Change the name "Ability Power" to "Magic Damage"
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
(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
and
primarily do physical damage but their damage comes from abilities as well.
's soul furnace or
's Citrus Fruit Heal Thing :P