Why does AP not add damage to auto attacks against minions?

Vekkna·12/27/2018, 9:10:36 PM·9 votes·4,145 views

Just wondering what the rationale is here. AP adds auto-attack damage to turrets and abilities. AD adds auto-attack damage to everything and still adds damage to abilities.

The AD : AP gold equivalency is 1 : 1.56. So the gold you spend on 1 point of AD could buy 1.56 points of AP. If AD has a 1 : 1 ratio on auto attacks against minions, would it not make perfect sense for AP to have a 1 : (1 / 1.56) ratio on auto attacks against all NPCs? Stated otherwise, if AD and AP were equally effective, AP auto-attacks should have a ~.65 AP ratio against minions and monsters. Even if you adjust all those values to account for Deathcap bonus (but still ignore crit), AP autos should still deal ~.45 AP against NPCs.

Is there any reason why that would break the game instead of just making it more fair across the board?

19 Comments

Elite4Runner12/27/2018, 11:00:39 PM3 votes

At one point in this game, the "power" of your abilities was determined by "Ability Power" .. kind of catchy, eh?

On the flip side, the damage that your basic attacks dealt was determined by your "Attack Damage" .. I hope I'm not going too fast. lol

This has obviously changed, but the reason for the distinction was to keep Casters and Mages strength in their abilities, which is most often stronger, but gated by resources and cooldowns. Fighters and Marksmen were meant to have weaker damage output, but it was more sustainable because basic attacks didn't have resource costs or cooldowns.

So if we mixed the two in a way that increased a mage's sustainable damage output by increasing the source of their ability damage, AP based champions would really start to outpace AD based champions.

ContDeCaterinca112/27/2018, 9:31:20 PM3 votes

There is a thing called item 3115 so you do magic damage on basics, scaling with AP. And item 3100 that does half of your AP on hit bonus damage after using an ability.

Also consider the fact burst mages are all AP champion. There is not any burst AD champion that is also ranged(AD ranged a.k.a ADCs are DPS champions).

So imagine if a safe, ranged mage would do so much damage with each auto, just because AP would grant damage on autoattacks, it would be insane.

MankeyMadness12/27/2018, 10:33:21 PM3 votes

Because AD contributes to last hitting, and mages instead clear waves by managing mana.

Tahminatrix 12/27/2018, 9:17:41 PM2 votes

Because control mages and aoe artillery mages like vel koz should not be getting free single target damage without massively nerfing their identity.

xDogMeatx12/28/2018, 3:58:47 AM2 votes

honestly i find it weird how veigars auto attacks deal physical damage not magic due to him shooting a smaller version of his q baleful strike.

ankoanko1912/29/2018, 3:48:14 AM2 votes

There was a mastery that made you deal 5% of your ap to minions in S5. As you can expect quite literally every mage ran this rune.

Sire Hippington12/28/2018, 1:58:35 AM1 votes

If it has a to high ratio, ap/as afine champs would get to much dps vs cannons, superminions and monsters, but i think a lowish ratio like 0.15 would already make CSing with AAs a bit more easy without boosting the dps to much.