Titan's Bane and Obsidian Shard: The Most Underrated Items, Ever

A lot of people scoff at these items. Yes, these items are only superior if you face enemies with protections well over 200. Yes, the Executioner, Spear of the Magus, or Demonic Grip are usually a better deals.

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Tl;dr version: If you have even 15 flat pen and the enemy builds just one defense item, you can consider buying the Titan's Bane or Obsidian Shard. Same is true for attacking map objectives like towers or the gold fury.

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But a lot of people don't factor three things:

1: You won't always be able to hit with a basic attack first

2: Flat penetration

3: Towers and other map objectives

One is obvious. Gods who do not rely on basic attacks and need to counter defense items would want to seriously consider these items. Even on a simple Void Stone, they remove 16.5 protections - more than the starting shoes. And that's not even applying the base protections!

Two is a little less obvious. For those of you who don't know, the penetration formula goes like this: % reduction is applied first, then flat reduction, then % penetration, then flat penetration.

So let's say that an enemy has 120 physical protection, which is easy to get even for a squishy. The Executioner + Warrior's Tabi, after three stacks:

((120 x .79) -15) -15 is 64.8 protections, after basic attacking thrice.

Now, with the Titan's Bane, the calculation is simple. (120 x .67) -15 = 65.4.

In other words, if they purchase even one physical defense item, and you have at least 15 flat pen, you can save gold by buying a Titan's bane. If you need attack speed, there are better places to get it, such as the new Qin's Blades or Hastened Fatalis. The Titan's Bane just gets better with the more flat pen you have.

The last one is also obvious in hindsight: Towers cannot be debuffed. If you want to quickly take down a tower, this will literally always be better than every other debuff item in the game.

So, there's my arguement. I hope I've convinced at least a few people to buy more Obsidian Shards instead of Spear of the Magus.

well the % pen items are not ment for the squishy targets but more for against tanks. 50 flat pen is not gonna cut it against random Sobek with 250 protections so you take 33% pen which will let you do a lot more damage to them.

but because even with that item they will still take 1 year to die intead of 1,3 years people don't tend to buy it. that combined with the fact that both items have rather low damage and no other redeming cualities they don't get picked up that fast.\

they are great at their job it's just that their job is not important.

It's because you CAN go into negative protections, as such the base pen plus % rot pen on Spear of the Magus is better, as well as the Executioner for attack speed.

You say you won't always land the first attack, but if you're good, you're going to be chaining multiple auto attacks. As for spells, Tornadoes, Whirlpool, Grasping Hands, Divine Blessing, Noxious Fumes / Agni's Passive, Expose Evil, etc all apply a dot, which instantly ramps up the passive on Spear. You only need a couple ticks for it to work.

Remember, that these pen items are generally built to provide use against lane partner, and still have effectiveness late game. Your lane opponent will most likely not be building heavy, if any defense. Mages would pick up a Void Stone at best, and ranged carries will generally NEVER have physical protection, not even Voidblade. As such, the % damage is just not as useful.

Also, the % Attack speed + Power is better than what's provided by Titan's Bane against towers. Second, you should never itemize around towers. They're going to go down, and very easily, anyway.

Basically, it comes down to this
If you don't trust yourself landing spells or auto attacks, take the easy route and go Titan's Bane/Obsidian Shard. The only other time you should take it is if you need your VERY first spell or ONLY abilities on a warrior/assassin to hit. If you auto attack at ALL, or plan on using ANY more than one ability, go with the alternative.
Spear and Executioner are for more skilled people who are reliable with landing things.

I hope we don't start up the 400th pen thread or I will get the pop corn for this one :X

Yeah, gotta agree with you there, ICEN. This thread (and the Loki complaint thread) pops up every week.

I knew Loki threads were super common, but pen threads? New to me.

That said, these two are indeed better than most give them credit for. I see them in tournies all the time, and I know several of the better players include them as core/semi-core items in their builds.

I will be blunt and say that Raventhor is incorrect. I distinctly remember, when testing Hydra's Lament, that defense cannot go below zero.

Circumstances: Warrior's Tabi and Titan's Bane, at level 20 Thanatos with his Scent of Death on, dealt exactly 143 damage to Ra jungle practice, who has 60 pp, equaling the 143 physical power.

Now, if Raventhor is correct, then the damage formula would've been:

However, I state that this is impossible, as Thanatos clearly dealt 143 damage.

Just to be sure, I checked again, with the Executioner added to the build. In theory:

Now we put Titan's Bane:

And now the flat penetration, which is simply -50, giving a theoretical -27.03 protections (rounded). In other words, damage should be multiplied by 100/72.97, or 37%, turning 173 physical power into 237.01 damage.

Whacked Ra three times before activating scent of death and whacking him once. 173 damage.

Is my form incorrect? Am I missing something here? Because it looks like to me that protections cannot be beyond zero.

Ahem. Besides that, I just wanted to say that I hope there will be less items with zero passives. I hope Malice won't start a trend..

Pfft, if Raventhor was wrong the world would have ended by now. :p

I am being perfectly serious here. Don't take my word for it and test it yourself. After all, scientific validity is all about replicating the results.

We've gone through this at length more than once, here is one of the threads.

And yes you are right you can only go as far with pen as to deal true damage! And yes Titan's is OP, The Executioner as a freaking beast on adc though (get both, Titan's Bane late game, early if you are playing Apollo and all you do is split push).

As you said Titan's Bane for objectives (so great on junglers, gank a lane push tower) and The Executioner for dps against gods.