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Does having dual scaling (AP/AD) serve a purpose? (Opinion)

Looknook·3/28/2018, 1:26:51 PM·2 votes·395 views

With Irelia’s upcoming Champion Update Riot has put a large AP scaling into one of Irelia’s abilities. This; however, raises the question of is it worthwhile to have Champions with dual scaling be put into League?

The first issue that is a problem is the actual lack of items with both AD and AP on them. Currently there are just two, Gunblade and Rageblade and they both work for totally different types of Champions. Due to this lack of items Champions will often just go AP or AD depending on whichever stat works best for their Champ or whichever works but is also the most ridiculous, like having Rengar yell people to death or having Sion ... yell people to death.

While many of these builds can be fun, very few tend to be competitively viable unless the champion also has access to onhit effects, ala Jax, Varus and Kog’Maw. On the flip side the off-damage type (such as an AP ratio on an AD champ) tends to either have such low AP values as to be worthless, Graves smokescreen, or be so good people are cramming in odd items to make the most of the Ratio, like with Katerina.

The sense of discovery that comes from finding and thinking about potential off builds for Champions can be very enjoyable. Yet without proper support of Dual damage type items, very few champions seem to have the chance to do much with Dual scalings. Unless Riot wants to give more options of AD/AP items or builds the Dual scaling on Champions should stop, so as to allow a champion full access to their abilities and kit.

What do you guys think?

5 Comments

DuskDaUmbreon3/28/2018, 2:33:50 PM3 votes

I think the purpose of dual scalings is less to make them good with a hybrid build, and more to make those champions able to properly utilize certain items (Such as, say, GA on Akali). These kinds of items tend to have passives the champion would love to have, but they may often ignore it if the item has stats then don't want - Hence why Akali and Katarina never picked up Morello before it was changed to how it is now - the mana (A large amount of the investment, and the sole purpose of a component) was wasted, and the CDR was often excessive. Even when they wanted the GW passive, they often went for the less-efficient Mortal Reminder.

The other purpose is that they don't want an ability to scale too much with their primary damage type, but they don't want to leave it with no scaling, for whatever reason (Usually because it looks a bit odd).

Critmaster Garen3/28/2018, 2:46:03 PM2 votes

they want to make certain champions and abilities scale better with baron.

Escheton3/28/2018, 2:57:09 PM2 votes

Dual scaling is fun and versatile. If we are more talking Sion E scaling 40% off AP for instance. Not so much a Kat with 200% scaling.

Linna Excel3/28/2018, 2:50:43 PM1 votes

Well, there's still gunblade so someone with dual scaling will be able to make full use of it.

I kind of like dual scalings because they give players an option to either go AP or AD. While it won't matter so much for Irelia, I think there are a few champs in the league where it gives some interesting alternatives.

xxxMadLionxxx3/28/2018, 7:44:35 PM1 votes

Well honestly, there are other ways to get dual stats, just a lot harder to do. If you build item 3042 and item 3040 then you get a good amount of AD and AP. You can continue to support this with more mana base items such as item 3285 item 3030 item 3110 item 3025 .

The next thing you can do is get transcendence and build mainly AP, along with high CDR AD items like item 3078 item 3071. Then you get the AD from those items and the CDR is converted into extra AP.

The problem with this is its takes a long time to get going, hence, a third hybrid item would go a long way.

We also now have the new true damage keystone which works well for hybrids.