obviously, certain members of GD aren't the best at reading comprehension and/or mathematics.

don't be one of them!

Not that I disagree, but most new players are not mathing it out.

They are just following the builds of others.

I read this too fast and it made my head hurt...

Yeah, perhaps I should have written "intermediate" instead. By "new", I originally meant players who are still trying to gain reasonable all-around competence, not players who are totally new to the game. Very new players would just follow the recommended items while advanced players already have a general feel for when what item would be useful, even if they're not fully aware of the math behind it.

Intermediate players who are trying out new things would greatly benefit from such a change, though. And in general, Morello and the other reds are always emphasizing the importance of clarity -- this would improve clarity significantly and allow for more informed player choice.

bump

Honestly, this was done on purpose so that Riot could ape the benefits of leveling in DotA (your attack speed gets better due to AGI growth) within its stats system while not making attack speed items outrageously overpowered because they're expressed in percentages.

Because as your original post notes, the difference between 55% to base + level growth and 55% of base is pretty big.

this makes me consider another possibility... what if every hero starts with 100 + 0 (0.625) attack speed? phantom dancer then gives 55 attack speed. then when you have 128 + 32 (1.000) attack speed as per the example in the OP, it's still fairly clear how much a phantom dancer would improve your attack speed. the number in parentheses represents the "real" attack speed, which is necessary to display since a number like 128 is meaningless by itself in terms of communicating to you what your stat actually does.

just throwing some ideas out there; i believe Riot will figure out what's best.

I agree

bump

bump for reds