Talk:Thornmail/@comment-85.207.18.54-20120115093501/@comment-67.166.110.115-20120119022424

Thornmail's damage return is magic damage, and is thus mitigated by magic resistance, despite general impressions, Master Yi's base MR is rather high even if he should choose to not buy any. Master Yi's build almost always includes a significant amount of lifesteal. Between any MR, lifesteal, and armor pen(which amplifies his lifesteal/damage versus thormail but doesn't cause any additional damage to be reflected), Thornmail's passive is often completely neutralized. In a 1 on 1 engagement merely coming out even with thornmails passive is sufficient, as a Master Yi who hasn't fallen behind will likely still out damage his opponent. Clearly a target with thornmail in a teamfight should be avoided, as obviously the squishy damage dealers are a priority rather than expending all the in-this-situation-valuable lifesteal on overcoming thornmail.

Autoattack champions, especially melee ones, are usually well equipped to ignore thornmail in this way. People also often to neglect to realize thornmails passive is actually NOT a defensive stat, on the other hand other armor items such as Frozen Heart and Raduin's Omen have effects which DO decrease autoattack damage output additionally doing so whether the owner of said items is the target or not. Thornmail is however the cheapest way ot stack armor into a single item slot and imo is actually of greater use against more AD-cast oriented champions which the passives of FH and Raduin's do not mitigate, with the passive as more of a bonus against autoattacks and the more susceptible ranged AD's.

Numerous times playing Master Yi, upon finding my opponent has bought a Thornmail I simply run up and kill them anyways. Even in the case that this is not possible, Thornmail provides benefit in a lane ONLY if they are attacked, spacing out trades nullifies any advantage it may have given them as Master Yi can nearly always recover better than they.

TL;DR People are greatly mistaken as to which champions Thornmail is actually most effective against.