Talk:Vladimir/@comment-128.153.46.173-20120329155320/@comment-77.249.233.124-20120329204055

I just did some rough number crunching with AP offense vs defense trees and it turns out the defense tree wins. Though it's mostly the HP and mres in the top of the defense tree that's the best, the rest of the tree just supports that with more mitigation and HP.

Late game it might turn around, but since masteries by definition are mostly early game advantages I really think the defense tree wins here.

Just a simple comparison, the offense tree with 21 points gives 5,25 AP at lvl 1 (flat, AP/lvl and the 5%), on your Q that gives 3,15 extra dmg. The defense tree on the other hand extends your effective HP by 6% with the mres mastery alone, on 400 HP that's 24 HP. 24/3.15=7-8 hits. So if you trade 1on1 every time you harass someone your opponent effectively has to hit you 7-8 times to equal out the mres mastery alone. Of course this is a mirror match and only theory with the base dmg of spells not included, but the fact that 1 mastery offers so much more defense than most of the offense tree combined at lvl 1 is pretty shocking. And that mres scales with every point of HP you gain, the AP of the offense tree barely scales considering it has to go through the AP ratios of spells.

tl,dr; in practice the offense tree probably works fine, but in theory the defense tree is superior at least early game, and quite possibly equal to the offense tree late game.