How do you start with 25% chance to crit at level 1? With Crit Chance runes? With a magical starting 1280 gold? With 4 Twisted Fates on your team? I'm quite curious to know. And considering the Bloodlust skill is a great self-heal early game for staying power in lane, and it triggers off of crit activation, I'd say chance is awesome early. Plus each crit reduces the spinning slash's cooldown.

And if you have crit chance runes, why would you waste your gold on crit chance items that put you over 100%? Let's say you have:

Infinity edge: 20%
Phantom Dancer: 30%
Crit Chance runes: 14%
Passive: 0-25% depending on health.
= 64 - 89% Crit chance

add 12% from an Avarice Blade and you get: 76 - 101% crit chance.
add 18% from an Atmas Impaler or Executioner's Calling and you get: 82 - 107% crit chance.

Not much of a waste in my opinion. And now instead of getting more crit chance you can buy some armor penetration or attack speed or attack damage or health or whatever you want.

You fail at reading. He specifically said Shaco is an exception.

Black cleaver (and starks) applies before -40% from last whisper.
3 stacks of BC = -36
Last whisper -40% more
Brutalizer - 15 more
Actual max armor to hit 0 armor = 61 armor.

Last whisper does not have good synergy with Black Cleaver or Starks.

Shaco, however, is the odd exception to begin with, as he has the ability to crit on demand.

In general, Armor penetration beats out Crit Damage Reds/Quints, but I would have to do a detailed breakdown to see the BEST distribution. Since you get more Crit Damage relative to Armor Penetration with quints, if it were worth it, you would get a split in quints.

Having tons of bonuses to Crit Damage just makes Armor Penetration all the more appealing.

Let's redo the math I did this time assuming you have 50% from IE and 130% from decieve:

100 armor:
With 33.45% Crit Damage: 100 * 3.1345 * (100/200) = 156.73 damage
With 29.37 Armor Pen: 100 * 2.8 * (100/170.63) = 164.10 damage

200 armor:
With 33.45% Crit Damage: 100 * 3.1345 * (100/300) = 104.48 damage
With 29.37 Armor Pen: 100 * 2.8 * (100/270.63) = 103.46 damage

Now redo with 50% from IE and 130% from decieve and 40% from SotO:

100 armor:
With 33.45% Crit Damage: 100 * 3.5345 * (100/200) = 176.73
With 29.37 Armor Pen: 100 * 3.2 * (100/170.63) = 187.54

200 armor:
With 33.45% Crit Damage: 100 * 3.5345 * (100/300) = 117.82
With 29.38 Armor Pen: 100 * 3.2 * (100/270.63) = 118.24

Well look at that, now instead of crit damage pulling ahead at 200 armor, armor penetration is better.

No, you don't.

Having Last Whisper and Black Cleaver at the same time is a horrible idea. Armor Reduction/Penetration goes in this order:

-Armor Reduction
-Armor % Penetration
-Armor Flat Penetration

So if they had 60 armor and you got the five stacks of the black cleaver, your last whisper is now doing nothing. If they had 100 armor, you're doing damage against them as though they had (100 - 60) * .6 = 24 armor. If they had 100 armor and you're using last whisper + 60 armor penetration, you're doing damage against them as if they had (100 * .6) - 60 = 0 armor. Hence, either you want Armor Reduction + Flat Armor Penetration or % Armor Penetration and Flat Armor Penetration. Not Armor Reduction + % Armor Penetration.

As long as Flat Armor Penetration is less than or equal to the amount of armor they have, it actually becomes *more* effective the more you add. By contrast, Crit Damage simply has linear returns, each part of which makes Armor Penetration that much more effective.

Indeed there is more, just as crit dmg runes scale with damage, so do armor penetration runes.

At 30 armor and 100 dmg:

With 33.45% Crit Damage: 100 * 2.3345 * (100/130) = 179.58 damage
With 29.37 Armor Pen: 100 * 2 * (100/100.63) = 198.75 damage

At 30 armor and 400 dmg:

With 33.45% Crit Damage: 400 * 2.3345 * (100/130) = 718.32 damage
With 29.37 Armor Pen: 400 * 2 * (100/100.63) = 795.00 damage

Convinced yet?

Some more notes on this:

The lower the target's armor is, the more effective armor reduction and penetration are (until you have penetrated to zero). The more armor penetration/reduction you get, the more effective each point of armor penetration you have is. This means, while Crit Damage may be better than Armor Penetration at 200 armor WITH NO OTHER PENETRATION/REDUCTION, if you add in something like Last Whisper (which is pretty much necessary on any physical attacker, especially if they have 200 armor), you increase the required armor to make Crit damage better to something like 330.

The other thing worth noting is that Armor Penetration only has an effect up until it reduces their armor to 0. As most champions start with something like 14-18 armor, this means that Crit Damage might be more effective at level 1. However, if you do the actual math for Shaco:

50 base damage + 20 from potion, 250% crit damage on deceive, (283% with crit damage runes), more armor penetration than they have armor (call it 14 armor), you get 175 net damage with Armor Pen and 173 with Crit Damage.

In short, stop ever suggesting crit damage on anyone.

Also, mad props to EnderA for posting this thread.

Sort of. I do point out that Shaco actually has a reliable source of critical strikes, thus my second point of relying on a specific item build is irrelevant. However, Armor Penetration is still better on Shaco unless they have less than 30 armor, in which case I'd have to redo the math. The math I gave isn't for your average hit. It's for Critical Strikes. So even given Shaco's critical strikes, Armor Penetration is better.

If you'll look, Crit Damage still loses out to Armor Penetration at level 1 on Shaco, I just did this math.

You're welcome.

Also high-five, fellow math-utilizing critdamage-scorning LoLer.

Nice, thanks. Yeah, if your *only* concern is doing maximum damage on a crit against a level 1 target, then you should get mostly armor penetration and a small amount of crit damage.

yup ive been saving up for armor pen reds ever since they nerfed my shaco/gangplank/etc into the ground.