I.10d - Take two - military expenditure

My previous post was lengthy and I was wrong about a very critical fact about mitigration scaling. Thanks to Phreak for setting me straight.

TL;DR Both health and mitigation scale linearly; prefer health early on because it helps against all incoming damage sources. Itemize not only based on your opponent's comp but also which of your opponents is doing well.

In depth:

I previously stated that the mitigation becomes less efficient over time, but I was wrong. Both health and mitigation scale linearly. 100 armor provides you with 50% mitigation. If you have 1000hp it will take 2000 physical damage to kill you. 200 armor gives you 66% mitigation, meaning it will take 3000 physical damage to kill you. Every 100 points of mitigation gives you 100% more effective health from that source.

I maintain that health should be favored over mitigation because it allows you to absorb all 3 types of damage (physical, magic, true). Purchasing 100 armor does nothing to protect you from an ap carry, so building out a solid base of hp is a great way to soak damage from both sides and adding mitigation contextually.

To demonstrate the principles that effect your build order, I'll discuss jungle Amumu and cover two scenarios. The enemy team has a balanced comp so I will account for both types of incoming damage. I always start with Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold. The passive gold helps my late game itemization, the Philo allows me to give blue to the ap, and the HoG establishes early health for tanking. I use 0-21-9 masteries, armor yellows, and mr/level blues, move speed quints and magic pen reds.

Ad carry is doing awesome, ap is meh:

• Randuins or Frozen Heart. The Frozen Heart is very popular right now, mana, cooldown reduction, armor, and a debuff aura are very compelling. Note however that these stats will do nothing to protect me from the enemy ap. If I expect incoming magic damage, the Randuins will protect me from both sides and give me the aoe slow.

Ap carry is doing well:

• Aegis/Negatron. The aegis gives me everything a tanks need and is extremely cost efficient. With  health from the HoG and Aegis, a Negatron will substantially mitigate incoming magic damage. I would likely go back to buying armor at this point because the utility of the big armor items tends to beat out the negatron items. 

I've found it very challenging to succinctly describe the driving forces that optimize your itemization because there are so many variables at play. Watching pros is a good way to start building a body of knowledge around when to build what. Pay attention to what's happening in the game, watch the order in which items are picked up, and actually talk through the decisions with yourself (or a buddy) to determine how wise the choice was. It's worth noting that the mathematically you can calculate the maximum effective health for a given amount of gold, however this is of limited value because in reality you are limited to six item slots and items give you specific stats that may not follow this curve. Additionally for legendary items you are paying for things other than the base health and mitigation stats so it's difficult to say what item will treat you best based on simple models.

I.10a - Method and Discipline - marshaling your troops

10. By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions
(because each aspect of this verse has so much depth, I'll be covering this in four parts).


Marshaling the army in proper subdivisions means running a competitive composition. Start with a standard high level comp until you've mastered it and understand why it's successful. The dominate meta gets established during big tournaments when thousands of dollars are at stake, so they have been proven at the highest level of play. Once you've mastered it start experimenting and try to break it.

The current standard meta consists of a bruiser top, an ap carry mid, an ad carry with a support bot, and a jungler.

• The bruiser tends to be a tank or a tanky dps. Their job is to farm as hard as possible and provide some meat to the team comp. Depending on the champ a bruiser might chase down squishies in a teamfight or protect his carries. Examples include irelia, rumble, nidalee, udyr and many others. A top lane champ must be able to escape ganks because the towers are far apart.
• The ap mid is also responsible for farming hard, but has more opportunity to snowball because of his proximity to all the action. Slower champs with fewer escapes are safest mid because the towers are close together. The jungler and support should take care of wards for the mid. Casters need a solo lane because their damage is dependent on leveling spells.
• The ad carry deals damage with auto attacks so levels aren't quite as important, while items are critical. The support's job is to ward and babysit the ad carry while he farms the lane as if he were a solo. A support should ward, heal, and potentially harass lane opponents to give his carry the best chance to succeed.
• The jungler's job is complex, though generally he should try to help his teammates win their lanes. He does this by warding, ganking, and crippling the enemy jungler. Do not take xp/gold from your solo while the enemy is in lane; this will put your teammate behind (unless you are saintvicious in which case farming is your only goal).

There are many nuances and plenty of variation inside this meta system, and a few teams like dignitas and goose have had some success running non-standard comps. Other factors a team should consider are damage, tankiness, range, poke, sustain, aoe, cc, damage type, zooms. I'll give an example for each of these factors, note that the 'bad' examples are only bad for the factor I'm covering, they might represent a perfectly suitable comp depending on your opponent. Similarly, good examples exhibit the trait well and may not represent a good overall comp.

Total Damage: Your team needs to put out enough damage throughout the game. Carrying too many tanks or champs that fall off late game will cause you to fail.

Good example: Irelia, Annie, Skarner, Tristana, Taric. (trist has amazing late game and nobody falls off too hard).

Bad example: Cho Goth, Leblanc, Malphite, Cait, Janna (cho and malph have no damage, lb and cait fall off).

Tankiness: Without a tank you will not be able to commit to a fight. I audited 15 tournament games from Dreamhack S1 Championships and IEM Germany, 14 out of 15 winning teams had a 'true' tank, and the one exception had three heavier than average champs. Don't get too tanky or you won't have any damage.

Good example: Sion, Kassadin, Skarner, Tristana, Janna. (skarner tanks it up, sion is naturally big)

Bad example: Nidalee, Brand, Nocturne, Corki, Sona. (even warmog/atma nid isn't enough tank for a team).

Range: Range keeps your opponent at a distance and allows you to harass, without range you have to go all in which can force you into some bad spots. Ranged champs also stay safer when they commit their damage; Vayne has insane damage but puts herself at risk, white Cait does a lot of damage from a much safer distance.
Good example: Udyr, Karthus, Nocturne, Tristana, Taric.
Bad example: Rumble, Ryze, Malphite, Vayne, Alistar.

Poke: Similar to range but specifically about dealing damage from range while preventing the enemy team from committing. A poke comp is meant to prevent Dyrus' tank tank tank tank mordekaiser comp from reaching you, rendering their beefy champs useless.
Good example: Nidalee, Karthus, Lee Sin, Caitlyn, Soraka. (Tons of ranged damage and with Karthus wall, Cait's traps and Nid's escape it's very difficult to pin this team down).
Bad example: Nidalee, Annie, Amumu, Miss Fortune, Taric (Not much sustain, only nidalee has ranged harass)

Sustain: Soraka is op. Sona is very strong.

AoE: If you have Kennen a 4v5 ain't no thang. Amumu makes all their squishies belong to him.

Crowd Control: Get some. Otherwise your friendly neighborhood Yi will come knocking on your (back) door.
Good example: Irelia, Morgana, Udyr, Graves. Soraka (3 out of 5 with hard cc, Soraka has silence, Graves slow).
Bad Example: Nidalee, Kassadin, Shyvana, Graves, Soraka (ouch).

Damage Type: Try to carry at least two champs with each damage type.
Good example: Yorick, Brand, Amumu, Tristana, Sona. (Amu does a lot of ambient magic damage and sona can put out some also).
Bad example: Riven, Leblanc, Pirate, Vayne, Alistar. (buy armor and kill Leblanc first).

Zooms: Champions with zooms/blinks give your team a lot of utility. You can assassinate squishies, escape ganks, and generally frustrate your opponents. The increase in champions with these abilities have made champions like Ashe effectively unviable because they can't avoid getting nom'd.
Good example: Jax, Ahri, Pirate, Ezreal, Alistar.
Bad example: Pirate, Malz, Amumu, Miss Fortune, Sona.

With all of these variables it's very difficult to come up with an ideal comp. That's okay however, because in competitive play you need to adjust your comp based upon your opponent's picks. Counter picking champions often has a big impact on the outcome of the game, regardless of whether your comp is perfectly balanced or not. This topic is extremely deep and I hope this provides a good general starting place.

Dyrus' tank tank tank tank mordekaiser