Masamune vs Shifter's Shield

I ran into an interesting thing when working on my Achilles guide.

Two very similar bruiser items that I was debating on are Masamune and Shifter's Shield.

I always assumed Shifter's was better for pure offense and defense while Masamune had the 10% MS to make up for it.

However, running the numbers, I can't see any reason to take Shifter's. Ever.

Offensively they are about the same, since Shifter's has average of 52 power and Masamune has 50. Shifter's gets a bit better if you can do most of your damage before you take too much return damage (like Ne Zha)


Looking at the numbers:

	Shifter's Shield	Masamune
Physical Protection	15 or 50 protection	7 to 35 protection, +100 health
Magical Protection	0 or 35 protection	7 to 35 protection, +100 health

Effective Health = HEALTH * (100 + DEF) / 100

Using a level 20 Achilles as an example (with no other defensive items, and forgoing armor):

Achilles has a base effective health of 3726 physical, 3115 magical.

With each item:

As you can see, Masamune is almost always better against magical damage, and gets better against physical if you are near 4+ enemies. This makes them pretty comparable, except that Masamune also has 10% movement speed.


What is more interesting is a tanky character grabbing one offensive item.

A fairly standard solo lane build can hit ~200 protections and ~2800 health and leave one slot for a bruiser item.

Using my standard achilles 5 items as a base we have 8190 physical health and 7798 magical health:

As you can see, Masamune is now always better against magical damage, and gets better against physical if you are near 3+ enemies. This means Masamune is purely the better defensive item, and only sacrifices a tiny it of power if you a doing most of your damage while healthy. But even then, 10% movement speed is amazing on the new map, and could even allow you to sell boots for something like Winged Blade on certain gods.

The only scenario's Shifter's Shield should be built are:

A) you REALLY care about that bit of extra power,
B) you are playing joust, or
C) it is your ONLY defense item against a physical heavy team, AND you don't care about the movement speed

Thoughts?

Great analysing dude! :)

I guess Shifter's Shield has dropped a bit lately.

Masamune used to be mode expensive right?
But as you have explained in your analysis the Shifter's Shield is better as you only defensive item. So I feel it still is the stronger item for jungle if you go Winged Blade as well for example.

And then you could maybe have it as your early item then change it for Masamune late game?

I don't think there is enough of a difference between the two to justify swapping one for the other lategame.

In that situation it would be technically slightly tankier against physical gods. However as a jungler you could make even more use of the movement speed, so Masamune would still be better

I'd say burst damage is more important than MS, and the extra protections vs 1 and 2 targets is decent untill you start teamfighting. So when you are full build and got gold to spare I would say it is better to have Masu than Shifter's.

So I would say Shifter's 3rd item for some siq damage and physical prot. Later than 3rd item I would say Masamune is better.

On someone like Ne Zha or Thanatos with frontloaded damage its definitely an option. 20 power isnt a huge amount, but its not insignificant either.

A god like Hun Batz or Fenrir that chips down targets and then finishes with a burst, Masamune may actually give you more damage as well as the better MS and magical prots.

Yeah for sure, the more scaling you got on abilities the better Shifter's is.

But I definetly think masamune is better most of the time.

Awesome writeup, Cyber, thanks for the explanation!