Yeah as a point per point Mpen is better than AP, most spells have 300ish base damage and only get somewhere around 70% of your AP as actual damage.

HOWEVER, Your AP can easily reach 500ish by the end of a dominion game, Mpen definitely can't do that xP

However MPen is far cheaper than Ap and wa more useufl early game since you can jsut sell that haunting guise and get other thing late game nstead of getting items you don't even need on the first place, i mean i see the value on getting giant's belt some times for my rilayis but i would prefer the haunting guse since it is more useful early to mid game and then i can sell it for other thing when it suse falls off.

You're right, excellent catch.

having a lot of ap actually makes m.pen more attractive since it gives a relative increase to your total magic damage (not just base).

Posted from his smartphone. Alternatively, shift keys are broken. /trollface

No, that's just rickless, never capitalizes anything. or maybe you know that and that's what the /trollface was for, I didn't quite follow

Mpen works as a percentage reduction to your target's effective health, AP is more damage added. Mpen > AP when it reduces more than the damage AP gives. Since you don't have a full burst pre-6, and you scale pretty strongly with levels thanks to large base increases in each skill, this generally leads to Mpen being more effective. I'd have to break out notepad and get craftin' to figure out when the breakeven is, and I'm not in the mood to do that though.

Having full CDR Gylphs gives approx 5% CDR....

If you spec in offense masteries (Archmage) and plan on getting a Deathcap, that 27.54 ap@18 is actually 37.179 ap@18.

Just food for thought.

Sorry to sound upset but,

Magic penetration in this game is abysmal (no pun intended).

Haunting Guise is Riot's eye sore/redhead step child of mage items.
(Can't believe they removed the CDR on it at one time, it still doesn't build into anything and it is more expensive than the Brutalizer that stacks with the Ghostblade. *Yeah Armor Pen. vs. MR Pen.)

Abysmal Scepter offers some defense and is in the right direction but its range of area effect is situational and cost is just expensive.

That leaves stacking Sorcerer boots and you wouldn't believe how many players feel that is a trollish build.

The famed MR items rock thou:
Quicksilver Sash - 56 MR with a clicky effect that is better than cleanse
Odyn's Veil - 50 MR, 10% Magic damage reduction And a clicky nuke

Hell, I would settle for the MR on JUST ONE of the above items, either, pretty much nix's the effect of all 3 Magic penetration items listed above. (I think the funniest part is that the Quicksilver Sash is cheaper than the Haunting Guise.)

But the argument that the Void staff and Stacking AP is best has been made a tremendous amount of times on the SR Forums. Err did I say SR forums I mean General Forums.... geez how could I make that mistake *roll eyes*.