They changed the name when they gave some champions Lethality scaling and made it work less effectively at lower level. Back then, 1 lethality only ignored 1 full point on armor when you were level 18. Except they reverted that change recently, so there's no real difference between lethality and old school non-percentage armor pen anymore...
@@LostAccount404 they recently did that , but its still an item i see being built even when theres 5 squishy enemies because of its passive also being great
It's important to note that lethality items have more AD than the percent pen items. Mortal reminder and LDR have 35 and 45 ad respectively, while most lethality items have 55 AD or more. So while the percent pen items are still going to be more effective vs armor against most enemies, the passive effects and AD from lethality items can more than make up for the difference in damage. IMO percent pen doesn't make sense until item 3-4, as you need strong passives for your core build
Yeah, but later on, that percentage based armor pen means more than the flat ad, even against squishies. Also LDR and Mortal Reminder also give crit chance, so its a great 3-4 item for an adc
By the way, armour doesn't actually get less effective the more you have. Every armour point you have gives you 1% extra effective health. Lets say you have 1000 health: Going from 0 armour to 10 armour takes you from 1000 to 1100 health. Going from 100 armour to 110 armour takes you from 2000 to 2100 health. It doesn't matter how much armour you have, each point of armour would give you 10 additional effective health.
Calculation of %armor reduction comes first and then the armor reduction by lethality second. Its good to know since unless you play champions like pyke that scales purely off of lethality, builds that consist of only one or the other are not common.
Armor reduction is actually not the same thing than lethality and the order of calculation is quite important. Armor reduction actually refer to reduction of armor by items or spells. The one you are actually talking about is armor penetration. However, you are right that a mix of multiple source of armor reduction and penetration is good, as closer you are to 0 armor, higher will be the damage from 1 less armor point.
@@felixvadcard4208 To be fair, armor reduction and armor penetration, while being technically different and having different orders of calculation, apply pretty much in the same way, and translate to the same amount of armor you ignore. There are some caveats to it, like having different champions applying armor reduction, among other things. But if we base it on a normal 1v1, it will essentially be the same stat in terms of how much armor you get to ignore.
Also worth noting that champs will naturally have more armor as the game goes on, even squishy ones. This means that while lethality is strong in the early to mid game, it doesnt scale nearly as well as armor pen
so the way i think of how armor works is that take your armor and turn it into a % and thats how much more effective your health is. fo5 example 1000hp target with 50 armor has an effective 1500hp. basically an extra 50% total hp. target with 1000hp and 100 armor has an effective 2000hp because that 1000 has an extra 100% more effective hp
armor is always worth the same, the % damage reduction may not increase as much, but the overall effective health you receive from armor stats is the same regardless of how much armor you had before, so armor doesn't have diminishing value the more you buy
the graph with the damage reduction and armor is kind of misleading since it makes you think armor is diminishing returns but its actually linear in terms of how much "effective hp" it gives you, 1 armor = 1% more hp based on your raw amount
u right, i thought about this too, i briefly mention that it's effective health but i could've explained it better for sure, i was worried it was too much info for my fellow nOObs tho
From my understanding Lethality just subtracts the amount of armor the enemy has. For example someone has 20 armor, you have an item with 10 lethality, so you are ignoring 10 out of their 20 armor so it would be like fighthing someone with 10 armor. In that situation you are ignoring 50% of the enemy's armor. You would need an item with a 50% armor pen. to be equal to the 10 lethality item in that specific situation and from my understanding no item has 50% armor pen. so lethality is more effective in that situation. But if the enemy has 300 armor and you have an item with 10 lethality, you would be facing against their 290 armor, which is like about 3.3% armor pen of equivelance. Meanwhile an item with 18% of armor pen. would ignore 54 armor out of the 300. It would be the equivelant of a 54 lethality item in that situation. 54 lethality is obviously better than 10 lethality. So as the video said, lethality is great against characters that don't have much armor and armor pen. against characters with alot of armor. To build the equivelant armor pen. or lethality for their respective scenarios would simply cost you more to achieve the same result.
I know this is a small unimportant part of the video. But regarding the discrepancy between the 86 ad at lvl 6 and the 87 damage it does. I am 99% sure that's because Garen doesn't actually have 86 AD at lvl 6, he has 86.78. Probably the champion stats indicator is coded so it simply disregards the decimal numbers. While the actual damage calculator likely takes the 0.78 into account and either always rounds up or rounds according to the commonly accepted rules.
@@SirHelium_ It also was very clear... I've seen like 4 or 5 of these explanations an NO ONE ever explained that penetration is better for a LOT of armor, and Lethality for flat low armor pen + some damage.
Dont forget, you can build both flat pen AND %pen as well, thats what make serylda's such a batshit insane item. im a firm believer of you should have to choose between the two, but im sure the bruiser and assassin players are already typing death threats to me for suggesting they shouldn't have counters to everything XD
hey i have a question if you have lets say ldr (40% pen) and 50 lethality from other items, do the % and flat lethality stack? does it work like this: firstly the 40% lethality reduces someones 300 armor so thats 300-120=180 and then the 50 lethality reduces it to 130? or does it work the other way: flat lethality comes first and THEN the 40% pen
I would like to expand on that: Reducing armor has a similar end effect, but is still a different way of increasing the damage the target takes. The full order of operations is: 1. Flat Armor Reduction (e.g. Corki's E Gatling Gun, or Baron's Passive) 2. Percent Armor Reduction (e.g. Black Cleaver, or Nasus E Spirit Fire) 3. Percent Armor Penetration (e.g. LDR) 4. Flat Armor Penetration, aka Lethality
Good summary but your conclusion might be misleading to some. Every champ has scaling resist and very soon %pen is more gold efficient than flat pen even on a « squishy » target
@@definitely_not_laundrybasket lets use vayne as an example. she starts lvl 1 with 23 armor. LDR gives 35% armor penetration so it removes 8 armor. where as ghostblade has 18 lethality so it removes more armor than LDR. however when vayne is lvl 18 she has 101 armor and so LDR now removes 35 armor. so even if youre not playing against champions that buy armor at some point you would still want to buy an item that has % armor penetration. usually lethality items comes with powerful passives and more AD so you dont want to buy % armor penetration items too early in the game even if they reduce more armor. 3rd or 4th legendary item is usually when you want to buy them.
@@m81895 I see now I understand that! but now I have 3 questions at what point do you prioritize %pen over lethality? lets say the entire enemy team are just squishy champions (who don't usually stack armor) is it still worth to buy %pen or is it a situational stat? how about black clever with armor shred does it work the same way as armor pen? if you have a link for a video/reddit post if you don't want to explain this to me that is also fine by me!
@@definitely_not_laundrybasket champions that want to purchase %pen (pretty much anyone that isnt a tank, bruiser or on-hit item stacker) almost always want to buy it at somepoint in the game regardless of the enemy team composition. but depending on the team composition at which point you want to buy it can differ. less armor = buy later. There is really a lot of factors that play into exactly when you want to buy X item so there is no golden rule. armor shred (reduction) decreases the users armor instead of being part of the damage. This way allies also gets the benefits to their damage. otherwise it pretty much works the same. typically you dont see black cleaver being bought on champs that buy lethality anymore though because you first have to stack it to get value. The reverse is then also true black cleaver users dont usually buy lethality so if you're trying to do damage you would buy it earlier than other %pen items but items like sundered sky or steraks can take priority if fights are long or you need to survive bursts of damage. most videoes and posts focus on specific champions since there is a lot less variables so pick a few champions you find fun to play and look for guides about them.
There is one point not so logical to me yet. What happens, if the target has e.g. 40 armor and you do have 50 Lethality Do you deal 1.1x of the usual damage or does it fall off at 1 armor = 1 lethality?
Lethality is not armor pen, it scales with levels as real armor penetration Back in the days with real rune pages, not loadouts, we could run 29 real armor pene (29 lethality at level 18) at level one. Now also imagine black cleaver gave 25 armor pene, it wasn't unique 💀
