LTL Mech Stats

1 | Learn the League

Stats There are a lot of stats and attributes to keep in mind while you're playing League of Legends. In this section, I'm going to cover all of the major stats you'll have to deal with, as well as their quirks and benefits.

Most stats stack additively, not multiplicatively. In other words, if you have two items that grant 20% critical strike chance, you will have a 40% critical strike chance from these items. There are limited exceptions, such as percentage-based armor and magic penetration, which stack multiplicatively (thereby being less effective than they would be with additive scaling).

Items with bonuses listed as "Unique Passive" always mean that building two of the same item will not contribute more of that bonus.

League of Legends will calculate most stats to several decimal places, meaning having partial stats (such as 1.9% Attack Speed) will still contribute meaningfully to your damage.

Some stats are only visible by pressing 'C' while in-game.

Note: For readability, I've capitalized stats in their sections, but tend to avoid capitalizing them outside their sections.

Baseline Stats vs. Multiplier Stats In League of Legends, there are three main baseline stats: attack damage, ability power, and health. There are rare exceptions, such as Ryze, who uses mana in functionally the same way most casters use ability power.

To be clear, I am not using the term baseline to refer to them being more or less important than other stats. These stats are considered baseline because they are increased in flat value increments.

Multiplier stats increase the effectiveness of their associated baseline stats. For example, attack speed increases the rate at which you attack, which means you'll increase your damage output from attack damage in direct proportion to how much faster you're attacking.

By finding an appropriate balance between Baseline Stats and Multipliers, you'll usually get more damage output than you would by just stacking one or the other. This is especially true on physical damage champions.


Normal Attacks

Attack Damage (Baseline) Attack Damage increases the physical damage your normal melee attacks do. Additionally, it increases the damage of some champion abilities.

Abilities that scale with Attack Damage will do so according to a ratio. For example, a damaging ability with a 0.5 ratio will deal bonus damage equal to 50% of your Attack Damage.

Tip: Some abilities scale with 'bonus Attack Damage.' This refers to Attack Damage that is beyond your champion's innate Attack Damage. When you see this, it's usually an indication that the developer intends for you to use Attack Damage items (instead of, say, survivability items) to make the most use of the ability.

Armor Penetration & Armor Reduction (Multiplier) Armor Penetration causes your normal attacks and physical damage abilities to ignore a certain amount of your opponent’s armor. Armor Reduction reduces the opponent's Armor, causing all incoming incoming normal attacks and physical damage abilities to deal more damage (including those from allies).

Armor Penetration cannot bring an enemy's armor below zero. However, Armor Reduction can. Armor Reduction is applied first.

Since Season 3, Flat Armor Penetration is calculated after Percentage Armor Penetration. Because of this, both Flat Armor Penetration (ex. Brutalizer) and Percentage Armor Penetration (ex. Last Whisper) coexist nicely.

Tip: Check out whether or not your opponents are building armor. If so, I strongly recommend looking at Last Whisper or Black Cleaver about midway through your item build, as this is often the most effective damage multiplier against opponents who stacks armor.

Flat Armor Penetration/Reduction is more effective against champions with low armor, whereas percentage-based Armor Penetration/Reduction is more effective against champions with higher armor.

Attack Speed (Multiplier) Attack Speed determines how quickly your character uses normal attacks. You can have a maximum of 2.5 attack speed, literally meaning 2.5 attacks every second. Due to how the stat is calculated, Attack Speed is more effective on champions who already have a high base Attack Speed.


Critical Strike Chance (Multiplier) Critical Strike Chance determines the likelihood that your next normal attack will be a critical strike. A small number of abilities, such as Garen's Judgment, also benefit from Critical Strike.

Critical Strike Damage (Multiplier) Critical Strike Damage determines how much damage your critical strikes deal, based on a percentage of your attack damage. Critical strikes normally deal 200% damage, though this number can be raised with runes (Furor), masteries (Lethality), and items (Infinity Edge).

Lifesteal Lifesteal restores health based on a percentage of damage done with normal attacks and abilities that proc on-hit effects.

Lifesteal is reduced by healing reduction effects.

Range Range is the distance you can use normal attacks from. Most melee champions have an attack range of 125, while a small number (such as Nautilus and Fizz) have an attack range of 175-200. Marksmen, as well as most other ranged champions generally fall between 500 and 650 range (Jinx, Kog'maw, Tristana and Twitch can go higher).

Tip: Range often has a big impact on how a game plays out, especially when two opponents are laning against each other. When picking a physical damage champion to counter another champion, always consider the range difference between them.

Abilities

Ability Power (Baseline) Ability Power increases the damage or effects of many champion spells.

Abilities that scale with Ability Power will do so according to a ratio. For example, a damaging ability with a 0.5 ratio will deal bonus damage equal to 50% of your Ability Power.


Cooldown Reduction (Multiplier) Cooldown Reduction reduces the cooldown on most active champion abilities by a percentage. Cooldown Reduction caps at 40%, meaning a player can only reduce the abilities down to 60% of their original cooldown.

Tip: Cooldown Reduction tends to be more effective on champions who already have short cooldowns. This is because having more Cooldown Reduction is more likely to allow for more spell casts in actual skirmishes and teamfights with these champions.

Magic Penetration & Magic Resistance Reduction (Multiplier) Magic Penetration causes your magic damage to ignore a certain amount of your opponents magic resistance. Magic Resistance Reduction reduces the opponent's magic resistance, causing all incoming magic damage to deal more damage (including those from allies).

Magic Penetration cannot bring an enemy's magic resistance below zero. However, Magic Resistance Reduction can. Magic Resistance Reduction is applied first.

Tip: Magic Penetration is a very strong stat to have, especially if your opponents are stacking magic resistance. Consider a Void Staff if your damage output comes primarily from magic damage.

Flat Magic Penetration/Magic Resistance Reduction is more effective against champions with low magic resistance, whereas percentage-based Magic Penetration/Magic Resistance Reduction is more effective against champions with higher magic resistance.

Mana & Resources Most champions use Mana as a primary resource for using abilities. However, some champions use energy, health, champion-specific resources, or no resource at all.

Mana & Resource Regeneration This is the rate at which you regenerate your resource while you are not capped.

Tip: If you're very dependent on a Mana or Energy, consider getting the blue golem buff on Summoner's Rift, as this will significantly increase your regeneration.


Spell Vamp

Spell Vamp restores health based on a percentage of damage done with abilities. This does not work on most abilities that proc on-hit effects. To be clear, this applies to abilities that deal all types of damage, including physical damage and true damage, not just magic damage.

Spell Vamp is only 33.3% effective on multi-target spells.

Spell Vamp is reduced by healing reduction effects.

Defensive

Health (Baseline), Effective Health & Shields Health is your primary resource. Once this reaches zero, you will die (with limited exceptions for some champion abilities and the Guardian Angel item proc).

The efficiency and effectiveness of Health is based on the type of damage you're receiving, as well as sources of damage reduction you have to counter them. Put more simply, Health becomes better and better as you acquire more sources of damage reduction such as armor and magic resistance. This is the concept of Effective Health (EH).

In most cases, health shields operate exactly like Health, and will also be more effective with armor and magic resistance.

True damage, or damage sources that ignore all magic resist and armor, will always deal damage directly to your Health pool.

Tip: Think about Effective Health when building items. A player with 5,000 health isn't necessarily more survivable than a player with 3,000,if the player with 3,000 has significantly more damage reduction from armor or magic resistance. Simply stacking Health is not an effective strategy for survival except in rare circumstances.

With high armor or magic resistance, champions with shield abilities can be unusually well suited to taking damage, especially if the shield can be re-applied fairly often. This is not just because it acts as a substitute for health, but also because you don't lose health while it's active. The practical effect of this is that shields have an extremely good multiplicative effect on your longer-term survivability and sustainability.


By the same token, healing is more effective on you if you're taking less incoming damage. Keep this in mind if you have a healing heavy team and you're deciding whether to build Health or damage reduction.

Finally, it's worth saying that -- in the early game -- it is virtually always better to build Health early on than it is to build damage reduction, unless you have very reliable sources of healing and won't be dealing with much burst damage. This is just due to a stat imbalance on most characters in the early game.

Armor (Multiplier) Armor reduces incoming physical damage from all sources. Due to the damage reduction calculation, Armor will always provide the same bonus to your Effective Health, regardless of how much Armor you currently have.

Tip: Even though Armor always provides the same bonus to Effective Health, that doesn't mean that it will always be the best option for increasing your Effective Health, even against physical damage opponents. Increasing your base health may have a substantially larger or smaller impact on your survivability depending on what your Armor is currently at.

Magic Resistance (Multiplier) Magic Resistance reduces incoming magical damage from all sources. Due to the damage reduction calculation, Magic Resistance will always provide the same bonus to your Effective Health, regardless of how much Magic Resistance you currently have.

Tip: Even though Magic Resistance always provides the same bonus to Effective Health, that doesn't mean that it will always be the best option for increasing your Effective Health, even against magical damage opponents. Increasing your base health may have a substantially larger or smaller impact on your survivability depending on what your Magic Resistance is currently at.

Health Regeneration This is the rate at which you regenerate health while you are not at full health.

Health Regeneration is reduced by healing reduction effects.

Tip: Health Regeneration tends to be more important in the early game than the late game. While regeneration is nice, keep in mind that itemizing for this stat will not help much against heavy burst damage (with exceptions for champions who can gain extremely high regeneration).


Health regeneration and other sources of healing are much more effective if you have high damage reduction (such as armor or magic resistance).

Tenacity Tenacity reduces the duration of Slows, Snares, Blinds, Silences, Stuns, Taunts and Fears by a percentage. The only type of crowd controls not affected are Knockups, Knockbacks and Suppression. Tenacity items do not stack with each other to provide greater reduction. However, they do stack multiplicatively with champion crowd control reductions, such as those found on Irelia, Trundle, and Mundo.

Tip: You'll usually want to evaluate the types of crowd controls your opponents have available. Mercury Treads are usually a good choice for boots, but you'll occasionally come into matches where there are only a few crowd controls that will be affected.

Utility

Movement Speed Movement Speed determines how quickly your champion travels over terrain.

Boots contribute to your base movement speed, while percentage multipliers (such as those from Zeal, Phantom Dancer, Lich Bane, and Force of Nature) will multiply the combined effect of your base movement speed and your movement speed from boots.

Tip: Movement Speed is one of the most overlooked and most important stats, especially for physical damage champions. This is because you will tend to need to catch back up to a moving opponent after your champion briefly stops due to their swing animation. With these stuttered attacks, your Attack Speed stat is generally a lot less effective, and the best way to speed your attacks up is to more quickly get back in range of the opponent.

Being able to move more quickly may allow you to get kills before opponents can reach the safety of teammates or tower, or before they can simply get (and stay) out of your range.

Passive Gold Gain (Gold per 10) Passive gold is gold that is earned for the player over time with no additional actions required. Runes (Avarice), masteries (Greed), and items (Avarice Blade, Philosopher's Stone, and Kage's Lucky Pick) all grant bonus passive gold.


Tip: Even though each of the passive gold gain items says 'Unique Passive,' they do still stack with each other. The only thing you can't do is stack the same item multiple times for more gold gain.


A Little More Regarding Defensive Stats Defense is not intended to be more powerful than offense in League of Legends. One team has to lose, and the only way that happens is if players have superior methods of breaking through defensive items and champions. It's important to know how to do this, and to that end, here are some guidelines.

Low Health, Armor, and/or Magic Resist Burst damage exists to punish players with low health. Use it when the opportunity presents itself.

High Health High health is best countered with attacks that deal a percentage of health as damage, such as Kog'maw's Bio-Arcane Barrage or Vayne's Silver Bolts. Blade of the Ruined King (designed for marksmen) is also helpful for this.

In cases where an enemy has high health but low armor and magic resistance, their Effective Health won't be too high and it may be much easier to kill them with normal attacks than other players who have a more effective balance of stats.

High Armor or High Magic Resist Percentage-based penetration stats (Armor Penetration/Reduction and Magic Penetration/Reduction) have a dramatic impact on enemies who are stacking armor or magic resist. Additionally, any source of true damage, such as Olaf's Reckless Swing or Cho'gath's Feast, will be effective against these players.

High Health, Armor, and Magic Resist Ignore these players until everyone else has been killed unless absolutely necessary. If a champion is too bulky, it usually means they've invested an extraordinary amount into defensiveness but haven't picked up items that would make them threatening to an enemy team.

High Health Regeneration or Healing Ignite or any source of healing reduction. In a pinch, pick up Executioner's Calling, an item that grants critical strike chance and lifesteal and can be activated to reduce your opponent's healing.

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LTL Mech Stats