armour pen VS lethality (for nOObs like me)

i think i'm good at explaining things

Twitch Channel:

Discord Server:

[OgarHelgkund]

Don't forget that Magic Penetration works identically to how Armor pen and Lethality do. But for Magic Damage on Magic Resist instead.

[hj-bzvo]

Then theres the assassins with 35% armor pen and 80 lethality

[gamignman]

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

[the_jedi_knight]

After 10 years of playin league you are the first one I've found that explains these concepts in the right and simple way.

Good job 💪

[crucifix]

finally someone said it, i couldn't find this out for yearsxd thx man

[Kobe]

Thank you for making this. I'm new to the game and knowing how the stats actually work and interact helps make the shop less intimidating.

[wrongdirection]

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.

[xCharLiiie]

I just needed to hear that one lethality equals one armour and everything made sense thanks Bro

[Atlas]

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.

[bn]

banger explanation, very easy to understand. THANK YOU!!

[justhair]

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

[Nebula_ya]

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.

[chair]

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

[OSRS_KQs]

So basically lethality is another word for flat armor well the devs for sure screwed the naming scheme on that. % magic pen, # magic pen, % armor pen, # armor pe... wait nvm lethality. What is funny is that I have played thousands of matches and never cared to look it up. I always assumed it was an execution below certain health thresholds.

[LordKeram]

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.

[picklebug]

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

[Rogue_kat]

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

[baab]

Extremely good explanation.
Left very little to my imagination While avoiding to becoming boring. At least a 9/10.

[einjharrelraca]

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

[ktskis]

basicly
penetration= more damage against not massive armor numbers

more massive armor numbers= better deffence against general penetration