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Lets talk about Weird AP ratios on champions.

Darkloore·8/29/2018, 4:49:13 PM·2 votes·4,107 views

Personally, I don't understand why Riot gives some of these random ratios to champions that they will never use in a normal game.

Examples of ones that are "OK" in a sense because of their potential (cooldowns will be max rank of the ability): Jinx E: 270 Magic Damage+ 100% AP Ratio, 10 second cooldown (with some cdr this can go down to 6 or 5.5 with runes.) (if they step on it they are severely punished.) Vi E: bonus 90 Physical Damage + 70% AP Ratio, 8 recharge cooldown (2 total charges) (Hit opponents with 2 E's in short succession for 140% AP.) Sivir Q: 115 Physical Damage + 50% AP Ratio, 7 second cooldown (very unlikely in laning phase to do its high damage to champions because of minions, with some cd this ability can reach close to 3.5 second, where if the enemy is the only target this can hit them for 92.5% of her AP)

If you notice the only reasons why these ones make some sense is just because of how often they can be used with there high scaling.

Examples of ones that are nonsense (cooldowns will be max rank of the ability): Quinn Q: 120 Physical Damage + 50% AP Ratio, 9 second cooldown (similar to sivir's AP ratio, but heavily lacking in the power department due to its singe hit. But, has a short cooldown with cdr, around 5 seconds) Ashe R: 600 Magic Damage + 100% AP Ratio, 80 second cooldown (With cdr can go down to 48 or 37.4 with runes) Ornn R: 225-450 Magic Damage + 20%-40% AP Ratio, 100 second cooldown (With cdr can go down to 60 or 46.75 with runes)

With these ones it is easier to see why these ones are completely useless. Quinn Q: not high enough AP ratio to complement the cooldown. Ashe R: Amazing AP ratio, but way to long of a cooldown. Ornn R: Kinda a double whammy, Not a high AP ratio and a very long cooldown.

I feel like Riot adds some of these ratios to let players try and play a champion differently, however most of the time it ends up with the ratios only becoming viable in URF mode.

I am not implying that yes, you should play these champions in your ranked games with full AP builds, i'm just showing the potential that some have compared to ones Riot released with very little effect.

11 Comments

Paroe8/29/2018, 4:53:51 PM2 votes

You seem to not understand that ability power is for abilities. Some designers still hold to that idea... And all tanks have AP scaling or tank scaling.

AbiwonKenabi8/29/2018, 4:59:28 PM2 votes

I think often an AP ratio is there so that it doesn't feel bad to build an item that has some AP on it, like Guinsoo or formerly Triforce. Tanks also tend to use magic damage/scale off of AP somewhat for damage. Sometimes an AP ratio does seem a little out of place even with that in mind.

Hotarµ8/29/2018, 5:33:04 PM2 votes

Most of the time an AP ratio is there for people who build Guinsoo's. Namely Jax, Nocturne, Shyvana, etc. However, I think the reason some other people have AP scaling was to try and increase build diversity.

It doesn't really work most of the time because why would you ever build Sivir AP when AD gives you so many more benefits? Same with Vi.

I used to play a ton of AP Varus on a different account and I feel like that was the best version of a champ that could build either or. Building AD makes you a standard ADC/Caster champion, but building AP forces you to patiently stack your W and get resets off with your ult. It turned him into a burst mage of sorts and it's still pretty fun to this day. :^)

DuskDaUmbreon8/29/2018, 5:57:59 PM2 votes

Most of the time it's so they can get a Guinsoo's or Banshee's or Gunblade or a Zhonya's (or any other item that they might want that had AP in the past) for the passive and not feel so bad about the AP being wasted.

That, or because Riot wants it to have some kind of scaling (Simply because damage abilities with no stat scaling are weird to see), but don't want it to be their primary scaling type because they don't want it to be too high-damage.

Luigi Tortellini8/29/2018, 7:16:52 PM1 votes

Once upon a time League was a game about innovating and experimentation. A beautiful time where Riot didn't force whatever meta they wanted to see in LCS, nor hand pick builds for every champ in your class you must follow every game regardless of situation to be competitive. Then sometime around the end of Season 4 Ghostcrawler got finished ruining wow (apparently, I don't play Blizzard games) and moved on to League. And that is how we got the league we all know and love to hate today.