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The Gold efficiency of an item tells you how much stats it provides for its price (gold cost). This is a theoretical value with no direct game impact, used mainly to compare items.

A base gold value for each stat has to be defined in order to calculate gold efficiency. This is a form of "theory-crafting" because gold value is not a part of the game's rules; the number has to be derived from the prices of in-game items (see below).

Gold efficiency is then the ratio of the item's theoretical gold value to its actual in-game price.

In general the theoretical gold efficiency is most useful for comparing items' relative, theoretical values. The "real" value of an item during an actual game is influenced by many other factors that are not easily modeled (in terms of gold or otherwise).

## Calculating Gold Efficiency

The formula for the gold efficiency of an item (as a percentage figure) is simple:

$\pagecolor{Black}\color{White}{\rm Gold\ efficiency}={{\rm Gold\ value} \over {\rm Item\ price}} \times 100$

The difficulty is in determining the gold value given the stats on the item. It is done by using the price of "reference items" (see next section).

If the item has passive or active effects they are only taken into account if they provide stats with a gold value (e.g. if an item's effect added a temporary flat movement speed, the gold value of this effect could be determined, because there is a reference value for movement speed). See the next section for how the base gold value of various stats is derived from "reference items".

The item price is simply the price from the in-game shop.

Since gold efficiency is usually given as a percentage value, we have to multiply the ratio by 100.

An item is said to be gold efficient if its gold efficiency is at least 100%. Usually, items that are less than 100% gold efficient have other (passive or active) effects that are not taken into account when determining their gold value. This then results in a theoretical gold deficit in the item's value; in those cases, the items passive or active effects usually make up for the deficit.

## Base Statistic Prices

The gold values assigned to stats are not measures of the effectiveness of those stats. They are simply base values meant to be used in determining the theoretical value of other items (or effects that are not item-related, such as Dragon buffs or Runes).

A stat's gold value is derived from the least expensive basic item that provides only that stat:

Champion Statistic Base Item Item Cost Stat Raised Gold / Stat Bonus
Attack damage 350 10 AD 35
Ability power 435 20 AP 21.75
Armor 300 15 Armor 20
Magic resistance 450 25 MR 18
Health 400 150 HP 0 2.6
Mana 350 250 MP 0 1.4
Health regeneration 150 50% HP5 0 3
Mana regeneration 125 25% MP5 0 5
Critical strike chance 400 10% Crit 40
Attack speed 300 12% AS 25
Flat movement speed 300 25 MS 12

Life steal, lethality, magic penetration, on-hit damage, cooldown reduction, percent movement speed, and heal and shield power are not found isolated on any single item, so their gold values are calculated using the least expensive items that provide the stat: , , , , , and  for each of the aforementioned stats respectively. Spell vamp (on an item) is currently only found on the non-static passive Lifegrip on , making its gold value incalculable.

Champion Statistic Base Item Item Cost Stat Raised Gold / Stat Bonus
Life steal 900 10% LS
37.5
35
Lethality 1100 10 Lethal
22.5
35
Magic penetration 1100 18 MC Pen
45 MS
31.1
12
On-hit damage 1000 15 OH Dmg
25% AS
25
25
Cooldown reduction 800 10% CDR
200 HP
26.6
2.6
Percent movement speed 850 5% MS
30 AP
39.5
21.75
Heal and shield power 800 5% HS Power
50% Base MP5
10% CDR
56.6
5
26.6

## Item Statistics

### Basic Tier Items

350 10 35 N/A
875 25 35 0% Greater Efficiency
1300 40 32.5 7.69% Greater Efficiency

Base Item Item Cost AP Value Gold / AP Equivalence
435 20 21.75 N/A
850 40 21.25 2.35% Greater Efficiency
1250 60 20.8334.4% Greater Efficiency

Base Item Item Cost Armor Value Gold/ Armor Equivalence
300 15 20 N/A
800 40 20 0% Greater Efficiency

Base Item Item Cost MR Value Gold / MR Equivalence
450 25 18 N/A
720 40 18 0% Greater Efficiency

Base Item Item Cost HP Value Gold / HP Equivalence
400 150 2.666N/A
1000 380 2.63 1.46% Greater Efficiency

Base Item Item Cost MP Value Gold / MP Equivalence
350 250 1.4 N/A

Base Item Item Cost Hp5 Value Gold / Hp5 Equivalence
150 50% 3 N/A

Base Item Item Cost Mp5 Value Gold / Mp5 Equivalence
125 25% 5 N/A

Base Item Item Cost Crit Value Gold / Crit chance Equivalence
400 10% 40 N/A

Base Item Item Cost AS Value Gold / % AS Equivalence
300 12% 25 N/A

## Trivia

• Spell vamp used be a statistic available on items. It was valued at 27.5 per percentage point before it was removed from . It is still available through passive.
• The former values for MP5 and HP5 were 60 and 36 respectively. Flat MP5 is available on , and flat HP5 is still available on items like and .
• With the maximum amount of ability power, a grants about 424 ability power, with a theoretical price of 9222; 280% of its purchase price.
• The snowball item begins with a very low gold efficiency, but upon reaching maximum stacks has one of the best possible in the game.
• has a theoretical price of 3828.75 when fully stacked; 273.48% of its purchase price.
• has no gold efficiency cap with or because they infinitely increase their health, which will scale Health regeneration.
• A also has no gold efficiency cap with or .

## Start a Discussion Discussions about Gold efficiency

• #### Mathematical validity of the Gold Value calculation method.

3 messages
• Moyon wrote: Can anyone justify why picking the small items is better than picking the larger items ? Both seems as arbitrary to me. Beca...
• It's sort of like with SI units. They've been somewhat arbitrarily determined, but something had to be used to determine value so...
• #### Gold efficiency item classification

2 messages
• I really want to change the classification of the items in the Gold Effiency page : * Leave Basic Tier Items where they are, without chang...
• Wrong forum. Use: :'''Wiki discussions and announcements''' :Discussions and announcements pertaining to the wiki