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Why were AP Bruisers slowly phased out, anyway?

Acanthus·11/2/2018, 12:25:05 AM·59 votes·18,436 views

It's not that we never had any, but that the systems supporting ap bruisers were removed: item 3116 health nerfed/damage buffed. item 3151 health nerfed/damage buffed/added damage amp passive. item 3027 stats nerfed/level-up passive replaced by eternity passive (which is a sustain buff on spell spammers) Abyssal scepter lost ap then was changed into item 3001 lost aura for stronger solo passive and gained eternity. Net loss in efficiency due to overlapping passives. item 3174 reworked into a support item from mr/ap/mp5 item for mages. item 3102 changed from tank item to mr/ap item; buff to ap bruisers. item 3157 lost 5 armor and cd increased by 30 seconds, which generally makes an armor/hp item or armor/cd item better for defensive purposes for a theoretical ap bruiser.

Zac reworked and lost bruiser capabilities. Sejuani reworked and lost bruiser capabilities. Amumu still able to have bruiserish builds. Diana better as bursty diver with current itemization and scalings. Chogath no longer needs ap to deal damage. Gragas post rework was changed to incentivize high ap comboing/deincentivize tank Gragas. Maokai reworked in a way that cost him agency and power offensively, defensively, and to his utility. Mordekaiser still built as a mage rather than you'd expect as a juggernaut because of a combination of itemization and damage equaling greater sustain. (Correct me if I'm wrong, as he's such a rare pick and I never personally played him.) Malphite has armor scaling and can forego ap now. Nautilus can still do enough magic damage to qualify, but struggles due to modern(ized) champions being able to outshine him in every role. Singed one of the few remaining qualifiers. Niche though.

It's an archetype I fell in love with by playing Sejuani originally. (I'm obviously not a fan of her rework.) It's also one that I always felt worked really well in the jungle, but items and champion design has moved away from this type of play slowly and started strongly favoring ad for bruiser builds. This is actually something I found kinda strange for one simple reason: If you remove strong auto attacks from the bruiser archetype (although with item 3115item 3124, this is out the window for ap too, but nonetheless, back in the day, before feral flare and such, it wasn't an issue), they're a lot easier to balance. The reason was simple. In order to have an ap bruiser, you needed 1 of 3 options: a damage over time spell like old Sejuani or Amumu, a spammable low-to-medium damage spell like Zac (back when he was healthier and also had ap scalings on w), or auto-attack scalings like Diana. The first 2 are easier to balance for obvious reasons. A more healthy example than Diana would be Nautilus, though he is outshined by modern champs. The reason why the archetype could be healthy was actually pretty simplistic, when your autos and your spells have different scalings, you have less levers you need to control, which makes it easier to keep them from going from god to trash to godly once more.

120 Comments

Friendly Ram11/2/2018, 12:36:43 AM34 votes

Vladimir ? Swain ? It is really annoying they nerfed ap bruiser items though.

MarkedOfKane11/2/2018, 12:59:36 AM18 votes

I miss old Sejuani Zac Maokai

JeaneGreene11/2/2018, 12:32:00 AM14 votes

Idk why there isn't an AP version of Black Cleaver or Steraks gage. That would really help AP champions be less squishy in general. Whenever I see an enemy or allied champ build ap "bruisery" they are still super squishy.

Buff Riven Plz11/2/2018, 1:13:41 AM12 votes

riot always seemed to dislike brusiers more than any other class.

Automated Riven11/2/2018, 3:30:00 AM8 votes

Because riot insists on giving tanks ap scalings. Which means that if they release ap bruiser items then tanks just abuse the shit out of them. If riot switched all tanks to have Bonus HP/armor/mr scalings then ap bruisers could have descent itemization. I posted in gameplay+ about it but it got denied due to some tanks having some scalings similar. Didn't care enough to argue about it.

nGio11/2/2018, 5:09:38 AM8 votes

Zac Sejuani Makes me really sad to these 2 in their current states. Zac was one of our few AP bruisers, and his highest win % was top lane. Now he can't lane, because his wave clear, damage, and sustain all had to be gutted to make room for the all of the cc. Now he's stuck as a jungle-support. They took 2 viable and balanced champions and turned them into balance nightmares that can't function in the same roles that they did previously.

NineTailedMystic11/2/2018, 3:40:57 AM8 votes

AP items are so homogeneous that AP bruiser items are typically good on every other AP champion. See Abyssal Mask until they nerfed the aura range so hard.

ModWulf Helhammer11/2/2018, 12:42:15 AM7 votes

The above items because regular mages were building them, and doing absurb amounts of damage while still being strong off-tanks and impossible to burst.

The reason why AP bruisers don’t work as a concept is because AP is a burst stat. Until there is a fundamental game change that makes it not that, AP bruisers just aren’t going to work. They’ll either be worse assassins with no way out (Diana) or just don’t consider AP at all (the AP tanks)

SuffocateMeDaddy11/2/2018, 9:09:06 AM6 votes

Because tanks are better ap bruisers than ap bruisers. It could also be that ap bruisers dont have equal part to couqueror, but tank mains will tell you that conqueror was failure so ye it doesnt count.

TheSingularity11/2/2018, 2:23:18 AM5 votes

Majority of those are tanks. Hence why you don't see em built as bruisers

emarythomp211/2/2018, 4:16:58 AM3 votes

"ap bruisers" isn't a thing. They're just mages.... They wanted the items to be more ap focused and the champs you mentioned to be more tank focused. They were well needed nerfs since ap champs aren't suppose to have tons of health while also doing burst damage.

Jackom111/2/2018, 3:45:48 PM1 votes

Depends on what you see as an AP bruiser, and it doesn't help that HP/AP have been repeatedly nerfed.

Zac Was a tank first and foremost, he was never intended to be a bruiser. At best an AP assassin, if you go full AP

Sejuani She was a full tank from release, and a weak one at that. Whenever her damage was somewhat relevant, she would be immediately nerfed. Rito never wanted sej to have bruiser potential, only some occasional burst window.

Amumu AP build is mostly for fun, again not intended to be a bruiser

Diana Now we're talking bruisers. And bursty diver is a kind of bruiser, although she probably leans too much on the burst part, since she scales better with AP, and can't survive that long anyway even if building some tanky items. She's one of the victims of AP/HP itemisation being bad, in that her kit wants her to be an AP bruiser, but with the items currently present she can't really do that, she still has to build full AP/magic pen.

Chogath He's a weird one. Rito sort of wants him to be half tank/half juggernaut. But since they are aware that current items don't work for that, they just made his kit work on its gimmick. He probably highlights why magic damage bruiser is different than AP bruiser: the second actually wants AP/HP damage, the first can build whatever he finds most efficient, since his kit will work anyway.

Gragas I don't even know if Rito knows what direction give to Gragas. He was even a full burst mage at some point. Maybe he's like Galio, a champ that likes to build some AP but is actually a tank. Again, current items don't favor that, so you can only be successful with him if you can play his disruption game really well. If you can't, then you just stick with tank items and act as a damage sponge, not the best one, but it's something.

Maokai Not intended to be a bruiser. His kit, like Zac's, is made so you either go full tank or full AP, no middle of the road, and I think that's ok. he either engages/peels for the group as full tank whose damage (generally) isn't that relevant, or sieges from a safe position as a full AP caster, though that isn't really optimal outside of ARAM, is it?

Mordekaiser On point on him, but it's Morde we're talking about, is there really anything that favours him now? Besides possibily some of his countless bugs? Although Rito said that he should be getting a rework next year, so let's wait and see...

Nautilus Malphite full tanks, otherwise even Ornn should get a damage oriented build, and I don't really want that.

Singed Unique champ, and current items don't put him in a bad position. It's just that you have to know what he's supposed to do, because you don't play singed like you would play any other champion.

Not sure if I should add Vladimir Swain : they are more mages than bruisers, so are meant to prioritize AP over anything else, while still wanting to build some defense. Personally I wouldn't call them AP bruiser, but someone does.

EDIT: people downvoting without even giving a phrase or two of motivations. Never grow LoL community, never grow.

Biggest MO3 Fan11/2/2018, 2:25:27 AM1 votes

i would say because , doe to the fact that mages , or ap assasins would be able to abuse it. Thats what made it kind of an issue before , mages stacking hp , a good amount of armor , and still able to burst the back line. If riot found a good way to make items for ap bruiser viable , with their items and not making mages overpowered it would be great.