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A suggestion to make an actual hybrid champion

NotEvenMyMain·4/16/2015, 7:25:38 AM·15 votes·2,315 views

Seems like hybrid champions tend to fail nowadays because they're better off just picking one or the other. Or perhaps it's because mixed damage is fundamentally broken. When they did work, like 4 years ago they were far too powerful and ended up getting nerfed. My friend and I came up with a vague concept, a skeleton build I suppose, that might remedy this.

The idea is similar to the way supports work in that their utility benefits from AP. Have their skill's damage scale with AD, and offer an AP incentive to buff up their utility. This utility could range from anything like CC, to augmenting abilities with bonus magic damage or something.

With the scaling split up like this it gives you the option to build a straight up AD bruiser with no augmented abilities, a hybrid with the best of both worlds, or a utility heavy, low damage AP bruiser. I think it makes for a versatile champion, but one that can't easily abuse all of its advantages.

I'd really like to see a champion actually put rageblade to use again. If you guys have any criticism, suggestions, or even got an idea from this post, please feel free to comment any of it below or use this idea to make your own concept champion.

31 Comments

DeloricVI4/16/2015, 7:41:56 AM7 votes

Honestly, the reason that hybrid damage champions don't work is because of how items work. If you split your build, what do you have? Let's look at the signature items of each kind of build, and see why they are bad for hybrids, shall we?

AP

Rabadon's Deathcap, Zhonia's Hourglass

Rabadon's gives you % ap. This means that you can't really make a good build with it (or take full advantage of it) without building full AP. Zhonia's is... kinda bland without it. You get your excellent stasis effect, but without rabadons, 120 ap doesn't get you very far, unless it's still the early game. If it is, then you probably haven't gotten enough gold to build it, or you're incredibly fed. If that's the case, you should probably build luden's echo or rabadons instead.

Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster, Last Whisper

These items aren't good for champions that could use an AD compliment to their magic damage. If you're going for AD on a champion these items make you go all for it. What use is all that crit damage if you only have 20% crit chance? 20% is not as good as many may think. It is still 1/5 of the time, but it would be so much more advantageous to grab phantom dancer, or whatever else will boost your crit chance. Also, with bloodthirster and last whisper, the benefits are purely for AD, and are weak if you don't go all in for it. Since lifesteal and spellvamp are different and separate, other than with hextech gunblade, there's not much you can do with only one or the other. Most of the time, the enemy team is going to build one kind of defense with a little of the other so you're probably going to focus on what they didn't build against anyway if you're playing hybrid builds. If you can get away with either, then why not just pick while you're out in lane as the enemy builds your weakness?

Yormaughm4/16/2015, 6:19:12 PM2 votes

I sometimes build item 3124 on Evelynn am I crazy? Probably.

I really like the concept of hybrid champions, but the problem is that the things they counter don't really exist. In theory, hybrid champions counter enemies that build defense because as a hybrid damage dealer I can build equal parts AD and AP and scale off both, whereas defensively you kind of have to choose one of those to stack against. Therefore if your enemies build defense heavily in one direction or the other (because hybrid defensive items are kinda rare) you just build hybrid and still do decent damage because they're only resisting a large portion of a part of all the damage you're doing, instead of a large portion of the whole chunk. But this kinda only works on abilities where the ability itself scales well off of both AD and AP, like Eve's Q, and Poppy's Q and not much else. Honestly most champs that can build hybrid like Diana or MissFortune have an "either or" choice to make depending on which abilities they have that you want to emphasize, in which case anybody building defense against the ability you "chose" is still gonna shut you down. Building hybrid also has the lazy bonus of not having to react to your opponent;s build paths, which you should be doing anyway, but if you scale off AD and AP well, just build hybrid and don't worry about it.

I really like your idea though about one affecting utility and the other damage, that way you could choose to either be a support, or another damage dealer or be decent at both. Honestly the whole "mages as supports" meta that's been going on since around the end of season 3 is at least proof that some people would try it.

Side note: I feel like if Evelynn had better AP scaling on her ult, she'd arguably be the best true hybrid champ in the game (meaning she benefits most from the existing hybrid items), but people seem to only want to build her one way or the other, and Riot seems completely unable to solve or identify what her role is so their best solution is to scrap her completely and rebuild her from the ground up. This is really sad to me because I feel like she's one of the most versatile and fun champions in the game. They're doing the same thing to Poppy too. item 3070 .

The Bíg Ticket4/16/2015, 3:31:11 PM2 votes

Kayle, Jax and Akali all work being built hybrid.

Chaotic Reks4/16/2015, 5:16:07 PM2 votes

item 3146 item 3124 item 3158 MissFortune

Conus254/16/2015, 7:25:01 PM2 votes

Ezreal Kayle

GaleWinUnleashed4/16/2015, 7:32:34 PM2 votes

I'm pretty this would rarely result in a true hybrid build, and players would instead pick which part of the kit they wanted that game and build for it.

What about diminishing returns for both AD and AP scaling on abilities? Done correctly, it might be possible to create a situation where an actual hybrid build makes the best use of the entire kit. Or maybe a balance system, where the champion receives bonuses based on how closely their AD and AP stats match? That could be a fun one, no champion has anything like that yet.

Quite apart from kit design, hybrid itemization would also need an overhaul. At the very least we'd need some new items that have unique passives/actives based on both AP and AD, or the attack patterns of that kind of champion.

Malzahard Mode4/16/2015, 11:01:21 PM2 votes

I recently came with a two form champion Barge and Charge where one form was AD and the other AP, to compensate for the would be "weakness" in each form, i gave each form a passive that "Converted" a portion of their AD to AP or viceversa depending on the current form. So if they build Hybrid, they still get a total amount close to a full AD or AP build, just not all the benefits from building purely one way or the other.

IceKingChernobog4/17/2015, 12:10:14 AM2 votes

the thing is, people wouldn't mind more hybrid champs or hyrbrid builds if there were more itemization against said hybrid champs or builds because so far we only have item 3026 item 3512 as hybrid defensive items and they're not that great maybe we could get something that builds out of item 3211 and item 1031

Sinlaire4/16/2015, 5:47:21 PM1 votes

I've been trying to theory craft a hybrid champion for several months now, though i constantly forget to update my drawing board to tweak the numbers in my head. i can post the general outline as its scales and tuning still need tweaking for balance and effectiveness.

but in short it would be a bruiser Melee-healer. His passive would take a % of all damage dealt and damage received ( before resists) and convert it into an energy bar that can be used for either offense or defense. the % ratio would decrease as the game progresses based on ap/ad/resists to reduce scaling and keep the passive gains controlled. this function allows him to feed his passive for damage or heals and gives purpose for him to tank and/or deal damage without relying on either.

he would start with a well of 250 "power" which would increase by 250 every ~ 4 levels, maxing at 1000 at 16. His basic skills will only empower by 250 "power" unless using his ultimate. his ultimate will allow a burn of 750 "p" on first basic and 500 on the next skills. Ult deactivates after 10 seconds or 3 seconds after having used every skill once, but not exceeding the base 10 seconds. Ultimate increases defence, health, ap and ad by acceptable amounts. 10 second window or upon using all skills once keeps the steroid from being over powered by giving him a choice on how to make use of it. either by using it for the steroid of for the skill empowerment for additional damage and support.

from there he would have the option to target enemies with certain skills to deal additional damage or cc and target allies to provide a heal that would function as a health battery. ex. 1 ally in 250 units receives 100% health, 2 allies in 250 receives 50%. further delineation could go so far as to make the pool heal champs to an = % before raising them both, which could provide additonal support to those dying. he would not be allowed to heal himself. life steal and spell vamp only.

80% of his skills would have little to no base scaling and would rely entirely on his build with bonuses applied after reaching benchmarks. as an example for every 50 ad his ad ratio increases by .15 or such. same goes for ap. this increases either his healing or damage ratio.

this allows a melee to deal damage, and provide support to the team through cc and heals at the cost of forcing him to be in melee range for it and to potentially sacrifice itemization that would make him truly tanky. he has to survive team fight burst but only long enough to be useful. hence the passive that feeds both on damage and defence. long team fights mean more utility, but high tank stats mean low quality skills. poorer heals, damage, and potentially cc.

example of team heal. 100 health at lvl 4 + {100 x .2 base ratio^increased by .05 per 50 ap("p" spent [0-750 during ultimate first cast])

lets say with lvl 4 and 200 ap that becomes a 130 HP heal without his passive. with an ultimate first cast it becomes a single shot nearly a 1k Hp heal battery for nearby allies, prioritizing lowest health first. but at the cost of losing the first shot benefit on other skills. his passive will be intended to be used every time he uses the skill on an ally, so the passive bonus can make it range between a 150-400hp battery without ulting. making it decent unless in large crowds with = health unless someone is clearly lower that will receive priority. cooldowns and gameplay would clearly come into play as well to account for the strength of the skill as well.

but like i said. i need to refine my numbers, but that's the verbal outline of the plan.

Moose101Dude4/16/2015, 11:39:48 AM1 votes

A couple of people I know and I have been working on a champion that utilizes something a little like this. A couple of his abilities have slowing effects that have their duration increased with AP, while the majority of his damage output comes from AD.

I personally think it's a neat idea. Even if a champion ends up building pure AD or pure AP, giving them different effects based on which they choose creates variety.

So yeah, I totally agree with everything you said in this post.

jmaishere4/17/2015, 5:12:28 PM1 votes

a true hybrid would most likely take an ap/as build

LilStacey874/18/2015, 5:34:14 AM1 votes

I actually made it a champion concept that uses AD and AP about 3 or 4 days ago, check him out and let me know what you think!

Orion, The Mystic Edge

Occams Raiser4/16/2015, 8:48:06 PM1 votes

This game is too simple to have a hybrid. If you have 50% ad and 50% ap whatever the opponent builds to negate one or the other will negate half your damage. If he has MR, your ap is only half of your build and it means nothing to him. Same goes for armor vs AD. I don't want to shit on people ideas without explaining the hole.

I liked Teemo when I started playing. I felt I could go hybrid with him even with his build being ap. With a few items his shrooms and poison were enough to put a hurt on someone while having some AD on his aa. Well RIOT didn't like that. Two season later..... what is a teemo? What is his win rate anyway?

qetzel4/16/2015, 2:38:40 PM1 votes

The trouble is, one build path will be better. It always is. It is incredibly difficult to balance something like this. Either you won't have high enough utility ratios to make buying any AP worthwhile or you will have utility ratios that are oppressively high when building AP. Alternatively, the champion's AD ratios would be too low for meaningful damage in a hybrid build or too high in a damage build.

My question is: Why do you want a hybrid champion? The only thing a hybrid champion would really bring over any other champion is the ability to buy more items... You could just make the AD ratios AP and have a mage, for example. No new space is filled, you just get a champion with extremes that are hard to balance.

NotEvenMyMain4/16/2015, 9:46:02 PM1 votes

Thanks for all of your opinions guys. I don't know how to quote different people in one post, and I don't want to make several replies and clutter the thread, so I guess I'll try to throw everything into here.

A couple of people brought up the issue of balancing AP vs AD builds would just lead to people picking one of the two extremes. This problem is addressed in my second comment.

The AP utility should have high scaling, but be soft capped. What this means is that AP stacking should work similar to how Armor/MR stacking does, but not as heavily punishing. With this soft cap you can feel like you've unlocked a big portion of your AP potential by buying a small amount like 150-200. The soft cap shouldn't be so rough as to discourage leaning towards AP completely. This eliminates Death Cap etc as a necessary piece to get the most out of the AP scaling, but still leaves it as an option.

Now for AD. As stated in my previous post skill scalings should be based off of total AD instead of bonus AD. Doing this will lessen the gap between pure AD and Hybrid. Basically the hybrid isn't being punished for not stacking AD because he's passively adding damage to his skills through his base AD, while it will deter people from going straight AD because they could be building defensively, or hybrid and still gain damage. The scaling should probably be moderately high so you can feel rewarded for buying some AD. This is okay because someone who builds pure AD is sacrificing ALL of his utility for damage, not some, or most of it. The base values for the utility will start with 0 and rely completely on itemization to unlock it.

With these two measurements in place I feel that it removes AD or AP as options to be the dominant build, but leaves them open as paths to fill specific role if needed.

There were a couple of suggestions and notes that I agree with as well. Someone mentioned that hybrid itemization needs to be better. I completely agree. The build path for a champion built from this skeleton shouldn't rely completely on the only three hybrid items we have in the game. We probably won't see one until a true hybrid champion is made though.

Someone else also suggested that there be a bonus reward for keeping your AP and AD close together. This is a really cool idea that I'd like to see happen. It would probably open up more build paths that specifically focus on achieving this too. Someone might feel encouraged to buy some strange items just because it lines up with their stats perfectly if the bonus is rewarding enough.

General Veers4/16/2015, 4:29:37 PM1 votes

As a long time Kayle main, I love hybrid champions and think they're the most interesting in terms of strategy and versatility.

Here's a link to my best attempt at a true hybrid champion: My Yasuo Rework. It's pretty similar to what you're talking about here (AD for dmg, AP for utility).

The thing about hybrid champions is that to make them work, you need to be able to offset the opportunity cost of stat multipliers. Things like crit, dcap, cinderhulk, and AR/MR penetration scale really efficiently for specialists.

What this means is that your hybrid champion should have bonus penetration built into their kit someplace. They should have weak base stats and strong scaling to make your build actually matter. Their utility needs to be strong enough to make someone actually want to forgo their damage build (I think it needs to be something OP like intervention or windwall).

They should have a farming mechanism - the fun of these champs is that they're choose your own adventure, where items actually matter, and a big part of whether or not you win is if you adapted your build to the situation at hand (more so than on other champs). It's probably a good idea to help the player get a little ahead in money so that they can actually make those choices.

BerserkGoldfish4/16/2015, 5:10:50 PM1 votes

shyvana also benefits from a hybrid build,

like Triforce, GB, Liandrys, Hydra, fire cape or spirit visage, mpen boots

Only Play Darius4/16/2015, 9:47:02 PM1 votes

Jax Skarner Akali item 3070

PRØTØSS4/16/2015, 5:26:33 PM1 votes

Skarner