Discussion: Why have AP Bruisers failed as an Archetype?

Angyal·12/20/2019, 1:29:24 AM·2 votes·2,697 views

My thoughts for the reason why the AP Bruiser archetype has failed is a mixture of two points:

The lack of proper AP bruiser items so they must borrow other mage items from other archetypes to succeed.
Some aspects of the AP bruisers are geared way too much toward upfront damage (burst) than sustained damage or utility/mitigation to the point where they are a detriment to the team for not focusing on the burst aspect of their kit.

So what are your thoughts towards this question?

21 Comments

ModThe Djinn12/20/2019, 2:48:38 AM4 votes

So what are your thoughts towards this question?

My thoughts are very simple: the lack of base AP as a champion statistic.

One of the reasons you can create AD bruisers is that solid base AD and a kit that needs durability to work mean that you can offer tank-focused items that synergize well with sustained combat while still ensuring some combat scaling, and due to how AD / Crit / AS works you can offer AD items that don't give enough AD to be appealing to off-roles.

With AP being a "once-size-fits-all," you either have to give AP bruisers alternate scaling (tricky to balance right) or deal with one of the following three situations:

Poor scaling, so AP items feel bad. The character likely builds tank.
Good scaling, so pure AP items feel great. The character becomes an assassin.
Design high AP bruiser items. Mages and Assassins now become extremely durable.

Having a form of base AP would let us build ratios or items based on it, such as an AP Bruiser item that gives +50% base AP and tank stats. A hard-scaling AP Assassin or Carry with low (or no) base AP wouldn't want that, but a champion like Rumble, who might have solid base AP, would be very interested. You could even make some ratios rely ONLY on base AP if you wanted to avoid burst-focused builds on these champions (and if balance required it).

Demented Lemur12/20/2019, 1:35:01 AM3 votes

Well Considering mordekaiser is doing fine right now I don't think they really suffer from a lack of ap bruiser items. In fact, I think they benefit from it more than anything, because of mage items already being so good. ap items are some of the best items in the game imo

Darkdemon65312/20/2019, 1:36:05 AM2 votes

It didn't fail.

Kazekiba12/20/2019, 1:47:10 AM2 votes

They were so close to launching a full-scale item shop rework, removing Duskblade and putting Ohmwrecker somewhere useful, making item 3136 build into more than 1 item and item 3010 feel a LOT better to build/sit on and item 3027 actually do its job as a mid-game delayed powerspike. Whats the point of RoA when it gives the same stats as a Luden/Morello but no CDR or passives?

And then, inexplicably, it all got cancelled.

Why?

Sire Hippington12/20/2019, 3:43:57 PM1 votes

It'S mostly the lack of itemisation and wrong tuning for potential AP-brusier champions.

Champs like diana usually have to high ratio and to low bases to work on a low AP built, but lack the item options to get a suitable mix of AP and defense, while the high ratios make them great on full AP.

However, the biggest issue is where bruisers fail no matter if ap or ad, it's damage creep. Sustained combat patterns on a melee just don't work outside of a 1v1, you just don#t live long enough to do your job, so you need to burst down threats quickly. It's not just Ap-bruisers that are geared towards upfront damage at the current state of the game. I've played many champs with bruiser builts back in the day, cause back then items didn#t scale as much in multiplicative ways. Nashors and guinsoos for example were stat sticks rather than haveing an additional ap-scaleing and amping other on-hit, so they were stronger on theri own and didn't scale that well with additional damage. Squishys were actually vulnerable and you didn't need absurd damage numbers to threaten them, while even 2 tank items allready made quite an impact. Now you feel like anything that isn't fulltank dies in a sec, and many champs feel like the hardly deal damage if they don't stack off items that synergies with each other. There are to few items that are strong on their own, to much dependency with other items so you usually get somewhat foced into certain builts. The only exeption for that are trinity, bc and ravenous aswell as to some extend titanic and steraks(though both need additional health, but that's still a big pool of items to choose from), which are all ad-bruiser items and the reason why ad-bruisers still work to some extend.

Also, Riot never really released an proper AP bruiser, it's been usually either tanks with high enough ratios to make use of some AP items, or AP assasins going more tanky, and everone looses their shit when AP assasins go more tanky(fizz/ekko and even release sylas who arguably was designed as AP-bruiser and now gets turned into an assasin)

P.S. I also like The DJinn's base AP idea, haveing some overall damage scaleing per level and potential bruiser items that give a % base AP increase like sterkas does for AD would also help alot.

Hayaishi212/20/2019, 4:04:43 AM1 votes

Lack of proper itemization.

Z3SIeeper12/20/2019, 4:11:29 AM1 votes

I think AP bruiser itemization is just something that can never occur. Any effective AP + Health item is going to be used by all mages, not just AP Bruisers. We've seen it when RoA was strong, Rylais, Morello, etc.

In that case, I think the AP Bruiser classification needs to come entirely from the kit relying on that sort of itemization.

Galio works well as an AP Bruiser due to how long his W damage reduction stays active for (and cuz it scales on AP).

Mordekaiser works out due to full AP scaling on everything plus his W scaling directly with both damage dealt (AP) and how much damage he can take (health), which results in him wanting AP health items.

New Diana got some love in this direction, but she's basically still being played like an AP assassin-diver hybrid and ignoring AP + Health items outside RoA.

Moving forward, I think if Riot wants any AP champ to be played as a bruiser, they need to look into these sort of defensive tools built into AP Bruiser kits.

I do however think that the health + AP itemization pool (especially manaless) is a little bit too limited at the moment and we could use an extra item or two to fill this hole.

haaaaaaalp12/20/2019, 4:34:57 AM1 votes

I don't think they failed, I think people try to pidgeonhole too many champions into an ap bruiser role. In order for a champion to be a decent bruiser, they need good consistant damage. Champions like singed, rumble, amumu, or mordekaiser all fit well into that role and have been fine. Meanwhile, champions with kits like galio or chogath work better as either a tank or a burst mage. Meanwhile, champions like diana, ekko, and sylas fit better as an ap skirmisher. When people try to pidgeonhole these champions into a bruiser role, that is when they run into trouble.

On the ad side, we don't really say that bruisers failed simply because sion or fiora do not play as bruisers. However, on the ap side, people tend to blur the line more.