OK, I like to play a physical attack eve. Now first off, I don't care much whether you think ap eve is better or not, just to get that out here.

So here's my problem. I like my blue runes and yellow runes (I use cooldown reduction and dodge (dodge helps get the 10% move speed bonus from masteries))

Blue = cd reduction
Yellow = dodge

though I am considering possibly replacing the dodge with crit chance

REDS and Quints... I can't decide whether armor pen is better or crit chance is better. I think maybe crit chance runes with armor pen quints? Or would all armor pen be better?

The way I see it is with armor pen quints alone with the masteries, I get about 18 armor pen to start the game. If I add to that the 8.3% chance to crit, I would be critting much harder, and far more often than I would with my base 3% crit. (only 6% at level 6). So crit runes cause double damage to proc more than twice as frequently.

The only item I usually get that gives crit is trinity, and that's only 12%, so that 8% from runes still makes a big difference.


I guess the question is, how effective exactly are armor pen runes? And are they worth getting over the crit chance runes? Should I go all crit chance and screw armor pen all together? Help on this would be much appreciated!! Thank you

Crit chance allows you to do more 2x / 2.5x your damage.

Cooldown? I don't think that's a good choice, Eve's skills recharges fast enough in my opinion besides you're doing a physical one, so using your abilities is only second in priority aside from Ravage (-Armor).

Well the cooldown could viably be replaced with mana regen, though right now, that's not exactly my top priority as cooldown still helps, at least a little (though you're right wih her, it's prob not the best choice).


The reason why armor pen may be the better choice with her is b/c her ability can bring them into negative armor, which give bonus damage. so if the hero has 34 armor, I can actually bring them to -10 with ravage which gives about an 35% extra damage every hit. (that includes the 20% or so not being reduced from armor.

So looking at the math, if I hit for 80, I am getting a bonus 28 damage a hit from armor pen.
10% chance to crit gives me a bonus 80 (1/10 times) which is a bonus 8 per hit on average.

The question is, is the burst from crit worth it? Also, since my crit chance is low, does that raise the value of the crit chance runes? i mean 8.3% is a lot when my crit levels only ever get to be about 20-25. (33% more chance to crit)

All right, I see it has come down to the Armor Pen. vs Crit Chance question. For this one, I think it's really just personal preference, let me explain why.

Amor Penetration can be good early game, you can get around 19~Armor Penetration from Runes and 10+ from Ravage depending on level. But keep in mind, all heroes have varying level of armor so choose your target wisely (this involves looking up each hero and knowing their base armor and amounts of increase in it by level) so it can be quite tricky at times. Around mid to late game most heroes already have 50-90 Armor so putting them to the negative can be quite difficult, you'll need some items like Stark's and Black Cleaver which requires getting 3-4 hits in melee.

Critical Chance, while I myself don't like depending on chance (it broke the game if you ask me, it's just too much @2x/2.5x dmg) early game with a full rune page, you'll have a starting Critical Chance of 20%~ so that's really 1/5 chances from doing double damage. It also gets better from mid to late game once you get more Crit items like IE & Trinity Force add an Elixir of Agility and it turns the chance to a definite Crit.

That's all I could help you with for now man, if you need more guidance about the topic I believe there's a few threads here in this forum with the same topic. Peace.