Originally Posted by Ralik098

It used to be the way it is now a long time ago and then it was changed to be flat before % based pen. Why did you decide to revert that change now?

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

iirc, xypherous has made a few posts on the subject.

i might be paraphrasing him incorrectly, but i believe that it was essentially the first step in creating a much healthier environment for all archetypes. that way fighters, assassins, and mages could all co-exist with carries without having to have ridiculous things built into their kits to compensate for damage calculations that were set up around the carry's power curve.

i suggest trying to search for his posts for see if you can flag him down to post in a relevant thread if you're curious about the matter.

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

eh, i'm not convinced that rushing liandry's is a great idea—i'd rather put the 1415g towards other things until its best case of 1.67% current health every 0.5 seconds is better than my champion's natural scaling (that is often more reliable) and other actives/passives i want in my build.

i still think the passive good, but i haven't seen a situation in which liandry's rush was the best call.

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

ridiculous things built into their kits to compensate for damage calculations that were set up around the carry's power curve.

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

summary of feelings:
-magic penetration is still extremely strong.
-flat penetration is too easy to get for how strong it is, and doesn't require you to give much (if anything) up.
-liandry's is really good as a late-game upgrade and plays into the 'not giving anything up' bit above.
-void staff is probably too strong right now… it might not be, that's my gut feeling.

it's almost 5 in the morning, so i'm not going to go all 'crazy details and math' right now, but basically things got pretty awesome for mages that care about dealing magic damage.

best core damage build (for 'skill gatling') is something like:
dfg, haunting guise, void staff, sorc shoes
7880g for +195 ability power, +30 | +32% magic penetration, +15% cdr, +200 health, +45 movement speed, and the dfg active.

this varies a little bit based on a few factors, but that's basically what you want if your job is to make people dead. there isn't really a lot of room for substitutions unless you're willing to pay for it one way or another. if you really don't need the dfg active, then you can sub it out for morellonomicon (plus a start on another ap item) or deathcap, but then you'd be giving up the dfg active.

the only reasons you wouldn't see void staff on someone (that i can think of offhand) would be because they're snowballing really hard early game and opt for more flat penetration first, or they can't afford to prioritize damage over something else. otherwise they should be getting it sometime before late-game (assuming the enemy team is building responsibly). again, this is all generalized and is assuming the mage's core responsibility on the team is dealing magic damage.

Originally Posted by Almeena

But, some questions I'd like to ask.

How do you think Master Yi is doing with the new itemization and masteries? As AD or AP?

Do you think Black Cleaver is too powerful and too convenient of a pick? I mean, it's nice to have a bruiser item, but it gives a bruiser nearly everything they need. Bruiser itemization is staler that it was before because it's based around a single item now. It would be like if Rabadon's added some free spell vamp and CDR.

Did Leviathan really need to get deleted? Double Stack Garen was one of the funnest (and rather viable) builds to play.

Originally Posted by RazyUltim8

I can't believe it, how clueless can you reds can be?

You do NOT penetrate more MR than in s2. Mages are immensely weaker for many reasons:

-Early game they do less damage thanks to sorc shoes and mpen runes nerfs. MR runes unnerfed (And the increased cost of MR does nothing, it's effing early game).

-Deathcap nerfed.

-The rise of the AD assassins.

-With sorc shoes alone you do less damage than in s2, you NEED void staff to get the same values like in s2. And you also need haunting guise to actually penetrate more than in s2. Three different pen items to finally do more damage (But you only have 100 ap lol!). Don't forget that void penetrates 35% and mastery 8% (40% together, down from 46%)

-Haunting guise is situational (not every champ needs 20 AP for 1450 gold, some champs actually have more advantageous ratios) and its upgrade is so bad it's unreal. Extremely situational, terrible on burst champs, and it's even subpar on DPS champs like vlad or rumble.

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

best core damage build (for 'skill gatling') is something like:
dfg, haunting guise, void staff, sorc shoes
7880g for +195 ability power, +30 | +32% magic penetration, +15% cdr, +200 health, +45 movement speed, and the dfg active.

this varies a little bit based on a few factors, but that's basically what you want if your job is to make people dead. there isn't really a lot of room for substitutions unless you're willing to pay for it one way or another. if you really don't need the dfg active, then you can sub it out for morellonomicon (plus a start on another ap item) or deathcap, but then you'd be giving up the dfg active.

the only reasons you wouldn't see void staff on someone (that i can think of offhand) would be because they're snowballing really hard early game and opt for more flat penetration first, or they can't afford to prioritize damage over something else. otherwise they should be getting it sometime before late-game (assuming the enemy team is building responsibly). again, this is all generalized and is assuming the mage's core responsibility on the team is dealing magic damage.