Why AD champions need to get MR to survive AP champions burst, but AP ones doesn't give a fuck?

PiVoRx·Jul 30, 2016·2 votes·428 views

Before you downvote: Yes, adcs in Diamond build Maw/Steraks or even Banshee to not get one shotted by things like LB.

I never seen any mage actually build any armor (beside cancer Zhonya), meanwhile very often i see ad champions running at least 1 MR item + mercuries to survive ap champions burst. Theres nothing like "i need ninja tabis or radunin cause they got Zed/yi or fed adc" from mages, even against pure ad teams, only full AP damage build. Whats most ridiculous is that they live much longer than MR-less adc would and there is no way for adc to fight against mage when both are with only damage items.

Why da hell mages can get away with 0 defense items against ad champions?

8 Comments

deadlychuckJul 30, 20162 votes

item 3050 item 3157

because those are the only two items in the game which provide AP and armor.

Just like some players will go full AD builds, some players will go full AP builds, but the defensive stat they are offered for their items is health.

Personally i'd prefer if riot would remove some of the HP, and change some scaling around so that mages could actually build defensive items as well as the AP items, yet still have reasonable damage. However they don't, meaning mages only get this general form of defense in health on most of their items. AD on the other hand, can build maybe 2-3 damage items 2-3 defensive items (what ever might be needed for the situation), and then obviously boots.

warpenguin555Jul 30, 20161 votes

ADC's are supposed to be taken down by assassins

PiVoRxJul 30, 20161 votes

Following that logic every ap mid laner is an assassin.

Handy Sandy Jul 30, 20161 votes

Mages get away with 0 defense because they'll still be squishy and not do as much damage. They also won't have their number one defense: People can't kill you if they're already dead. Mages usually have long range, so they won't be tanking hits very much. The only mage I'd ever build armor on is Veigar because of his passive. Play a mage once or twice and try out your armor build and see how it works, then try going full AP and see how it works.

MisterHealYoGirlJul 30, 20161 votes

Well, first of all, aside from Zhonyas, there actually ISN'T any armor itemization available for mages (or ADCs, for that matter). Magic pen boots are generally too good to pass up (although against multiple ADCs or an AD assassin mid I do favor Tabis).

Anyway, in a straight-up 1v1 duel, mages tend to have an advantage over ADCs; with a few exceptions (Karthus, Azir, Fiddlesticks) most mages' damage is heavily front-loaded. That is to say, they choose a target, blow all of their cooldowns (dealing all of their damage very fast) and then have to wait until their abilities are back up to contribute again. ADCs, on the other hand, deal much higher damage over the course of a teamfight, but generally need longer to do it.

What this means is that survivability is much more important for ADCs than it is for mages. Say itemizing defensively buys you an extra five or six seconds in a teamfight. For an ADC, that means a bunch of extra autoattacks, potentially adding up to thousands of damage. For a mage, though (again, with some notable exceptions) that's perhaps one or two cooldowns back; since your damage is cooldown-based, living longer is often not as important as making the most of each use of your abilities.

tl;dr Mages tend to fire off all of their spells at once, so their primary focus is making that initial blitz of spells count as much as possible; living longer doesn't mean much if your cooldowns don't come back up in that time. On the other hand, ADCs deal damage consistently over a longer time, so building defenses greatly improves how much they contribute to a fight. Basically, mages don't build as many defensive items because they can't really use the extra time well.

deadlychuckJul 30, 20161 votes

Ironically it's because of riot's terrible balancing. If an AP mage can't "assassinate" the marksmen, then if that marksman has anything that provide lifesteal, they will likely have healed most or all of the damage you did, before you're abilities are back for another chunk of damage.

They let damage get so high that healing from damage provides to much sustain, meaning that in order to kill a target you need to be able to kill them in a single rotation of spells. Meaning that to kill an ADC, you pretty much always have to "assassinate" them.

Wind WhistlerJul 30, 20161 votes

How the fuck is Zhonya's CANCER? They completely gutted its base stats. It used to give 100 AP and 50 armor, and before that, it used to give a whopping 120 AP. Now it's 70 AP. Not to mention they heavily nerfed the active on it, too.

Maximum MordeJul 30, 20161 votes

Last whisper no longer removes base armor(Rightfully TBH)
Several AP items have HP on them.

1 and 2 combined means you really don't need much more armor than what is provided by runes and/or Zhonyas cause all you need to do is blow your load, you don't have to live forever.

Now why don't we take a look at why it's totally legit for AD champions to heal back to full life off a creep wave with their damned lifesteal on every other item? Or, you can just accept that there are different design decisions made for AD and AP champs.