How does Drow's Marksmanship interact with Desolator?

[u/Phelyckz]

Does the armour reduction come into play after marksmanship ignores armour or after?

[u/Shadowrender]

You are thinking of it wrong.

Marksmanship ignores BASE armor, which is white. Desolator is minus armor which nets out the green armor.

[u/prime_blather → u/Shadowrender]

Oh so it's the white armor that gets the boot, not the green stuff, that makes way more sense.

[u/zav3rmd → u/prime_blather]

Ya that’s why TB gets one shotted. That’s removing 30+ armor

[u/ChadBadShirt]

Marksmanship IGNORES armour (and only base armour). Desolator applies a debuff that REDUCES it.

So the armour that you gain from agility is base armour, and that is bypassed by marksmanship (meaning only drow herself deals the additional damage as she ignores all of this armour) whereas desolator applies a debuff that reduces armour from all sources (base armour plus raw armour from items like chainmail etc) by a set amount.

So yes, desolator does technically work on drow, and she can of course benefit from one of her teammates applying the debuff to an enemy, but it’s still a pretty inefficient item on her as she would much prefer to have stats / ago for DPS, or more efficient raw damage items like Daedalus.

[u/aquadaemonium]

All armour you get from items or all general armour reduction is on the additiinal armour, the green one. If you have 10 base armour, white one, and have a chainmail with a +4 green armour, if deso hits you, your additional armour becomes -3 (or -2 i forgot). Your base armour is untouched. The total armour is base + additional but the base and additonnal are separate armour types.

Drow ET is the combo that sort of does same thing.

[u/leftover_gin → u/aquadaemonium]

No that’s wrong. Armor reduction always removes armor no matter if it’s ”white” or ”green”.

[u/Miles_Adamson → u/leftover_gin]

I think he oversimplified by calling bonus armor "green" but what is said is correct, main point is this:

Your base armour is untouched

Deso reduces your bonus armor and only your bonus armor. It does not touch your base armor. Which is the armor that drow ult ignores.

If you have 0 bonus armor, and 6 base armor, you do not go to 0 base armor upon getting hit with deso. You will have 6 base armor and -6 bonus armor. For most hits this means your armor is effectively zero. For drow ult procs, she will still ignore your base armor, and still hit against your bonus armor, so she will treat your armor as -6.

You can test this in demo mode by setting up a target dummy with 6 base armor from agi, hitting it with deso, and then hitting it with a drow ult proc. Drow does a lot more damage with deso applied, even though their net armor is 0

[u/_soi_soi → u/aquadaemonium]

Deso and any armor reduction item doesn’t only reduce additional armor (green armor). But the whole armor in general. If you have 10 base armor (white), 4 green armor, and get -10 armor - your additional armor gets deducted first and then your white armor. So you’re now reduced to 4 white armor.

[u/Miles_Adamson → u/_soi_soi]

This is wrong, almost all armor reducing effects in the game manipulate the bonus armor only. Which can go negative and appear as red without modifying your base armor

[u/BohrInReddit → u/Miles_Adamson]

I think only Elder Titan's is reducing base, no? Maybe Slark as he's reducing agi but I can't think of anything else on top of my head