Ao Shin, identity crisis solution?

My first post so bare with me. I've been meandering through the posts about Ao and the general feel I'm getting is creating his gameplay identity is the real hampering agent to his fruition. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you want a champion who can use their abilities to either augment their allies or lay waste to their foes, but don't want a lulu 2.0.

Why not make his damaging abilities ad based and his support ap based? I turn to my fantasy roots here. In most fantasy novels/systems a dragons damage capacity is based off of their physical prowess, even their breath weapons. In D&D terms, I point you to red/gold species. Literally the physically strongest dragons of each alignment and their breath weapons are also the strongest, adults having 10d12 if I remember correctly. Their spell-like abilities also are based on their physique. Their raw damage is always based on their strength, they usually get their utility from spells. Again I turn to gold dragons, ALL of their non-damage abilities are spells.

You can have the mechanics akin to lulu, or the same abilities perform differently depending on whom you're targeting, but I say take it a step further. Take a page from kalista: Your starting item dictates WHERE your stats lie. Let's say the proverbial black spear dictates that you're stats are strongest in AD and Mobility. If you go with the other item, your stats are strongest in AP and health. I envisage Ao as a mage/assassin personally, but I believe that this can be abridged to an adc/support, but I would like him to be a high difficulty champ, mostly skill shot based like vel'koz, it fits the lore in both mechanic and making him a relatively rarely chosen champ.

The starting item, I'll say tooth for damage and claw for support, boosts their respective stat, so his "base" stats can be artificially low, and this item selection, once consumed, brings them up to their playing base stat. Obviously you can only choose one throughout the game.