Liandry's Torment is Incredibly Strong

Quite often I get requests for specific analysis to be done by several members of the community. This week I had a very special request from Gambit Gaming's mid laner, Alex Ich, who wanted to know if Liandry's Torment outdamages a Void Staff. Unable to say no, I agreed I'll figure it out for him. This article lists the results of the analysis I completed on his request, and I'll tell you right now, Liandry's Torment is the most underrated item in the game.

Now that I've thoroughly spooked you with the horrific background on that header. Read on to see exactly how strong this item is.

Beginning the Analysis

I had shied away from analysing Liandry's Torment for a long time due to the number of factors involved in exactly calculating its output. There was:

• Your base damages
• Your AP ratios
• Your current AP
• Enemy's Current HP
• Enemy's MR

Not to mention, that I imagined it would be quite complex to calculate damage over time spells, as I would have to subtract the damage done by the initial spell damage and then subtract the percentage HP damage of Liandry's passive and so on for each second. However, determined to figure out the answer, I experimented with various values and realised that your current AP actually does not result in a significant difference in damage when comparing Liandry's to Void so I could eliminate that variable and purely use the values of Liandry's AP and Void Staff's AP to calculate the damage differences. Having made that discovery, I went on to create some rainbow graphs taking into account the standard 22.8/8% Magic Pen everyone runs and beheld the shocking results.

However, before I show you those, let's just run through what each item does.

Liandry's Torment -- 50 AP, 300 HP, +15 Magic Penetration. Passive: dealing spell damage burns enemies for 2% of their current HP per second for 3 seconds (6% total). Double damage if movement impaired.

Void Staff -- 70 AP, +35% Magic Penetration.

As you can see, the most significant differences are in the passives. Flat Magic Pen + Percentage HP Burn vs. Percentage Magic Pen. There is also a gold difference of 605 gold between the two items, however this can be attributed to the extra HP that a Liandry's gives, so we can eliminate that out of the equation.

Right off the bat, we can discern the following:

• The higher the enemy's MR, the more favourable it will be for the Void Staff
• The higher the enemy's current HP, the more favourable it will be for Liandry's Torment
• The higher an ability's AP ratio, the more favourable it will be for the Void Staff

So which wins? Let's get the how-to read graph out of the way so we can revel in the glory that is Liandry's Torment.

Now that you've understood how to read this repugnant rainbow, let's move on to the results.

Results for Single Spell Damage

Firstly, let's compare Liandry's with a Void Staff across single spell damage. This is assuming that you land the spell, it does the damage, and then Liandry's ticks for 3 seconds which is the minimum.

I've taken two extremes to compare. A high damaging spell with good base and AP ratio compared to a low base damage and AP ratio spell. These provide two extremes for which to compare the damage between Liandry's Torment and Void Staff with.

Interpreting Single Spell Damage results

And if you read the graph right, like me, you would have been gobsmacked.

Let's look at an example -- if you land a Lux E, that's the AoE glowy thing that slows and you can detonate after, on a target with 50 MR and 1500 HP currently, you will deal roughly 25% more damage with a Liandry's than a Void Staff. I repeat -- 25% more damage. And if they get slowed by someone else for the 3 seconds Liandry's ticks, then that becomes 50% more damage.

Let's take a look at another example -- if you land a Karthus Q, the skittle ability, on a target with enemies near him (so there's no double damage) with 100 MR and 3000 current HP, you will deal roughly 90% more damage than if you had a Void Staff, and if they're slowed around 200% more damage. This is on someone who is your average Warmog's building bruiser.

Let that sink in, 200% more damage, that's 3x as much as if you had a Void Staff. THREE TIMES. If that didn't blow your mind, I don't know what will.

In fact, the only time a Liandry's is less favourable than a Void Staff is when they have less than approximately 1000 HP. And even then by only around 10% less damage, which is balanced out by the fact that you do obscene amounts of damage to get them to the point where they have less than 1000HP. If you're hitting someone with spells that low, they're almost near death and would not likely want to be near you, so the damage difference does not play as important a part.

This is a CLEAR win for Liandry's Torment. Absolutely no doubt at all.

Burst Damage

Now the skeptics might be saying, Liandry's is alright for single spells but what about full QWER bursts? You'll only get the minimum 3 seconds of Liandry's ticking and a whole lot of base damage and AP scaling abilities that would favour the Void Staff.

Well surprise surprise, I've got graphs for that too! I just have graphs up all my sleeves....

Interpreting Full Burst Damage

Skeptics proven almost right. Assuming you land a full perfect burst, eg: Lux's QER without delay and Liandry's only ticks for 3 seconds (which is impossible to do unless you're Annie Bot), you will actually get to situations where Void Staff is favorable.

Depending on how much AP you currently have, your full burst will either 100-0 your enemy or it won't. Now if you look at the breakeven points then look back at your full burst, most of the time on the left half of the graph, you will actually end up killing the enemy. So now it becomes favorable for Liandry's in most realistic situations. Very rarely will you land a perfect burst where Liandry's only procs 3 seconds and not 5 or 6 seconds. This favours Liandry's even more.

There's also the fact that not every fight starts with the enemies at full HP, meaning that when you do get a full burst off, they're dead regardless of whether you had a Void or a Liandry's.

For all the reasons above I believe that Liandry's is overall a better pick even though it is not distinctly better in a full perfect QWE burst.

Conclusions

• Liandry's deals anywhere from around 25% to 200% more damage per spell depending on which spell and which enemy. Even more if it's a DoT spell like Malzahar's Malefic Visions
• Liandry's matches up to a Void Staff when landing a QWER burst when taking into account human delay and other factors such as enemy being so low that they die regardless or pre-fight poke
• Liandry's is ridiculously strong when compared to Void Staff in non-lethal spell combos

Other Words (my opinions)

In my opinion, and take it as just that, if your champion has any sort of damage over time ability or a reliable movement inhibiting CC (slow/stun/suppress/snare etc), always build a Liandry's over a Void Staff when presented with the choice (obviously both is better). The increased damage is potentially sky high. For each second that Liandry's Torment's passive ticks, it becomes a stronger option than Void Staff. There are not many mages who don't have either a slow or a damage over time spell, and for that reason I'd prefer a Liandry's over a Void Staff in almost every case (exceptions being situations when faced with a relatively low HP but high MR stacking champion like Galio).

If you remember an analysis I did recently, Deathcap vs. Void Staff, you'll remember that Void Staff was favourable past 80 MR. Even after the patch changes that value does not change much, goes to around 90 MR. If you look above on the graphs you'll see that a Liandry's Torment actually does a lot better than Void Staff the lower the enemy's MR is and still significantly beats a Void Staff at higher MR.

If Void Staff > Deathcap and Liandry's > Void Staff, then it follows that Liandry's > Deathcap. (I bet there's some logical fallacy here that someone will point out)

I honestly don't understand why Riot has buffed this item in this 3.02 patch. It is ridiculously broken in its current state and offers an exceptionally viable build path. So Mr. Alex Ich, I hope you read this and start building Liandry's in your tournament games, because it is OP.

I hope you enjoyed that analysis and start building Liandry's Torment on all your champions -- It's especially good on Vayne! (No I kid, please don't build Liandry's on physical champions)

Have a good day,

DiffTheEnder

PS: Thank you to GG Alex Ich for the idea and SoNumber9 for verifying the math!