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Pop Quiz: Name all the counters to AP and magic damage in general

Cdore·2/19/2020, 7:46:58 PM·1 votes·8,053 views

I was thinking over all the armor and magic resist options, and realized how many ways you can shut down down AD damage (slow attack speed, reduce crits, reduce damage in general, blind). However, when it comes to AP, there are little to no counters present in the game except in very small doses. There's hardly any mana draining abilities. There's not a lot of mr to go around (armor reduces tower shots but mr doesnt do anything but stop magic damage, making it more of a niche stat). There's no silences you can buy, nothing to increase the cooldown of abilities (like how you can slow the attack speed of champs). The only item that seems to exist that does something direct is Adaptive Helm, which is most effective against only dot mages, who are few and far inbetween. And even then, just having more AP let's you still burn through the target's health, especially liandry's. Void Staff also renders ap counters useless.

76 Comments

Jmman2/19/2020, 8:34:23 PM26 votes

lol this must be a troll thread.

AD - adds damage to skill and autos AS - increases damage from autos Crit - increases damage from autos LS - heals for damage CD - decreases skills recast time Lent - removes armor

ok nows lets add one or two counters for each of thoses

AP - only increases damage on spells. This spells can be dodged if not targeted Mana - Lets you cast a few more spells however at start of game this is actually a draw back. See AD spamable skills like zed. CD - decreases skills recast time.

wow there is alot less than what ad has. Meaning there should be less counters.

i guess we can add spell crit, spell vamp and other things so we could have more options.

What your complain should be is why have they turned ever AP user into a burst mage.

King Lego2/19/2020, 8:07:58 PM9 votes

item 3102 item 3003 item 3193 item 3814 item 3140 item 1033 item 3157 item 3083 item 3053 item 3027 item 3165 item 3001 item 3065 item 3111 item 3072 item 3812 item 3222 item 3190 item 3091 item 3156 item 3194

Your comparison on AD and AP is very poor. AD has lethality, Lifesteals, Crit, and Attack speed while AP has...well just one, literally just AP. AP can be countered by various ways from magic resist + a ton of HP, a spell shield, a ton of mobility, heals, shields, etc.

That's not "little to no counterplay" now is it? Do I have to assume that you lost to an AP champion or something? Don't even try with this classic meme argument. Especially coming from a Vel'Koz main.

PopcornBunni2/19/2020, 9:47:44 PM8 votes

item 3001 item 3194 item 3102 item 3812 item 3814 item 2138 item 3193 item 3190 item 3111 item 3222 item 3155 item 3156 item 3140 item 3139 item 3065 item 3050 item 3091 item 3083 item 3053 item 3046, Kassadin Galio DrMundo Malzahar Leona Poppy Ornn Maokai Alistar Braum Olaf Kindred Tryndamere Taric Kayle, summoner 4 summoner 21 summoner 3, Boneplating, Conditioning, Nullifying Orb

How'd I score professor

Voluug132/20/2020, 2:07:01 AM7 votes

Oh look another ''AP items are so OP'' bad topic when its just AP assassins and and Morde/Vlad the only relevant AP heroes atm.

Jamaree2/19/2020, 7:51:39 PM6 votes

AD tends to be far more consistent so it needs those options, AP happens in bursts and would be made pretty heavily useless if things like forced silences and mana drain were made a thing

Z3SIeeper2/19/2020, 10:12:48 PM6 votes

While I agree MR itemization is ass right now, your argument sucks.

Leave this to the people who know what they’re talking about.

MR itemization sucks because they’re all understat and super niche as opposed to armor options which are much more generalist and offer just better stats.

But that’s it, that’s the only real argument.

As others have mentioned, physical damage has a truckload of different stats to scale off of while AP doesn’t have anything particularly unique to the stat (mana, cdr and penetration are all stats used by AD champs as well), and thus there isn’t a need for more niche MR items to counter stats that simply don’t exist.

There also aren’t “many ways” to shut down physical damage. Tell me, how do you itemize against Zed? The answer: you build armor. Notice how there isn’t a specific answer, no item that directly counters him, just armor in general.

And why do you even bring up Void Staff when LDR exists too?

Anyway yeah, argument sucks.

koshkyra2/19/2020, 8:17:21 PM4 votes

Magic damage and AP is inherently burst damage where physical damage and AD is inherently DPS and resistances are significantly more effective versus burst than DPS.

If you achieve 100 MR, a lux combo will go from dealing 1000 to 500 and she’s effectively useless against you because she has to wait 30-60 seconds to deal meaningful damage to you again.

If you achieve 100 armor then jinx’s auto attacks will go from dealing 500 to 250, but what’s stopping her from just auto attacking you again with her 2.5 attack speed?

This is why there is a lot less MR in the game than armor. They arent equal to eachother outside of very specific circumstances.

Wrathful Chicken2/20/2020, 9:09:30 AM4 votes

Don't really understand the point of this thread. You trying to say there aren't any counters to magic damage when too much magic damage has literally never been a problem?

Never been a problem sound like an overstatement? Not really. As proof, try and find 3 games where a full AP team, not even an ADC unless its Corki Corki, completely dominates the match. You probably won't even find 1. In the time it takes to find 3 games where AP-only dominates, you'll find over 50 games where AD-only dominates. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

This is just making up a problem that doesn't even exist. The truth is, if AP was a big deal and has "absolutely no counters" it wouldn't be so hard to find full AP teams. The only thing that makes AP seem difficult to deal with is the fact that you don't want to stop itemizing against AD. On the other hand, for AD, they don't even give a damn if the whole enemy team builds armor. They still going to item 3071 cleave right through it.

TehNACHO2/19/2020, 8:41:55 PM3 votes

Maokai, Dr. Mundo, Galio, Kassadin, many Slayers as a whole counter AP Champs as a whole, and Engage Tanks like Sejuani and Zac are soft counters due to play style.

You're approaching this from an itemization point of view but I can promise you, you can't (completely) itemize your way out of a bad matchup or lack of skill. Most AP Champions can be played around as overwhelmingly they are way more reliant on Skill Shots and Gameplay patterns than raw stats.

Everyday Legends2/20/2020, 12:23:55 AM2 votes

There are more things to counter basic attacks because, if there wasn't, they'd be too easy. No aiming, they don't miss, they don't have a cooldown, they're capable of dealing critical damage, apply on-hit effects, they don't work off of a resource... Abilities have cooldowns, resources, typically involve some sort of aiming. The burden is on the player to use them effectively.

3TWarrior2/20/2020, 3:52:03 AM2 votes

in most cases a single MR item will keep you alive if you do not just outright let them catch you

if you have a powerful one, it basically cripples magic damage, forcing them to go penetration items

also, there is nothing stopping fragile characters from building defensive items like item 3812 and item 3046

glass cannons are not supposed to survive...you go full offense and get melted or broken, or you sacrifice some offense and build defensive

Zerenza2/20/2020, 7:56:41 AM2 votes

AD and AP aren't meant to be Fundamentally the same. If they were there would be no reason to have AD and AP or Armor and Magic Resist, you could simply call it Damage and they all work the same/get countered by the same things. Here are their differences.

AD- In total there are 25 full build items that give AD, if you build the items with the highest AD you can get 390 AD from just items. Ad in 5 Crit Only items so there are 30 AD only items in the game. AP- Most AP Mages and Assassins can get to at least 700 AP there are 20 Full Build items that give AP.

The issue comes from what the AD items do, there are 2 Ad items that grant MR, 3 that grant a shield(Steraks, phantom dancer and hexdrinker). There are 3 items that shred Armor, it's not uncommon to get a BC+Last Whisper item so that you negate 70% of the enemy tanks armor. Then there's lethality so that you can shred up to 103 Armor. Ability Power has Magic Penetration, 40% from Void Staff and Flat Magic pen which caps at 39.

There's also Scaling differences, most AD champions do not scale with Total AD they scale with Bonus AD, but in many cases Bonus AD scales harder than Total AP. Here's a few examples.

Talon's Q scales with 110% of his Bonus AD, meaning if he has 200 Bonus AD he actually has 220 added damage to his Q. Scaling like this isn't uncommon by any means, most AD Assassins have Scalings like this on at least one ability. Talon can achieve this with 3 items, Duskblade, Youmu's and Ravenous Hydra or 8300 Gold.

Lux has a 60% AP ratio on her E, her most used spell. This means that in order to have the same extra damage on her E she would need to buy 338 AP. Lux can achieve this with 3 items, Morellonomicon, Luden's echo and Deathcap or 9800 gold. Technically she could achieve it with an extra item but building 4 items would cost a lot more than building 3. Hell even if she build Zhonya's, Banshee's, Morello's and Ludens she still wouldn't have 338 AP without runes.

This is what people don't seem to understand, the abilities of champions are Catered towards what type of Damage they build, it's not cut and dry and scaling is different for each one. To add AD has far more options Shields, Heals, Penetration, Defenses, Anti-Burst AD has it all while also having the highest scaling abilities on average and the fact that Crit is exclusive to AD champions and AD Damage. Mages and AP champions get Dodgeable spells, 2 niche defensive items, weaker overall defenses for Carry Champions since they can't build an inherent shield and less build path options in general.

Taking all of this into account, AD champions scale harder, have more ways to counter their defensive items and are overall far more adaptable, versatile and reliable than AP champions.

macspam2/19/2020, 11:15:53 PM1 votes

For tanks you are correct itemization leans toward armor but for squishies it's not so, the only armor options for ADCs are tabis and chain best/GA and we all know that GA is way less desirable an early item than seekers/zhonyas