'League of Legends' Lethality Explained: How the new armor penetration stat works

Impact

League of Legends has introduced a new statistic as part of its Season 17 changes. You may not have heard of Lethality, but it's pretty important as far as armor goes. If you're unsure of what it offers, we're here to explain the new changes.

League of Legends Lethality explained

According to League of Legends' official website, flat armor penetration has been changed and altered to become the new Lethality stat. The name was changed to reflect how the stat is looked upon and to clear up any confusion. The previous name, "flat armor penetration," suggests it's good against targets with armor, which is a backwards understanding of what the stat actually does. 

Lethality will give the owner of the stat a flat penetration split between a regular base amount and an amount that will scale with the target's level. Here's the formula for how it works: 0.4X + [((0.6X * Y)/18) = Flat Penetration Amount]. The X in this equation is Lethality, and Y stands for your target champion level, according to developer Riot Games.

To illustrate this, here's an example by way of the League of Legends Wikia:

Given 30 flat armor reduction and 30% armor reduction, and the target is affected by 10 flat armor penetration and 45% bonus armor penetration:

The goal, as Riot Games has stated, is meant to ultimately reduce the fall-off that assassins are dealt when they're behind in-game. It can be a little difficult to understand if you're not a hardcore player, but players have commented that it's an overall nerf.

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