Armor Penetration VS.

attack Damage [Semi guide on how to melt your enemy]

Hey, my name is Blackb0nd I've been playing league of legends since rengar's release; I am an average bronze jungle main but somehow a plat math geek so I am going to invest my math knowledge to find an answer for one of the most asked questions which confuses some of summoners which is "What is better for the AD oriented champions, attack damage or armor penetration?"

Overview In that part of my article I am going to define some words that I am going to use more frequent in later parts to keep you up with what I am trying to explain. - Attack Damage (Physical Damage): it's the damage dealt by your auto attacks and some abilities with AD ratios on it Example: wukong's crushing blow deals 30/60/90/120/150 (+1.1 per attack damage); it means every 1 attack damage you have you deal 1.1 physical damage by this ability - Armor Penetration: It's an amount of reduction of enemy's armor and it divides into two types; first type is flat armor penetration it means if you have 10 armor penetration then the enemy's armor is reduced by flat amount which is 10 and the second type is percentage armor reduction it means if you have 10% armor reduction then the enemy armor is reduced by 10% whatever his armor his not by flat amount. -Armor: It's the amount of reduction of enemy's physical damage (will get to the formula of damage reduction later) So these are the three main definitions I am going to use later.

Math part This is the most important part of my article where I am going to give a full example about how attack damage, armor and armor penetration affects both early, mid and late game performance using the standard masteries and runes; so in our next few examples we are going to assume that you have full potential of the offensive tree mastery and full potential of the 3x Quints and 9x marks for both armor penetration and attack damage.

What we have here is the standard AD mastery tree, through that you get +0.55 attack damage per level (+10 attack damage at level 18), +4 attack damage, increased attack damage by 5%, +6% armor penetration (didn't mention the magic penetration because my main focus here is the physical damage only) and +3% increased damage, I intended to separate some other factors like critical chances, attack speed and magic penetration because I don't want to mess with our experiment and to be focused only on the physical damage.

For runes I am going to have two assumptions first assumption is having 3x attack damage quintessence (+7.65 attack damage) and 9x armor penetration marks (+11.52 armor penetration) from runes and for second assumption I am going to use 3x attack damage quintessence (+7.65 attack damage) and 9x attack damage marks (+8.55 attack damage) with total +16.2 bonus attack damage from runes Experiment part In this part we are going to assume two different scenarios for a game and I am going to isolate some factors such as damage reduction, crowd control and some other factors to make the experiment more clear and more viable so let's begin: First Experiment: we are going to assume that you have 100 base attack damage and you gain +2 attack damage per level, +7.65 bonus attack damage from quintessence and bonus +11.52 armor penetration from marks, and the bonus 8% armor penetration from masteries, we are also going to assume that you will not buy any damage items or any armor penetration items to make the experiment more controlled For early game: you have bonus 107.65 bonus attack damage and bonus +11.52 armor penetration and 8% armor penetration so let's assume you are going to attack that 100 armor enemy, what will happen is the percentage of armor reduction will apply (8%) which will make enemy's armor 92 then the flat amount applies (+11.52) which leaves your enemy with 80.48 armor which will deal directly with your bonus damage "formula is [attack damage / 100 + armor]" so in our case it's like this [107.65 / 100 + 80.48 = ~0.59] it means your enemy receives your flat attack damage x 0.59 which means the true damage that enemy receive is 107.65 x 0.59 = 63.51 damage For mid game (level 9): you have 116.65 attack damage while the rest elements are still constant so your enemy will receive [116.65/100+80.48 = ~0.64] it means your enemy will receive 116.65 x 0.64 = 75.3 damage For late game (level 18): you have 125.65 attack damage your enemy will receive [125.65/100+80.48 = ~0.7] it means your enemy will receive 125.65x0.7 = 88 damage Second Experiment: we are going to assume that you have bonus flat 116.2 attack damage and you are going to buy some armor penetration item in mid game. For early game: you have 116.2 attack damage and 8% armor reduction which leaves your enemy with 92 armor so so the formula is [116.2 / 100 + 92 = ~0.6] so you deal 116.2 x 0.6 = 69.72 damage For mid game (level 9): you have 125.2 attack damage and bonus +10 armor penetration so your enemy's armor is reduced to 82 armor so the calculation [125.2 / 100 + 82 = ~0.68] which means you are going to deal for your enemy 125.2 x 0.68 = 85 damage For late game (level 18): you have 134.2 attack damage so formula works like [134.2 / 100 + 82 = ~0.73] which means you are going to deal 134.2 x 0.73 = 98 damage

Conclusion If we take a look at the resulting numbers we see in the first case in which you started with armor penetration runes that you deal 63.51, 75.3, 75.3 damage respectively and in the second case in which you started with flat attack damage runes we notice that you dealt 96.72, 85, 98 damage respectively.. we deduce that armor penetration is good but it's more good if you have flat attack damage to back it up so it's better to start with attack damage runes because most of the champions in league of legends don't benefit from the early armor penetration in early stages of the games but it became a major factor in late game specially against some champions "yes I am talking about nasus who stack tons of armor through items like randuin's omen, frozen heart or even sunfire" a champion like him merely affected by flat attack damage only but in mid or even late game if you got last whisper for example (talking about AD champions here) you will deny him 35% of his total armor and will be easy for you to melt him down.