4961

No, the enemy team.

4962

You can see it when you die, or look in the champions tab in the game info.

4963

That information is still useless, because several champions can build either.

THE ONLY WAY TO ITEMIZE AGAINST THE ENEMY IS TO PRESS TAB AND SEE WHAT THEY ARE BUILDING.

4964

When you die… well you died, so that’s a bit late, plus are those the raw numbers or post armour and MR numbers?

I checked for this recently and wasn’t able to find anything up to date, those there are a couple of topics on the LoL forums about this.

4965

What? Post armor and MR? i have no idea what you are trying to say :|

4966

Missing hypher: post-armour, post-MR. As in, is it raw numbers or modified by your defences?

4967

That’s what i don’t understand what you are talking about, what do you think is modified by your defences?

4968

So does ability power always increase magical damage then? If not, how can you tell what kind of damage to expect by their items?

4969

Post armor/mr, it’s the actual damage you suffered.

4970

No, what determines the type of damage is the skill itself, not the item.

Some skills do magical damage but can also scale from attack damage, you can see that on the skill info as either Green or Red (green is ability power, red attack damage) there other types of scaling too but they are rare.

Some skills scale of both Attack Damage and Ability power.

Autoattacks always do physical damage but can have additional damage as magical, for example orianna’s passive adds some extra magical damage to your auto attacks.
Items like Wit’s End, Malady, Bloodrazors also add magical damage to your auto attacks.

4971

For the most part, abilities which scale from AP do magic damage and abilities that scale from AD do physical damage. So like Pogo said, simply looking at your opponents items should give you a good sense of what defenses to buy.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but you will learn those with time and don’t need to overly concern yourself about it now :)

4972

no, it doesn’t but usually it does. I know what’s being asked, and I don’t know why people are being so defensive ;)

Each hero has a major type of damage that on average they will be doing. A chart of this would be nice to see. Sure they could be built different ways and that could change it, but in general if you start off a match and see your opponents, he’s asking for a quick and dirty chart to know what to expect.

It is also useful to have this info when picking teams, and you can’t look at their items being built at that point either.

Sometimes the snark seems to fly in here before people actually think about what’s being asked.

4973

I for one, didn’t snark at all. I feel left out…

Hark, you suck.

There. Much better :)

4974

Ask the team what to expect. The only way to actually know what to expect is to have played with, as, or against that champion a couple of times.

Like I said there are very few champions for which you can’t be sure what to expect.

Ezreal, Teemo, Evelynn, Kayle, Kog’Maw, Tristana, and Poppy come first to my mind as champs which people choose to play as AP or AD, but their first item will usually tell what they plan to do. If they have a Doran’s Blade, they will probably be focusing on abilities that facilitate AD damage for the rest of the game.

At 10-15 minutes in, press TAB and see who has the highest minion kills. That person is generally who you want to be afraid of, but you usually only want to be afraid of them if they are focusing you, and even then defenses may not help if they’re a better player.

This is why in general you should just pick a health item of some sort no matter who you’re playing.

4975

Kog’Maw especially, even if he builds entirely AD, he still does a shitload of magic damage.

4976

Yeah but that’s just something you can’t really do anything about… unless that Kog is carrying a Bloodrazor as well.

That’s why I suggest, for new people, that they build a Catalyst as soon as possible for any champ in this game that has mana. At lower levels, people that are attacking you don’t even realize how much health you have (those little bars below your name? each bar is 100hp). They don’t even look at those bars, they just jump in and try to kill you and if they fail they go “damn! better luck next time” even though it has nothing to do with luck.

I think another problem is people don’t realize just how important something like 250 health is. At level 8 that’s like 25% extra health. I can guarantee that having even 2200 health around level 16 makes a massive difference in surviving fights as opposed to 1800 health. The numbers don’t seem consequential but they are very, very important.

Catalyst > Banshee’s Veil, do it, even if you just hold onto that Catalyst for most of the game before finishing it. The extra mana boost also helps greatly because amateur players sometimes don’t realize how much mana their abilities use and how much they can cast them before running out. You can’t constantly harass with abilities before you get some mana or mana regen under your belt (and Catalyst has both when you include the level-up regeneration).

Exception of course is energy-using champs (Akali, Shen, Kennen) who all benefit from rushing Rylai’s Crystal Scepter (even if it’s tank Shen). The tanky DPS in the game that don’t use mana that often (Renekton, Lee Sin, Riven, Xin Zhao/Jarvan) can also generalize their defense via a Frozen Mallet or at least a Phage or Giant’s Belt.

One caveat when using Catalyst is that you don’t have gold left over for some damage items (unless you’re farming well). I’m not sure how often it’s mentioned to new players but it’s very important that you pick a high-damage ability and rank it up to rank 5 by the time you’re level 9. That’s your main damage bread and butter, especially when it comes to harassment or farming. If your skills are all over the place with ranks, then you’re going to be even more ineffectual without damage items than otherwise.

4977

Pogo’s tips are good ones. Catalyst is a good idea.

McK - I mean featured guides, my bad.

4978

And why the hell isn’t anyone posting Dominion beta when it’s up?

It’s up right now until 1:30 PDT.

4979

Err, yeah, that’s what I meant. Just that they aren’t emphasized as much.

4980

Soz, too busy Dominioning.