they reworked sona recently to have a little bit more interaction. ultimate skins have excessive amounts of particles and animations and stuff.

Akali is basically a champ that gets more value out of items than most other champs because she's hybrid. Her playstyle usually involves trying to not fall behind in gold until she completes one or two items. In terms of how she plays in a fight, she has a lot of burst and low cds, so she usually tries to pick someone off with her combo and then stall using her shroud and ult to reposition until she has her cds back up and can burst someone again. A fed akali will basically steamroll a team, she's one of the snowballiest champs in the game.

Her general rotation is q > wait a few seconds > shadow dash > spin > auto > q > auto. Her spin used to pop her q but i don't think it does anymore but i don't think that makes a big difference.

The important strengths when playing her is understanding your own and enemy's positioning in a teamfight, so that you can stay alive while capitalizing on enemy mistakes in positioning. If Akali is ahead enough she can basically just dash in a **** people up though.

No.

To begin with, the ingame music gets completely replaced by one of 3 tracks of your choice that you can toggle between. Your teammates can also choose whether or not to listen to this.

In addition, she is completely covered by some sort of cyberpunk suit that has recevied a severe visual upgrade and a major visual change when you toggle tracks. Her playing board also follows this theme, and change drastically from form to form. Her attacks have all also received a major visual overhaul.

Basically, it's 3 high quality skins you can switch between at your choosing. It's also the first skin where it has a major effect on the sound system or on anything that's not the character's skin to be honest.

In every other skin, you can see her face, and none of them are animated as well.

Basically, if you are a fan of Sona it's probably going to be her best skin.

Edit: Oh and they give you 3 unique summoner icons if you care about that.

oh, I didn't realise that. she still seems pretty boring but not as much as before

Sona actually has multiple ways you can viably build her too. Some people are even taking her AP Mid.

On a different note, I've discovered I can get a stupidly tanky 1200 AP goddess out of Cassiopeia.

I used to play adc sona sometimes, but she's been tinkered with so much since then that I feel like it probably wouldn't work anymore.

Gold Efficiency. Ever wanted to calculate this on an item? Well here's how. Calculate how much the item is worth. And then divide that by how much it costs.

AD worth 36 G per point.
AP worth 21.75 G per point.
Armor and MR worth 20 G per point.
Health is 2.67 G per point.
Mana is 2 G per point.
Health Regen is 3.6 G per point.
Mana Regen is 7.2 G per point.
Strike Chance is 50G per point.
Attack Speed is 30 G per point.
Movement speed is 13 G per point.
Armor pen is 12 G per point.
CDR is 31.67 G per point.
Life Steal is 55 G per point.
% Movement Speed is 39.5 G per point.
Magic Pen is 34.33 G per point.
Spell Vamp is 27.5 G per point.

I will now use the above to explain why Trinity Force is one of the best items in the game while also being one of the worst.

3 items build into Trinity Force.

Zeal

20% Attack Speed
10% Critical Chance
5% Movement Speed


This item is 118% gold efficient.

The lowest amount of movement speed you will get from this item is 16.25 movement speed.



Sheen

+25 Ability Power
+200 Mana

Passive: After using an ability, your next basic attack will do +100% BASE attack damage more physical damage. Basically, your base attack before items is doubled. 1.5 second cooldown

This item is 78.6% efficient without the ability. If you consider the ability to be worth 256 gold, then it's 100% efficient, and so on.

To be blunt, the sheen passive on people who use it is considered to be worth MUCH more than 256 G. Thus, this item is generally considered to be over 100% efficient.


Sheen

+200 Health
+20 Attack Damage

Passive: You get 20 movement speed for 2 seconds upon each basic attack and 60 per minion, monster, or champ kill.

This item is 94.57% gold efficient before the passive and 100% efficient if the passive is worth 76 gold. The passive is worth much more than that usually. Thus, this too, is worth more than 100% efficiency.






So. The 3 items that build into it, by our calculations, are all more than 100% gold efficient and really good no their own. You can build them at any time and have a decent choice.

What does Trinity Force itself do? Well, to begin with, YOU KEEP ALL OF THE ABOVE.

You get the following for paying the combined cost, on top of all of the above:

+10% Attack Speed
+3% Movement Speed
+5 Ability Power
+50 Health
+10 Attack Damage

You get all of that for paying the combine cost. You also free up 2 item slots. That's not very fancy, but what IS the combine cost? A massive 78 G. ....... Did you get that? Before the bonus combine stats, we were effectively stupidly efficient. And you get all that for 78 G.

Trinity Force is 126.25% gold efficient without the passives. That's pretty **** good.



What's the catch? Why did I call this item also one of the worst in the game? Well....... let's put it this way. It's stupidly good on someone like NASUS who can use every single stat on that list and gladly. It's stupidly good on someone like that. But let's look at the list of things again, total.

We've got the two passives, which are auto attack based (proc on heavy auto attacking champs). A lot of mages won't really use them to the full extent.

We've also got:

30 AD
30 AP
30% AS
10% CSC
250 Health
200 Mana
8% Movement Speed


What's the issue here?

Well some champions, as stated, can't really use the passive to the full extent. Those same champs would not be able to use the attack speed to its full extent of course.

How good does the item look if its only 30 AD, 30AP, 10% CSC, 250 Health, 200 Mana, and 8% MS? Not as good.

Realistically, about 1/3 of the stats from this item will be ignored by most champs. This makes it less than 100% efficient and not as good as other options on a lot of them. That's why it's generally a bad buy. But if you have someone who is a hybrid auto attack based like Nasus (one of my favs)........ well then we have ourselves a party.

Third and final post in this series: Why all of the above is ****.


Let's just look at armor and magic resist to begin with. Both stats lose effectiveness per point with each point you equip. Damage calculated is multiplied by 100 / (100 + defense stat).

100 Armor or MR gives you halved damage taken. The next 100 in either stat only gives you a further 17% reduction.

Does anyone here truly believe that buying 20 Armor at 200 Armor is the same as buying 20 Armor at 100 Armor? No. Armor is obviously worth more the less you have, so your first 20 armor is much much more valuable than your last 20 armor.


The same can be effectively calculated of a lot of other stats, albeit with different kinds of examples. Basically put, there is a huge fault in the system the way it currently is, and it's complete nonsense to calculate the value of something like armor penetration on the back of something like the cost of a brutalizer.

I completed my first rune page.

Although armor and MR have diminishing returns, they aren't technically weaker in large quantities than in small quantities. Assuming an opponent only deals physical damage (rare, but its for the sake of the thought experiment), this is what building armor does for you:

If you have 1000 health:

Having 0 armor gives you 0% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 1000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 100 armor gives you 50% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 2000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 200 armor will give you 67% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 3000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 300 armor will give you 75% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 4000 physical damage to kill you.

On the other side, if armor/MR didn't have diminishing returns, you'd eventually reach 100% damage reduction and no amount of damage would kill you, meaning the effectiveness per point of stat goes /up/ over time.

armor and mr /do/ stack multiplicitively with health though. You'll get more value per point of armor that you buy for each point of health you have, and vice versa. For this reason it's good to buy a mixture of them. AD/AS/Crit are the same way, you deal the most damage when you build a blend of them. AP and CDR will also increase overall DPS when built on most mages, although in the case of burst mages you may want to favour the ability to deal a lot of damage at once over an overall increase in DPS.

Although armor and MR have diminishing returns, they aren't technically weaker in large quantities than in small quantities. Assuming an opponent only deals physical damage (rare, but its for the sake of the thought experiment), this is what building armor does for you:

If you have 1000 health:

Having 0 armor gives you 0% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 1000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 100 armor gives you 50% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 2000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 200 armor will give you 67% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 3000 physical damage to kill you.
Having 300 armor will give you 75% damage reduction, meaning an opponent will need to deal 4000 physical damage to kill you.

On the other side, if armor/MR didn't have diminishing returns, you'd eventually reach 100% damage reduction and no amount of damage would kill you, meaning the effectiveness per point of stat goes /up/ over time.

armor and mr /do/ stack multiplicitively with health though. You'll get more value per point of armor that you buy for each point of health you have, and vice versa. For this reason it's good to buy a mixture of them. AD/AS/Crit are the same way, you deal the most damage when you build a blend of them. AP and CDR will also increase overall DPS when built on most mages, although in the case of burst mages you may want to favour the ability to deal a lot of damage at once over an overall increase in DPS.

It's an issue of severely diminishing returns vs investment.

Most people never buy more armor than a Frozen Heart or something similar, because that extra 100 armor puts you at 190 something. After Last Whisper, and other armor reduction, that number will still leave you over 100, which is what people are aiming for.But getting a second large armor item and going to 290 something makes little to no sense within the system, because you are paying about 2500 to 3500 gold? for an item whose main stat doesn't actually benefit you as much as something else that DOES scale additively would.

As for magic resist, the issue with magic resist is it's about 2500 G per 50 MR, while the equivalent armor item is about 100 Armor at that point in time. Furthermore while some AD champs never grab serious armor penetration EVERY AP champ will grab magic penetration and void staff (or almost every). Void Staff makes the MR on these items horribly inefficient, and magic peneration wipes out even more of it, so people basically buy 1 to get to the lowest tier you want to be at while getting whatever passive or active they were aiming for.

Defensive builds are generally situational unless a specific item is dominating in the meta, like spirit visage or randuins before they were nerfed. People do stack both armor and mr, especially tanks and bruisers who need the defense. Despite the diminishing returns, armor does scale additively.

The rule of thumb I've heard is that you shouldn't build more armor than you have health, in terms of hundreds and thousands. This means 200 armor is ideal with 2000 health, 300 with 3000, etc. The same relationship applies for MR. That's just how you get the most value out of each point of health/armor though, It isn't always worth building that much of it if you have enough damage reduction already.

It is true that percent penetration hoses armor stacking, But in the current meta I don't think %pen is strong enough to make a difference in the way people choose to itemize. In the past that has been the case. When black cleaver was off the top broken people stopped running tanks all together for the most part and just ran glass cannon assassins.

In the current meta every mage has void staff, and almost every auto attack ad champion grabs last whisper.

Because of this, it's highly recommended that the following be your item set for the majority of tank champions:

1 pair of boots
1 really good armor item
1 really good mr item
1 really good health item
1 really good offensive item
some 6th item depending on the situation

The order you build these in changes on each tank, and some things like Iceborn Gauntlet or Sunfire Cape can perform 2 roles at once, but that's the final build for a lot of them.


Health is also favored over armor and mr a little on your 6th item if you already have decent armor and mr, because the benefits per unit don't go down the more unit you have.

So if you already had Call to Glory, Frozen Heart, and Banshee's Veil for example; something like Sunfire Cape would be favored over Randuin's Omen.



Yes, armor stacks additively. But the benefits of it don't go up in a linear fashion. That's the key point.

Let's assume, just for a second, that 100 armor costs 2000 gold. This is what it's weighted at, gold efficiency wise.

Let's say you start at 100 armor. Buying another 100 armor gives you an extra 17% (about) reduction in damage. This is good. But people only consider it worth it because of the passives and other stats that come on such items. 2000G for 100 armor itself would never see the light of day.

But let's say you start at 200 armor. Buying another 100 armor only gives you a further about 8% reduction in damage. You are getting half the benefit for the same amount of cost. This severely diminishing return is why people say you shouldn't do it, except for a few exceptions on a champion by champion basis (thornmail on a few champs being the classic case).


As for MR, people say you shouldn't buy more than 1 because it's just stupidly expensive. Every MR point costs you about twice what every armor point costs, meaning 100 points of MR is about 3600 to 4000 G. Thus, people buy it the one time to hit the 50% area and then really really don't want to shovel out for the diminishing returns when they could buy armor or health instead.

You are mistaken about a couple things mjack.

Armor has the same diminishing returns compared to health as health does to armor. As you buy armor, health becomes more efficient. As you buy armor, health becomes more efficent.

Neither have diminishing returns in a vacuum.
1000hp+100ar = 2000ehp, 2000hp+100ar = 4000ehp, 3000hp+100ar = 6000ehp, 4000hp+100ar = 8000ehp.
1000hp+100ar = 2000ehp, 1000hp+200ar = 3000ehp, 1000hp+300ar = 4000ehp, 1000hp+400ar = 5000ehp.
See, the increases never diminish the more of the stat you buy. The reward is always the same amount of increased effective hp.

The calculation for resistances proves that you don't want to buy resistances until you have 100pts of health, and after that you want to buy pts of health and pts of resistances in equal quantities to get the most efficiency from your stats (ignoring specific item inefficiencies). By a "pt" of health I mean the amount of health that you could get for the same gold cost as one point of resistance. And by a "pt" of resistance I mean 1 ar/mr/ar+mr or other combination that is relevant to your situation.

If you are against an all physical team then you only need to buy armor, and you can get about 7.5hp for 1ar. This means that your efficiency goals should be 750hp/0ar, 1500hp/100ar, 2250hp/200ar, and 3000hp/300ar.

If you are against a team that does exactly 50% phys and 50% mag then you will want both armor and magic resistances in equal quantities, and you will be able to get 15hp for the price of 1ar+1mr. This means that your efficiency goals should be 1500hp/0ar/0mr, 3000hp/100ar/100mr, and 4500hp/200ar/200mr.

Furthermore Last Whisper and Void Staff do not make armor and magic resistance a less effective purchase once your "base HP" is met, they just make it so that the base HP you have before you should start purchasing armor and magic resist is higher. Instead of wanting 100pts of hp before you buy any resistances you will want 154pts (or more specifically 153.85pts) of hp before you consider resistances. From there though you will want to buy pts of hp and pts of resistance in equal quantities.

Fair enough in a vacuum. However, my points aren't being made in a vacuum:

You can only have 6 items. Ideally, as a tank, you would like to have:

- a good pair of boots
- a good armor item
- a good magic resist item
- a good health item
- a good offensive item

If you are missing any of those as most tanks, then your build has a huge weakness. Even if you go something like Rod of Ages + Rylai's for your health and offensive items, you want some good combination of health, armor, magic resist across your 4 non boot items, while maintaining good offense so that you can actually.. you know... do damage.

Even take someone like Nasus with a lot of double items, building as a tank I still want:

1 mercury treads
1 Spirit Visage
1 Iceborn Gauntlets OR 1 Trinity Force
1 Frozen Heart OR 1 Randuin's Omen
1 Warmog's OR 1 Righteous Glory

It's highly unrealistic to expect me to build the missing 150 or so Magic Resist here.


Usually, after your core build, you end up with 1 item left. This means that:

- It's highly unrealistic to build equal amounts of armor and magic resist since magic resist takes twice the price and twice the slots to equal your armor.
- It's highly unrealistic to build 300 armor AND magic resist AND good offense on several tanks
- Generally, you are making a decisions about your 5th or 6th item, which I have mentioned before ARE situational.



More generally put, you just can't have equal amounts of armor and magic resist in the general case and expect to do well across the board. It doesn't happen. Magic Resist is too expensive and needs too many items for it to work that way.

My main point from above is that it's very hard on a lot of people to actually build more than 1 armor and 1 mr item and get a ton of use out of them without neglecting something else.

As a counterpoint, there are exceptions where you want a **** load of armor. For example, take a couple of standard thornmail build on Rammus:

Ranger's Trailblazer - Juggernaut
Boot's of Mobility - Homeguard
Thornmail
Sunfire Cape
Frozen Heart
Banshee's Veil

Ninja Tabi - Homeguard
Sunfire Cape
Randuin's Omen
Thornmail
Warmogs
Banshee's Veil


Both of these builds have well over 300 armor, and both perform well in games. You would build them vs mostly melee AD opponents, and you NEED TO HAVE GLYPHS OF SCALING MAGIC RESIST if you are going to run either well, but these work because of Rammus's passive and the fact that he has 2000+ health at level 18 without items. There are some other champs that are in the same sort of situation (although a lot of tanks and off-tanks are not).

I don't disagree that item builds are more complicated than get X amount of each stat, but that is not what I'm arguing. I just wanted to point out that some of the claims you made are mathematically untrue like armor having diminishing returns and the comment on the effect of penetration items was a bit sketchy. I also wanted to point out that if you were only buying raw stats (Ruby Crystals, Null Magic Mantles, Cloth Armors) then there would be a best way to build mathematically.

That said, it isn't incredibly difficult to get a balanced build taking into consideration what items have good effects and are good with a champion! Sejuani with Juggernaut, Mercury's Treds, Randuin's Omen, Banshee's Veil, and Liandry's Torment has about 4500hp and 180 of each resistance. The sixth item doesn't really matter that much.

Another thing to consider is that sometimes you want stray away from the perfect split. Champions like Sejuani who have damage that scales on hp will prefer HP. Champions like Nasus who will have life steal or non% based regen or heals will prefer resistances.

Also if you're a tank in most games it is going to be a priority to weigh armor higher than magic resist. This is because sustained damage dealers focus tanks, and that generally means ranged attack carries. A tank will generally only want an even split or a preference for magic resist if the enemy team contains high sustained magic dealers like Singed/Corki or the enemy team's burst mage(s) is fed. Also I'd say like 1/20 games of League you'll run into a full phys team, and by this I mean something like Darius top, Zed mid, Graves bot, Blitzcrank sup, and Lee Sin jungle, against this team the 3000hp/300ar split is almost perfect since there are a lot of solid efficient armor and health choices.

Since people seem to be talking about runes a lot here are my rune pages. I think they cover most situations I run into.

AP Jungler: Hybrid Pen Marks, Armor Seals, AP Glyphs, Armor Quints
The idea make Jungling a breeze (hybrid pen and lots of armor) while still scaling your damage well (hybrid pen and AP). Also works for AP vs AD lane matchups where you are playing someone who auto attacks a lot like Annie or AP Ezreal.

AD Jungler: AD Marks, Armor Seals, CDR/Level Glyphs, AD Quints
This is for a AD casters like Kha'Zix or Lee Sin. You end up with 20% CDR just from runes and masteries.

AS Jungler: AD Marks, Armor Seals, MR/Level Glyphs, AS Quints
For jungling melee carries like Master Yi and Xin Zhao.

Tank Jungler: Armor Marks, Armor Seals, CDR/Level Glyphs, Armor Quints
This is just a preference thing since I like lasting in the jungle a long time and this maximizes my health potions and regeneration. Other perfectly viable options would be hybrid pen marks, heath/level seals, and MR/level glyphs.

AP vs Phys: Magic Penetration Marks, Armor Seals, AP Glyphs, AP Quints
This is one of those rune pages that I think you're just doing it wrong if you don't do it this way. It uses all tier one and manages to be mostly offensive, making this an amazing page for decimating your lane. AP/level is a viable choice too though if you are playing a champion who blooms at level 6+.

AP vs Magic: Magic Pen Marks, Health Seals, Mix of AP and MR or MR/Level Glyphs, AP Quints
It is harder to go offensively oriented against a magic damage champion as an AP champion because MR and AP occupy the same slot.

AP vs Hybrid: Magic Pen Marks, HP Seals, Mix of AP and MR/Level Glyphs, Mix of AP and Armor Quints
This is a complicated page. I mostly use it for AP oriented supports like Annie or Zyra.

AD vs Phys: AD Marks, Armor or Health Seals, Armor Glyphs, AD Quints
Armor Glyphs really suck but I prefer snowballing in lane and buying teamfight stats through items over taking late game stats (MR/level) that won't help me in lane. MR/level is fine though, it is a playstyle choice.

AD vs Magic: AD Marks, Health Seals, Mix of MR and MR/Level Glyphs, AD Quints
This is just a pretty efficient defensive page against magic dealers as an AD caster or carry.

AD vs Hybrid: AD Marks, Health Seals, Mix of MR and MR/Level Glyphs, Mix of AD and Armor Quints
This page is usually for AD top laners vs characters like Shyvana, but it is also good on supports who you plan to auto attack harass a lot on.

Ranged Attack Carry: AD Marks, Health or Armor Seals, Mix of MR and MR/Level Glyphs, Mix of AS and Armor Quints
For bot lane ADC mainly.

Tank vs Phys: Armor Marks, Health Seals, Armor Glyphs, Armor Quints
Rocking 27 armor and 72 hp, this page is for decimating AD champs in the top lane as a tank. This can also be used as a jungling page too, but your clears might be slow.

Tank vs Magic: Hybrid Pen Marks, Health Seals, MR/Level Quints, Health or Movespeed Quints
Health means you absorb more damage but movespeed has greater utility (roaming, dodging skillshots, gap closing).

Tank vs Hybrid: Armor Marks, Health Seals, MR/Level Glyphs, Armor Quints
Mainly for high utility supports like Thresh, Taric, or Janna.

We should play sometime.