Here, I'm going to analyze the choices you can make as you go along with your build. I've assumed a sort of structure (relatively specific to ADCs) which I've internalized through the trial, error, and learning I've gone through in my years of playing this game, but I'll explain the logic.
TLDR Takeaways!
- 50% Attack Speed total from items is enough to cap AS with Vengeful Assault
- Transcendence + Asi is awesome and always better DPS wise than Devourer's Gauntlet + anything else. Double stacking (building Transcendence and Devourer's Gauntlet) is never worth it.
- Ninja Tabi is marginally better than Warrior Tabi except when you overcap Attack Speed, which we do easily with Vengeful Assault. Then, Warrior Tabi is best. For most conquest games, you will want boots. You could switch out endgame, but really only if you have great team coordination/peel so you can be a standing cannon.
- The Executioner is always a must. Lifesteal tends to be too.
- Crit multiplies awesomely with your passive: CC'ed opponents get crit for 2.3 times your normal damage, and with Deathbringer 2.645 times your normal basic attack damage. Rage & Deathbringer will always grant the greatest DPS.
- Alternatives to crit include Poisoned Star paired with Rage to guarantee your passive, noting that critting with your passive is like a normal hunter critting with DB. You can also choose Silverbranch Bow & Qin's Sais since Artemis has so much AS and will overcap. Ichaival is also great for 1v1 boxing, and Odysseus' Bow actually has insane teamfight DPS potential. However, while any alternative build will be close to the natural DPS of the crit build, none will even come within 200 or 300 DPS of the crit build with Vengeful Assault, which sits at 1168 raw DPS with full Rage and The Executioner stacks and our passive procced, and regardless is higher even without Rage stacks or Vengeful Assault.
I'll show you some direct calculations of some theoretical raw DPS, and often I'll use
Kero's Build Comparison tables to get numbers. It'll let you see that there's a possible world in which Artemis can deal 1976 damage per crit, leaving her with
3641 raw DPS!..but that requires both Power potions, Red Buff, full Fire Giant buff, fully stacked Void buff (idek what that is), and teammates giving you
Pythagorem's Piece aura,
Void Shield proc, and causing full
Stone Cutting Sword stacks, along with an enemy with around 10,000 health to let you fully stack
The Executioner and
Rage on them. Fun!
My ideas were also heavily inspired, refined, and confirmed by DukeSloth and his
ADC build video
Here are some principles
that we build our ideas and item choices from. For more, see
Word of Thoth.
- Basic Attack Damage has a base amount stat for your God, increases by a set amount every time you level up, then scales parallel to your Physical Power. For Artemis, our BAD = 35 + 2.5*level + PP without our passive procced (D = BAD*1.15 or crits (C = BAD*2. Awesomely, this will stack, so critting against a CC'd opponent will deal BAD*1.15*2= 2.3*BAD, or with Deathbringer, D = BAD*1.15*2.3 = 2.645*BAD. That's super awesome; it means Art's passive by itself is like having DB, and it works even better with crits and DB!
- Gods have a base Attack Speed which increases by a set amount every level. For Art, this is .95 + 1.7% per level.
- Attack Speed is always increased in percentages, and ALL of these increases are based off that initial base AS——for us .95. So, when an item gives you an additional 10% AS, what it's really doing is adding .1*.95 = .095 AS. E.g. The Executioner always grants Artemis .25*.95 AS regardless of her level or other items built, and max level Vengeful Assault similarly always grants .8*.95 = .76.
- Attack Speed is hard capped at 2.5. Any increase beyond that will just be lost. For a .95 base attack speed, this means ~163% (1.6316... = (2.5-.95)/.95) of your base added brings you to the max. Getting to level 20 grants Art 1.7*20=34%. Vengeful Assault grants another 80% for 114% built-in increase. So, you only want to build about 50% AS to not overcap as Artemis.
- Raw DPS will be BAD*AS*(2*CritChance), so DPS = AS(35 + 2.5*level + PP){*1.15}(2[+.3]*C), where C = Crit Chance, the {curly brace multiplier is Art's passive} and the [square bracket greater crit multiplier comes from Deathbringer]. In general, as we build, we want a balance of PP and AS to maximize our DPS.
- Actual Damage will be reduced by protections. Damage Taken DT = D*100/(100+P). This makes the percentage of damage you actually take (the term D is multiplied by) sort of inversely proportional to Protections (so 1/P), but the 100s are added to temper it a bit, so you deal 100% damage (mult by 1) with 0 Prots, and 50% (1/2) with 100 Prots, 25% (1/4) with 300, and so on. In general, if you want a 1/x = 100/100x ratio, you need P = 100x-100 for DT = D*100/(100 + 100x-100) = D*1/x.
y: % of Damage Dealt, x: Protection
- Every character has base Protections that increase by level
0. Starters: Hunter's Blessing.
We always start with our Blessing starter items. They give us a lot of core stats for super cheap, in particular the thing we need most at the very start of the game: Physical Power (PP), or for us just basic attack damage, and later on they give us more along with the second thing we need: Attack Speed (AS). We'll still have some money at the start, so we'll buy some potions for early safety/aggression and the tier 1 of our next item, stackers!
1. Power Stacks: Transcendence > Devourer's Gauntlet.
The first thing we want to complete ASAP is our big stacking item, which for us will be
Transcendence or
Devourer's Gauntlet. They serve us well early by being our main source of priority one: PP, and we of course also need to build their stacks through last-hitting minions (dealing the finishing blow to them) to get their full effect, and we want to get this done quickly while we're still completely focused on laning and not rotating, getting kills, or doing objective pushes for Towers, Gold Fury, or Fire Giant.
Devourer's Gauntlet also checks a box for lifesteal, which we want pretty early. However,
Transcendence gives a lot more power, while also solving Artemis' mana problems (which are actually now not even close to as bad as before!). Because
Asi is so great,
Transcendence+
Asi will always grant more DPS than
Devourer's Gauntlet+Poison Star or [Ichaival]] or
Silverbranch Bow or
Odysseus' Bow, though each still have their own utilities. Along with solving your mana problems and imo having a stronger Power Curve, I also actually prefer Asi's lower base lifesteal and big lifesteal passive over
Devourer's Gauntlet more consistent lifesteal Late Game, and that would've been the only reason I might've situationally preferred
Devourer's Gauntlet. However, you may find laning a bit nicer from the start if you start with lifesteal rather than waiting until 2nd or 3rd item to have any lifesteal, so you may find it better sometimes.
2. Movement Speed: Ninja Tabi -> Warrior Tabi.
Essentially, the DPS are very close and we're weighing 20% AS against 20 PP.
Warrior Tabi is initially better at level 1 because we desperately need power then, but because we're building it after our stacking power item significantly later,
Ninja Tabi adding to the low AS we have to multiply with our currently high power is better than maintaining our low AS and multiplying it with even higher power. It also is 50 gold cheaper and gives us 200 mana, which with Trans' passive is 200*.03=6 PP. So, I'd buy
Ninja Tabi first, but maybe switch it our late game if you want to maximize your burst with
Vengeful Assault.
more incomprehensible math to prove it!
Warriors vs. Ninjas
Artemis' base basic attack damage is 35 + 2.5 per level. Basic attacks scale parallel to physical power, so a basic attack against 0 defense does 35 + (2.5*level) + PhysPower. Let's assume when we're buying boots, we're level 9 and have a have a
Hunter's Blessing and fully stacked Devo's. Before boots: 35 + 8*2.5 + 65 = 120. With her attack speed of .95 +.017*lvl*.95 (=.1292) = 1.0792 => 120*1.0792 = 129.504 dmg/s.
With Ninja, AD = 120+20 = 140, AS = (.95*.2=.19) + 1.0792 = 1.2682 => DPS = 177.688 dmg/s
With Warri, AD = 120+40 = 160, AS = 1.0792 => DPS = 172.672
Higher levels and maxed out Devo help Ninja out, but we can see that DPS is roughly equal, the difference becoming even more negligible w/ defense calculations added in, with Warrior better earlier and Ninja better as time goes on /with more power (assuming we don't overcap AS).
HOWEVER, Artemis has a craaazy attack speed steroid! Lategame, with necessities like
The Executioner, one other AS item like Asi will already bring you to 50% AS, and you won't want any more.
So, now the question is if the utility of 200 mana or the additional damage on abilities is better. Our, 1 scales for 90% total, doing 18 more dmg if we have Warriors...quite negligible since we hardly hit it (its use is sparse early and is for safety typically, or should safely guarantee a kill when used in combo with other abilities and CC), the same applies to our 100% PP scaling ult, and our 2 doesn't deal dmg. Our 3 scales for...I'm serious now...40%. Seriously. It does an extra 8 dmg with Warriors. You use it all the time...but that's nothing. Being able to use it 3 or 4 with the 200 mana is much better.
I'd recommend buying Ninja Tabi *to start* for Artemis. We struggle with mana a ton, and the difference in auto DPS and ability damage is very very negligible. Having higher AS also makes your damage dealing more steady and less in spaced bursty increments. This, in general, makes it more consistent, though potentially not destroying the person as quickly as possible. It also makes missing a basic attack less significant. You can buy whichever you want though. By the end, Ninja will continue to give you around 30 or 40 extra DPS without your steroid but will have around 50 less DPS with Vengeful Assault. I prefer Warrior's Endgame because I find I'll be going in the most when I've used my two, and I care most about my DPS when I'm trying to burst squishies. I'll also have a bit more power for Tusky and such.
3. Lifesteal, or a Bow if you built Devourer's Gauntlet
For your third item,
Asi and
Bloodforge are your lifesteal choices if you built
Transcendence.
Asi is an incredible all-around item and is cheaper, the 15 flat pen excelling at the 3rd item slot while armor levels are still low and the AS excelling as time goes on. It adds so much to your DPS and it is also the best lifesteal item, in my opinion, especially paired with Artemis' highly bursty nature with her crit synergy and
Vengeful Assault.
For similar reasons to
Asi,
Silverbranch Bow is a really great and surprisingly cheap item that provides lots of power, pen, and attack speed. It's passive also really gives it the edge when you use your 2 because if you build a bow you will definitely overcap on AS by a good amount. However, again, your passive can be a huge boon to your damage, and if you don't feel it's being utilized, then
Poisoned Star can fill this flex spot, though you'll actually probably want to build
Rage here then
Poisoned Star where you would build
Rage.
4. Percentage Protection Reduction: The Executioner, You Have to Have it.
The Executioner is always essential because it provides solid stats in 30 power and 25% attack speed for just 2350 gold, and overall your DPS will suffer greatly without pen, since adding just a little bit of protections can kill damage really quickly. At level 20, e.g.
Artemis, along with many other hunters, gets from her base stats 72 physical protections, mages on average a bit less, assassins avg similar, warriors a bit more (hovering a bit under 80), and Guardians often going to around 90. Referring to our principles, just 100 protections halves your damage, and with one hybrid item that assassins often build, they'll already be there, while warriors and guardians will be way above that from their items abilities, and passives, possibly making your damage output only 1/4 of what it could be. Now, no one item will normally quadruple or just double your damage, and
The Executioner probably won't either, but it'll do a lot. It's also important that you be able to deal damage to these tankier opponents since your jungler and mid are built for bursting people, while ADCs need to have the highest consistent, sustained DPS.
5. & 6. Crit: Rage & Deathbringer or Bow & Qin's Sais
We build
Rage before
Deathbringer because their difference in DPS at that point is a completely negligible 8-12 dmg/s, and
Rage is much cheaper and more consistent. Afterward,
Deathbringer,
Rage, your passive, and your overall build play together so beautifully and optimally, also giving you more than the sum of their parts.
If you feel you don't need them because your team's got you (and, well, you're just a sitting duck anyway), you can sell your boots after you've built everything else and you're solidly in late game team fight mode.
Silverbranch Bow will actually maximize your DPS w/o your 2 and against squishies.
Qin's Sais will have similar DPS that scales upward against enemies with high health.
Poisoned Star will always have a bit less DPS, but if your passive wasn't always being procced without it, then it'll definitely increase your DPS. Take your pick! You'll destroy no matter what.
However for most people reading it in the guide they probably aren;t going to care as much or get dizzy from it. honestly would recommend to put it into a spoiler so people that are interested or want to see the proof can read it but also doesn;t clutter up the guide as much.
don;t know if you know how to BBCode however your bold items can be made linkable by the use of brackets (][
)
Crit, on the other hand, wants power and lots of it; so going: Transcendence, Ninja Tabi (extra mana and attack speed), Rage (get this stacked early), The Executioner, Deathbringer, wind demon or Poisoned Star would give you a lot of bang for the buck, as it were since your crit chance would be 75-80% with a fully stacked Rage depending on whether you went with WD or PS. Your AS would be 2.25 with your steroid active so you could swap out Ninja for Ich after you've bought a potion of speed and get a defense item if you needed it.
Is going crit without lifesteal a good idea? What if the enemy team builds Hide of the Nemean Lion/ Shield of Thorns?
All AS items are calculated based on the god's base AS. For Art, that's 0.95. At level 20, her adjusted AS is 1.27, so you have to account for her level too.
So, for example, Ninja Tabi is 20% AS. So the actual AS increase would be 0.95 * 0.2 = 0.19. Her steroid Vengeful Assault is not 0.8, it's 0.76.
In your build list at the top, her AS without steroid is 2.315. WITH steroid, it would be 3.075, over 0.5 more than the cap, in which case, Silverbranch Bow subbed for Tabi in that same build would provide 36 added power from the passive.
Keep in mind, Poisoned Star is a way for Art to get CC out of her basics, and it's typically considered a core item for her due to this and the interaction with her passive, Still Target.
As for a non-stacking build, you could go: Warrior, Silverbranch, asi, exe, ichaival, qins.