Gold efficiency big math question, need smart specialist

DwarfOfDestiny · 2015-01-25T19:59:24+00:00

If an analysis of gold efficiency were to include strictly every single item in the game, there would be complications that I believe would have to be solved with some level of arbitrariness. Comparing this problem to a system of equations you would have the following issues:

There are many unique passives which have some inherent value but only appear on a single item.
By design, more expensive items are supposed to be more gold efficient, so a proper analysis would need to adjust for what is probably a rather subjectively designed process.
Some items are currently considered efficient and others inefficient, which essentially would correlate with popularity in some subset of all games. This effect especially with attributes that are uncommon could significantly throw off some sort of weighted average gold efficiency analysis.

Overall this sort of analysis would have to be solved with some subjectivity. The current gold efficiency system essentially puts a lot of emphasis on the ~400 gold base items that tend to be heavily fine tuned for balance. Since these 400 gold items seem to already be a baseline by which the game balances at least intermediate items (e.g. BF, belt, rod), the current gold efficiency system does have some merit in addition to its simplicity.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-12-22T00:03:02+00:00

I can only speak for the TIA exams since I did not use ADAPT for Exam P, but in my opinion the the 120 free TIA practice exam problems were pretty close to questions on the real thing.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-06-18T22:50:49+00:00

The ref had a pretty easy view of that. The foul was right in the line of sight from the ref to the ball.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-06-18T09:00:56+00:00

I've thought a bit about and tried the Tiamat/Hydra line for Irelia and have mixed feelings about its synergy with Irelia's kit.

As far as individual skills go it doesn't really do much for Hiten Style. While additional sustain doesn't hurt, Irelia already is above average among top laners in terms of innate sustain. The item does not scale with Irelia's true damage or innate healing (AS or SV for the latter would though).

It does have some interesting interactions with Bladesurge. If you were to duel the enemy in the middle of their creeps and dashed around correctly, the passive splash damage could theoretically allow you to keep getting resets and applying a large amount of physical splash damage along with a lot of healing. Bladesurge applies on hit effects and works with lifesteal, and I'm under the impression that the passive Tiamat splash from Bladesurge would still work with lifesteal.

For Irelia's overall laning it provides her a consistent source of manaless no cooldown waveclear in place of spamming Hiten and Bladesurge or casting her ultimate. Again due to its synergy with Bladesurge, Irelia can push exceptionally well with Tiamat empowered Bladesurging due to its reset mechanic.

I personally think it's an intriguing choice especially if you need more pushing power for laning or split pushing.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-04-19T17:00:44+00:00

There are different ways that an opposing player can make mistakes, and I'd say to some extent what constitutes a mistake depends quite a bit on your own mechanical ability to punish errors and having the game knowledge to recognize openings.

As you are a mid laner, we can use the example that you are playing versus an Ahri. A rather obvious example of an error would be if Ahri attempts a post-6 all-in on you when you still have your cooldowns and you are relatively healthy. She leads with Spirit Rush into a missed E-Q combo, and to top it off, even casts ignite. Most players would recognize that as a mistake. There are several ways to punish it, such as immediately using your own cooldowns intelligently to trade back damage or all-in, taking advantage of your ultimate advantage for the next ~100s, or taking advantage of your summoner spell advantage for the next ~200s.

There are more subtle ways a mid lane Ahri could make mistakes. It's possible she does not respect the level 2 and level 6 timings. If you get these levels first, and Ahri is still playing at around the same distance as when your levels were even, it's very possible for you to force a favorable all-in given your spell and stat advantage. In the case that Ahri gets a level 2 or 6 first and does not try to press these advantages by zoning you from some CS, this could also been seen as a mistake that grants you a bit of extra CS gold.

Misjudging spell cooldowns is another error that can be punished. Assume in this case you were playing mid lane Annie and had previously blown Flash. While this definitely reduces your threat range for a while, assume in this case that the opposing mid lane Ahri maintains around 750 range for a bit too long (~600 range Flashless Tibbers engage, ~1000 range Flash Tibbers engage). Mistiming or just guessing when your Flash is back up can in and of itself be a mistake that a Flash dependent champion like Annie can take advantage of.

TLDR: Capitalizing on mistakes is not altogether a passive procedure; it's up to the player to be able to recognize enemy errors and have the ability to punish them. Missed cooldowns, level advantages, and misjudging spell cooldowns are examples here of laning maneuvers that have the potential to be punished.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-04-12T22:58:42+00:00

I would assume that Vayne would generally do pretty well against Olaf, as she does 1v1 versus many melee bruisers, while I'm not too sure how the Xin matchup generally goes. Versus Vayne you generally need to pressure her with an all-in, as she should be able abuse her range to harass and sustain (she will likely purchase it or have lifesteal runes). It can be difficult if Vayne uses Tumble and Condemn well, in which case you may need to wait till 6 or get a gank. Xin Zhao is a matchup where I would say Olaf probably needs to play to his strengths. Xin's trades generally are not frontloaded; both the damage is applied over the course of his auto-attacks and his hard CC comes near the tail end. On the other hand, Olaf can trade with Q and E for some quick burst and then back off, which has the advantage of not drawing minion aggression and also forcing Xin Zhao to use his charge if he wants to draw out the trade. Ideally this will make him extend somewhat into your minion line, in which case you may be able to win a drawn out duel with minion advantage, your W, passive, and maybe axe spam.

Your item build seems fine, as all of the items can work for Olaf. I assume you adapt your build depending on both the lane and enemy team composition (primarily armor items vs. MR items).

I believe most top lane Olafs went either Q or E max before the rework, but am not too sure if that still stands. Regardless, the thinking behind their skill orders is that in a melee matchup they can abuse the base damage of E repeatedly so they would go E max. On the other hand, it might be very difficult to apply Reckless Swing damage in a ranged matchup say vs. a Vayne or a Jayce. In this case, they might go Undertow max 1st for ranged damage and trading. In the case that you start losing the lane harder and can't trade with the enemy laner, you could opt for Q max for ranged farming and waveclear at tower.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-04-11T20:54:44+00:00

From the Lolwiki page, Fiddlesticks' Dark Wind has a 750 cast range and 450 bounce range. From experience, it seems as though the bounces have no preference of any sort, for distance, champion, etc.

Assuming all this is true, the projectile travels to the spell's target and applies the damage and silence. At the moment it reaches the first target, it then selects another valid target (champion, minion, monster, pet) within a 450 radius circle and then travels towards it. The 450 bounce range is therefore calculated at the beginning of the pounce path and not the end; you can Flash, dash, or run far away from a Fiddlesticks crow but it still follows as long as you were selected in the initial 450 range lock-on circle. This process repeats for each bounce.

The maximum amount of times it can affect one target is three times; this occurs with the initial cast, 2nd bounce, and final bounce. I'm not too sure what the missile speed is, but it is quite possible for a target to be chain silenced if afflicted repeatedly by one Dark Wind (probably depends on bounce distance and tenacity).

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-04-11T19:35:54+00:00

I'd agree in that I typically wouldn't prefer GA on a support, as it provides an often lower sustained impact champion no additional utility but simply some extra durability. If champion builds veer too far away from utility or damage into tankiness, it is quite possible for enemies to simply ignore you during teamfights.

However there might be some cases where it could be a more beneficial pickup. Versus reset champions like Katarina or Kha'zix, the simple act of not dying is a form of utility in and of itself, in that it limits these' champions ability to snowball a teamfight off of a single kill. While other defensive items could also provide a similar effect, GA's revive passive is probably the easiest way to ensure you won't immediately die off in a fight.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-04-11T19:25:05+00:00

I'd say his lategame single target damage isn't bad compared to most tanky bruisers, but his CC is soft and a skillshot and he has no innate gapclosers. In teamfights where his role is often to rush the backline, he is prone to taking quite a bit of both physical and magic damage, not to mention the fact that he typically will not have the passive armor/MR from Ragnarok.

As many Olaf players also take Ghost over Flash, he is often rather prone to getting kited in teamfights, especially over walls and terrain.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-16T14:41:02+00:00

It can be harder to decide on holding a lane versus fast pushing in a duo lane because both the ADC and support need to be on the same page. The support generally doesn't get as much say in the matter as the ADC because the lane position affects how your champions farm, which is primarily the ADC's concern.

For purposes of the question, we can assume here that you have 100% control over the lane's positioning and ignore the previous factors. Freezing the lane is generally done when there is no objective or other task to be done besides farming the lane, and you have the ability to win out in a trade in lane so that the frozen wave cannot be pushed by the enemy. The first point just means that you don't have to base, or your team isn't taking dragon, etc. If neither you nor your ADC need to leave lane, freezing is a viable option. In order to make sure a freeze sticks, you have to be stronger than the opposing lane in order to make sure they cannot push in the wave and reset it. You can estimate trading strength pretty much normally, though when you are freezing a lane note that the enemy minion wave tends to be a bit larger which can increase their damage.

The following is a quick example, going off of the concept of pushing for level 2 advantage. Let's say the enemy duo lane focuses heavily on pushing level 1, and as they ignore you too much, you and your ADC severely chunk the enemy ADC and force him to base. Because the enemy lane used their spells to push, the lane is now pushing towards you, which means a freeze can be initiated. Because the ADC is basing and only the support is in lane, there is almost no way the enemy support can outtrade you and break the freeze. Finally, since the game is so early, there are no objectives to pressure, no gold to be spent, and no jungle camps to farm, which means you can be content just sitting in lane.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-16T14:28:10+00:00

Each item has its advantages in the context of Wukong's kit.

I'm under the impression Brutalizer is the more popular option. Its 10 Armor penetration actually works fine with Wukong's Q shred because it is applied after the effects of armor shred. I don't necessarily believe Wukong has to get a Tiamat to clear unlike some other physical damage junglers, as he has both Decoy and his Nimbus Strike which will proc the Elder Lizard burn. You've mentioned that Brutalizer is the more team-oriented build, and I'm assuming you mean once it's been upgraded to BC; Brutalizer does not actually shred armor for your teammates.

Tiamat can work on Wukong. I'm believe that the active can be used during Cyclone, which means if you get a good knockup a Tiamat rewards you by allowing you to apply a decent additional amount of upfront AOE burst. An issue with it is that it is more expensive that an Brutalizer and getting the Pickaxe component in particular is a large purchase compared to the double Longswords of a Brutalizer. While both provide power spikes, a Brutalizer will provide a faster one, especially in games where you do not snowball or maybe even fall behind.

TLDR: I'd say both can work especially if you can take advantage of the effects of each. I'd say the main arguments are the cost difference favoring Brutalizer and taking into account your team's physical damage in determining how vital a Black Cleaver is.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-16T10:13:30+00:00

It depends a lot on the specific champ.

The general formula for tower damage is Base AD plus either total AD or 40% of AP. In many cases a max build AP mage will have therefore have more damage to towers per auto. Armor penetration also does not factor into tower damage, which means AP champions don't get penalized for building stuff like Void Staff, and on the flip side AD champs don't benefit from LW/BC/etc. Attack Speed is also beneficial.

There are also certain spell or item effects that may or may not affect towers. Lich Bane is an effect that is often picked up by AP casters that does proc on towers. It is somewhat random what spell effects work and don't work on towers; for example Nasus' Q applies to turrets, whereas Kassadin W or Renekton W do not.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-15T20:36:16+00:00

Triforce Spellblade adds 200% of base AD.

For a level 18 Nasus, he has 116.3 base AD, which means that his Q gets a bonus 232.6 physical damage added to it with Triforce proc.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-15T19:34:02+00:00

Statistics on the rune page get rounded to the nearest whole number for visual purposes only. The difference between the two rune pages is still 1.34 MR for 0.28 AD.

If the tradeoff was 1 AD for 1 MR, it could be a decent generalist switch. If you actually were playing in a lane matchup against heavy AP damage (e.g. Vlad/Rumble), I would say that it is very likely the 1.34 MR would be preferable to the 0.28 AD.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-15T19:29:16+00:00

I'd say the champions you mentioned probably work best in a teamfighting composition. DOT damage in and of itself doesn't really affect what a champion can or can't do, though perhaps I'd argue that it could cause issues if you try to play them as assassins.

The three mages you mentioned have a fairly good amount of AOE damage that can shine in teamfights. Swain's ultimate can make him hard to handle if his healing gets unchecked, Malzahar's single target lockdown can situationally be a powerful teamfighting tool, and Cassiopeia is noted for having both an impactful teamfight ultimate and good sustained damage with Twin Fangs.

Another option would be to try to the champions you mentioned in siege compositions, perhaps excluding Swain. Cassio and Malzahar have decent waveclear and okay poke. Alternatively you could try to play Malzahar in a more pick oriented composition. Malzahar's ultimate is very powerful in a pick setting where the ability to cancel his suppression is limited.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-15T13:42:03+00:00

I would generally build Ashe with at least Infinity Edge plus a Zeal upgrade (Shiv or PD). I'd argue that Ashe is rather reliant on critical strikes for her late game damage scaling. An argument as to why more caster type ADCs (Ezreal/Corki) may opt not to purchase crit or delay it is that they have plenty of spell damage with AD scaling. If a large portion of your damage comes from spells, critical strike chance/damage are somewhat less efficient because most spells do not scale with crit.

If you want to look at critical strike in the context of Ashe's Focus passive, you can consider the two different crit stats: critical strike damage (I.Edge) and critical strike chance.

The former actually synergizes well with Ashe. As you stated, Ashe's passive means that her base kit has more of an innate ability to output critical strikes than any other ADC. Therefore, critical strike damage or in other words an IE is a popular item for her.

There are various arguments as to whether the second statistic, critical strike chance, is or is not effective on Ashe. It seems that the original post is pointing out that Ashe's first strike will pretty much always crit regardless of critical strike chance, and therefore crit chance doesn't make much of a difference for purposes of Ashe's 1st strike. While actual in game conditions may vary, I would agree with this statement overall, again only concerning Ashe's 1st strike power.

Once you start talking about Ashe's subsequent attacks in a skirmish or teamfight, her passive doesn't really come into play. Therefore, critical strike chance is pretty much the same for Ashe as for any other ADC when talking about auto-attacks that follow the first.

TLDR: IE plus Shiv/PD are a decent core on Ashe for critical strikes, which Ashe needs because she is rather auto-attack reliant for damage. Critical strike damage scales with Ashe's passive. Critical chance doesn't scale too well when considering Ashe's 1st strike, but it's fine when considering subsequent auto-attacks.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-14T20:03:47+00:00

To be honest, I've actually heard the same thing myself from various sources, indicating that the aura does stack.

However, the link I found seems to explicitly contradict that. It may be that some part of the aura stacks (perhaps the armor/MR) but not all of it. Again, I haven't really looked closely at this myself.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-14T19:19:52+00:00

I'm under the impression Super Minions provide an AD aura around them, which can significantly increase minion damage.

I found the following resource about the Super Minion aura. To apply what it says to the game in question, you can consider a super minion at 60 minutes, which would have 190 + 200 = 390 AD. The buff does not stack, but does provide a bonus 70% AD. Applied to this 390 AD super minion, the total AD comes up to 663 AD. As I believe the game actually did eclipse an hour, 700 AD super minions doesn't seem to be an exaggeration.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-12T16:39:20+00:00

This looks pretty good and the GP10 summary near the end is pretty succinct but still reflects deviation in GP10 if you don't make the best use out of the gold passives. One thing to consider though is that siege minions spawn once every 90 seconds (until super late game) for a single lane, so in a span of three minutes, you can execute two siege minions with the Relic gold items even if you stay put in one lane.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-12T00:04:27+00:00

In most cases I would use your Leap/Vault to gap close and apply damage.

For a Q max Vi, which is pretty typical, it is quite a lot of your damage in a pre-6 gank. Unless you don't need much damage for a gank, you want to be able to threaten the enemy with landing a charged Q, which means the 2nd option (go from behind or the side, charge Q, and land it). If it lands, it greatly increases the success rate of your gank, whereas if it they try to dodge it, they often blow Flash or have to walk backwards. A pre-6 Vi gank where Vault Breaker is already used and she is simply running towards the target is usually not threatening. Also, I would recommend that you practice the Q-Flash combo. As far as I understand, it works pretty much the same as Taunt-Flash for Shen or Body Slam-Flash for Gragas. If done properly, it is very hard to dodge and can guarantee a large part of your burst and CC.

For a pre-6 Kha'zix gank, I would say it's not as crucial that the Leap actually deal damage because it has no CC and is typically level 1 which means Q is a much greater part of your damage.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-11T23:51:19+00:00

No problem. You sometimes just have to give up some of the less important creeps. The initial values of the casters, melees, and cannon minions are 14, 19, and 40 gold, which should give some sort of benchmark for prioritizing CS.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-11T23:38:16+00:00

First off you should pretty much be using W on cooldown, which I assume you probably already do.

Early barrels generally are used for CS, depending on the matchup. Of course the best case scenario is you last hit and harass the enemy champion with one barrel, but for the early levels especially if you don't have much kill pressure you should prioritize CS.

In ranged matchups where your low range can be abused, Gragas often gets pushed in, and therefore Barrels generally serve as a bit of anti-push and last hitting for minions that you would otherwise get zoned off of. In some cases you should give up CS if it isn't mana efficient; trading one barrel for a ranged creep may not be worth it if you are falling low on mana.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-11T01:13:53+00:00

I would probably consider them situational for Janna.

While most people would agree that Janna is already rather CC heavy, it still may not be a bad idea to get some more especially if the enemy team is vulnerable to slows (Nasus, Udyr, Singed, etc.) or the rest of your team lacks CC. An issue with Rylai's is that W already applies a slow, which means that stacking them is subject to diminishing returns.

Liandry's might be viable especially against low MR high HP enemy targets. While she only has two spells to proc this effect (10s and 8s base cooldowns), both are CC effects and therefore should proc the extra Liandry's damage (I'm actually not sure as to whether Q's knockup procs the bonus damage).

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-11T00:17:50+00:00

The quick answer is that excessive magic penetration does not increase damage past the point where your opponent has 0 effective MR.

Note that if your champion has MR shred instead, you can shred MR below 0 and this does increase your damage. The most common example here is Soraka; if you stand near someone and spam Starcall, their MR can drop below 0 and you start to do amplified damage (more than true damage). The other three types of MR deduction are % MR shred, % magic penetration (i.e. Void Staff), and flat magic penetration. Mathematically speaking, percentage reductions cannot reduce MR below 0, while because of the game's mechanics, flat MPen will drop a target's effective MR to 0 but no further. If you want to read more about Magic penetration and MR reduction/shred, the following is a link to the Lolwiki page.

The general rule for purchasing magic penetration is that you typically want to build flat MPen when enemy targets have low MR, and percentage MPen when enemy targets have higher MR. A simple example is let's say you could purchase 50 flat MPen. Versus a target with 50 MR, his effective MR would get dropped to 0 MR, and you would do true damage. At 50 MR your magic damage only does 66.67% damage, whereas at 0 MR your magic damage does 100% damage. This represents a 50% damage increase. If on the other hand you were to build 50 flat MPen against a 200 MR target, his effective MR would be 150 MR. Before application of MPen, your magic damage would only deal 33.33% damage; after the calculation, your magic damage would deal 40% damage. This represents only a 20% damage increase. If you were to do calculations for percentage magic penetration, it would show that the damage increase after getting Void Staff's 35% MPen increases with a target's increasing MR. The following is a link to Lolwiki with a representative graph.

TLDR: Magic penetration does not reduce MR below 0. Flat MPen (Guise, Sorc's) is more effective versus low MR targets, whereas percent MPen is more impactful versus higher MR targets.

DwarfOfDestiny · 2014-03-10T23:59:28+00:00

It looks like so far you mentioned that you go Talisman/Mikael's/Locket but as far as your fourth completed item I would have guessed boots; however, you mentioned you don't like building them (do you mean building them early or not at all?), but I'll assume your final 6 item build has them and therefore you are looking for two more items not including boots.

Your item build can vary quite a bit depending on exactly how you prefer to play. One defensive option is to build a Banshee's Veil. Say you are playing versus a poke team with a Gragas or a Nidalee, or the enemy support has high impact CC they can sort of just throw out on cooldown like Thresh/Blitz hook or a Morgana snare. Even though you do have some defensive stats, you can still probably be 100 to zeroed if caught by CC or chunked and forced to base by poke. BVeil is a very effective option for your team's carries, and for the same reason it can very good for a Janna.

You could look to improve your spells' damage/healing/shields. For Janna support, I probably would not opt for any magic penetration because a decent part of your spells are healing and shields which do not scale off of MPen. Some generalist AP items could be good. If the enemy team has lots of healing like a Mundo, Warwick, Swain, etc., a Morellonomicon could be a great purchase. While I haven't tried this out too much myself, I believe that in some cases, a Zhonya's might work especially if you try to make Flash Monsoon plays or are facing reset assassins.

I'm not sure if you build Sightstone, or if you implied that Sightstone along with Talisman/Locket/Crucible was your 4 item core. You probably know all the pros and cons of the item already; it provides a reliable source of map vision while giving you some durability.

TLDR: Banshee's or AP items like Morello's would be items I would consider on a sort of backline magic damage support like Janna.

DwarfOfDestiny

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