How does Ability Power work?

Rammus Soup·Dec 20, 2015·2 votes·3,178 views

Does Ability Power affect the power of ALL champions' abilities? Or do certain champions' abilities scale off other stats?

12 Comments

AyRe CoNteMpTDec 20, 20152 votes

ability power only affects abilities that directly scale off ability power.

many champions have abilities that scale off attack damage and some even have abilities that scale off health, mana or armor and even magic resist.

Void NargacugaDec 20, 20152 votes

Certain champions gain increased damage from Ability Power (its shorthand is AP). Best example for a hard scaling AP champion is Veigar . He scales VERY hard with it. But its also his main source of damage. So it makes sense.

On the other hand a good amount of champions have no AP scaling abilities at all. Some good examples are Draven Zed Riven these 3 have no reason to build AP. Some even have abilities that scale off MR ( Galio ), Armor ( Malphite ), or even their HP ( DrMundo ). Its just another source of power for champions.

Rammus SoupDec 20, 20151 votes

I noticed Rammus needs AP for his abilities to deal more damage. But his passive makes his basic attacks deal more damage based on Armor?

Void NargacugaDec 20, 20152 votes

That is a good example. He is a lot like Maplhite --> Malphite . Both scale really well with Armor mainly. Sure you COULD build him AP but it probably won't be optimal. Some champions seem to defy many of the common rules though for what they scale best with. A strange example is Malzahar --> . This guy scales REALLY well with AP. But he has a single thing that scales with his bonus AD, which is his Passive that spawns Voidlings. This is where it gets weird. Some people found out that going a high CDR build with lots of Mana and AD lets him just do surprising amounts of damage via the Voidlings he spawns at a scary rate. BUT by doing so they loose a lot of his power in his primary abilities. Those being his Q, W, E, and R. This is the problem with choosing to play AD Malzahar instead of playing him as AP. I have found an interesting middle ground though by building only 2 AD items on him: item 3146 & item 3071 . Its fun and works for me but others may find (the full build) weird and unwieldy.

JbelsDec 20, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Rammus Soup,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=MfOUVIe9,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2015-12-20T10:33:59.937+0000)

I noticed Rammus needs AP for his abilities to deal more damage. But his passive makes his basic attacks deal more damage based on Armor?

Rammus is a very old champion, and contradictory scalings were very abundant back then. Old Sion had an ult that gave himself bonus attacks speed and lifesteal, but his two main damage abilities scaled with AP. Or take Alistar, all of his abilities are some kind of utility spell (Knock-up, knock back, heal, CC cleanser with Attack Damage and damage Reduction Buff) But the majority of his kit scales with AP. The design philosophy was very different back in the day.

Rammus is a tank though. Normally, you'll build him with items that make you very tanky, and then a thorn mail to punish people for hitting you even more than your E already does

Rammus SoupDec 20, 20151 votes

How I build Rammus: item 1401 item 3075 item 3001 item 3143 item 1318 item 3026 summoner 11 summoner 6

iHerringDec 20, 20152 votes

Not sure if you are aware, but if you look at the tool tips for abilities the colors will tell you what they scale with. Ability Power (AP) is a bright green Attack Damage (AD) is orange Mana is blue Armor is yellow There are probably others I can't think of, most common are AP and AD. Mana and armor less so.

So if your ability has something like :

Do 100 (+0) damage to some guy

Then check out the color of the (+0) and that will tell you what will boost that ability.

Some champions might have more than 1 thing on each ability like "100 (+0)(+0)" and some champions will a different scaling stat on each ability, like your Q scales with AP but your E scales with AD. Some abilities will not scale with anything and can't be boosted by buying any stats.

You can also go here and look up all the champions http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_champions It can get a bit wordy and technical but if you find the champions you want it's pretty easy to glance over and get a sense of what colors they use ;)

SkelenthDec 20, 20151 votes

The most important things have already been said, but to complete the color - scaling connection: Magic Resist (like in Leonas W) is a bright purple Special Scalings (like Nasus Q) are a dark purple Those two are very rare. I actually can't think of any other scaling comparable to Nasus'

VasilisGreenDec 20, 20151 votes

Ability power is one of the 2 main stats that affect your damage output and it affects magic damage output mostly. Some abilities scale with other stats as well but they are few. It only affects champion abilities that scale with it and nothing else. There are some champions that have abilities that scale with AP, others with AD and some scale with both AP and AD. For instance, riven or Zed both scale only with AD and buying AP for them is a total waste of gold. Others like Akali scale with both stats but AP is generaly better than AD on her. So, to determine what to build on any given champion you have to know what this champion scales with. If you haven't checked a champions stats in the client or on the internet before you play them, in game, each ability has a colored numeral next to the base damage. Orange-ish goes for AD and green-ish goes for AP.

NahuiDec 20, 20151 votes

Actually technically none of Galio's spells scale off of MR, be careful with that. His passive turns 50% of your MR into AP, sure. But he does not have a direct MR scaling.

NekusenDec 20, 20151 votes

it's easy, green numbers means that scales with ability power, Orange means attack damage, Red mean HP, Yellow with armor, Blue with mana, Purple with magic resist.

Abilities say, for example: Deals 50 + ( 60% (green number) ) + (70% (orange number)) magic damage.

That means, that if you have:

0 ability power and 100 attack damage, you deal: 50+0+70 = 120 damage

100 ability power and 100 attack damage, you deal: 50+60+70 = 180 damage

Note that an ability using ability power and/or attack damage for scaling doesn't necessarily mean that ability deals magic or physical damage. The ability tells you what kind of damage it deals in it's text.

So, ability power itself won't make your spells stronger unless they specifically say they scale out of it (by having a green number)

If you have doubts about specific champions before using them, you can google data bases which specify what they scale out of and how much.