Masamune vs Shifter's Shield

Forum » Theory Crafting » Masamune vs Shifter's Shield 7 posts - page 1 of 1

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

Two very similar bruiser items that I was debating on are and .

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 )

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:

	Shifter's Shield	Masamune (1 target)	Masamune (3 targets)	Masamune (5 targets)
Physical Health	4400	4057	4365	4674
Magical Health	3473	3418	3726	4035

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:

	Shifter's Shield	Masamune (1 target)	Masamune (3 targets)	Masamune (5 targets)
Physical Protection	9088	8686	9093	9499
Magical Protection	8275	8279	8686	9093

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 on certain gods.

The only scenario's should be built are:

Thoughts?