's really easy to get 100 armor and half ALL physical damage, and while you can still build MR, it's not as common as armor.
Force of Nature and laugh as most mages land all their abilities with every magic pen item and do all of 100 damage to your 5k hp.
People actually taking the time to explain things to you and you stay in delulu mode. Crazy mindset. FoN got hard nerfed this patch too.
I don't see your point. Force of Nature is supposed to do that, It be weird If a Full MR tank got shrreded Just because the enemy has a luden and a pen boot. What I meant was on normal circunstances against enemies that aren't a tank, cuz a tank is always going to be hard to kill unless your name is vayne or fiora.
My point is you build that one item and most mages can't do diddly squat to you. Don't disagree with you on the Ludens and sorc shoes thing. Or tank thing really. I'm just saying I've had every single pen item going against a Cho with only FoN for MR and did almost no damage, I know that burst mages aren't supposed to do much to tanks but nothing at all is kinda wtf at the same time. So if you want to cuck every mage who doesn't have %hp damage, just build FoN and maybe Stoneplate if the rest of your team is feeding you're pretty well set. One to two items, and you pretty much make it so the mage in question doesnt get to play the game. That's all.
That's why they nerfed it. Though I don't think it changed much tbh. You pretty much need an adc to kill tanks at all. Except for swain and cass, maybe. I guess thats the tradeoff, though, as most adcs don't have as much cc,range,poke,or zone control as mages can provide.
Tanks do well against burst champs, crazy. Champs like Amumu completely hamstring assassins and burst mages, it’s just how it is. DPS champs shit on tanks as a result.
Mages have been really strong for a while idk why you are complaining. Buy Rabadons 3rd and you will have 1 shot threat.
I dont think mages are strong when pro teams are playing tank mid almost every game. Maybe in 13.10 mages are better. The biggest advantage to having magic dmg is just that enemies won't build full armor. However, adcs and most ad champs can build pen/bortk/divine and deal with tanks. Building liandries doesn't even really deal with tanks for mages like any ad champ can. My opinion is it's fine. You can't expect to kill the 5k hp force of nature tank as syndra and zoe, so you need to play with your adc and look to burst squisher targets. If you kill the enemy adc or fed enemy jungle by 1shotting them as these champs, it can outright win the fight/game. However it's also a problem of how to work mages into the game like this, if tanks can just go mid and tank all your damage while clearing the wave and shoving you under tower where can mages even exist in the game? There aren't very many that are safe toplane, and considering the strength of adcs, you aren't sending them botlane very often. I think maybe mages need more mana. It should be possible to force a tank out of lane at least before running oom. Playing a mage vs most tanks feels hopeless right now, you are just stuck under tower and hope your botlane wins, if you manage to take lane control or shove the wave out you are probably oom and can't impact the game very much.
idk if you've ever played other roles but Tanks being a problem is not a mage problem its a tank problem. Tanks are dominant through most of the game until ADC hits full build or if they fall behind. Mages have been good in the mid lane for the past 3 years. Mages were never meant to bring down tanks and used range and wave clear to beat them in lane if it ever came to it. Now tanks like Sion and Mundo can hit insane AD amounts with 1 item because of how tanks are. Riot if anything need to nerf tank damage, not buff mages.
Ah the classic "I refuse to buy Void Staff" crybaby.
Just for your information, voidstaff did fuck all to old FoN, now that its bonus is bonus Mr it does work. But voidstaff did not reduce %magic dmg reduce!
Yes mathematically Void Staff lost 25% of its effectiveness, but so what? The other 75% of damage not mitigated by that passive still was affected. You still need to be able to deal damage one way or the other as a damage dealer. Staying in the lurch isn't gonna help you. What's the better alternative? Crying in all chat? Starting a rant post on Reddit?
Try to consider the whole item, not just one part of it. Also try to only compare it with items it's most similar to, because there's a whole lot of factors to consider. Let's take liandrys for an example because they both offer almost the same stats(the difference is pretty big actually which is 6 pen), cost the same price, and almost similar item components. One of their primary differences is the mythic passive. Luden's 5 pen is actually insane compared to most items(if not the best in the whole game), and certainly compared to 5 ability haste. That alone is the reason why I tend to build it. Also consider the fact that luden's offers movement speed and its cooldown is reducible by item haste and ability casts. Luden's also has more waveclear. Rocketbelt has no mana and it has a 40 sec cooldown. Luden's has a less than 10 cooldown. Avoid comparing it to ad items because no champion really chooses between luden's and stormrazor. The comparison you're doing is literally just a single factor out of so many others.
I really feel that ludens lacks identity as a mythic rn
Most of those are no longer mythical anymore and have been adjusted to be hybrid from my understanding
Yes which is why I didn't specify mythic only. And kinda serves the point. They all give more.
If ludens would do higher damage than liandries, no one would buy liandries. Ludens is the burst mythic, liandries is the dps mythic.
Ppl tend to forget that ludens is also a gameplay enhancing item, move speed procing off minions like fleet footed is like extremly op and undervalued in general, it makes ur champ completely different and allows u to hit and not get hit
Luden proc cooldown is lower than any other item (10 seconds). It also reduces its cooldown on hitting spells (up to 3 seconds per spell). The most important part is also the magic pen. I don't know what you're on about
It can hit up to 4 champ/minions, has on demand move speed bonus (unlike nharvest) extremely low cd...but agreed a 30-50 dmg bonus would be nice
Why are you comparing a 10s or lower cd poke damage to items with 40s+ cooldown. Stormrazor deals 25(+65% AD)(50% AP) damage. At 1 item that's ~110 damage. Ludens at 1 item deals ~110 damage. The AP ratio is pretty low tho ur right and the damage number by itself will fall off but I believe the mythic passive and other magic pen is supposed to make it still scale. Out of crown and everfrost it's def the option with the most damage. According to leagueofitems tierlist it's doing fine compared to other AP items. Some AD items are just hard outperforming AP items atm but dw they're getting nerfed next patch.
Saying Liandrys is better than Ludens is like saying Armor is better than MR. Ludens does more damage than Liandrys to squishy targets, while the other to tanky targets. As always, you choose your items according to what you're facing and if you face a lot of tanks, Ludens will not be your prime choice.
a lot of mages can proc it multiple times with one spell rotation... and the movespeed boost is good for kiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDJyQqdgaqo
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? did i say that? i was just pointing out that the dmg can proc multiple times making it more in line with the alternatives
Ludens is for wave clear not burst. You build it because it gets you through lane phase with plenty of mana and helps you clear waves upon completion, then gives magic pen for legendaries which is a strong stat and hard to come by otherwise in the game. Night harvester has more ap, more ability haste, a higher damage proc and a bigger speed buff to keep you on a target or get you out after bursting someone. The problem is the NH build path cripples your landing phase on any mage with mana and puts you in a weird situation where you likely won't be able to burst anyone because you'll be behind.
Says right on the item placard when you open it "Burst Damage"
Every time I build Ludens on Karthus Jungle I groan from how slow my Jungle clears is without Liandries Even in lane Liandries burn is just better with the E
Liandries just is better on almost every champ. Burn stacking in particular is quite strong.
Into squishy teams the magic pen will be much more valuable than the passive burn
This is true.
Ludens is weak by comparison. Comparing it to ad mythics or tank mythics just makes it look so pathetic. But the again, if you objectively look at items for the past couple years, with a few exceptions ap items in gerneral have always been shit overall
I feel like I haven’t built ludens in ages because of this. Why would I take a minimal bump in damage and miss out on the utility and versatility of the other mythics.?
You use Luden with which champs op. I use it with Swain and it feels fine.
Lux, Xerath, Vex champs like those. Swain is rather strong right now. Though usually see him with either Liandries or ROA. Never thought of Ludens on him. Seen it on Brand.
Swain main here, ROA liandries radiant and helia are all good on him, never built ludens tbh. dunno why anyone would unless theyre up against a really squishy comp, swain uses the others so much more effectively
Luden work if you figure out that magic pen will be more useful than %health burn, which is insignificant against lifesteal or Resistance or shields. I feel Swain is in a good spot right now; his Q got some weight to it as it should’ve always had.
ironically i saw LS talk about this with another pro player, and after the math is all said and done in 9/10 situations its more efficient than ludens.
ludens passive is for if your premier waveclear ability leaves the backwave at low hp and doesn't have enough damage to wipe them in one go
Stattikk has better ap scaling on It than ludens or liche
Ludens also gives movement speed and can easily proc multiple times in a fight. For example with brand, he'll do more damage with full combo with ludens than with liandries on targets with less than like 3000 health and part of the reason is that ludens will trigger twice on the same target due to his passive. And then if enemies are close together, it'll bounce to them. On top of all that, it gives you a lot of magic penetration which really adds up when combined sorcs + void staff
Good base stats, proc hits 4 targets with a low cd (and its not a skillshot like some other Mythics), gives movespeed and scaling MPen.
AP has higher scaling than ad, so comparing them just makes you look foolish. Most AP items with scaling have lower scaling because average ap items give 70-80 where ad mythics give 70 the rest giving 50-60. Yes there are AD champions with high scaling but they still do less damage than mages overall and mages late game compared to adc's whose primary damage is AA is about even if both players are of the same skill level.
You are right i should try heartsteel xerath
It's a weaker version of protobelt for champions that need mana
Ludens slaps with burst mages. My go-to for Taliyah unless I get a shitty match up. Makes lane clear not as awful
I mean comparing to Galeforce that has an 80 odd second CD whilst ludens has like what 10-15 second ? You can apply it 3-4 times a teamfight. You ain't galeforcing twice in one fight. Heartsteel is Melee only right ? So you have to get on top of the enemy and not 1000 units away. Plus you have to be near them for 4 second first. You see my point they have all advantages and disadvantages.
You realize it isn't about the splash damage that makes it the damage mythic right? It's the only mana mythic that gives you flat pen on every item. That is what makes it the damage mythic. The splash is mainly for wave clear then actual dps
That's the same I feel with Liandry. Don't get me wrong, the item deals good damage, to everyone but tanks. The burn is a joke on tanks. But the extra damage on targets with high HP is nice.
It's an early game item for early game champions so it isn't supposed to scale that good. Also, it gives wave clear which basically none of the items you mentioned give. I do think luden's should be adjusted tho (not flat out buffed). Imo, the problem with ludens is a problem many ap items have. It doesn't specialise too hard in one area. This is a bigger problem with ap items in general. AP items are vastly less than ad items but still have to be shared by ap bruisers, ap tanks, artillery mages, burst mages, battle mages who all want slightly different stats and passives. Luden's damage has an 8 second cd and it gives MS and 20 haste. These are properties that should be given to items built on champions who prefer to stay in fights for an extended period of time. However, the lack of scaling on the damage, the pen passive and pen on the item itself lends itself toward burst mages. So what ends up happening is a "burst" item tries to also be available to be built on non burst champions. The 8 second cd is attractive to artillery mages (and also battlemages and ap bruisers). The movespeed is attractive to battlemages and ap bruisers. The haste is attractive to battle mages and ap bruisers. The pen and early burst damage is attractive to burst mages. The item is just stretched out too far. If they want to make it a better item for burst champions they can increase the pen, increase the cd of the dmg but increase its amount, maybe lower the ap and haste to make it less attractive to battle mages and remove the ms for similar reasons (which allows the power budget to be put elsewhere). But if riot want to do this, they have to make other items for the champions that just got kicked off of building luden's. Then they'd have to compensate by making other items more specialised too, which would lead to each type of mage or ap champ building the same mythic every game. They have to overhaul the whole ap item system to make way more items for the different classes. Only then can we see a change like that to luden's.
You're comparing a burst damage mythic to tank mythics and DPS mythics. They aren't really in the same class. Better to compare Luden's with Eclipse or Duskblade.
Luden's primary objective is never burst damage. When it was first introduced long time ago it was branded AP Statikk Shiv as a waveclear item.
Heartsteel has to be stacked, Luden's just charges by itself like an Energized effect.