League of Legends – When Is Teemo’s Bomb Damage Calculated?

First, let's clear up a misconception.

Armor Penetration gives you a constant %damage bonus, regardless of how much armor the enemy has see here.

It doesn't matter if your enemy has 300 armor or 15 -- penetrating 10 of that will have the same effect on total DPS increase.

That said, let's take a look at why Armor Penetration is preferred, even with its linearity.

Attack Speed is easy to acquire via items.

Armor Penetration is not.

You can more than match the effects of attack speed runes with a single dagger - 420 gold.

The cheapest item with Armor Penetration is the Brutalizer at 1337 total gold. By this metric alone, Armor penetration runes are worth approximately three times that of attack speed runes.

It is easier to use items to stack Attack Speed over Armor Penetration -- but to get the highest DPS, you want to stack both.

Given that the amount of Armor Penetration available via items is strictly limited, if one's goal is to achieve maximal values for both Armor Penetration and Attack Speed, runes for Armor Penetration are much better than that of Attack Speed.

It depends on your team!

The opponents also know you're the biggest guy. They will focus you, trying to take you out as quickly as possible to win the fight because once you're gone, your team is massively behind. In the long run, this means your team will lose the game. There is nearly no carry in the game that can truly carry a game on his own, you always need your team's support in some way or another. So the question is actually, what is the general route you want to take from here in order to squeeze out a win?

1. End the game as quickly as possible. If you're the only one ahead, chances are you're far ahead. You must capitalize on this and press your advantage before their multiple fed carries can take over and get close enough in strength to overwhelm you together. Taking objectives (mainly turrets) becomes very important and has the nice side-effect of getting your team extra gold. But most importantly, it brings the game closer to its end. And you want the game to end while you're still far ahead. To do this, get damage. The more, the better. Gimmicky tricks are worse than raw damage, you main objective is to bring down those turrets and Inhibitors. This is a high risk, high reward kind of approach. You're basically on your own and need to end the game while your team "distracts" theirs. If they have the means to hold turrets and possibly even split push, you will lose.

2. Level the field. Carrying can also mean helping your team catch up. If you have several item dependant team members just waiting to get gold and catch up to the enemy team, your main objective becomes giving them the opportunity to farm. This includes minions, objectives, jungle creeps and enemy champions, especially ones with bounties. At this point it's important to focus down their main damage dealers and let your team get kills. Don't take the kills, they serve you much less than the rest of your team. Communication is important here, make sure everyone knows they're supposed to "steal" those kills you're preparing for them. If you can use your lead to have your team catch up, you will come out stronger and possibly catch the enemy team off-guard if they think they're still ahead of most of your team. As always, vision is crucial. In this setting, your main goal is to deal damage consistenly so your team can capitalize on it. Taking out 2 targets quickly and then dying to watch your team get destroyed by the remaining 3 champs is bad, you want to last the entire fight or most of it to make sure your team wins it. This is a situation where a defensive item, especially Guardian Angel, becomes very viable. It ensure exactly that, you outlast their damage dealers. It also has the added benefit of making you a much less attractive target. People don't like attacking an opponent with GA. Use this psychological effect to your advantage so you stay in the fight as long as possible and can help your team win the fight and pull ahead as a whole.

3. Snowball them to hell. Another possible team composition is a support and crowd-control heavy team. If your team is able to either save you from dying or stop them from damaging you altogether, you don't need defenses. Your team is your defense. If they can keep you alive for as long as possible and help you wreck the enemy team with their skills, go for damage and do wreck them. This is especially true if you have few or no other carries on your team that can benefit greatly from a gold boost. In this case, your team needs you to carry them to victory and will do everything to help you do that. It's fine to be a glass cannon if the other team won't ever get close enough to killing you because you have potent tanks, aoe disablers and healers backing you up. In this setting, you need to snowball. Get all the kills, farm like a madman whenever there are no opponents to kill, get the buffs, get the objectives, build more items and rack up as much damage as possible to mow through all 5 of them. If your entire team dies trying to save you, but buys you enough time to get a pentakill doing so, you will be alone. And you're the one doing the damage, so you'll have quite some time to crush their base.

Here's a summary:

• If you have other carries on your team, carry them. Build defensively to last as long as possible and prepare kills for your teammates.
• If you have a super-defensive team, be their glass cannon. Farm, build anti-champion damage and leave keeping you alive to your team while your destroy the other team.
• If your team has neither, end the game quickly. Build anti-building and anti-minion damage to push. Don't bother farming, the longer the game lasts, the more likely you'll lose.