Alistar damage source and scaling

Iron Legionnaire·Jan 24, 2015·1 votes·708 views

To me it seems really weird that s passive, q, and w, all scale with ap and deal magic damage. since these abilities are basically him using his body to hurt people in different ways, I understand the heal scaling off ap, but everything else seems very strange, and I have no Idea why it bugs me so much what do you guys think? also I have no idea which board to put this in.

4 Comments

DurzakaJan 24, 20151 votes

His ult also gives him a huge chunk of AD.

So no, lets not change his scalings.

Scaling have almost nothing to do with theme in most cases (IE Katarina).

KhristophorosJan 24, 20151 votes

When Alistar was designed, Ability Power improved ABILITY damage, and Attack Damage improved the damage of your basic attack. It was a simpler time.

Anyway with that said, his base damages are good and I don't think AD scaling would help him much. Also, it would make AP and AD builds too similar because AD would become a burstier build similar to how AP is. AP and AD should have different playstyles.

My only complaint about him is his ult's duration is too short. It's really difficult for him to make use of his AD bonus when he only gets it for 7 seconds.

Iron LegionnaireJan 24, 20152 votes

That Icon is amazing

67chromeJan 24, 20151 votes

I have no Idea why it bugs me so much what do you guys think?

I'm pretty sure having damage split between AP and AD scaling bugs everyone.

As for why Riot did that though, having damage output split 50/50 between physical and magical is the best possible set-up for any champion that's going to predominantly concentrate on building defense. That glass-cannon Zigg's or Draven can't just purchase a Negatron Cloak and become a mega-tank against your damage. They can't purchase a Chain Vest to counter you either. However, you can easily itemize against those guys by grabbing the appropriate counter-item. Inversely, they're going to get a lot more out of a glass-cannon adventures path than Alistar.

So, it pushes tanky champions to build tanky and damage champions to build damage. Considering items play such a massive roll in champion rolls this strikes me as good design.

Alistar isn't alone in the split damage side of things either - pretty much every tanky DPS is a pretty solid 60%/40% split. Nasus, Udyr, Shyvana, Dr.Mundo, Darius, Warwick - all of these champions aren't easy to counter-build by any stretch.