@Riot questions about Hybrid champs and Itemization

La Bello··3 votes·266 views

Shaco Katarina Evelynn Warwick Akali

All suffer from being hybrid champs but with no clear Itemization.Ive havent seen Riot Talk about Hybrid champs unless its item 3124 or Jax so ive got a few questions.

Shaco has amazing AP ratios and gets the most out of his ablities when building AP and relying on traps but he is built AD in most cases and his Q scales is most effective with AD as well. As AD the clone can be pretty lethal when left to attack a squishy target however when AP clone needs to die to be useful Evelynn tools to get into close range and slug it out + amazing Ravage buff but poor Ad scaling on everything else which makes 70% of her kit feeling useless

Akali AD being only useful for granting spellvamp. Akali never right clicks you unless she has applied a mark to you.

Warwick AD actually pretty useless for the most part on him. He scales the hardest with magic pen and Tankiness. Hungering Bite offers insane sustain and damage when built with AP

Katarina good early AD ratios but no tools to actually make use of right clicking also all abilities deal magic damage not physical.

So my questions are....

What are the thoughts behind these champions?

I remember a while back Riot said Warwick was going to be a AP heavy bruiser Is this still a plan? when reworks come will you simply kill off a certain build path (like AP Tristana / AP MasterYi ). Also what about Hybrid Items?Will we ever see something like item 3170 on Summoners Rift or is Hybrid too hard to balance?

Why are the hybrid pen runes so cost efficient?Will they ever be changed to be more appealing to hybrid scalers?

3 Comments

CrazedPorcupine1 votes

The big problem that is faced with Hybrid champs is that there's a lack of clear build paths, lack of optimal items, and one type of Build (AP over AD or vice versa) will always end up with the result that one occaisional Mixed item (gunblade on Akali, Rageblade on Jax) will be core, while then building pure one stat over the other.

Tohob1 votes

most of these champs aren't "hybrid" so much as they are capable of building either AP or AD, i've never seen a Shaco build a mix of both AD and AP, for example.

Akali and Jax are more "true" hybrid champions, though you never see item 3124 on Akali because she scales very poorly with attack speed and rarely auto attacks.

personally, i do build hybrid on Warwick and Evelynn , but i havent seen anyone else do it. i honestly hope that the Warwick rework will be AD focused, though i would love to see a hybrid-focused Evelynn rework.

also it's always confused the hell out of me that Katarina has any AP scalings at all. she throws KNIVES. how does a KNIFE deal magic damage??

AyRe CoNteMpT1 votes

what defines hybrid champs is that they deal a relatively even amount of physical and magical damage, not that they have magic damage or an ap ratio on one of their abilities. gangplank has an ap ratio on his ult and W and his ult deals magic damage, is he a hybrid champ? not so much.

master yi also isnt a hybrid champ at all and the rageblade ap only buffs his W SLIGHTLY, its really neglible but the attackspeed and passive of this item are so good on him that he still builds it.

shyvana deals 50% magic and 50% physical damage, thats the most hybrid you can get but you would never want to build AP on her. building ap is infact so bad that even rageblade is a waste on her.

volibear has AP ratios on his E and R and he scales much better off of rageblade than shyvana does and he deals a substantial amount of magic damage too and the AP from rageblade is nice, but you wouldnt build AP on him otherwise either.

so what exactly makes a hybrid champ a hybrid? ezreal can build ap and ad but the majority of his damage will always be of one damage type or the other. kat has AD scalings but will still only deal magic damage.

define "hybrid". i think the biggest and ONLY problem of "hybrid" champs is that there is no hybrid pen item and that all pen items also have ad/ap on them.

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