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Strategic diversity that Riot can't believe in

MTaur··1 votes·661 views

Strategic diversity that Riot can't believe in: AP/AD build itemization that actually flipping scales. Absolutely going to not make the cut at the "diversity" buzzword brainstorm session at HQ. Yet again. (It might even be banned from internal discussion by gag order at this point, the way it's never ever taken seriously in public)

Hint: Compound scaling belongs on items, not Akali's passive. Reworking Akali's passive to scale linearly off of one stat at a time opens doors for all kinds of magic to happen with items.

PS: Why doesn't Gunblade's active scale with bonus AD as well as with AP? Because "lolol, you thought it was a hybrid item" or some such?

PPS: Lucian could've been a dual-scaling champ, but the AP ratios needed to be moved around to places other than his ult for full release, not just nerfed to the ground because "lolol Nashor's, our hands are tied". Seriously, Lucian's concept art screams "gunmage hybrid". He dual-wields guns that shoot flipping light. I was really disappointed when he was just the next FotM mobile ADC lane bully...

2 Comments

Sightless661 votes

Hybrid builds aren't really strategic diversity. You still tend to play the champions in almost exactly the same way whether you have hybrid items or non-hybrid items, and none of them have actives or other elements strong enough to really cause a change in playstyle. For example, AP Jax plays almost exactly the same as Hybrid Jax who plays almost exactly the same as AD Jax. It's just a matter of which specific number is making my damage go up. Lucian could have ad a hybrid build and his playstyle would still be the same.

Increasing item diversity is an aim of strategic diversity, but if those items really just aim to do the same thing as other items but with slightly different stats then it isn't valuable, and right now that is all that hybrid builds are. That isn't increasing strategic diversity. It's just letting me buy two different things that don't really change my gameplay at all.

MTaur1 votes

Blatantly false, in general. AP and AD do not have the same effect most of the time, unless you have innate on-hit AP scaling that's really really high. Jax is pretty exceptional for that, almost entirely alone. Try telling people that AP Trist plays like AD Trist and see how that goes...

Hybrid Akali likes basic attacks a lot more than AP Akali, and Rageblade is a good example of an item that encourages even more of them.

AP Ezreal has a lot more W and E damage than AD Ezreal, so he's not going to just spam Qs and autos all day. He is a lot more likely to Arcane Shift forward for the W and E damage.

If AP Lucian were actually a thing, then his skills would do damage to a much larger extent than they do now. The main thing for AP would be that basic attacks are most important for procing his passive, but otherwise not as important.

The most common case, for champions who scale either way, would be that AD would have more DPS, and AP would have more burst, while hybrid would lend itself more to medium-length engagements. We just don't ever see that very much because at most you see a gunblade and then a bunch of tank items, because Riot doesn't support hybrids.

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