A thorough consideration of the issues surrounding the addition of a 2nd ap armor item

This is a long one, I'll warn you flat out. But I believe I thoroughly considered the issues at hand and the potentially disastrous consequences for adding a 2nd ap + armor item. I was going to post this in the other thread, but figured it was too long and likely warranted it's own thread.

Something that I haven't really seen brought up in the other thread, or on the board in general, although a few people have skirted around it, is that ADs don't actually have a way to build both defensively + maximize damage. I know people will immediately bring up the combination of but please consider that you actually sacrifice a lot of damage building sterak's. It's going to give you around 20-40 damage at any given time. Which is pretty insignificant unless you have Triforce. The thing is, you have to have HP in order to make the MR worth anything. Same is true with any defensive stat. If you have ~160 mr and only 1.8k hp or 160 armor and 1.8k hp, it's not really effective. The only way you don't get annihilated by someone like LB is the shield from Maw, and even then there's plenty of vids from pro games showing that LB can rip through a Merc + Maw ADC and leave them with sub 300 hp even with the shield active and summoner heal or even flat out kill them. This is because they don't have HP. And if they build sterak's they don't have good damage because you're going to sacrifice either crit or armor pen and that shit doesn't fly unless you're kalista and graves (or blue build EZ, but he definitely won't build sterak's). Who both have balance issues outside of itemization. The 10 armor pen from Maw vs someone like Poppy, or Nautilus, or any other common top lane tank, is not anything. Here's, basically, your 2 potential anti-ap builds for an adc. crit item + crit item, merc, maw, steraks, boots. No significant armor pen so their tank will laugh at you. Or crit item, merc, maw, steraks, lw, boots. No significant crit, their tank will laugh at you. Or if you're kalista, bork, hurricane, merc, maw, steraks. No significant armor pen, no significant crit. Tank builds thornmail and laughs at you (if they can catch you with that fucking passive). If you build a lw, you're giving up something huge in order to do it. If you're not getting sterak's for the shield + hp to make your mr effective, you're not actually tanky to a mage. By the time you have both merc and maw the ap could have easily built void staff and is going to pen your mr down to the ~100-110 range. With only void staff. Not counting runes, not counting boots, not counting masteries. With all of those, even if you have merc + maw, you WILL be sub 100 mr. Not even including an abyssal, which would get you much lower.

Now with that preface, I'll get to the point. AP's DO have a way to efficiently build both damage AND hp at the same time. is an insane item for mages. 500 hp, 120 ap, 800 mana. Matches the highest amount of HP you can get from a tank item (save warmogs), and gives you literally everything a mage could want outside of cdr and mana regen. It's also not particularly expensive. The need for mana regen is less salient when you add 800 to the total pool and consider blue buff. If you go 2nd item and have armor runes (which you should if you see you're vs an AD) then you do have effective resistances. But the thing to consider here is you still have a lot of damage. You've gotten 220 ap from 2 items. That's pretty close to the most ap you can even get from 2 items. If you're a burst mage, you haven't really sacrificed much damage by building defensively. Not only have you not lost much damage, but you have cut the opposing AD champs damage by a lot because you have armor AND hp. Even if they have armor pen (which they were going to build regardless of if you got zhonyas or not), you are way tankier than you would be with just a zhonyas or, god forbid you build no defensive stat. If you don't build defensively at all they are going to do near true damage. Which, mind you, if they didn't build any MR at all YOU would do near true damage just the same as they would. It's a completely fair situation. You either maximize damage and minimize defensive capabilities, or you lose damage in exchange for not being insta-killed by what is effectively true damage. Both ADs and APs make this same exact trade off. With the exception that ADs CANNOT build AD + HP effectively, outside of Black cleaver's meager 300 hp, and massive cost, combined with an obscene 1150 combine cost. The only reason Maw is good defensively is the shield, which is a temporary boost to your effective hp (although I think the shield should be 3s instead of 5s). If you had no shield at all, it would be a terrible item vs aps. So we have established there is one way an AD can defensively itemize vs an AP and get some sort of effective hp, while not sacrificing too much damage. That is: Which gives you +110 mr, a pathetic 300 permanent HP, and a 300 + 110 temporary shield in order to make that MR actually worth a shit. If you build sterak's for effective hp, or BV or spirit visage you WILL lose a lot of damage. You could build frozen mallet for the HP and bit of AD, but my god is it expensive for little gained and the build path is not good. You could do Titanic Hydra, but there's also issues involved with building that. Especially if the nerfs to it's AD go through the pbe.

Compare this to an AP defensive build: and then you can get crafty depending on your champion, and do: or (Rylais is very underrated in my opinion, considering what it brings to the table in terms of defense) This option cuts your damage, but not nearly as much as you might like to think. Consider that every single one of these items gives 100 ap or more when completed. On top of giving you a way to either get more armor, or more hp (+900 with ROA and Rylais), or more effective hp (seraphs massive 700+ shield). You'd still have plenty of AP for wave clear and plenty of mana to spend doing it. Once you throw in there, you will pen their MR down to near 100, without calculating runes + masteries and boots. That Merc + Maw combo, isn't so scary when you consider that even with both of them, you can still get them below 100 MR with 1 item. And at best they have little hp to back that up. Compared to them needing either Black Cleaver, or a minimum of 2 armor pen items to get you to sub 100 armor (not factoring runes + masteries) if you have built just Zhonyas. If they have BC + Maw, they have 300 hp + 50 mr built. Compared to ROA + Zhyonas, which is 500 hp and 45 armor. Seems to be pretty even. If you count Maw's 5s shield, it's a temporary 650 ish hp + 50 mr. Compare that 650 temporary, to 500 permanent hp and it's arguable which is better. When you consider Zhyona's active (which completely removes Zed's and Talon's ability to kill you in a teamfight, and almost makes it nearly impossible for Zed to 1v1 you in a split push scenario), I personally lean in favor of the 500 permanent. If you have ROA, Zhonyas, Ryais (or seraphs) you have so much effective hp that they cannot hope to burst you. They will not 1v1 you unless they are way ahead, or you've put yourself in a bad position to begin with. Which is your fault, not theirs. Now the obvious counter-point to this build is "where's the cdr?". This is a problem that is almost completely solved by scaling CDR blues + blue buff. And if you're a champion that can go thunderlords, you can grab that 5% cdr if you think getting rid of the extra MR pen is worth it. (Which it sometimes might be, it's match up and personal preference dependent.) Contrary to popular belief, getting 40% cdr isn't always the best decision, nor necessary.

Now let's throw in a theoretical 2nd AP armor item. If that ap + armor item gives 40-50 armor and over a minimum of 60 ap, you could make it effectively impossible for an AD castor to kill you. Even ADCs would have a hard time eating through nearly 3k hp and +85-95 built armor. On top of what you get from runes, and basic scaling. You could easily reach 200 armor on a mage with 3k or higher hp, that still has over 500 ap. is + 320 ap, 900 hp, 45 armor. Throw in a theoretical 2nd armor item that has 40-50 armor and at least 60 ap and you have 380ap (from just items), 900 hp, 85-95 built armor. Add in AP from runes, scaling, masteries and you reach over 500 ap. This isn't factoring Zhonyas active or all the cc you get from Rylais, which are both useful in their own right. And, there's still a slot for a 5th item. Which could be filled with, , if you don't need tons of MR pen, or if you do, or if you want a little MR pen but want more survivability go with or if you need to stop some AP go for the CDR and MR, along with the massive increase in HP pool. (Not like a mage is gonna burst your 3k hp anyway). This item build would create a mid laner that is pretty god damn tanky when they are SUPPOSED to be squishy. If you consider this build on a top laner, or someone that can afford to build ninja tabis, like (please remember that AP Jax is a thing and he actually has solid ratios and ult scaling when building offensively) I'm sure I left someone out, but you have a recipe for disaster here. A 2nd AP + armor item has the potential to make a large pool of champions obscenely strong. A few of the champions I listed are already problematic in their current state, let alone adding in an item that would allow them to remove their only counter (burst damage) as well as itemize against sustained damage.

In particular, I'd be terrified of Maokai with this build. He'd have well over 3k hp, 200+ armor, 500+ ap. His W (max rank) does 11% + 3% per 100 ap max hp damage on a 9s base CD. Assuming a flat 500 ap, he would do 26% of your max hp with 1 spell. That is also point and click, and roots you for 2s. His Q would do 450 on a 6s base cd. E would be 320 up front, and an additional 540 with the explosion. Factor in how much value his ult gives in a teamfight and he would be a horrendous monster. He would nearly insta-kill any squishy on your team and could not be killed quickly. Bear in mind he has 4 other team mates also doing damage. You think tank Yi or Fiora is bad? This would make them look like tame by comparison. Fizz would also be a huge problem. Even more so than he already is (balance wise).

In summation: I'm not 100% opposed to a 2nd AP + armor item, but Riot would have to find a way to make it inefficient to stack HP, AP, and Armor. Which with the current items, they could not do. If the item had a passive that gave more armor based on having less bonus hp, that would be a potential way to counter it. Like 50 armor for under 300 bonus hp and 25 armor for over 500 bonus hp. This is a straight up fucking weird passive, but I can't think of another way to stop efficient ap, hp, armor stacking. TL;DR Adding a 2nd ap + armor item has the potential to completely ruin the balance of an entire class of champions, and the balance of the game. It also gives a clear path for an entire class to negate an intended weakness (their squishyness). Have a nice day.