Wit's End vs Zephyr - A damage analysis

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to my analysis of Wit's End vs. Zephyr. Irelia is one of my favorite champs to play and with the items that got introduced coming into season 3, I was always curious if it was better to get Zephyr as a first item or continue to rush Wit's End, a core item for Irelia in past seasons. Not seeing much success with a Zephyr rush in games, I decided to do a number analysis of the two to hopefully shed some light on the subject.

Items

                  

Irelia is an auto-attacking anti-carry that depends on AS items to maximize her damage output with Hiten Style, which gives 6 seconds of 15/30/45/60/75 damage per hit. Wit’s End gives an additional 40% AS as well as 42 magic damage per hit, giving you additional burst. The magic resist makes her even tankier and allows the bypass of the MR from mercury treads for berserker greaves/ninja tabi. On the other hand, Zephyr gives 50% AS, 20 AD, 10% more movement speed, 35% tenacity, and 10% more CDR. 10% CDR can really help Irelia stick to a target in prolonged fights and the tenacity/movement speed will let you run through a team easier.

Phantom Dancer isn’t included in this analysis as Zephyr is vastly superior to it in every way (in Irelia’s case). Sword of the Divine is not included because lolsotd.

Analysis

All following calculations are made assuming 9 points have been spent in the offensive tree, granting 4% AS, .67 AD per level and 8% Armor Penetration. Likewise, calculations have been made for both champions with 21 points in the defensive tree (which grants 5 reduced damage from champion attacks and 3% reduced damage) and champions with 0 points in the defensive tree.

First off, let’s look at the damage output from having only Wit’s End or Zephyr. For the time being, let’s ignore the usage of Irelia’s abilities and just look at the damage from auto attacking. Armor and MR are assumed to be 50 each for these tests.

As you can see, Wit’s End outperforms Zephyr when they are by themselves. These results are obvious when you look at Wit’s End and Zephyr side by side. 42 on-hit magic damage is going to beat out 10% more AS and 20 AD easily. However, as mentioned before, Hiten Style is a major part of Irelia’s damage. So in addition to the damage from Wit’s End and Zephyr, we need to look at if the difference in AS allows more attacks and true damage output.

Since you cannot have a percentage of attack, each number is to be rounded down to find the number of possible attacks while Hiten Style is active. Assuming you are able to land every attack (you are not being kited, enemy doesn’t run away, etc), there is only a difference in one auto attack at levels 3-6 and 11-13. Levels 3-6 are irrelevant since you won’t have either item by then, so we will pay attention to 11-13. Taking the damage from the above graphs, you can add an additional 75 damage at the 6 second mark.

Looking at the graph, that extra 75 damage does spike Zephyrs damage a bit, but not enough for it to keep up with the consistent damage from Wit’s End. Also, it’s unlikely that in an actual game that your opponent is going to allow you to constantly auto attack them, so you can’t rely on that 10% more AS giving you one more attack.

Our last test will be that of the 10% CDR that Zephyr provides. Assuming each ability is maxed, that brings the cooldown of Hiten Style to 13.5 from 15 seconds, Bladesurge to 5.4 from 6 seconds, Equilibrium to 7.2 from 8 seconds, and Transcedent Blades to 45 from 50 seconds. Since Bladesurge has the lowest cooldown, that will be calculated first.

Data is a bit different this time as we are dealing with spikes of damage from Bladesurge rather than just a flat line. While the CDR from Zephyr allows for more uses of Bladesurge, the damage from it still can't compete with the damage output from Wit's End. With Bladesurge proccing on-hit effects, you are adding on another 42 damage.

We can assume the results from applying 10% CDR to Equilibrium and Hiten Style will be similar to Bladesurge. In the very long run, Hiten Style might put Zephyr ahead of Wit's End, but fights in league usually don't go longer than 15-20 seconds, so we don't have to think about multiple uses of it. Equilibrium scales with AP, which will definitely not put Zephyr ahead in damage (utility, however, is another story).

Conclusions

So now that we have all these numbers, what does this mean in a game of League of Legends?

Wit's End provides superior damage output to Zephyr. The additional 42 on-hit damage outscales the extra 10% AS, 20 AD, and 10% CDR from Zephyr. Thus, when getting your first AS item, it should almost always be Wit's End. However, Zephyr works much better as a late game item, especially during team fights when the lower CD of Bladesurge/Equilibrium will allow you to stick to targets easier and the tenacity bonus will reduce the amount you can be CC'd. Add in other late game items like Ghostblade (which synergizes well with Zephyr) or Triforce (more Sheen procs) helps prove that Zephyr is a better late game item while Wit's End helps you with early game dominance.

tl;dr - grab wit's end for early game lane dominance, grab zephyr as late game team fights start to happen

Who are you?

I go by the name Sky Pirate Vyse on the NA server. I've been playing league a couple years now and I currently sit somewhere in gold. My enjoyment comes from playing tanky characters and as such, I'm usually top lane or in the jungle. I have a lot of theorycrafting experience from being a hardcore raider in WoW, so I took some of that knowledge and applied it here. With the feedback on this article, I hope to improve and continue to contribute for the league community!