AP Kog (a tragic love novel with a hopeful epilogue)

**I understand this is a ridiculously long post but I poured a lot of effort and love into it and firmly believe it is worth the read... so pls bear with me ..**_

He was my little doggy that went "barf barf," but now he's about as viable as + .

I haven't been playing league for all that long tbh; in fact I believe I only started right after the URF event of season 5. Even so, I've come to love nearly every aspect of the game and even a few aspects of the community. This is my first boards post and I am currently Bronze 1 in a low-mid Silver ELO, so keep all this in mind whilst considering what I have to say about my little puking puppy. Also keep in mind, however, that I checked the stats of his ult from a few years back and it remained largely unchanged until preseason/season 6. Another thing to consider is that by "AP " I mean a reliant almost entirely on his ult, whether AP or AD or w/e is built. I am not referring to a close-range AP build such as an APC with .

Why There is No More AP :

He doesn’t do what he used to do, which is to deal wonderful amounts of sustained (when played well) damage at an incredibly long range. One of his greatest assets/uses was to poke down a the enemy team before a big fight. Now, however, he doesn't. For those who don't remember or weren't playing/in-the-know at the time, before season 6 's ult at max rank dealt 160 base damage with 30% AP scaling and 50% bonus AD scaling. When hitting a champion, however, that damage was doubled to 320 base with an effective 60% AP scaling and 100% bonus AD scaling. Currently, the damage stats at max rank are... too much to type out xD long story short though it deals approximately half the damage it used to do when the enemy is at max health, about the same when they are 50%-25% health, and roughly 150% of the damage when they are below 25% health. The AP and bonus AD ratios are also proportional to those percent max health base damage changes. Speaking in numbers, this (as we all likely know) made AP nearly completely irrelevant.

However AquaDragon, the premier player and guide-maker for AP at a diamond and below level, has said otherwise and made me believe in my little barf bear. So I persisted, thinking that all the ult damage changes ultimately average out to about the same if not more damage. Coupled with the slightly strengthened laning phase, I was inspired and driven. Tragically, however, I discovered that the enemy would very rarely stay in range for my ult damage to be relatively viable with the build which had gotten me so many carried games in season 5. That build was based around getting as many ults off as smartly and safely as possible and capitalizing on the ult's base damage to be a consistent source of ranged siege damage. Said build consisted of the core of for mana, for mana regen (good synergy with high amounts of mana), for boots and sweet, sweet magic penetration, and for survivability, a little bit of AP, and most importantly the passive which allowed the wielder to keep any enemy out of position in line. Aside from that I usually built and for maximum magic penetration, although AquaDragon's guide called for a defensive item somewhere in there (however I never built one because I was in silver at the time, so no one realized that the little poke constantly falling on them REALLY added up and needed to be eliminated). After this discovery, I did calculations for a true ult-based damage . To capitalize on the ridiculous bonus AD scaling, I designed a build of as much AD as possible while still trying to remain as viable and practical as possible. It consisted of and . Giving everything the benefit of the doubt, I calculated damage for this awkward build and found that it did about DOUBLE the damage (averaging the damage from 100%-50%, 50%-25%, and 25%-0% health) the old ult did. I was rejoicing in my math and just about ready to try the build out in a game when a few compounding variables and factors loomed their heads.

• The damage from my new build was more reliant on bonus AD, whereas the old ult/build relied more on base damage. That meant the damage was more reliant on getting that final build, making an already late-game champ unnecessarily even later-game
• The enemy is very unlikely to just compliantly sit within your range when at 50%-0% health, making the new ult's numbers a lot less reliable than I'd previously thought (not to mention being counter-intuitive to the whole 'poke-before-a-teamfight' primary purpose of AP )
• I'd done all the calculations without considering resistances, something which the old ult/build dealt with much better with its synergistic inclusion of a ; to add it to the AD build would sacrifice some of the crucial AD which the build was deeply reliant upon
• The "new build" I'd thought up was literally just pure, boneheaded AD stacking. It didn't synergize well at all, it didn't really do enough damage to make it the new, viable build which I thought would have been the intention with the ludicrous bonus AD scaling of the new ult
• The "new build" also sacrificed the passive of which, I must admit, is perhaps more valuable than anything but mana on the original build. Being able to slow down enemies made them a whole lot easier to hit and, in the case of a single poorly-positioned enemy, chain multiple ults onto so that the punish wasn't just a little tickle to let them know a bush was warded
• I also didn't factor in a piece of data perhaps more crucial than the damage itself: the cooldown and mana/mana cooldown of the ult. The old ult's cost only increased by 40 mana with each cast, which is a lot less than the current 50 mana per cast increase if you're pumping out numerous ults. Even worse is that this cost takes a whopping 10 seconds to reset to base whereas it used to only take 6. A 10 second window of potential uselessness is MONUMENTALLY larger than a 6 second window, and after considering this fact I finally gave up on trying to be as optimistic as one devoted Diamond 1 player

WHY There is No More AP :

As with anyone who has lost the love of their (season 5 silver 5) life, I must look to the god we call rito and scream "Why?!" My brother, a better player than I, inevitably notices my cries and tells me that the almighty rito wanted to make a unique, viable ADC again. This was understandable, and it made most of the ult changes make sense at first. The scaling percent max health-based damage would make the ult a great finishing blow for a champ with a weak laning phase, and the high af bonus AD ratios meant that what little AD you built as ADC helped that much more. Therein, however, lies the rub. is a champ with and "On" and "Off" setting. Early game you're off and cautiously farming, and once you get to that 2-3 item "on" point you're just laser-melting faces at AA range. Neither stage really makes the ult a necessity; it's really more of a convenient extra tool to a kit that most use for it's unique (albeit linear) purpose of disgusting amounts of consistent, sustained, mixed percent health damage in autoattacks. That said, I cannot in any way deny that rito did a great thing with the ult to make it better for ADC builds. I can, however, give my possibly biased opinion that it was not worth brutally murdering an entire playstyle of a champ; a playstyle whose validity landed it a spot in the LCS numerous times. A playstyle which was as rewarding as it was fun as it was varied: early game was spent in a constant state of extreme caution while at the same time trying to get as much CS as possible and fit a little poke in as well. Mid game was spent getting a feel for the enemy team and precisely what role you would need to play in teamfights and late game as well as figuring out what kind of predictions you'd need to make to be able to hit the enemy. Did they juke around a lot or did some just walk in linear, predictable paths? Were any of them SUPER afraid of you? Did any of them have a way to get to you and/or know they needed to assassinate you? Would you be whittling down the tanks from a distance or crippling squishy carries? All this preparation was for your true time to shine: late game. Those teammates who flamed you for not building a and said you did no damage, who said you played like a total wuss and that's why you were 1/1/7 or something didn't matter anymore because you were in the zone. You were always focused on landing as many ults as possible without exhausting your mana reserves, always focused on getting damage out on the priority targets, always focused on chaining those ults and predicting the enemies' movements and positioning, and always focused on your own positioning and safety. After that game, win or lose, you'd look at the "Damage Dealt to Champs" bar and be able to truly measure your performance by how much it dwarfed everyone else's, free of the "gg rep useless mid kog" and able to know you ensured so many kills, helped with so many teamfights and granted vision of enemies in bushes far more often than your team was willing to acknowledge.

So why kill such a unique, rewarding playstyle? It wasn't because no one played AP , not because he stole 's thunder, but because of the season 6 meta. It was all about the ADC in preseason and, for the most part, still is. It would be stupid to let a meta based around squishy carries have a champ that could dump copious amounts of damage at an almost unreachable range with little to no counterplay. I can totally understand riot's fears and reasoning with gutting AP at the start of season 6, but that's where the present meta and my point come into play.

Team comps have moved away from "WOOOOO ADCS" to "yeah wooo 1 or 2 ADCs," thus making my baby a little less broken in the meta. For those ADCs, the current meta allows for numerous ways to counter AP . With the recent buffs to tenacity items and the availability and viability of -based items (namely ), the slow from the essential is much less of an unavoidable death mark and more of a balanced tool. That is, if you also consider how many viable ADCs have ways to juke and dodge the ult or swiftly escape its range; and for example. The pick is also largely less safe because of and the prevalence of assassins in general (both AD and AP). This would force AP players to either play way more cautiously and smartly or to build a defensive item or two, thus making the damage even less broken (if one could ever consider it to be). To, it seems very safe for rito to bring this adorable little void puppy back into the mid lane.

Riot, is by far my all time favorite champion. He's really, really cute. He taught me just how valuable warding is, and how essential good positioning is. Playing him, I had to be aware of my mini map almost all the time. I also learned just how far skill caps could go with ult placement predictions and the ever-difficult technique of the unlocked camera. Sure I could feed a little bit and have poor map awareness but still do alright in the damage department, but that wasn't where my puppy really shined. I felt most happy with a game when I used all of my junior LCS strats like using ult to get vision or the occasional attempt at unlocked camera for teamfights, and when I laned safely and well. That is why I implore rito staff to consider this. I understand that there are higher priorities, and that not many people play AP to begin with. However he is so, so worth it. My humble request is to rework his ult to make it again viable to use it as the primary tool of his kit if one should so chose that build/playstyle. If that is in fact not possible, I'd honestly be happy with an explanation as to why. I'm basically a newb bronzie, so I fully understand that I'm probably wrong in a few regards; that's why I'd be content just to be educated. As of my knowledge now, however, I can only implore that my all time favorite be resurrected so others may experience the valuable experience which I have.

**TLDR: It's safe to bring AP back so... Rito pls ;-; **