(Original post, 1/30, noon local time)
I've noticed something about the design of LoL and its items. We've created all kinds of items to both increase damage, as well as survivability. The thing is, there's items that can increase damage while undoing your opponent's survivability. Why isn't there an item that could help protect you from the penetration that occurs?

I will admit, while I know enough about math to calculate what I'd need/get on my character, I don't have enough experience or such to create details on an item, but I wouldn't mind feedback. We have tanks who's purpose is to dish out some damage, but mainly be able to soak damage, be a pain, and have presence on the map. They are being undone by penetration without any way to protect themselves from it (which is the point of being a tank, being more resilient.)

What if we had an item either similar to tenacity or another stat entirely, that allowed for a character to account for how much resistance could really be mitigated? Before I ramble on, I'd like to hear some feedback from everyone else regarding this.
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1/31-
Clearly since I need to show some math to demonstrate my concern, let us go ahead and grab a few examples and why health isn't the best of solutions.
For this example, we'll be using Caitlyn as the damage dealer, and Garen as an example “Tank”
Caitlyn, I will anticipate building Bloodthirster, IE, Last Whisper, Black Cleaver, and PD with berserker's greaves. - http://leaguecraft.com/builder/caitl...0&fspells=true – summary of stats being: dps: 1097/sec, 1.5 AS, 394AD, 55% crit chance, 40 flat Armor Pen, 43% Armor Pen. (yes, extreme case of pen, but still), plus a possible 25 more % (total of 68%) after 4 AA's via black cleaver.

Garen, we will assume is going full tank with minor damage. Warmogs, Atma's Impaler, frozen mallet, GA, and runic bulwark (yes, I know I made the argument for diminishing returns on armor, but I’m not seeing as much hp items that would be good for garen, so I improvised). - http://leaguecraft.com/builder/garen...0&fspells=true – statistics of extreme tank Garen: 4567 hp, 203 Armor.

Caitlyn would ordinarily do only 33% of her damage. Calculating her items into this however, % applied first would drop armor down to a maximum of 115 (203*.57), and then further reduced to 75, giving garen a grand 42.8% mitigation. The lowest she can drop this to due to black cleaver is 64 (203*.32), then dropped to 24. 19.4% mitigation for a tank is abysmal in this game, but lets continue calculations.
With Garen's mitigation being between 42.8% on first autoattack, and 19.4% by caitlyn's 4th, Caitlyn's dps changes from 627 (1097*.642) up to 884 (1097*.806). Caitlyn by this approximation, can drop an extreme tank garen from full to 0 in approximately 5-6 seconds by doing nothing but autoattacking. Garen, at least this build, would not be able to kill her in time unless she were already damaged (which some would argue she shouldn't be if her role is played right, and no one should focus the tank until last, pending how much of a nuisance they're being).

This completely ignores that most of the rest of the team will be just as heavily impacted. The average scores of armor that I've seen on my teammates range between 100 and 135 armor for non tank people. 68% mitigation via items, stacked with 40 flat makes caitlyn do nearly true damage, and anyone else caught by her will be dead within 2-3 seconds.

Why is this a problem? Because the only way you're allowed to play or show any amount of skill is by locking down the enemy player and prevent them from doing that damage in the first place. Is this a valid strategy? Yes. Is it fun? No.

How many people like being killed from something that is completely unpreventable? How many of us enjoy facing an opponent who's in this position? My argument is that even though this is viable for play and very effective, its not conuducive to skillful or enjoyable play. No one enjoys being locked down and being unable to retaliate, as in the case of counter cait play, and no one enjoys not being able to counter cait when they can't lock her down as item builds don't do enough and you have to count on the other player being “bad” in order to do something against her.

Anticipated argument: You shouldn't have let her farm in the first place noob!
Rebuttal: lets face it, a skilled player who plays caitlyn will likely not be prevented from farming even somewhat, correct? There's hardly any way of countering this player shy of pushing her out of the lane. The thing is, the biggest comment I hear on why ADC is so hard is because they constantly need to watch their positioning and know how to last hit. So, by that understanding, she shouldn't be in a position where she would be caught or pushed or she's deemed “bad” correct? This negates your comment because if she's playing “well” then she can't be prevented from farming in the first place.

The counter to it is health.

Health doesn't help much when the enemy can autoattack you for 3-400 and the highest health items only give 700-1000 hp, congradulations, you live 2-3 hits longer =/ not what i call a solution.

Fantastic, you've now learned the WRONG way to use HP to counter Armor/MR Penetration.

Now, be a smartass for once and learn that Armor/MR is a multiplicative defense stat that has much more powerful scaling early than late. What this means, basically, is that 20 points of Armor from 0 gives more effective defense than 20 points of Armor from 100. I'll show you this with EHP calculation in a bit, but what that most importantly implies is that HP scales best when you have some Armor/MR to go with it.

Here's how EHP scaling works.
Base HP=100% EHP
Each point of Armor/MR=+1% EHP. So, at 150 Armor, you have 250% physical EHP.

Let's say you have 3000 base HP. At 100 Armor/MR, that would be 6000 EHP.

Add 20 Armor to a person who has 3k base HP and 0 armor, and to one who has 100 armor...

3000*1.2=3600 EHP
3000*2.2=6600 EHP

600/3000=20% increase in EHP
600/6000=10% increase in EHP


SO, bottom line, as long as you buy a mix of Armor and HP, unless they somehow manage to ignore every point of Armor/MR you have (which is impossible in a practical build after 100+ Armor/MR), your EHP, and thus lifespan, will increase greatly.

I was assuming you had 100+ armor, and the enemy had armor pen, because armor pen is on nearly all adc. Your counterargument is invalid. Rising armor further doesn't help because of how armor has diminishing returns after 100

You going to PROVE me wrong with numbers and validation, or just SAY I'm wrong because you can't be assed?

I wouldn't mind being proven wrong for the second time in a year on these forums. Instead of you bull****ting and saying my argument is invalid with no logic or math behind it, get the numbers out.


Defense has always had diminishing returns. This has not changed. What has changed is the availability of Armor Penetration. However, it's still fully possible to counteract with HP and enough Armor that they're not dealing true damage with every auto attack. More importantly, if you spent your time analyzing the game like I do, you'd realize that Riot is taking the game in a new direction, by making defense more relevant mid-game than late-game. THAT WAS THE REASONING BEHIND THE CHANGES. So quite obviously, defense is going to be weak when your opponent has their full build. Build defense before they have penetration, then build offense while they're trying to recover from not getting enough kills for gold.

You analyze this ****?

Man, you've got a lot to learn. Mostly in instinctual adaptations and logical progression on a subconscious scale with mathematical glossary.

I'm not in an English processing mood today, so would you kindly define what you mean?

I'm just saying, it's not hard to see what it looks like if you take a step back from the stats of each individual thing, and take it all in as a whole.

Let me give you a little piece of information that is really useful to know

Armor and MR not really multiplicative unless you are going by % of damage reduced. 1 armor/MR is 1% effective health against that type of damage.

+1%

Not 1%, +1%

Normally, your EHP is 100%, unless you have a negative Armor/MR value. So each point of Armor/MR is +1% EHP.

And that IS multiplicative output; increasing the base value by a percentage is done by multiplication


When you buy more Armor or MR, you are increasing the EHP multiplier. When you buy more HP, you are increasing the base value to be multiplied. Which one is more effective is dependent on which one is higher at time of purchase. If you have 3000 HP and 50 Armor (3000*1.5), Armor is better. If you have 1000 HP and 150 Armor (1000*2.5), HP is better.

Multiplicative properties.