I'd actually like to see armor actually mean something again ... S3 changes have made armor a near worthless waste of gold .... combinations of BC/LW/Brut/YGB go at armor like a shredder does to paper

Buffs to BC on PBE? Seriously? It's to the point that anything less than 300 armor gets reduced to nothing; and even then it's still reduced to the point where the gold value is better spent on dmg instead of dmg mitigation

gh

Some number tweaking definitely needs to be done - but if someone is stacking that much penetration, their raw AD numbers take a hit and HP becomes more valuable. The player should be monitoring the enemy build and investing in HP over armor when they see this type of build.

The player with a pure armor penetration build only has 250HP for survivability. They're pretty damn squishy, and have no critical strike or lifesteal.

Note that I'm not defending the current power of armor/mr pen; the numbers need to be adjusted downward for Last Whisper at a minimum. I'm just noticing that I see people stack armor (myself included) instead of getting more HP. I attribute this to the heavy reliance on armor in S2 carrying over. There was a certain point where it didn't make sense to buy HP any more because the gains through armor were far greater. I believe S3 aims to change that.

You seem to have forgotten that Cleaver also gives 50 AD and LW gives 40.
I honestly don't see how "raw AD numbers take a hit" when you stack penetration.

Well, considering that is gold/slots not being spent toward Infinity Edges and the like...

Agreed, but that is still less than IE and SB provide. Not by much, but the point stands.

Also, they give up attack speed and critical strike chance which is all part of the multiplicative damage scaling appreciated by AD Carries. Yes, Youmuu's gives all those things - but in small quantities compared to an AD Carry build.

Some champions have the AS (Fiora, Tristana, Xin) or Crit Chance (Tryndamere) covered completely or in part by their kits, but every champion has to give up something, and they all have to give up survivability.

The real kicker is that a champion like Garen or Wukong can build Black Cleaver + tank items while his squishy AD Carry buddy builds heavy AD + Last Whisper. The AD Carry benefits from the Black Cleaver debuff hitting the entire enemy team, on top of whatever other penetration/reduction they may have (Corki). The bruiser remains a great damage soak. I don't know if that was intended, but perhaps a great fix for Black Cleaver would be to change the passive to % penetration?

I still favor the idea of disabling Black Cleaver for Dominion, especially if they're going to buff it.

THIS. Dominion should be viable for AD carries also. NOT JUST BRUISERS. I find myself having to buy a BC then LW early just to remain competitive.

How can one possibly compete against armor stacking foes early game? It's so easy to get armor, and extremely costly to get armor penetration. Think brutalizer 10 armor pen for 1337 gold, 3000 gold for a BC which gives up to 25% reduction after 4 hits, 2135 gold for a LW for 35% penetration... For early game, it's nearly impossible to kill tanky foes. Imagine scaling into late game with armor. Why hasn't anyone noticed this? I'm guessing everyone in dominion plays a bruiser so it probably never applied to them.

No, everyone noticed it. Early game damage went down as a whole because of penetration nerfs.