Change the name "Ability Power" to "Magic Damage"

Orders·1/5/2015, 12:35:51 AM·2 votes·1,357 views

For the sake of clarity, since Riot always mentions that, why is magic damage referred to as Ability Power?

The name Ability Power seems incredibly misleading, especially for a new player. Personally, I have not fallen victim to the term "Ability Power" when I first started but I can easily imagine how a new player can and potentially will mistaken Ability Power for what it is.

For example, champions have spells that are called abilities. **A new player might come to the conclusion that building AP on a champion will increase the damage on their abilities **while building AD on a champion increases the damage on auto-attacks. This is true for the latter, but certainly not true for the former as Ability Power strictly means Magic Damage.

This brings me to my point;** Riot should seriously consider changing the term "Ability Power" to "Magic Damage", "Magic Power", or even just "Magic".** All Ability Power items should be referred to as Magic Damage items.

For instance, Syndra's Q says that she "Conjures a Dark Sphere at a target location, dealing magic damage".

LeBlanc's Q says that she "projects an orb towards her target, dealing magic damage".

Deathfire Grasp's active: "Doom amplifies all magic damage that champion takes by 20% for 4 seconds."

None of these descriptions explicitly mention Ability Power, which can lead to some confusion for new players.

If such a change were to occur, the new player will realize that building "Magic Damage" items on champions like LeBlanc and Syndra will increase the damage output accordingly.

Note: I understand that some champions deal magic damage with their abilities even when they're building AD like LeeSin (and vice versa), but the simple changing of the word "AP" to "MD" should be a more clear indicator of the exact type of scaling on a champion's ability.

Plus, since Attack Damage is abbreviated as AD it flows better if Magic Damage is abbreviated as MD.

Also worth considering is changing the term "Magic Penetration" to "Magic Resistance Penetration" because it does not make much sense to be able to penetrate magic. "Magic Resistance Penetration" is a mouthful but it helps with the clarity tremendously.

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It is especially concerning since the stat bars for champions do list the blue bar as "Ability Power". It is not entirely misleading but champions like Zed and Pantheon do most of their damage from spells (abilities) as well but they build purely AD.

TL;DR: For the sake of clarity, Riot should consider changing the phrase "Ability Power" to "Magic Damage" because the phrase Ability Power can easily be misunderstood by new players as Ability Power implies that it will amplify ability damage. In contrast, champions like Pantheon and Khazix primarily do physical damage but their damage comes from abilities as well.

9 Comments

The Soulforged1/5/2015, 12:36:59 AM6 votes

Ability power is the stat, magic damage is the type of damage mitigated by magic resist. It is possible for an ad scaling spell to deal magic damage and vice versa.

Meep Man1/5/2015, 12:37:42 AM1 votes

While Magic POWER would be a better option, there is some physical spells that scale off of AP.

Vicvictorw1/5/2015, 12:40:58 AM1 votes

While on one hand I can say* how would someone be dumb enough to have that confused,* I do see the point.

Regardless of whether the ability even scales off AP, we still call it an "ability."

So I could see someone being confused and wondering why Caitlyn's *ability *"Piltover Peacemaker" didn't get any stronger with more AP.

JustMyBassCannon1/5/2015, 12:45:02 AM1 votes

Regardless of whether or not a champion has spells that scale on AD, Ability Power will never affect the power of attacks without an ability/on-hit effect. It is strictly designed to function on abilities. There is a very small number of abilities that apply AP to your basic attacks, but those are, again, abilities. An item ability, a mastery ability or a champion ability. Innately, basic attacks do not scale on Ability Power.

The Soulforged1/5/2015, 12:53:52 AM1 votes

Lee sin e solely scales on attack damage, yet deals magic damage, which is lowered by magic resistance instead of armor.

Sukishoo1/5/2015, 12:55:30 AM1 votes

Champions that deal Magic Damage use Ability Power. There's nothing misleading about that at all. It's just like those that use Attack Damage cause Physical Damage.

ExecutorDill1/5/2015, 2:45:37 AM1 votes

It's called ability power because it empowers various abilities. Keep in mind that AP only isn't used for Magic Damage but it is all use for shields and heals like Sion's soul furnace or Gangplank's Citrus Fruit Heal Thing :P

Name one champ who gets a heal (and I don't mean life steal) or a shield based off how much ad they have. Logically speaking converting your offensive power to defensive power is not a trait that would fit with many champs theme.