Lets Talk Efficiency #1 - Aegis of the Legion

Aegis of the Legion - probably one of the most commonly bought items on a team, but also one of the items which can often go unnoticed. In this article I shall be looking at how cost effective Aegis really is.

First off, let’s go over what Aegis actually does. At first glance Aegis may not look that attractive, giving the buyer +270 HP, +18 Armor & +24 Magic resist, not that much stat wise after spending almost 2k on it. But, when we take into account the aura Aegis gives off, which also affects the buyer, it instantly turns into an extremely appealing item especially for the early team fight phase and throughout the mid to late game. This aura, is of course the +12 Armor, +15 Magic resist & +8 Attack damage to all allies in a 1200 range.

Now lets get onto the fun part; the math. Let me first begin by telling you how I will be calculating all of this. I will be using the average cost of 1 unit of any said stat in order to calculate how efficient the item is. To find these averages, I will be using the base tier items, these are the items that are used in order to build upgraded items and have not been upgraded themselves. Examples would be a ruby crystal, mana crystal, brawler’s gloves, long sword... you get the picture. For the purpose of this article, I have listed the relevant averages below.

- Average cost of 1 HP is 2.6 gold.
- Average cost of 1 Armor is 15.9 gold.
- Average cost of 1 Magic Resist is 15.8 gold.
- Average cost of 1 Attack Damage is 38 gold. 

For now, I want to forget about the aura that Aegis gives and focus on the base stats of the item to see if Aegis would still be worth it if this aura didn't exist at all. If we calculate, using the averages above, what we are getting in terms of gold just from the base stats of the Aegis, it amounts to a grand total of 1367.4 gold. Not very spectacular at only 71% efficiency. However, we still need to add in the aura, lets do that now.

So first off, lets simply calculate, again, using the averages above, how much we are getting in terms of gold for 1 person (the buyer) receiving the aura’s bonus effects. This time, it comes out to a total of 731.8 gold. Let’s add this to the total we got for the base stats of the Aegis as this aura also affects whoever buys it. We now get 2099.2 gold’s worth of stats, which now makes it stand at 109% efficiency.

That is not the end though. We still need to look at how much golds worth of stats we are distributing to the team. As I previously mentioned, a single player receives 731.8 gold worth of stats while under the effect of the aura. Therefore if all the other 4 members were in range of the aura effect, Aegis will be giving out a grand total of 2927.2 gold worth of stats just to our team.

So to wrap this all up, assuming all 5 members of the team are under the influence of the Aegis aura and we also add in the base stats from the item, we can effectively be buying 5026.4 worth of stats for a petty 1925 gold. Giving the Aegis a maximum of 261% efficiency.