Talk:Last Whisper/@comment-8053512-20140209172751/@comment-20804982-20140215190838

So I basically with you (although I think your math may be a little confused).

First, I completely agree that the *ratio* of extra damage grows as armor increases… that was why I gave the second formula above. My first point (regarding the fixed percentage) was that the other way to look at LW is that it basically just adds ~10% of AD in additional true damage. You are basically doing the same amount of extra damage to a character with 60 armor that you are doing to a character with 250 armor. This represents a bigger relative increase in damage to the tank (because it is true damage), but it is the same amount of fixed damage to both (because it is true damage).

You can see this with your example:

For 250 armor, 500 base AD, you calculated 143 damage pre-LW and 190.5 damage post-LW. I completely agree.

If we calculate the difference, we see that you are doing an extra 190.5-143 = 47.5 damage. So in total you are doing an extra 47.5 damage. This is equivalent to 47.5/500 = 9.5% of your base AD. This is what I am calling 10% true damage.

It is ALSO true that this is equivalent to a 47.5/143 = ~33% increase from your original pre-LW damage. It is still just 47.5 extra damage though.

To reinforce my point, we can do the same calculation for someone with 60 armor/500 base AD. I calculate doing about 360 damage pre-LW, and about 312.5 damage post-LW. If we calculate the difference, you are doing an extra 360-312.5 = 47.5 damage. So AGAIN YOU ARE DOING AN EXTRA 47.5 DAMAGE. Again is equivalent to 47.5/500 = 9.5% of your base AD. This is what I am calling 10% true damage – you are doing an extra 10% of your base AD for both 60 and 250 armor.

It is ALSO true that this is equivalent to only a 47.5/312.5 = ~15% increase from your original pre-LW damage; HOWEVER, IT IS STILL AN EXTRA 47.5 DAMAGE. Neither way of looking at it is wrong. I prefer to look at it as true damage myself, because it is easy to calculate in game – I know that I will be doing an extra 10% of my base AD to basically all targets.

An interesting way to look at it is that the LW armor pen is basically equivalent to Corki’s passive.

(As a side note, you had a couple of math errors – first, the “difference” is one number *minus* the other, not one number divided by the other. One number divided by the other you could call a “quotient” or a “ratio”. Second, your 25% number is not exactly correct – if you want a percentage increase between two numbers, you need to do (bigger number)/(smaller number) – 1. In your example, it should be 190.5/143 – 1 = .33 = 33% increase. You were calculating the decrease from 190.5 to 143, which is not the same – (for example 75 is a 25% decrease from 100; however, from 75 to 100 is a 33% increase – this is because 25 is a third of 75, but only a quarter of 100)).