Reign of Gaming

I think HG is a must buy if you're the only magic damage dealer on your team. Is it countered by MR? Actually, that's the goal. You want to force their team to build some MR instead of just stacking Armor or more damage.

Consider this, top's and mid's main objective is to nuke the enemy carry from full. With Sorcs boots, HG, and 10 Mpen from runes you basically do true damage to their AP and AD carries.  Often they won't buy the MR until you've already melted them.

TL,DR: HG helps you achieve true damage on carries or pays for itself by forcing their team to build MR.

i think that the fact it is a dead end item just deters players from getting it

i wish riot would add an upgrade to the item (and maybe have some MS on its upgrade?  i never really liked the monopoly of MS on ad carries)

idk, just i feel its rather niche.  ill get it if i need it, but i dont normally see the need for it

its a nice snowball item tho

I get it on Vlad. Thats about it.

Duh, Wickd and voyboy buy it this really early to keep their lanes snowballed (playing as rumble or vlad usually)

It's like nobody is talking about the health bonus on it. ^^

It's a good mid game item. I like it on my Cass, but I only buy it if we're ahead.

It's good on champs with high base damage against low MR targets, like Rumble vs. a top laner who isn't going to build Wits or a fast Negatron (and good even if they do).

Anyone with good spammable base damage is alright with the item.

Well I read it, and if anything, I have a stronger dislike for Haunting Guise.  It's just not good and your arguments aren't sound enough to prove it.  As a matter of fact you technically prove it's a horrible item and your cherry picked points don't really help the validation of your argument.  Where to begin:

Point 1: This may seem like nitpicking but using 80 MR as a base in the HG vs Void and then 100 MR in 80 AP vs 25 AP/ 20 Mpen can be misleading.  Barring the fact that Void Staff plus Arcane Knowledge is actually 46% penetration (.6*.9 =.54-1=.46) you fail to mention that even though the difference is 1.5 points (which is a 1% damage increase) that as enemy MR increases the percent penetration gets better where as flat penetration gets worse, which is the opposite of what you stated ("The penetration is only 1.5 points more. And it’s worse the lower it goes." pretty misleading). IF the enemy MR was 100 then the numbers would look like this:

49/10% vs. 100 MR = 45.9 ending MR

29/46% (the true number) vs. 100 MR = 38.34 ending MR

Now THAT is a difference. 8 points in MR is roughly a 7.5% damage recieved decrease.  That's a REAL noticeable difference.  This is even more of a noticeable difference then 3 points of damage difference in your 80 vs. AP vs 25AP/20Mpen argument. (which in all honesty is moot since anyone will sacrifice 3 points of damage in exchange for a build path that leads to Zhonya's Hourglass.)

Point 2:  Honestly you make reference to the rioter post but seem to only take key points that will strengthen your argument, almost completely ignoring the full point of the post: Flat MPen will teeter off and become less effective as the game goes on and more MR is stacked, while Percent MPen is the opposite.  As a matter of fact there is a quote from his post that completely invalidates most of your arguements:

"so as explained above, when your target's mitigation values go up, the damage bonus you gain from penetration goes down. percentage-based penetration in practice works the other way--the damage bonus you gain from percentage-based penetration goes up as your opponents stack mitigation. this is due to the fact that you're gaining enough raw penetration to offset the damage reduction your opponent is building."

This concept alone can be taken as saying "Haunting Guise loses power the longer the game drags on". There have been numerous post about how percent penetration and flat penetration don't synergize well and how flat penetration devalues percent penetration and so on and so on, so I'll just end this point with another quote from the recklessabadon post (this time with math):

"an example:
a target has 200 magic resist.
if you had no percentage-based penetration, marks + sorc shoes would give a 10.5% damage increase. buying 20 more magic penetration would increase the 'amount of mitigation you are penetrating' by 20, and bump the damage increase to 19.3% (which is +8.8% damage increase).
if you had void staff, 10% magic penetration mastery, marks, and sorc shoes you would have a 55.8% damage increase. buying 20 more magic penetration would increase the 'amount of mitigation you are penetrating' by 10.8, and bump the damage increase to 65% (which is +9.2% damage increase).

in the latter scenario, you can see that an additional 10.8 magic penetration is more effective than the addition 20 magic penetration in the former scenario."

So with that, given your beginning scenario, what would I do with 1710 gold.  NOT buy a Haunting Guise.  NL Rod gives comparable damage in your situation and builds into Zhonya's Hourglass (a better teamfight item due to it's awesome active), or for 1545 I could get a Blasting Wand, Amp Tome and Blue Elixir netting me at a minimum 80 AP with 10% CDR and then have Void Staff on my next base.  Either way, Haunting Guise is just not the item to buy, even given a snowball scenario (this post is long enough and I won't get into it.)

TL:DR - Haunting Guise is just bad, getting a NL Rod or Void Staff will always pay out more in the end.

Quote from Douggie »

Well I read it, and if anything, I have a stronger dislike for Haunting Guise.  It's just not good and your arguments aren't sound enough to prove it.  As a matter of fact you technically prove it's a horrible item and your cherry picked points don't really help the validation of your argument.  Where to begin:

Point 1: This may seem like nitpicking but using 80 MR as a base in the HG vs Void and then 100 MR in 80 AP vs 25 AP/ 20 Mpen can be misleading.  Barring the fact that Void Staff plus Arcane Knowledge is actually 46% penetration (.6*.9 =.54-1=.46) you fail to mention that even though the difference is 1.5 points (which is a 1% damage increase) that as enemy MR increases the percent penetration gets better where as flat penetration gets worse, which is the opposite of what you stated ("The penetration is only 1.5 points more. And it’s worse the lower it goes." pretty misleading). IF the enemy MR was 100 then the numbers would look like this:

49/10% vs. 100 MR = 45.9 ending MR

29/46% (the true number) vs. 100 MR = 38.34 ending MR

Now THAT is a difference. 8 points in MR is roughly a 7.5% damage recieved decrease.  That's a REAL noticeable difference.  This is even more of a noticeable difference then 3 points of damage difference in your 80 vs. AP vs 25AP/20Mpen argument. (which in all honesty is moot since anyone will sacrifice 3 points of damage in exchange for a build path that leads to Zhonya's Hourglass.)

Point 2:  Honestly you make reference to the rioter post but seem to only take key points that will strengthen your argument, almost completely ignoring the full point of the post: Flat MPen will teeter off and become less effective as the game goes on and more MR is stacked, while Percent MPen is the opposite.  As a matter of fact there is a quote from his post that completely invalidates most of your arguements:

"so as explained above, when your target's mitigation values go up, the damage bonus you gain from penetration goes down. percentage-based penetration in practice works the other way--the damage bonus you gain from percentage-based penetration goes up as your opponents stack mitigation. this is due to the fact that you're gaining enough raw penetration to offset the damage reduction your opponent is building."

This concept alone can be taken as saying "Haunting Guise loses power the longer the game drags on". There have been numerous post about how percent penetration and flat penetration don't synergize well and how flat penetration devalues percent penetration and so on and so on, so I'll just end this point with another quote from the recklessabadon post (this time with math):

"an example:
a target has 200 magic resist.
if you had no percentage-based penetration, marks + sorc shoes would give a 10.5% damage increase. buying 20 more magic penetration would increase the 'amount of mitigation you are penetrating' by 20, and bump the damage increase to 19.3% (which is +8.8% damage increase).
if you had void staff, 10% magic penetration mastery, marks, and sorc shoes you would have a 55.8% damage increase. buying 20 more magic penetration would increase the 'amount of mitigation you are penetrating' by 10.8, and bump the damage increase to 65% (which is +9.2% damage increase).

in the latter scenario, you can see that an additional 10.8 magic penetration is more effective than the addition 20 magic penetration in the former scenario."

So with that, given your beginning scenario, what would I do with 1710 gold.  NOT buy a Haunting Guise.  NL Rod gives comparable damage in your situation and builds into Zhonya's Hourglass (a better teamfight item due to it's awesome active), or for 1545 I could get a Blasting Wand, Amp Tome and Blue Elixir netting me at a minimum 80 AP with 10% CDR and then have Void Staff on my next base.  Either way, Haunting Guise is just not the item to buy, even given a snowball scenario (this post is long enough and I won't get into it.)

TL:DR - Haunting Guise is just bad, getting a NL Rod or Void Staff will always pay out more in the end.

Man, all your examples are horrible.  Of course HG is trash for focusing tanks. But your job as a AP carry is to nuke the other carries.  When's the last time you saw Graves stacking early MR?  Get a quick Sorc boots and HG and you do true damage to him. This can easily win you the first team fight and than the item has paid for itself.  Once they stack the MR just swap it.   Crumbz has proven HG to be one of the strongest early game items.

Too bad they aren't my examples. If you looked you would see that they are taken from both the article and the rioter post. I simply used them as a tool of correction

I really like this item on LeBlanc.

My early game item goals for her are Sorc shoes, 2 Doran's Rings, and a Haunting Guise (maybe a Kage's Lucky Pick, too).  She has enough enough base damage and good enough scaling that you don't need that much AP to 100-0 their health, but being able to shred through their base MR (and whatever MR they invest in to counter you) is the most helpful immediately.

Also, I actually really like the +360 health you get from this combo.  By midgame it stops mattering that much, of course, but I routinely towerdive as LeBlanc and being able to tank one or two more tower hits while dodging skill shots makes or breaks some kills during laning.  It also helps in early skirmishes and teamfights to keep you from exploding before you can get your combo off and hop out.  Obviously it's a mistake to itemize for defense on LeBlanc, but I find Doran's Rings and a Haunting Guise offer just enough incidental defense on top of their good burst potential that I can justify the slight detour.

Your reasoning is based upon someone with relatively low ap ratios. If you take an AP tristana with the same conditions the damage output would be higher because your ap ratios are higher, thus giving you more damage with a needlessly large rod. I think you should note(at least more clearly) that these calculations are highly situational depending on what champion you are playing with.

Wait, a DIFFerent View that has actual numbercraft as opposed to "You should be excited for this patch because these three champs are getting remade and Zyra is coming which is funny because she didn't!"

Awesome post, I love doing numberwork like this and I'm glad somebody else does too.  Never realized just how much 20MPen could increase damage.

lol dyrus double boots

I actually would like it if haunting guise was paired up with another item to bring back the spell vamp it use to have.  Say, another amp tome with haunting guise and a few hundred gold and you gain 15% spell vamp on top of the pen and some more ap, say 40 or 45.  I think we would see it return as a go to item for people like vlad and mord as it gives health, ap, pen, and spell vamp.  All things these casters need.

Good idea. Would do the same for HG that Maw did for Hex Drinker