Lethality is the armor penetration stat in League that players misunderstand the most, and you really can't help but wonder why every time you blow your whole combo on the enemy mid laner, and they're walking off with a third of their health left. Lethality is the stat that decides whether that combo is a kill or just scratches.
Lethality Explained: Flat Armor Penetration, Not Armor Reduction
Lethality is a stat where each point lets you ignore exactly one point of enemy armor on your physical damage. Ever since lethality was changed in Patch 14.1, that conversion became a clean 1-to-1 at every level. And before all that, it scaled with your level and gave less than a full value early. But not anymore.
If you have, say, 18 Lethality and hit a champion with 50 Armor, the game would then treat their armor as 32. Likewise, 20 Lethality against a target with 20 base armor drops it straight to zero.
Two things to keep in mind, though: Lethality touches only the physical damage, not magic resist, so it won't work for AP champions. Another thing is that it cannot reduce the target's armor below zero. Only abilities capable of reducing armor by a flat amount (like Corki's Gatling Gun) can push it into negative numbers.
Lethality vs Armor Penetration: The Line That Decides Your Build
There's a lot of confusion among players between Lethality and Percentage Armor Penetration, and I can't blame you if you're one of them; they may sound synonymous, but really they serve completely different purposes.
Lethality as flat armor penetration removes a fixed amount of armor, which makes it more effective against low armor targets.
Percentage penetration, on the other hand, removes a share of the target's actual armor value rather than a flat amount of armor. This means it scales up and deals damage massively against heavy tanks — for example, a target with 200 armor loses 70 effective armor points to 35% penetration alone.
|
Enemy armor |
After 18 lethality |
After 35% armor pen |
Better stat |
|---|---|---|---|
|
30 (early-game squishy) |
12 |
19.5 |
Lethality |
|
60 (late-game carry) |
42 |
39 |
Armor penetration (barely) |
|
100 (bruiser) |
82 |
65 |
Armor penetration |
|
200 (stacked tank) |
182 |
130 |
Armor penetration |
Against a target with only 50 armor, these stats cross over, and beyond that point armor penetration is better. If a target has less than 50 armor, flat armor pen wins and deals the most damage. But once the target builds more than that number, percent armor penetration pulls ahead and scales better against targets with higher armor.
That's why assassins rush lethality early, when it is more effective against squishy, low-armor targets, and only transition to a percent armor penetration item once the enemy starts stacking high armor.
The Best Lethality Items in LoL Right Now
Assassin builds usually start with Serrated Dirk but later move on with either of the three meta items: Youmuu's Ghostblade, 18 Lethality, for roaming speed; Bastionbreaker, 18 Lethality, if you're going for a massive true damage power spike. And Hubris, 18 Lethality, and its Eminence passive banks a permanent stack of bonus AD every time you score a takedown.
Only when the enemy team starts to stack armor does a build shift from lethality and armor penetration in its flat form to Serylda's Grudge, which provides percentage bonus armor penetration to shred through heavy, tanky frontlines
Who Should Build Lethality?
The primary lethality users are burst champions like Zed, Talon, Qiyana, and Kha'Zix. It's also great for poke ADCs (Jhin and Varus), whose job is to obliterate squishy carries before any team fight could start. Mastering this itemization will not only make climbing rank faster, but also fix the macro mistakes you make along your journey.
