On Bonus AD vs Total AD Scalings

Essay #2

All AP scaling abilities scale off off your total AP, meaning a percentage of how much AP you have. Pretty simple. With AD things get more complicated. A large amount of damaging AD abilities (other than AA modifiers like Rengar Q) scale off of Bonus AD only. Meaning they are only empowered by AD from Runes, Masteries, and Items. Why? This is because Base AD and AD per level are stats that all champions get for free. Mages get slightly less base AD and a lot less scaling AD. So why Bonus AD? Take the example Jarvan IV. His Q and R have tons of utility and decent flat damage, making a tank build popular. However both abilities scale off of Bonus AD. This allows Riot to give him high ratios without giving full tank J4 free damage off his natural AD. On the contrary, this can be a problem. Riven's Q used to scale off of Bonus AD. The problem was she had no way to catch up if behind, and her damage suffered massively if she bought any defense. So they switched the ratio to Total AD. The other reason for Bonus vs Total AD is it's more fair to mages, who don't get AP per level or Flat AP.