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Are AD and AP balanced

deadlychuck··2 votes·1,034 views

I just mean as stats. Obviously champion design plays a bigger role in gameplay balance than what stat you are using, but consider how many primarily AP champions have a viable AD alternative build Fizz Diana Gragas Lulu TwistedFate Nidalee Evelynn to the number of AD champions with an AP viable build Blitzcrank Nasus Aatrox ???.

Seriously, i've had plenty of games where we end up with AD assassin mid, AD bruiser top, AD jg, and ADC support. The support being the only minimal source of magic damage on the team. Yet we still win.

Even just looking at the complementary stats. AD - Crit, Lifesteal, Attack Speed, Armor Pen (up to 4 items, including jungle) (4 total) AP - Spell Vamp, Magic Pen (4 items, including boots) (2 total)

CDR affects both (assuming AD scaling) Also every unique passive has both an AD and AP variant more or less item 3116 = item 3022 item 3151 = item 3153 ... ok item 3151 < item 3153

AD has natural scaling with every champions, at least a 1:1 ratio on auto attacks.

Lifesteal is insane right now. If you don't believe me try playing lifesteal Olaf or Trundle. The build is item 3111 item 3074 item 3072 item 3153 item 3143 item 3065 I've literally tanked ADC and Mages by just attacking a minion wave with this multiple times.

Crit is even worse than lifesteal at the moment though, just building item 3031 anditem 3035 is enough to bring your ADC to end game status in terms of damage, before you even add on your other items.

There is a reason Rammus has an insanely high win rate, because he is the only tank that is a counter to AD. Malphite being a close second.

27 Comments

Tannhäuser Gate3 votes

one thingitem 3116 >>>item 3022

deadlychuck1 votes

I'd argue that they are about the same looking at the stats... item 3022 |||||||||| item 3116 700 HP ....... 400 HP 30 AD.......... 100AP 30-40%........ 15-35% slows

After the ratio on the skill (probably about 60%) it takes around 2 auto attacks to equal the damage. The slow for item 3022 is based on auto attack range, while the slow on item 3116 is based on if a skill is AOE or not (which consist of about 90% of all magic skills).

To be completely honest they are about dead even, i might even sway more towards frozen mallet being the more powerful of the two. The reason you see item 3116 so often, but you rarely see item 3022 is because of build diversity. Mages have almost none, but bruisers have tons, while ADCs tend to view survivability as sub-par stats.

Just about every mage builds item 3116 item 3151 item 3135 item 1001 (mana item) (AP item)

HeadHonchkrow1 votes

Veigar

Kat Head3 votes

Dont leave out Vamp is under powered as fck compared to lifesteal.

redniwediS3 votes

You can have a full AP team and win too. There are some balance issues between AD and AP, but the way you presented it the main difference is between the players in any said game.

deadlychuck1 votes

As i said, there are much bigger factors in a game than AP vs AD (i.e. champion design), though when you can win a lane, because the enemy got a item 3144 so they are out sustaining you or can neglect recalling because they'll just heal it all back.

Or when you loose a fight when they out burst you because of the two crits they got from item 3086.

Or their item 3211 stops half of your poke while you are trying to stack up your item 3191 for dear life.

It just doesn't feel good.

Leon9623 votes

Also remember that it's easier to get obscene amounts of ap versus ad.

deadlychuck1 votes

Yes, but AP has ratios which almost always tend to be less than 1:1 and they require the skills which have cool downs and normally costs.

Then most AD champions (more so now) have most of their skills scaling with AD too and more new champions are lacking resources.

Now compare in how many auto attack modifiers there are (atk spd, crit, lifesteal, pen, sheen, slow, % current, on hit damage, on hit slow) to spell modifiers there are (spell vamp, pen, % current , on hit slow). This is where we start to get into the territory of balance issues.

Lifesteal>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Spell vamp

atk spd + % current >>>>>>> % current (also item 3153 is 8% and item 3151 is 2% [4% if slowed the whole time] like wtf)

4 sources of armor pen / shred (2 % sources) >>>>>>> 4 magic pen / shred (1 % source and 1 source which is auto attack based)

FyshinaTux2 votes

AP and AD are NOT balanced... not in my opinion.

While you can get hella more AP than you can AD, AP ratios on average are not THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT high. Whereas all AD ratios on auto attacks ARE 1:1 (before armor and armor pen and all that fun stuff...).

As far as building resistances, last I checked, turrets did physical damage, which means that if you had an all AP team, the enemy team would have to build inoptimally (by building armor) in order to effectively turret dive you.

Then there are the champions that do magic damage by BUILDING AD (lookin at you nid -_-). Why do I complain about that? Simple, her magic damage gets stronger with AD, and so do her auto attacks... So what do you do? Build MR, then she can just auto you to death since you have no armor... Build Armor? Now she can kill you even faster with her combo.

AP and AD aren't balanced, and with all the variables at play in any give match (AP ratios on AP champs, turrets, tank stats etc.), I don't think they'll ever actually be balanced.

The way people try to justify it, is that AP is generally the burst damage playstyle, whereas AD is (usually... barring Zed, Talon, Yasuo, etc.) the sustained damage source. That's all from me, peace.

Nausicäa 1 votes

lol? All those champions have a 'viable AD alternative' ? Sorry no. You clearly dont understand what viable means.

If by viable you mean that you can troll an AD build with those champions and beat only terrible players then sure they are perfectly viable.

deadlychuck1 votes

of the champions i personally listed Nidalee is consistently played as AD, and was best as it after the rework.

TwistedFate was originally designed as an on release along with Ashe Tristana Sivir

AD Lulu top was actually considered the best champion in i think early season 4 or late season 3

Evelynn really has always been played as kind of hybrid, but pure AD as been shown to work, mainly back with Elder Lizard

Gragas is less common after the changes, but it's still viable.

Fizz and Diana work but mainly because they already have natural synergy with auto attacks

FantasySniper1 votes

It's because it's the best build path for sieging and farming. I mean, Mages can't really compete when it comes to taking down towers.

However much you think that AD is superior to AP, you can't really find a different way to apply burst unless you're an AD assassin or someone like Jinx Ezreal Lucian, who have ridiculous ability scaling anyways.

More AP viable builds; Tristana Malphite Varus there's more I could add, but they're really fringe and debatable.

The only ones that give AP and AD relations a bad rap are hybrid damage champs; Akali MissFortune LeeSin Nidalee Jax KogMaw Tristana Varus Their scalings are inherently not balanced and make it difficult to counter them.

deadlychuck3 votes

You say mages are made for farming, well so is item 3074. In fact, that single item tends to make bruisers as effective at farming or better than mages.

While we are at it, other AD champions who have very high burst potential. Darius Gangplank JarvanIV Jayce Khazix Pantheon Renekton Rengar Riven Vi MonkeyKing XinZhao (search "fighter" you will find all of these ones on it).

So of those champions i just listed, buy a item 3074 and you then have all the advantages of a mage, but also the advantages of being AD. Along with the insane healing from the AOE lifesteal.

FantasySniper1 votes

I didn't say mages have the best farming, I said AD does. Especially so for that very item.

Some of those are AD assassins, like I mentioned. I think I should call out the difference between "sustained burst" and "burst".

Saying Nasus or Vi have crazy burst is kind of an erroneous statement because it's all sustained burst, even with specialized build techniques because that's just how AD works, DPS or DPS with a pattern. (Excluding extreme cases like Jayce, Gangplank, and assassins)

deadlychuck2 votes

"sustained burst"

... dictionary.reference.com/browse/oxymoron

seriously, if you want to call what Yasuo Riven Udyr do "sustained burst" go ahead, but it's just insanely high consistent damage. Which isn't balance.

Though i'd add a few more Gnar Shyvana LeeSin

Waffl3x2 votes

Actually because of how tower damage works, AP attack speed would be better at sieging.

deadlychuck1 votes

Although you must have never seen an AD Malzahar take a tower. 100 to 0 the Teir 2 bot lane tower in 2.5 seconds the other day, i don't remember exactly how far in the game we were though, i only know i had 2 voidlings out, one > 14sec and one > 7sec.

There were also some minions there, but only 1 wave i think.

Waffl3x1 votes

mfw you think one champion ad clearing faster than ap means my theory is wrong.

deadlychuck1 votes

oh no, i'm the one who upped your post :P i didn't explicity say that i agreed with you in mine, but you're correct, because of the lack of MR on towers AP attack speed does kill them faster. Ever seen a fed Veigar take a tower?

FantasySniper1 votes

Uncontested, yeah, but Kayle and Twisted Fate don't take down towers any faster than an ADC while they have to fight off people. They still need to manage their resources and CDs while ADCs can just poke indefinitely and still take the tower like it's nothing.

Waffl3x1 votes

This is wrong in so many ways, addressing the lifesteal build, CC them, what happens? Next, AP has a lot less counter items to it, and silences are widely being removed. And counting how many heros have an AP option when they are mainly AD and vice versa is silly, why does that denote balance of AP? And your "viable" AD build AP heros all suck at AD except TF and Nidalee. And I don't know where you got AP Aatrox, 160% of your AP will not kill anyone, anyone, and doesn't complement his kit at all. Nasus I've never been a fan of. And I think AD Blitz is better, but I'll leave that to preference even though he is complemented by AD much more. You're probably right about blade versus liandry's. Crit is probably not in a good place, but adc's are probably overpowered in general right now. And your reason why rammus is high win rate is laughable, he has a LONG CC, heavy AoE damage, can disrupt fights fairly well, and initiate or escape with ease. I can't really say much else other than the obvious because I don't play against him often. I don't understand how all tanks don't counter AP, as most AP is burst damage and what does burst damage not work well against? Anything that can survive it. Ap has it's place, and there should be more champions that can dish out more consistent damage, but like Lissandra, if you don't tune the damage right, people are going to nuke with them anyway, but with her low cooldowns still get a fairly consistent damage output. Maybe just have a champion that is punished for chaining skills together, riot plz steal.

Forgot to mention Evelyn is a good AD, and loved feral Evelyn.

deadlychuck1 votes

Ok first thing is first lol, Aatrox was a joke. Though AP nasus has been argued for a while to possible the more powerful between AD or AP. There are also others which i didn't bring up, but i'm trying to make a point, so providing every single one (or even just more than the counter argument) works against me. Side note: i personally play the crap out of AD Malzahar, after the captain boots and banner of command changes he lost quite a bit of synergy, but he is still viable, went 17/5 on him the other day, you should give it a shot too.

AP might have less counters, but they are also made a lot harder to remove or get around than AD. Health works much better against AP, unless the champion is given natural % damage (brought up later with blade vs liandry's), though physical damage has 2 options for % armor pen, (one of which is shred so really only 1 or 2 people need it), while magic damage has a single % pen item, and the only shred item it has is based on auto-attacks which is terrible synergy.

Next, the reason i listed Olaf is because he can become immune to CC, and Trundle has the advantage of his ult to provide extra tank to survive the burst while CCed, and also heals better than olaf against minions. The end of the build puts you at around 3.2k health on trundle (if i recall correctly), i've literally sat under tower until i was at about 200, then went into the bot lane and healed completely in .7 seconds. (Auto + Q + Hydra resets)

The reason i bring up the champions who have AD variants who are AP is to make a point of natural scaling, of the ones i listed, Lulu TwistedFate Gragas Fizz and Diana have no actual AD scaling. (excluding TF e and Diana's Passive attack speed, also because TF's W is an auto-attack with 1:1 ratio you can exclude that too)

Correct Crit is in a terrible spot right now, but so is lifesteal compared to spell vamp.

Blade has utility built in, but liandy's requires natural synergy or another item to reach full effectiveness (similar to item 3085)

You are also correct, AP is burst heavy and that's one thing at separates mages/assassins from the other champion designs, the only problem is that where AP mages/assassins lack execution damage, AD casters/assassins have their natural auto attack scaling to fall back on to finish the enemy. Inherently AP scaling champions lack the extra method of DPS which AD gain from their damage stat.

The Whamboozler1 votes

There is a slight bit of an imbalance between the two. AD has lifesteal, which is superior in every way to Spellvamp. Spellvamp is terribad on all but a few champs, lifesteal is a part of nearly EVERY AD build for anyone... ever.. Meanwhile, unless you have sustain in your kit already as an AP champ, odds are you will never have any. AD also improves auto attacks, which along with making AD champs better at taking towers... are a limitless method of doing damage. They cost no resources and never run dry. All AD champs by nature, have better sustained damage than most AP champs. AD carries also benefit from Crit, which gives them a chance at doing double or more damage with each AA. There isn't a similar mechanic for AP champs. A Lux or Ziggs ult does it's set damage +AP ratio no matter what. It never does more based on how much the RNG likes you.

The balancing factors are several. Melee AD champs often have to build durability to last long enough for them to do their damage, putting a cap on how much AD they can really afford to buy. The most damaging AD builds are by nature, glass cannons... meaning those champs need to be VERY careful when they engage in, or they have to keep a distance and constantly worry about being blown up. There are far, far more/better items for AP champs that have durability inherent to them. Zonyas alone is a HUGE perk AP champs have, as AD champs have no such invulnerability button. The other perks AP champs used to have over AD has been diminished a bit. AP used to be the go-to stat for strong waveclear, and while it still is possibly better at it on some champs, Ravenous Hydra and Static Shiv give waveclear to melee and ranged AD champs that wouldn't ordinarily have it... diminishing one of the big strengths of AoE spells. Some AD champs like Zed even have very strong waveclear without those items too. AP champs are still kings of doing damage over an area or to your entire team, but those two items give AD champs an edge, meaning you no longer NEED an AP mage for waveclear.

There are also more and more AD champs with CC in their kit, formerly something found mostly in AP champs like mages and tanks. Even the most forgiving mages cooldowns are nothing compared to how fast even a slow AD champ can auto attack, and a lot of AP champs are skillshot based... making them very risky in a game that is growing more and more full of mobile champs that can dash/blink/hop/dodge well. A mage who misses two of his spells loses a HUGE portion of his damage. An AD champ only "misses" his damage if he's melee and can't get close enough to auto-attack. Given that a LOT of AD champs are mobile, this problem is being diminished by the very same mechanic that is making skillshot AP champs too risky to use.

So no... all things aren't equal. Too many perks that AP champs used to hold have been given to their AD counterparts. Now it is entirely possible to make all AD teams that can fare very well. All AP teams rarely have that perk due to their inherant flaws not being as easy to work around with items.

Boulderox1 votes

i find ap is favored, as there is item 3001 , and to my knowledge there is no ad counterpart, there is no ADitem 3157 , Ap has raw power, health and utility, whereas ad is about damage, crit and lifesteal mostly.

Very different if you ask me

Stephenizgod1 votes

Agreed there is a big imbalance between AP and AD, but there are other factors here that reduce the huge difference slightly (depending on the champions of course).

For starters, most mages abilities start out with higher base damage (not all and some AD champs got ridiculously high base damage). This means they hit pretty hard starting out and then they only get stronger as they build more. Obviously they still get outclassed by AD items when at the same level.
Secondly, most (again not all) mages build item 3020 and item 3135 automatically, they are pretty much core items, whereas AD champs dont always have the luxury of getting multiple armor pen items.
Third, mages tend to have more CC then AD champs (and again not always) all you need is a little skill and the correct items and you can win most 1v1's.

This doesnt excuse the difference in power though, AD is just better. Lifesteal and Crit is prominent in almost all AD builds, both of which outclass any AP items. Lifesteal is just better then Spellvamp always, it doesnt matter who the champ is a champ with Lifesteal will beat a champ with Spellvamp in survivability overall (im sure there are some exceptions but i cant think of any; who ever you say for Spellvamp i will just say Warwick for lifesteal). Crit... Crit alone makes AD better then AP, enough said.

Not to mention some AD champs (mostly the newer ones) are ignoring the weakness/over-amplifying the strengths of AD champions:

  • There is Kalista being able to kite forever, immune to slows, long range poke, a moving ward, and potential infinite damage.

  • Then there is Yasuo with double the crit chance (as if buildin crit wasnt already OP), plus a shield just for moving, and a wall that blocks all projectiles.

  • Gnar has long range, deals %hp damage, high mobility (potential double jump), can become an instant tank giving him extreme initiate and escaping potential, tons of CC while in Mega Gnar mode, and no resource for his low cooldown Q which hurts.

  • Vayne who just by making it to late game becomes unstoppable with almost no weakness when played right; the same with Irelia and Jax actually...

  • Tristana (AD Tristana) who has 2 escapes, high burst damage, a stupid DoT, a attack speed steroid, plus if i remember correctly all her abilities do magic damage meaning there is no building against her completely, plus Tristana stomps even as an AP champion...

the list goes on but i dont feel like making this post any bigger haha. Yeah there are some AP champs that ignore the weakness of mages, like Vel'Koz being able to move while spamming abilities and having built in true damage, but this is counteracted by how skill shot oriented he is (also he has already been mostly pushed out of Mid and is now primarily a AP Support, so not a good example actually)

Sorry for the long post :(

7ha7guy7771 votes

i'm surprised AD Thresh hasn't been mentioned. with the AD scaling on Flay's passive damage and item 3031 item 3087item 3153 item 3072 you can chunk someone for 1600 mixed damage with one crit (before mitigation)

Hullabaloo9071 votes

What i never understand about post like these is that people are talking like playing both is not common for most players.

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