Top 10 Champions Whose Damage Can't be Itemized Away

Most champions get scary when they finish an item. These ten were already scary, because their damage never really came from the shop.

Percent maximum health, percent missing health, stacks, and raw defensive stats. There's a whole category of champion whose threat level barely moves when you look at their build, and understanding which ones they're changes how you itemize against them.

Top 10

Champions Whose Damage Can't be Itemized Away

Scaling and Itemization

Most champions get scary when they finish an item. These ten were already scary, because their damage never really came from the shop.

Counting down from the ones with a single build independent tool to the champion who turns his defensive items directly into an offensive stat.

#10: Kog'Maw, Bio-Arcane Barrage

Kog'Maw's W adds bonus magic damage on hit based on a percentage of the target's maximum health, which is why building health against him has always been a losing proposition. He still wants attack speed to fire it more often, so he isn't fully off the itemization grid, but the reason a fed tank melts to a Kog'Maw with two items is that the percentage doesn't care how many items he actually has.

#9: Amumu, Despair

Despair [W] is a toggle that deals a flat amount plus a percentage of maximum health as magic damage to everyone nearby, every second, for as long as it's on. That's real damage output from an ability that asks Amumu to do nothing except stand in the fight, which is what he was going to do anyway. Pair it with a passive that makes his magic damage apply bonus true damage and he contributes a meaningful chunk of a team fight while building purely to survive it.

#8: Dr. Mundo, Infected Bonesaw

Mundo's Q deals damage based on the target's current health, which means it hits hardest exactly when the target is at their strongest. His E then converts his own maximum health into bonus attack damage, so every health item he buys to survive is quietly also a damage item. Mundo goes where he pleases, and a fair amount of the time he gets there without buying a single thing the shop would call offensive.

#7: Garen, Demacian Justice

Demacian Justice [R] deals a base amount plus a percentage of the target's missing health as true damage. True damage means armor doesn't matter, missing health scaling means their build doesn't matter much either, and the base value means Garen's own build barely enters the equation. A Garen who has gone entirely full tank still deletes a low health carry with one button, which is a genuinely unusual thing for a tank to be able to say.

#6: Gwen, A Thousand Cuts

Gwen's passive adds bonus magic damage to her attacks based on the target's health and heals her for a portion of what it deals to champions. It's the reason Gwen has always been a tank's problem specifically. Her items make her faster and harder to kill, but the actual mechanism that chews through a frontline is a passive that reads the enemy's health bar rather than her own inventory.

#5: Fiora, Duelist's Dance

Fiora's Vitals deal true damage based on the target's maximum health, and Grand Challenge [R] reveals all four of them at once. The practical result is that the tankiest champion on the enemy team is the one Fiora most wants to fight, and no amount of armor changes the math. Her build decides how well she survives the duel. The Vitals decide whether the target survives it, and they were never listed on any item.

#4: Vayne, Silver Bolts

Every third consecutive attack or ability on the same target deals a percentage of that target's maximum health as bonus true damage. Not physical, not magic, true. No armor, no resistances, no damage reduction from stats. Vayne is the reason "just build tanky against the marksman" has never been universal advice, and a Vayne who's behind in items is still the single worst champion in the game for a fed tank to walk at.

#3: Cho'Gath, Vorpal Spikes and Feast

Cho'Gath attacks a fed tank and takes a percentage of their maximum health off with Vorpal Spikes [E], then finishes them with Feast, which deals a large chunk of true damage that grows as he stacks it rather than as he shops. Feast is also the rare ability that pays for itself, since every successful cast permanently increases his own maximum health. Cho'Gath is a champion whose two most feared tools both scale off something the enemy team can't itemize against and he can't buy.

#2: Nasus, Siphoning Strike

Nasus is the original version of this idea. Siphoning Strike [Q] gets permanently stronger every time it lands a killing blow, which makes his damage a number he farms rather than a number he purchases. A Nasus with six hundred stacks and no damage items hits harder than most champions do with a full build, and the only thing gold really buys him is the ability to survive long enough to keep swinging. Twenty minutes of last hitting is worth more to him than twenty minutes of gold is to almost anyone else.

#1: Rammus, Spiked Shell

Every other champion on this list ignores their build in one direction or another. Rammus inverts it completely. Spiked Shell [Passive] grants him bonus attack damage that scales directly off his armor and magic resistance, and Defensive Ball Curl [W] returns magic damage to anyone who attacks him while it's active. Buying pure defense is how Rammus buys offense. There's no other champion where the correct answer to "what should I build for damage" is a full page of resistances, and there's no more complete example of a kit that reads the character sheet instead of the shopping list.

Conclusions

The practical takeaway from a list like this is about what you buy when you see these names on the enemy team. Health is a liability against percentage health damage, armor is decoration against true damage, and neither one does anything at all about a stack count. Against most of the roster, stacking defenses is a real answer. Against these ten, the better plan is usually to kill them faster or stay away from them entirely, because the item that solves them doesn't exist.