Lethal Tempo Interaction with

Navori Quickblades

Author:
Lê Tùng Dương-74bleed
ABSTRACT

Lethal Tempo has been one of the most fun runes to play on a champion like Shen at
the time Sunfire was a mythic in league. After the new mythic changes, the
efficiency of the rune dropped massively. On a champion like Shen who heavily
relies on his empowered auto-attacks to deal damage; ability haste is of the
utmost importance to achieve a balance between haste and attack speed and turn
Shen into an actual DPS champion. In this document we attempt to revive lethal
Shenpo with the help of one of the new reworked mythics; Navori Quickblades. In
the following sections we are gonna give a brief description of Lethal and Navori,
then we are gonna establish the theory of interaction between the two, and
finally we will make some measurements and apply this theory to League with
numbers.

Keywords— Lethal Tempo, Navori Quickblades, Lethal Shenpo, Attack Speed

- Haste duality.

ii
Contents

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF SYMBOLS iv

1 INTRODUCTION 1

2 THEORY AND LITERATURE 3

2.1 Lethal Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Navori Quickblades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 MEASUREMENT 6

4 CONCLUSION 8

BIBLIOGRAPHY 12

iii
LIST OF SYMBOLS

∆ Lethal Tempo attack speed gained per stack

ϵ Attack speed multiplier for the champion of choice
α0 Initial attack speed with no Lethal Tempo stacks
αn Sequence of attack speeds achieved with time
SN Sequence of times at which auto-attacks happen
α(t) Attack speed as a function of time
m(t) Number of auto-attacks in a given time t
β percentage of Navori cool-down reduction
h0 Initial ability haste
h Equivalent ability haste
γ Initial cool-down reduction factor
γ′ Equivalent cool-down reduction factor
C0 Initial cool-down
C(t) Cool-down as a function of time
N Number of auto-attacks done in the duration of the cool-down

iv
Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

We introduce our subjects of study starting with Lethal Tempo:

Figure 1.1: Lethal Tempo

Rune Description :

PASSIVE: Basic attacks on-attack against enemy Champion icon champions grant
a stack for 6 seconds, refreshing on subsequent attacks and stacking up to 6 times.
Gain (Melee role 10% - 15% / Ranged role 4% - 9%) (based on level) bonus attack
speed for each stack, up to (Melee role 60% - 90% / Ranged role 24% - 54%) (based
on level) at maximum stacks, at which you also gain 50 bonus attack range and
increase the attack speed cap to 10. Stacks expire by one every 0.5 seconds when
the duration ends.

We are going to name the percentage gain of attack speed per auto-attack ∆
for the purpose of abstraction in the theory section. In the case of melee role for
example we would have ∆ = 15%.
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2

We then introduce Navori Quickblades:

Figure 1.2: Navori Quickblades

Item Stats:

• +65 attack damage.

• +15 ability haste

• +20% critical strike chance

Item Passive:

UNIQUE – TRANSCENDENCE: Basic attacks on-attack reduce your basic abili-

ties’ current cooldowns by 15% of their remaining cooldowns.

UNIQUE – IMPERMANENCE: Your ability damage and proc damage dealt by

abilities is increased by 0% - 20% (based on critical strike chance).

MYTHIC PASSIVE: Empowers each of your other Legendary items with 5 bonus
attack damage.

Apart from the base damage and haste the item gives. The main focus is the
passive ”Transcendence” which has a special trait; it provides basic abilities haste
which depends on a few factors. One of those factors is the attack speed for example,
since having more attack speed means you can land more auto-attacks hence get
more haste. Another factor is original cool-down of your ability, since higher cool
down abilities benefit from more auto attacks which translates to more haste. So as
you can see Navori doesn’t only provide base haste but also a dynamic one. Out of
all the factors Navori haste depends upon, attack speed is particularly special since
that’s where lethal tempo comes in; The more lethal tempo stacks you get, the more
haste you get out of Navori, which allows you to buy less haste and place your gold
in another area where you can maybe improve your defense by buying life steal for
example. Our goal right now is to develop the theory of interaction between Lethal
and Navori with a bit of mathematical vigor, which is the aim of the next chapter.
Chapter 2

THEORY AND LITERATURE

Let us start by establishing the theory behind lethal tempo.

2.1 Lethal Tempo

We define the base attack speed α0, Lethal tempo percentage per auto-attack ∆,
Attack speed modifier ϵ which is different for every champion. Then we define the
sequence {αn} such that:
αn = α0 + nϵ∆ if 0 ≤ n ≤ 6 , αn = α6 if n>6 (2.1)
Suppose a league player starts an attack at t = 0. The time it takes to issue the auto
attack would only be the time required for the windup animation but for simplicity
and as an approximation that won’t really hurt our analysis, we will assume it’s the
full animation time (this would affect the haste later on by giving a lower
estimate which works in our favor since building upon a slightly lower estimate in
game will result in more than enough haste). Based on that we see that the time at
which the first attack happens
α
is t = 1 , and the time at which the second attack
happens is 0
1 + 1 , and so on.
α0 α1

We define the finite sum:

N−1
1
SN = where N = 0, 1, 2, ... (2.2)
n=0
αn

And we use the convention that the sum from 0 to -1 gives us zero. We then define
the map m : R+ → Z where m(t) is the largest integer m such that Sm ≤ t. This
leads us directly to the definition of lethal tempo attack speed as a function of time:
α(t) = αm(t) (2.3)
Since m(t) physically represents the number of auto-attacks done in a given time t,
and α(t) is the number of attacks done per unit time. We get a bonus neat relation
between the two: - t
m(t) = ⌊ α(τ )dτ ⌋ (2.4)
0

Where ⌊·⌋ is the floor function that takes every real number to its closest integer
from below.
CHAPTER 2. THEORY AND LITERATURE 4

2.2 Navori Quickblades

Here is where we get to the meat of the theory. Our goal is to factor in the Navori
passive into ability haste and include the effect of lethal tempo. We start by defining
the base cool-down C0 which is the cool-down of an arbitrary ability given that we
have zero ability haste. then we define the initial ability haste h0 before the effect
of Navori. We define γ = h 0100
+100
then we write down the cool-down as a function of
time in the absence of Navori effect as:

C(t) = C0γ − t if t ≤ C0γ and C(t) = 0 Otherwise (2.5)

With the inclusion of Navori, the cool-down reduces by a portion β of the remaining
cool-down every time an auto-attack lands. This mathematically translates to:
m(t)

C(t) = C0γ − t − β C(Sn) (2.6)

n=1

Again this equation holds for positive cool-down and C(t) = 0 if the equation yields
a negative value. The only issue with this equation is that we don’t know the values
C(Sn), since everything else is given. So to calculate these values we substitute Sk
in the equation above to get:
k

C(Sk) = C0γ − Sk − β C(Sn) (2.7)

n=1

Which gives us the following recurrence relation after doing some algebraic manip-
ulations.
P k−1
C(Sk) = C0γ − Sk − β n=1 C(Sn) (2.8)
1+β
Assuming that the initial cool-down of the ability is is larger than the auto-attack
animation time we get: C0γ − Sk
C(S ) = >0 (2.9)
1 1+β
Since Sk is unbounded we know there exists a number N such that if k > N then
C(Sk) ≤ 0. Since we are interested in the haste over the entire duration of the cool-
down(we only care about when the ability comes back) and not instantaneous haste,
we can say that the cool-down as a function of time is equivalent to the following
equation over the full duration of the cool-down.
N N
C(t) = C γ − (β C(S )) − t = C (γ − β C(S )) − t (2.10)
0 n 0 n
n=1
C0 n=1

Which then becomes:

β N
C(t) = C γ′ − t where γ′ = γ − C(S ) (2.11)
0 n
C0 n=1
5 2.2. NAVORI QUICKBLADES

100 , then we can get an expression

We define the equivalent ability haste h by γ′ = h+100
for h:
h= 100
P N − 100 (2.12)
γ − Cβ 0 n=1 C(Sn)
We notice that if the cool-down is too small for you to auto-attack then N = 0
which leads to:
100
h= − 100 = h0 (2.13)
γ
This shows us the first dependency factor we talked about in the introduction; longer
cool-downs lead to more auto-attacks (higher value of N ). which leads to more haste,
since it’s easy to see that h increases with N. We can also see that if the attack speed
increases then Sn would generally be smaller allowing for higher values of N , which
shows that higher attack speed results in more haste.

The intuition behind the extra haste is evident from the equations derived but
the equations still remain too abstract. So in the next chapter we attempt to do
some measurement and plot some graphs of the haste varying different parameters
to get an estimate of how much haste we would actually be getting and whether or
not it would be enough to save gold for other items.
Chapter 3

MEASUREMENT

The measurements in this section will be done specifically for Shen, but similar
measurements can be done for other champions provided we pick the right value for ϵ.
We start by plotting the haste with initial cool-down as the initial haste changes and
the initial attack speed stays fixed (Figure 3.1). But note that using the descriptions
of Lethal Tempo and Navori Quickblades, we deduce that ∆ = β = 0.15 (at max
level). We also note that ϵ = 0.651 for Shen. Here we notice that the variation in
the curves across all values of h0 is pretty small (at C0 = 10 the variation is around
6 haste). So we fix the value for h0 at 50 (since it’s approximately irrelevant) and
vary the initial attack speed instead (Figure 3.2). And we can see a more noticeable
variation in this case (at C0 = 10 the variation is around 35 haste). which indicates
that an increase in attack speed has more effect over the added haste we get.

Plot of The Added Haste with Cooldown at Different Values of h0

250

200
Added Ability Haste (h-h0)

150

100
h0 = 0
h0 = 25
h0 = 50
50 h0 = 75
h0 = 100
h0 = 125
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Initial Cooldown C0

Figure 3.1: Plot of the added haste with cool-down at α0 = 1.25

7

This means we can hit two birds with one stone and buy attack speed items to
increase our haste taking the theory into account to make sure we get enough haste.
Apart from the variation across the curves, we notice the massive numbers that we
get as the cool-downs go high enough. Consider Shen taunt for example; it has a
base cool-down of 10 at max level. Figure 3.2 shows that at 10 base cool-down,
with α0 = 1.1, you get extra 72 haste. most items in league give around 20 haste or
lower. The interaction between Lethal Tempo and Navori gives collective haste that
can be gathered from 3.5 different items approximately, which is insanely huge.

Also looking at how haste increases as your initial cool-down increases, we no-
tice how all basic abilities cool-downs are pulled closer to each other; Shen’s Spirit
Refuge for example has a higher cool-down but higher haste as well which makes
its cool-down come closer to the Taunt and makes both come closer to Twilight
Assault, which makes for a beautiful sync that lowers the chances of forgetting to
use an ability that just came off of cool-down during a fight. So in theory a player
who isn’t that mechanically talented at Shen should be able to make outplays much
easier than they are used to.

Plot of The Added Haste with Cooldown at Different Values of α0

300

250
Added Ability Haste (h-h0)

200

150

100

50

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Initial Cooldown C0

Figure 3.2: Plot of the added haste with cool-down at h0 = 50

Chapter 4

CONCLUSION

The interaction between Lethal Tempo and Navori Quickblades provides massive
ability haste and can potentially give rise to many broken builds for many different
champions. The values of haste grow massively as the initial cool-downs get higher
and higher, which gains massive value on basic skills that inherently have long cool-
down like Shen’s Spirit Refuge or Yasuo’s Wind Wall or even Warwick’s Blood Hunt
possibly. And the massive values for haste can compensate for a lot of haste that
could be missed as different items are built that don’t include haste in their stats
like Bloodthirster for example.

In the physical reality there exists space in three dimensions and time in one
dimension orthogonal to it. Time and space were never known to mix until the
special theory of relativity has been established. With motion the axes of space and
the axis of time get closer to each other breaking the orthogonality and mixing the
two. If attack speed was space and ability haste was time, then Navori Quickblades
is the special theory of relativity.
Bibliography

[1] https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Lethal Tempo

[2] https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Navori Quickblades

[3] https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Shen/LoL

[4] https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Haste

[5] https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Attack speed