Full Crit Thresh? AP Soraka? There is more to League than just mechanics. Using items efficiently to explore your options will help you win decisive victories and make the game more interesting. Here’s a guide on deciding which and when to buy an item, and how it impacts the game.
With more than 150 items in League of Legends, choosing which to buy can be daunting for any player without in-depth knowledge on itemization. Items are a deciding factor on the outcome of the game; a well-timed Zhonya’s can win an important teamfight. There are many online guides outlining popular core builds of a certain champion but relying on the same build every single game might leave out some stronger alternatives. So the big question is, “What items should I build and when?” However, before going into itemization, let’s backpedal a bit and first talk about Stats.
Items can be broken down into two parts: Stats and Unique Effects. Statistics, or Stats for short, are numbers that measure how well a champion can perform a certain task. You can see your champion stats by clicking on the small green icon next to your champion picture in game. Pressing “C” will allow you to see the expanded list of Stats, as well as your runes. Here’s an example:
There are a total of 16 Different Stats in League (only 8 are shown in the main screen):
Though it may sound scary to consider all of these stats, most of these can be ignored when considering itemization due to the rigidness of how these items fit in builds. The six most important stats that need to be considered when itemizing (if you’re not a support) are AD (attack damage), AP (ability power), armour, magic resist, armour pen (short for penetration), and magic pen. However, even if the other stats aren’t as important, they situationally could be useful to take into consideration, so here’s a brief rundown on them:
Attack Speed: Just as the name suggests, Attack Speed refers to how fast your champion attacks on a per second unit. Having a 1.5 Attack Speed means you auto attack 1.5 times every second, or twice every 3 seconds. Even though Attack Speed is an important stat for marksman, or ADCs’ (and some AP champions who build Nashor’s), Attack Speed isn’t really considered when purchasing items. Most players don’t ask if they need more attack speed or have too much of it - it just comes as part of the item.
Ability Haste: Ability Haste gives Cooldown Reduction (CDR) and refers to how much faster your spells come back up. Ability Haste does not scale linearly with CDR, so it's less and less gold efficient the more ability haste you buy. In addition, relatively few items give Ability Haste, which like Attack Speed, is why it isn’t considered as an important stat. However, there are some cases in which players need to choose between Boots of Lucidity, which gives Ability Haste, and the other four most common boots (Berserker's Greaves, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Mercury’s Treads, Plated Steelcaps).
Critical Strike Chance: Critical Strike Chance refers to the probability of getting a critical strike, which deals 75% more damage (not including modifiers such as Infinity Edge). Critical Strike Chance isn’t prioritized unless you’re trying to reach 100% (such as with any crit-build). Otherwise, it is merely a helpful addition to the standard marksmen items.
Movement Speed: Unsurprisingly, Movement Speed corresponds to how fast your champion moves. Ignoring item effects, the only items that give Movement Speed as a stat are boots and its upgraded variants. It’s pretty much an unwritten League of Legends law to always buy boots (unless you’re Cassiopeia). Even considering item effects, unless it's an active like Youmuu’s Ghostblade, Movement Speed is just a helpful byproduct of purchasing an item for an entirely different purpose.
Tenacity: Tenacity isn’t as straightforward as the other stats, but it reduces the time to all crowd control (CC) besides knockups, drowsy, nearsighted, stasis (bard ultimate), and suppression. For example, if you are hit with a Morgana root that would last for 2 seconds, but have 50% tenacity, you would only be rooted for 1 second. The reason why Tenacity isn’t really considered in itemization is because of how few items provide it. In fact, there are only 4 items that grant Tenacity: Mercury’s Treads, Sunfire Aegis, Silvermere Dawn, and Anathema’s Chains.
Health Regen and Resource Regen: Health Regen is how much health a champion restores per second, and Resource Regen is how much mana or energy a champion restores per second. Similar to Tenacity, there aren’t many items that impact Health Regen or Resource Regen. Warmog’s Armour is an option to boost health regen outside fights for tanks, and either Archangel’s Staff or Manamune/Muramana are usually the solution for any mana problems. This makes building Resource Regen not a viable option (excluding support items) since it’s better to just build items that give more Mana .
Lifesteal/Vamp: Lifesteal is the percentage of health that is restored based on your basic attacks. Vamp is similar, but includes any sort of damage, abilities included. Again, items that offer lifesteal or vamp are only for sustain, and aren't the main focus of the build (with an exception to the Negan Graves build). Lifesteal and Vamp however, could influence what item to buy if you need the sustain or protection during a fight. For example, if you were to choose between Infinity Edge (IE) and Bloodthirster (BT), BT would give you much more protection with its shield as well as sustain, while IE would offer a hefty boost in damage.
Range: Well, it’s just, for lack of a better explanation, how much range your champion has. Basic attacks, abilities, spells, and item actives all have different ranges, and are measured in “units”. The only item that actually affects range is Rapid Firecannon, which gives a 35% boost in range when charged. Besides that and Senna’s infinite scaling range from her passive, range isn’t really affected by items, and is pretty set in stone at the start of the game.
Now that we got the more obscure stats out of the way, let’s focus on the general idea of itemization. Essentially, the idea of itemization is to build items that are most effective against your opponents, or to make yourself as strong as possible. For example, if your opponent stacks armour, then building armour pen would be effective.
Armour reduces physical damage while Magic Resist reduces magical damage. The important thing, however, that most players don’t know, is how these defensive stats scale. The formula for calculating the resistance for both Armour and MR is x/(x+100), where x is how much Armour or MR you have. Armour and MR don’t scale well, meaning building more defensive stats become less and less gold efficient since you receive diminishing returns. Here’s a graph of Armour/MR and the percentage of damage mitigated:
You can tell from the graph how the rate of the increase is always decreasing (the slope gets flatter and flatter). The first 50 Armour and MR give the same resistance as the next 150. This means that only stacking either Armor or MR is almost never a good idea. Even against a full AD or AP team, it would be a good idea to look at utility or maybe even offensive items instead of continuing to build defensive stats. Alternatively, you could build Health items such as Sterak’s Gage or Warmog’s Armour which makes you harder to kill, compared to just continuing to buy Armour or MR items. To sum it up, if you’re a tank or bruiser, having two defensive items of one type (AD or AP) is enough, and for other roles (Mages, ADCs, Assassins, etc.), having one is enough.
Armour Penetration (Armor Pen) and Lethality have similar goals: to make physical attacks hurt more. The difference is that Armour Pen from items ignores a percentage of the opponents’ Armour while Lethality ignores a flat amount of Armour. The general rule of thumb is that ADCs will build Armour Pen while AD assassins will build Lethality. The reason behind this is because of the different priorities each role has: ADCs shred the enemy tanks or frontline while assassins kill the squishier (lower Health) targets. In general, it doesn’t make sense for assassins to build Armour Pen because their targets don’t have a lot of Armour, so having a flat reduction is better than a percentage based reduction. On the flip side, it’s better for ADCs to build Armour Pen to deal more damage to the enemy frontline, since having 30 Lethality against an enemy with 150 Armour isn’t going to do much. This doesn't mean that marksmen can’t build Lethality and that assassins can’t build Armour Pen. Serylda’s Grudge is powerful on assassins such as Zed since it allows him to threaten both bruisers and squishy targets as well as giving him a slow. Eclipse Lucian is also a viable build that allows him to trade more efficiently (with the shield) and deal more damage to targets with low Armour, especially in the mid lane.
Magic Penetration (Magic Pen) combines both Lethality and Armour Pen into one stat. There are two types of Magic Pen: flat and percentage. Items such as Luden’s Tempest, Hextech Rocketbelt, Sorcery’s Shoes give a flat reduction to MR, while only Divine Sunderer and Void Staff give a percentage reduction. There are relatively few items that offer Magic Pen (both flat and percentage), but it’s good to know especially if your team is AP heavy. Although Void Staff is rarely seen as part of a core build (first 3 items excluding boots), it can be extremely powerful later in the game when the opponent has completed their MR items. Some Mythic Items (but not all AP mythics) such as Luden’s Tempest and Hextech Rocketbelt also give flat Magic Pen to other Legendary items, so it would be worthwhile to consider Mythic item options at the start of the game.
The other thing to consider when itemization is item effects. These could be either active effects, in which you would need to manually activate the item, or passive, which automatically activate when certain requirements are met. One big mistake low elo players make is not taking advantage of their item actives, while item actives should be seen as another ability to use.
Sometimes, item actives are worth more than the stat it gives itself. For example, a Stopwatch is generally much more valuable than a BF sword (assuming you use it), even when a BF sword is worth 1300 Gold and Stopwatch is only 650. Again, a well-timed Stopwatch or Zhonya’s could mean life or death in a teamfight, which could ultimately decide the game, as compared to 40 AD.
Grievous Wounds is yet another example of when item effects are more valuable than the stat it provides. Grievous Wounds reduce the enemy’s regeneration and healing which could be a detriment to champions that rely on that to sustain through fights. High elo players often build an early Bramble Vest or Executioner’s Calling and don’t finish the item until later in the game. Tahm Kench is another example that takes advantage of healing reduction. A common build for him is to rush Bramble Vest and then build into the Frozen Gauntlet. One reason he is dominating right now is that he is nigh unkillable in lane while also dealing lots of damage - and the Grievous Wounds from Bramble Vest only helps oppress his enemies. If the enemy has a lot of healing, such as Yasuo, Swain, or Kayn (especially if he is Rhaast or Red form), it would be a good idea to build an early healing reduction item. Another general rule is that a team shouldn’t have more than 2 healing reduction items. Grievous Wounds don’t stack, so it would be a waste if everyone on a team bought it. Assuming everyone in the team participates in team fights, 2 healing reducing items is sufficient to be effective.
It’s impossible to analyze every scenario and to 100% optimize builds. However, here are a few final tips to consider:
Who said you could only have 1 starter item? If you feel like you need more sustain in a difficult matchup, or just want the extra early game advantage, don’t hesitate to buy another Doran’s Blade or a Dark Seal. Even if you have to eventually sell it, if you farm well, you’ll make back that gold in no time.
Refillable Potions are excellent because they give you sustain in lane and refill every time you base. Although they heal less than Health Potions, they are cheaper and can be sold back for 60 gold.
Although Elixirs are generally only worth it after completing your build (all 6 items), the stats they provide are useful if there is nothing else to spend your Gold on. They provide a temporary, substantial boost.
One thing about Guardian’s Angel (GA) is that you don’t need to have the item in your inventory for it to be on cooldown. A neat trick at six items is to sell your GA when its passive is used to buy another item, and to buy it back when it's off cooldown.
Just because you start an item doesn’t mean you have to finish it. It’s totally alright to buy an item component (like a healing reduction item!), only to finish it later. Kai’Sa players will often buy a Serrated Dirk to get their Q evolve. With that being said, don’t start too many items at once, as the completion of each item is a power spike.
Hopefully this guide has been insightful and will steer you away from trying any strange builds in ranked games. Theorycrafting has a time and a place, and (hopefully) not in ranked games. As always, best of luck on the Rift.
