DerBattery Rising

Penetration Mechanics Help More than Bruisers One of the under-the-hood changes of Season 3 is the change in resistance penetration's order of operations. In Season 2 flat penetration was applied first followed by percentage penetration, while now percentage penetration is applied before flat pen.  Season 2:      EffectiveResist = (Resist-FlatPen)*(1-PercentPen) Season 3:      EffectiveResist = Resist*(1-PercentPen)-FlatPen The old penetration system made percentage penetration do less for you for each point of flat penetration you already had. While not the end of the world, the inefficiency of stacking flat and percentage penetration did make a difference, and League is won and lost by small advantages - for instance, merely owning a Brutalizer made Last Whisper give about half as much additional armor penetration to lower armored targets in Season 2. Over time, people learned to generally avoid building both Brutalizer and Last Whisper,...

Blue Katarina Is Best Katarina The Obsession with True Damage I can't be the only one who's noticed everyone's love of true damage. I hear about it everywhere, from posts recommending armor penetration runes on AD carries to "deal true damage in lane!" to casters seeing a triple mpen build and saying "Katarina will be doing true damage to the carries now!" or streamers swooning over Olaf's new potential to deal near true damage by using the reworked Black Cleaver. But the discussion point that's never mentioned is that by building all these penetration items they're choosing to not  build other damage items. We know triple pen Kat is a monster, but have you wondered if she'd be as effective going with an AP-centric build? Considering magic damage specifically, the main idea is that skill damage comes from both the base damage and a ratio of your ability power. Opponents' magic resist attenuates both parts of the damage (hur...

Bad Vayne Built Phantom Dancer I can't even tell if I'm a bk scrub noob anymore. A mere six months ago you could safely mock anyone who built Zeal or Phantom Dancer first on Vayne. What point was attack speed when you had no damage to back it up? You have to start Bloodthirster, I was told, it's the only viable option given her low range and survivability. And yet now you see (predominantly Asian) teams frequently starting with a Phantom Dancer on Vayne and even maxing Silver Bolts first, both of which go against the strongly ingrained habits of Western players. So what's the motivation behind each build path, and more importantly (to me), what do the numbers say on the comparison? Basic Justifications So what is the rationale behind each build? Completely ignoring numbers here, a Bloodthirster is commonly built because Vayne is quite short ranged and will have to be within range of taking damage in order to deal damage. Therefore we'd really like to build a l...