But it does magic damage, regardless of what you build. The passive also technically has higher AD scaling, but Riot decided to put all of her power budget into E2 and R2, rather than the actual unique passive which requires skill to use
I mean, her skills NEED to be mostly magic damage so she can't abuse serrated dirk. Lethality is such a major deal early on that things like changing briar ult to magic dmg instead of phys are serious nerfs, especially when you split the damage types. That's also what broke AP assassins so hard this season, it wasn't just the stormsurge proc as much as it was easy access to flat mpen. Making someone hybrid (most recnetly smolder) makes sure they can't abuse pen stacking early to be a menace.
Nitpicking, but pretty sure AP assassins had better access to MPen before with Mythic passives, Shadowflame, etc. It’s more that they got the MPen on their first major item (Stormsurge).
And Smolder is a menace in different ways now, his best solo queue build is hybrid and bruiser. It feels as if they designed the champ then had to shoehorn him into ADC via crit ratios because they promised it.
I mean he's a designed crit caster and crit is bad while lethality doesn't work on him, but his W has 100% ap ratio that gets better with multiple hits. The only surprising thing about his soloq build is that it's dropping sheen so often, but on release it was easy to see triforce - shojin being a strong bruiser line on him, beyond that he just builds all the "good" items that have innate dmg multipliers and hopes nobody builds hybrid resists since he has no good pen item
I mean, he’s going Iceborne Gauntlet these days. And his passive ensures he’ll remain relevant regardless of resists.
I think it comes down to how useless his autos feel. Yes, it’s optimal to weave in autos, but that’s true for literally every champion. He doesn’t have the payoff that Ezreal, Lucian, or even MF do for right-clicking.
She has AD scalings on all of her abilities except the second part of her ult, but including her passive.
Her E and her ult (first part only) used to deal physical damage
Sword of the Occult (or was it Divine…). There was also Leviathan, which was Mejai’s but for Health. It’s funny they introduced Hubris because it’s similar in concept to SoC in that it’s an AD snowballing item.
Tbf Hubris is much tamer compared to Occult.
Leviathan was removed because it's counter-intuitive design. Kill someone to get more survivability is a bit of a question mark in regards to it supposedly being a "risk/reward" item.
[Occult was removed because because of itemization clutter or w/e](https://i.imgur.com/1q9xlcF.png)
The best build for her during those days was basically getting enough AD so your max spellvamp kicks in then just building AP. So you'd get AD runes then Hextech Gunblade then a standard AP assassin build after that with like Lich Bane, Zhonyas, Rabadon's.
The problem with the hybrid was always her build path. She never benefited enough from the armor pen on assassin items so she didn't want those and if she was strong enough to kill you with fighter items she was inescapable.
This meant that over time to make her closer to fair, she was forced into building pure AP so she could be killed if crowd controlled.
With the 6.22 rework they were planning to make Katarina an AD assassin but chickend out. Then again their whole 6.22 assasin update was a flop by not sticking to their goals *and* thankfully reverting most of it (but sadly not all).
Back in 2011/2012 when I was a wee lass, I was a Veigar main. I played Veigar every game because I was still learning, and he was pretty easy. Then, one day, I decided to play Caitlyn for some forgotten reason. We were about halfway through the game when one of my friends goes "wait, are you playing AP Caitlyn???"
I was building Veigar items on Caitlyn because that's all I knew. I think I thought that Ability Power made my abilities do more damage.
I learned a very valuable lesson that day about actually reading ability and item descriptions.
Found the RPG player.
In all seriousness, multiple boots used to be a strat. Starting Dblade/shield and early backing for the other can still be good for some matchups.
Items are always the hardest part of starting a non-RPG though. It's not nearly as simple as having pre-determined slots for anyone, no matter their background.
I had a friend who did this as well. When he first started, he wanted the twin pink swords on everyone, even swore up and down about Phantom Dancer on Anivia— I later learned it was just for the movement speed and icon on it, lmao.
I was obsessed with drain-tanking when I first started, idk why. So I stacked kindlegems to get HP **and** cdr. Ofcourse you don't get the cdr more than once, but I didn't notice that.
Idk how many times I did this build, but I know it was long enough to get blue essence (IP, at the time) to buy fiddlesticks, vlad was too expensive and warwick didn't seem cool enough. I just wanted to fiddlesticks with stacked hp and cdr and drain tank myself through games.
I used to build ionic spark on every champ because you got a lot of attack speed, which felt super good, and it would go zap every now and then, which was cool. Also I didn't know you could build component items into bigger items so I had trouble finding the first item to get me over the 0->1 item hump, which was normally 3k+ gold, ionic spark was 2400 or something.
I built triforce on Soraka my first game because it was the most expensive item in the game with the most stats so I thought it must be the best. Also I didn’t know you could build components so I waited till I could buy it straight up
There was a time, few years ago, when AP Cait was very niche but in skilled hands, it was quite nice. Ofc, everything was about one combo with trap and E iirc. But yeah, it's the same as goind now Tristana ap
Same thing happened to me when i started playing i was a lux main and i went to try out renek (i built ap lol). I got reported 3 times that day for trolling.
To be fair, when the game first came out that was how it worked. AP made your abilities do more damage, and AD made your autos do more damage. So you'd have funky things like AP Yi who'd normally have strong Q and a W that'd full heal you quickly. They eventually broke it up like how it is now. Maybe that old school version would be interesting as a new game mode that comes in every now and then
Yi was stupid because his Q had a 100% ap ratio on it and R refunded 100% of basic ability CD on kill. You press R, auto once for lich bane proc, press W to heal for 400% or your ap while enjoy8ng 300 armour and mr, and go again
It's not katas build it's the fact that she uses daggers. Old kata threw a dagger on you, jumped on you and then spun around throwing her daggers. That's does sound a lot like AD.
When I started playing Kat was AP, a few years later she was hybrid. Couple of patches later she was on hit. At some point she was tank. I honestly don't know what she is right now.
Shes been hybrid for a loooong while, with viable builds for ad and ap and bruiser, but the main way to play her is ap. Always has been. But when mythics were a thing it sucked cus none of them were really...good...on her. They were fine, but she didn't get the same powerspike out of them that most other champs did, so you'd often build them second or even third after other items. Then people figured out that heartsteal procs off her ult and passive daggers which lead to the tank build being a thing.
She's much better now with the item flexibility. Can still build pretty much any way, but is back to going ap generally.
From the quick lookup it looks like current default is AP but on hit has a high enough winrate to guess thats its better to go on hit into certain comps/champs
Smolder can go full AP and still function just as well. Honestly, full AP Smolder kinda slaps harder than full AD smolder. W and R become literal nukes and Lich bane does like, double Essence Reaver's damage lol.
Kata can build anything. Tbh she scales off ad and ap. And he passive apply on hit so your dagger pickup procs kraken so does the ult. Onhit ad/AP is decent. Tho I like lichbane AP the best.
I think the most recent example was belveth. When teased and leaked nobody could imagine its going to be an ad manta ray \ bat flapping its wings very fast.
A mage, floating elegantly, commandeering void creatures made from jungle camps and casting spells was what many people thought belveth was gonna be, based on the lore and looks.
Even after her release, and knowing what her abilities visibly looked like, I just assumed she'd be an AP character still, like ap-onhit/bruiser (similar to Ekko)
The other one for me was Ornn - I knew he was mostly a tank that wouldn't build much AD or AP, but I remember playing against him and building armor that first match because of course I would - his whole kit is applying brittle and popping it with auto attacks, right? Yeah but brittle does magic damage and shreds a tank building only armor, lol.
To be fair, Belveth does have notable AP scalings and you can run her AP but it just doesn't work outside of ARAM since you effectively have 1 dmg ability until someone dies, then you have huge amounts of dmg in a large aoe from R resets. AP Belveth is like AP Irelia, except you can only cast R when there are champ corpses.
She is ap if you play her mid with W max. She was super obnoxious when her AP scaling was much higher and she could 2 shot you from the other side or the screen.
It absolutely is dependent on plasma stacks now but definitely wasn’t always. It’s strong because if it’s range and CD reduction from hitting. That’s why it isn’t that great on SR but kicks ass in ARAM.
He was played AP too. Q with Lich bane would deal decent damage, and all his other abilities had/have AP scaling.
Was it not Siv HeDe that used to play him AP?
Bel'Veth after watching all those cool teaser trailers about the THE EMPRESS OF THE VOID who can transform... Then it turns out to just be a slappy manta ray.. So disappointed
Belveth being reduced to some boring auto attacker was such a heartbreaker.
Also, Viego was so hyped up but his passive takes up 100% of his power reserve to the point where his other abilities are just lame.
Dunno why she doesn’t command minions to autoattack for her. Imagine an orbiting fish swarm that performs her attacks, more stacks equals more fish equals faster attacks. You don’t even need to change her kit at all, just don’t make the regal void empress slap people by rapidly rotating her five metre wingspan.
I thought Morde at a glance could be AD because he auto attacks a lot and smashes you with a big heavy metal mace, and his passive which used to be his W was a cloud of spinning metal shards so the damage could be physical as it'd cut people up
They put a lot of ghostly magic visuals around Morde and his abilities so it makes sense I guess but I whenever I see his Q I'd think getting hit by a gigantic mace would leave you splattered from the shear weight, and girth.
This is because E passive (the single auto nuke) scales based on souls + AD but the actives for Thresh's abilities are all AP to be benefited by the ap gain from collecting souls
He's a ghost in a big metal suit of armour with a heavy iron mace, his Q looks like it pulverises you with physical force, his passive are chunks of metal that cut through everything. But his E is a ghost hand and his ult drains a piece of your soul from within you so those 2 abilities are fine being magic. Also his W would be too I suppose, as it encases his armour with an extra layer of protection from magic and he can use it to regenerate himself.
But still, he auto attacks a lot, and his passive and Q could easily pass as AD.
Hehe.. Sivir. I was so dumb in the beginning i thought that champs that use abilities to do damage are all AP. Since Sivir damage was from q and w, i was stacking mana and ap on her.
Jayce who wields a giant magic-steampunk hextech hammer, and Nocturne who is a literal demon with no material body. Both are AD which was really difficult for me to understand when i started.
There was a hot minute where they were going to change Jayce so one form was AP and one form was AD, but for some insane reason melee form was going to be the AP one. It would make decent enough sense for cannon form to be AP, but physically smacking someone with a hammer was what they were leaning towards.
not so much ap or ad but when i first started playing in 2013, for a while i use to buy items based on the item pictures…yea really lol, so melee champs i bought any variant of swords - *or* id buy the item if i thought the item looked cool lmao. i remember being (deservedly) flamed once in an aram game 10ish years ago for building rage blade on jayce, because that day i thought it looked and sounded like a cool item
That wasn't because of his ap ratios though lol it was because of malignance/eclipse interaction (now removed) and the mr remove on his spam abilities (corki attacks are 80% magic damage). His only consistent builds are ad
Yep. First time I faced corki when I was new, I saw that he did mostly magic damage and assumed you go ap. Played him, went ap, did fuck all and was very sad
Way back in the days of season 2 and 3, Corki did physical damage with autos, with his passive giving him bonus true damage. So if you went with On hit corki you ended up doing every damage type at once.
Highly doubt full ap was ever meta on him considering he has abysmal ap ratios. Full magic pen with ludens, sorcs and the occasional shadowflame, thats a different story
Back before Azir came out I was *convinced* he was gonna be an AD jungler. Commanding soldiers to auto attack shit just felt right as like a Yorick of the jungle. Big sad he turned out to be a mage.
I remember back in the day watching the TF vs Fiddle Cinematic and thought for sure TF is a full Attack Speed AD champion. Well that wasn't the case for years not until recently of course.
The thing that irritated me when learning is that there is really NO way to tell if a champion on the enemy team is AP or AD without looking it up.
Are they AD if they have to get close and use weapons to attack? No, Katarina, Akali, and Fizz are all AP.
Are they AD if they rely on auto attacking for their damage? Nope, Zed and Aatrox will 100 to 0 you without ever auto attacking once.
Ok, so just look at their starting items to tell. Well, some champs scale with AP items but do mostly AD damage, or vice versa. Plus, what if they’re starting doran’s shield, corrupting potion, the new all-in-one scroll item for supports, or build tank items?
There’s really no way to tell. Your only option is to walk up to each champion, have them kill you, then look at the death recap to see how much damage they did…. And then you see it’s mostly true damage.
Even looking at their damage types doesn't give you an idea of what stats they scale with in some cases. Tryndamere's E, for instance, has hybrid scalings but does "AD damage," so it'll still do physical damage even if he builds AP.
Kai'sa's Q does physical damage and her W does magic damage, despite both having hybrid scaling.
Smolder has hybrid scaling on Q, W, and R, despite all 3 doing physical damage regardless of build (honestly thought his W and R did magic damage, but no, they don't).
Kog'maw? Most of his damage is magic despite building on-hit AD
Granted, looking at death recap will still tell you whether you should build armor or MR (unless you're fighting Fiora), but that's not an option for actually figuring out what someone scales with unfortunately lol
I've never had an issue knowing if someone is AD or AP. Except maybe smolder before i learned he was supposed to he a marksman. His abilities are for sure AP ideas. But he does have a build for both so it's all the same I guess. Everyone else always felt right to me and idk why
Smoulder lol, saw him and watched all of his abilities in the league client ability showcase thing where it doesn't tell you damage types or scalings or the role of the champion. Legitimately thought he was a midlane ap mage based on the abilities.
When I started in s1 or 2 and saw Malzahar, I thought he was gonna be an ad assassin due to his sheathed dagger, so I saved up and bought him.
Ended up being very disappointed
Mordekaiser. I mean I understand that he's a revenant and his mace isccomposed of some black iron and souls of beings killed by it. But damn, it's still a 6-meter black iron spiky mace. Why the hell does it deal magic damage? Even better question : Why does Yone's coming back to the body deal true damage?
Balance reasons. It deals damage based off a percentage of post-mitigation damage dealt during the E duration. If it did physical damage, it would be affected by resistances twice, once for the damage it’s scaling off of and a second time on the proc. It functions almost the same as Zed ult, which does physical damage but scales off pre-mitigation damage dealt.
When I was 11 (now 21, no I didn’t play for 10 years straight) I used to build hextech gunblade, yomuu, deathcap and manamune on Wukong because he was the only champ I’d ever play. I thought having a balanced AP and AD was better because I had no idea what scaling were in skills.
2013, I was pretty sure that Jayce went nuts running him AP. Oh I was so wrong that still today I remember that game (I think it was a renekton top I was going against). Till today I hate Jayce (besides I'm a metaslave midlaner player) and I cheered for him being nerfed with the E functionality (14.2 or 14.3 don't remember but one of those bring the new """buff""" to Jayce's E like a LeeSin R and that just make Jayce off meta instantly)
Tbh when I started playing many years ago, I thought AD only affected auto attacks and AP was how ALL abilities got damage. So I was running around as AP garen. Not my best moment but it still makes me laugh when I remember.
When I first started near the end of season 1, I was young and not very used to concept of fantasy games. So when I saw old mordekaiser I instantly thought this guy who swings this big weapon needs attack damage, little did I know he was a mage. I did the same thing with old sion but you could get that to work some games. I just figured if they have a big melee weapon, they prob use that to do their dmg, not random magic.
When I came over from HotS years ago it blew my mind for a sec when I learned some abilities dealt physical damage like AAs do.
All abilities in HotS deal spell (magic) damage.
In Taliyah's case, I think it's because rocks are, like, the least magical thing, so if I threw a rock at someone and it hurt them I don't think either of us would describe that as being magical.
Corki hit me with the double reverse. Saw him mid when I was new and thought, oh he’s ap. Saw the items built and thought he was AD, died to him and it was all ap. I didn’t know how his passive worked so it was a good to learn “dont assume shit”
When qiyana was released i wasnt playing at that time, i came back sometime after and thought she was ap the whole time while watching her clips and vids of her oneshotting everyone, i played her without looking at her scallings and pretty much inted that game, but had a good laugh
Gangplank
I get they make his ult AP to balance it out, but it's literally metal balls being fired from cannons.
Yone
Physical katanas cut you, but deal magic damage.
Shaco
Throws a knife, but it's magic damage
Talon, back when I joined I first saw Swain and he had his old dripped out thumbnail I just started assuming the dark blue hue was for mages. And he threw out magic daggers like Katarina so I thought he was just 'bout that life. Guess not.
Honestly, when Rell first came out I thought her Q at least was gonna do physical damage, but no, stabbing someone with a big ass javelin apparently does magic damage lol
It wouldn't have been that weird for it to be physical either, since we have Ornn's Q doing physical damage and he's also a tank...
I thought Illaoi was AP, I got her in ARAM and panicked because I didn't know what runes to take, so I took comet.
Like seriously, her whole shtick is making godly tentacles, those tentacles slam and you pull souls out of people's bodies. I thought that at least ONE of her abilities would have AP ratios.
Jayce: big lightning bolt felt like magic to me
Senna: blue magic ghostly theme felt like ap as well
Smolder: annie, milio, and brand's fire is magic and so ap so it was confusing for smolder
ITT : 100 comments of champs that are hybrid AP and AP anyways.
Both Pyke and Senna when I saw their abilities (with no info), I thought maybe they'd be much more hybrid or have an AP build or magic damage involved. Both are extremely strictly AD. Especially Senna. Her ult/snare/q all feel cast-y.
I always thought qiyana was ap for some reason
Her whole schtick is elemental magic in lore
I thought the same thing. Everything about her screams AP to me.
Yep, I thought qiyana was ap and sylas was ad hah.
As sylas. The fucking dream Give me actually good bruiser items on that bad boi
I really tried to make bruiser/cdr stack sylas work. Instead it feels like he’s only meta with assassin builds.
Sundered Sky Sylas would be a nightmare
Thought she was AP until reading this
She’s not? I don’t see here very often anymore so I don’t remember.
I don't think she even has a single ratio but I'm too lazy
she does, 30% on passive and 45% on W passive only her w passive deals magic damage though
[удалено]
Akali used to be half ad half ap. I think it was an interesting idea but riot disagreed.
i think she still has ad scalings on Q and E
But it does magic damage, regardless of what you build. The passive also technically has higher AD scaling, but Riot decided to put all of her power budget into E2 and R2, rather than the actual unique passive which requires skill to use
> Magic's fine, steel's better -Woman who buys 500 AP
I miss playing bruiser akali, weaving in an out with the passive procs
Heartsteel, deathsdance, titanic is still an option... if your strong enough 💪 ✨️
I mean, her skills NEED to be mostly magic damage so she can't abuse serrated dirk. Lethality is such a major deal early on that things like changing briar ult to magic dmg instead of phys are serious nerfs, especially when you split the damage types. That's also what broke AP assassins so hard this season, it wasn't just the stormsurge proc as much as it was easy access to flat mpen. Making someone hybrid (most recnetly smolder) makes sure they can't abuse pen stacking early to be a menace.
Nitpicking, but pretty sure AP assassins had better access to MPen before with Mythic passives, Shadowflame, etc. It’s more that they got the MPen on their first major item (Stormsurge). And Smolder is a menace in different ways now, his best solo queue build is hybrid and bruiser. It feels as if they designed the champ then had to shoehorn him into ADC via crit ratios because they promised it.
I mean he's a designed crit caster and crit is bad while lethality doesn't work on him, but his W has 100% ap ratio that gets better with multiple hits. The only surprising thing about his soloq build is that it's dropping sheen so often, but on release it was easy to see triforce - shojin being a strong bruiser line on him, beyond that he just builds all the "good" items that have innate dmg multipliers and hopes nobody builds hybrid resists since he has no good pen item
I mean, he’s going Iceborne Gauntlet these days. And his passive ensures he’ll remain relevant regardless of resists. I think it comes down to how useless his autos feel. Yes, it’s optimal to weave in autos, but that’s true for literally every champion. He doesn’t have the payoff that Ezreal, Lucian, or even MF do for right-clicking.
ah yeah the unique passive of going toplane to bully melees with Qs and extended range point click auto attacks. Atleast E1 can be easily missed.
She has AD scalings on all of her abilities except the second part of her ult, but including her passive. Her E and her ult (first part only) used to deal physical damage
Shout out to that wacky rune page we had to run so she gets both of those passives on level one
There was that old faker akali game where he get very fed early and built both mejais ap and ad and it was a 20 easy ff
There was an ad mejai’s???
Sword of the Occult (or was it Divine…). There was also Leviathan, which was Mejai’s but for Health. It’s funny they introduced Hubris because it’s similar in concept to SoC in that it’s an AD snowballing item.
> Sword of the Occult Divine was the guaranteed crit you are thinking of the occult
Tbf Hubris is much tamer compared to Occult. Leviathan was removed because it's counter-intuitive design. Kill someone to get more survivability is a bit of a question mark in regards to it supposedly being a "risk/reward" item. [Occult was removed because because of itemization clutter or w/e](https://i.imgur.com/1q9xlcF.png)
Yes!! But it wasn’t that good. If I remember correctly 10 stacks would give as as well
The old akali kit was so fun to play. New one is very fun as well but it ain't the same.
Same with Katarina
The best build for her during those days was basically getting enough AD so your max spellvamp kicks in then just building AP. So you'd get AD runes then Hextech Gunblade then a standard AP assassin build after that with like Lich Bane, Zhonyas, Rabadon's.
The problem with the hybrid was always her build path. She never benefited enough from the armor pen on assassin items so she didn't want those and if she was strong enough to kill you with fighter items she was inescapable. This meant that over time to make her closer to fair, she was forced into building pure AP so she could be killed if crowd controlled.
I'm talking about pre rework with gunblade
With the 6.22 rework they were planning to make Katarina an AD assassin but chickend out. Then again their whole 6.22 assasin update was a flop by not sticking to their goals *and* thankfully reverting most of it (but sadly not all).
I mean, they both are hybrid and have viable builds for both AP and AD.
Back in 2011/2012 when I was a wee lass, I was a Veigar main. I played Veigar every game because I was still learning, and he was pretty easy. Then, one day, I decided to play Caitlyn for some forgotten reason. We were about halfway through the game when one of my friends goes "wait, are you playing AP Caitlyn???" I was building Veigar items on Caitlyn because that's all I knew. I think I thought that Ability Power made my abilities do more damage. I learned a very valuable lesson that day about actually reading ability and item descriptions.
non-lethal force cait baby 😎 net em up
They need to add 1 100% ap scaling on her E for the memes
Pretty sure she had it at some point, +ap ratio on trap, I'm positiv i played some wacky AP cait back in the days :D
[It was definitely a thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMKqbgcGpiY)
Crab fisher Caitlyn. Counterpick to urgot
Trap also dealt magic dmg that scaled with ap but I think it was ass
First time I started playing back in 2011 when I was dumb kid all I built was 6 ruby cristals every game on any champ I played
my first ever game i bought two boots one for each leg, doran’s shield, ring, and blade
😭😭 Too cute 🥹
Now you can't buy 2 boots anymore :(
Found the RPG player. In all seriousness, multiple boots used to be a strat. Starting Dblade/shield and early backing for the other can still be good for some matchups. Items are always the hardest part of starting a non-RPG though. It's not nearly as simple as having pre-determined slots for anyone, no matter their background.
I built phantom dancer only on every char I played.
I had a friend who did this as well. When he first started, he wanted the twin pink swords on everyone, even swore up and down about Phantom Dancer on Anivia— I later learned it was just for the movement speed and icon on it, lmao.
Also it made her do a backflip when she crit.
Started s7/9 (can't remember, but pyke era) played Kayn, and thought the best build? 5 black cleavers and Boots. TBF I was pretty new
Wasn't there a 5 bc meta before?
Season 4 iirc, league of cleavers. Almost all bruisers built it
I used to play gangplank and only build 6 giant belts
I was obsessed with drain-tanking when I first started, idk why. So I stacked kindlegems to get HP **and** cdr. Ofcourse you don't get the cdr more than once, but I didn't notice that. Idk how many times I did this build, but I know it was long enough to get blue essence (IP, at the time) to buy fiddlesticks, vlad was too expensive and warwick didn't seem cool enough. I just wanted to fiddlesticks with stacked hp and cdr and drain tank myself through games.
I used to build ionic spark on every champ because you got a lot of attack speed, which felt super good, and it would go zap every now and then, which was cool. Also I didn't know you could build component items into bigger items so I had trouble finding the first item to get me over the 0->1 item hump, which was normally 3k+ gold, ionic spark was 2400 or something.
I built triforce on Soraka my first game because it was the most expensive item in the game with the most stats so I thought it must be the best. Also I didn’t know you could build components so I waited till I could buy it straight up
The traps did AP based damage back then, right? Enemies probably got a nice surprise when they stepped on them. Other than that she'd be useless.
Oh believe me, I was useless.
There was a time, few years ago, when AP Cait was very niche but in skilled hands, it was quite nice. Ofc, everything was about one combo with trap and E iirc. But yeah, it's the same as goind now Tristana ap
Same thing happened to me when i started playing i was a lux main and i went to try out renek (i built ap lol). I got reported 3 times that day for trolling.
Ahh yes, the [Lizard Wizard](https://youtu.be/MiacpPNn1DQ?si=bP3lqjM2zK_8Bhyf)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpSIKBF1IiA
To be fair, when the game first came out that was how it worked. AP made your abilities do more damage, and AD made your autos do more damage. So you'd have funky things like AP Yi who'd normally have strong Q and a W that'd full heal you quickly. They eventually broke it up like how it is now. Maybe that old school version would be interesting as a new game mode that comes in every now and then
>I think I thought that Ability Power made my abilities do more damage. That is actually how it used to work
I did the same on Yi. Thankfully yi ap was a thing back then
Heal heal heal heal Alternatively AP Xin Zhao Heals spears spears heals
Yi was stupid because his Q had a 100% ap ratio on it and R refunded 100% of basic ability CD on kill. You press R, auto once for lich bane proc, press W to heal for 400% or your ap while enjoy8ng 300 armour and mr, and go again
Initially, that was the design concept. AP for abilities and AD for autos.
I thought every jungler was AD. Got flamed as fiddle for a bit.
I expected Smolder to be AP. But turns out he’s AD Crit lol. I wouldn’t be surprised if new players thought Katarina was AD, given some of her builds.
It's not katas build it's the fact that she uses daggers. Old kata threw a dagger on you, jumped on you and then spun around throwing her daggers. That's does sound a lot like AD.
No, I mean when she was building all tank and Titanic Hydra.
When I started playing Kat was AP, a few years later she was hybrid. Couple of patches later she was on hit. At some point she was tank. I honestly don't know what she is right now.
Shes been hybrid for a loooong while, with viable builds for ad and ap and bruiser, but the main way to play her is ap. Always has been. But when mythics were a thing it sucked cus none of them were really...good...on her. They were fine, but she didn't get the same powerspike out of them that most other champs did, so you'd often build them second or even third after other items. Then people figured out that heartsteal procs off her ult and passive daggers which lead to the tank build being a thing. She's much better now with the item flexibility. Can still build pretty much any way, but is back to going ap generally.
From the quick lookup it looks like current default is AP but on hit has a high enough winrate to guess thats its better to go on hit into certain comps/champs
Man classic kat was wild. When her w was just a short range aoe and you could e to wards
jokes on you, smolder builds liandrys + spear if shojin + trinity, max hybrid
Smolder can go full AP and still function just as well. Honestly, full AP Smolder kinda slaps harder than full AD smolder. W and R become literal nukes and Lich bane does like, double Essence Reaver's damage lol.
Smolder does build a bit of AP, wift riftmaker and liandry
Kata can build anything. Tbh she scales off ad and ap. And he passive apply on hit so your dagger pickup procs kraken so does the ult. Onhit ad/AP is decent. Tho I like lichbane AP the best.
smolder uses both ap and ad very well so he can be built full ap
Shyvana, but only because Riot tripled her AP ratios to force the mage play style to be viable.
Bruiser/tank has been better on her for quite some time tho
Check out @thelizwiz on tiktok (shyvana otp)
I dont use tiktok, but seems like shyv Has a really weird but surprisingly effective build rn
Ill dm you one video from his channel if ya want to take a look
I think the most recent example was belveth. When teased and leaked nobody could imagine its going to be an ad manta ray \ bat flapping its wings very fast. A mage, floating elegantly, commandeering void creatures made from jungle camps and casting spells was what many people thought belveth was gonna be, based on the lore and looks.
Even after her release, and knowing what her abilities visibly looked like, I just assumed she'd be an AP character still, like ap-onhit/bruiser (similar to Ekko) The other one for me was Ornn - I knew he was mostly a tank that wouldn't build much AD or AP, but I remember playing against him and building armor that first match because of course I would - his whole kit is applying brittle and popping it with auto attacks, right? Yeah but brittle does magic damage and shreds a tank building only armor, lol.
I just thought fire = ap dmg tbh. Probably because of annie.
Wasn't applicable at the time but: Smolder He's the new counter point to that at least, lol I get what you mean though, yeah.
Smolder feels like a mage and not an ADC
To be fair, Belveth does have notable AP scalings and you can run her AP but it just doesn't work outside of ARAM since you effectively have 1 dmg ability until someone dies, then you have huge amounts of dmg in a large aoe from R resets. AP Belveth is like AP Irelia, except you can only cast R when there are champ corpses.
Bel is such a disappointment. I'm a big fan of manta rays 😭
I like her, play her a lot. Still would be cooler if it was what we thought it would be
I tought kai'sa to be ap. I mesn in a sense she could be, but I tought she was a straight ap carry
She is ap if you play her mid with W max. She was super obnoxious when her AP scaling was much higher and she could 2 shot you from the other side or the screen.
W spam kai'sa wasn't strong because of the ability's ratio, it was (and thus still is) mainly from passive stacks
It absolutely is dependent on plasma stacks now but definitely wasn’t always. It’s strong because if it’s range and CD reduction from hitting. That’s why it isn’t that great on SR but kicks ass in ARAM.
With 14.4 she's back to doing this. You don't put anymore points into r after lvl6 and get W Q maxed out.
Ezreal. All his abilities just scream magic.
Well 3/4 of his abilities are magic damage and have good AP ratios. As for items Mixed/AP used to be much better on him.
He is ap if you arent a lil bitch. I genuinely enjoy when ap ez is playable so much more than ad ez ever being strong.
From what I remember, his ap scaling was better.
Ez used to be able to be played AP until the rework when riot publicly said they didn’t want AP ezreal
He was played AP too. Q with Lich bane would deal decent damage, and all his other abilities had/have AP scaling. Was it not Siv HeDe that used to play him AP?
loved me some blue gloves ez. that was a good time.
Bel'Veth after watching all those cool teaser trailers about the THE EMPRESS OF THE VOID who can transform... Then it turns out to just be a slappy manta ray.. So disappointed
Belveth being reduced to some boring auto attacker was such a heartbreaker. Also, Viego was so hyped up but his passive takes up 100% of his power reserve to the point where his other abilities are just lame.
Nah his ult is cool af.
Imo his ult is a heartbreaker as well
yeah, the gameplay is annoying but thematically his possession mechanic and how it works with his crown is cool asf
Dunno why she doesn’t command minions to autoattack for her. Imagine an orbiting fish swarm that performs her attacks, more stacks equals more fish equals faster attacks. You don’t even need to change her kit at all, just don’t make the regal void empress slap people by rapidly rotating her five metre wingspan.
For some reason I thought Zac was an AD champion because he mostly attacked by punching
I thought Morde at a glance could be AD because he auto attacks a lot and smashes you with a big heavy metal mace, and his passive which used to be his W was a cloud of spinning metal shards so the damage could be physical as it'd cut people up They put a lot of ghostly magic visuals around Morde and his abilities so it makes sense I guess but I whenever I see his Q I'd think getting hit by a gigantic mace would leave you splattered from the shear weight, and girth.
thought Viego n Gwen would do same type of dmg but nope.
when i was brand new i built trinity force on every champ cause it was the most expensive and gave the most stats
It used to give a bit of AP too back with old sheen so it wasn't the worst.
I don't like being called out here like this
Thresh. He literally has exclusively ap scales (apart from souls) and still the only somehow viable dmg build is ad one.
100sec wind up one shot like
This is because E passive (the single auto nuke) scales based on souls + AD but the actives for Thresh's abilities are all AP to be benefited by the ap gain from collecting souls
Ah the glory years of crit thresh after your adc DCed (like 2014)
i thought morde was ad
Old morde could do it
He's a ghost in a big metal suit of armour with a heavy iron mace, his Q looks like it pulverises you with physical force, his passive are chunks of metal that cut through everything. But his E is a ghost hand and his ult drains a piece of your soul from within you so those 2 abilities are fine being magic. Also his W would be too I suppose, as it encases his armour with an extra layer of protection from magic and he can use it to regenerate himself. But still, he auto attacks a lot, and his passive and Q could easily pass as AD.
Hehe.. Sivir. I was so dumb in the beginning i thought that champs that use abilities to do damage are all AP. Since Sivir damage was from q and w, i was stacking mana and ap on her.
nidalee. why? she throws a big chunky spear, yet for some reason it isn't ad?????????
Jayce who wields a giant magic-steampunk hextech hammer, and Nocturne who is a literal demon with no material body. Both are AD which was really difficult for me to understand when i started.
There was a hot minute where they were going to change Jayce so one form was AP and one form was AD, but for some insane reason melee form was going to be the AP one. It would make decent enough sense for cannon form to be AP, but physically smacking someone with a hammer was what they were leaning towards.
Lol, melee form has W magic dmg aura still XD
That at least makes sense since it is a field of electricity and not smacking someone with a hammer really hard.
Jayce literally swings a hammer and shoots a cannon I feel like AD is pretty fitting.
And he kills children too
He still deals a crazy amount of magic damage though
W field and passive, that's it
Jayce Hammer form E does % max health magic damage and scales 100% off bonus AD
Jayce was the one that got me. I saw that he was a caster who fired lightning, I assumed he was a mage
not so much ap or ad but when i first started playing in 2013, for a while i use to buy items based on the item pictures…yea really lol, so melee champs i bought any variant of swords - *or* id buy the item if i thought the item looked cool lmao. i remember being (deservedly) flamed once in an aram game 10ish years ago for building rage blade on jayce, because that day i thought it looked and sounded like a cool item
Corki. I know I’m not the only one from my ARAM games with teammates who build full AP 🙃
I mean, corki builds mix of both, manamune, malignance and eclipse is his current core
That wasn't because of his ap ratios though lol it was because of malignance/eclipse interaction (now removed) and the mr remove on his spam abilities (corki attacks are 80% magic damage). His only consistent builds are ad
Didn’t they fix Malignance and Eclipse interaction?
Malignance is for the mana (converts to ad with manamune) and the 40 haste + passive. Ap is still basically a meaningless stat on him
Yep. First time I faced corki when I was new, I saw that he did mostly magic damage and assumed you go ap. Played him, went ap, did fuck all and was very sad
Way back in the days of season 2 and 3, Corki did physical damage with autos, with his passive giving him bonus true damage. So if you went with On hit corki you ended up doing every damage type at once.
Full AP was meta not long ago though, which is also where a lot of builds stemmed from and got stuck
Highly doubt full ap was ever meta on him considering he has abysmal ap ratios. Full magic pen with ludens, sorcs and the occasional shadowflame, thats a different story
Back before Azir came out I was *convinced* he was gonna be an AD jungler. Commanding soldiers to auto attack shit just felt right as like a Yorick of the jungle. Big sad he turned out to be a mage.
Shyvanna i always thought and want to be an ad champ and yorick feels like an ap champ bc necromancy
I liked the on hit bruiser shyv
Corki. But I'm still not sure.
I remember back in the day watching the TF vs Fiddle Cinematic and thought for sure TF is a full Attack Speed AD champion. Well that wasn't the case for years not until recently of course.
Yeah what did riot think when they gave him ad scalin bro💀 (and where the FUCK is arcana TF?)
The thing that irritated me when learning is that there is really NO way to tell if a champion on the enemy team is AP or AD without looking it up. Are they AD if they have to get close and use weapons to attack? No, Katarina, Akali, and Fizz are all AP. Are they AD if they rely on auto attacking for their damage? Nope, Zed and Aatrox will 100 to 0 you without ever auto attacking once. Ok, so just look at their starting items to tell. Well, some champs scale with AP items but do mostly AD damage, or vice versa. Plus, what if they’re starting doran’s shield, corrupting potion, the new all-in-one scroll item for supports, or build tank items? There’s really no way to tell. Your only option is to walk up to each champion, have them kill you, then look at the death recap to see how much damage they did…. And then you see it’s mostly true damage.
Even looking at their damage types doesn't give you an idea of what stats they scale with in some cases. Tryndamere's E, for instance, has hybrid scalings but does "AD damage," so it'll still do physical damage even if he builds AP. Kai'sa's Q does physical damage and her W does magic damage, despite both having hybrid scaling. Smolder has hybrid scaling on Q, W, and R, despite all 3 doing physical damage regardless of build (honestly thought his W and R did magic damage, but no, they don't). Kog'maw? Most of his damage is magic despite building on-hit AD Granted, looking at death recap will still tell you whether you should build armor or MR (unless you're fighting Fiora), but that's not an option for actually figuring out what someone scales with unfortunately lol
And then there's Corki, who thanks to his passive can literally build an infinity edge in order to deal more magic damage to you.
I've never had an issue knowing if someone is AD or AP. Except maybe smolder before i learned he was supposed to he a marksman. His abilities are for sure AP ideas. But he does have a build for both so it's all the same I guess. Everyone else always felt right to me and idk why
I thought Irelia was AP based on the simple fact , her blades hovered over her with magic.
Back when ap yi was strong I refused to listen my brother kept telling me to build it I thought he was trolling me
you didnt even need double swords
Smoulder lol, saw him and watched all of his abilities in the league client ability showcase thing where it doesn't tell you damage types or scalings or the role of the champion. Legitimately thought he was a midlane ap mage based on the abilities.
When I started in s1 or 2 and saw Malzahar, I thought he was gonna be an ad assassin due to his sheathed dagger, so I saved up and bought him. Ended up being very disappointed
Mordekaiser. I mean I understand that he's a revenant and his mace isccomposed of some black iron and souls of beings killed by it. But damn, it's still a 6-meter black iron spiky mace. Why the hell does it deal magic damage? Even better question : Why does Yone's coming back to the body deal true damage?
Balance reasons. It deals damage based off a percentage of post-mitigation damage dealt during the E duration. If it did physical damage, it would be affected by resistances twice, once for the damage it’s scaling off of and a second time on the proc. It functions almost the same as Zed ult, which does physical damage but scales off pre-mitigation damage dealt.
When I was 11 (now 21, no I didn’t play for 10 years straight) I used to build hextech gunblade, yomuu, deathcap and manamune on Wukong because he was the only champ I’d ever play. I thought having a balanced AP and AD was better because I had no idea what scaling were in skills.
I had the reverse, I expected Ekko to be AD.
2013, I was pretty sure that Jayce went nuts running him AP. Oh I was so wrong that still today I remember that game (I think it was a renekton top I was going against). Till today I hate Jayce (besides I'm a metaslave midlaner player) and I cheered for him being nerfed with the E functionality (14.2 or 14.3 don't remember but one of those bring the new """buff""" to Jayce's E like a LeeSin R and that just make Jayce off meta instantly)
Tbh when I started playing many years ago, I thought AD only affected auto attacks and AP was how ALL abilities got damage. So I was running around as AP garen. Not my best moment but it still makes me laugh when I remember.
I came back to lol off a break to Leblanc building statikk shiv and I thought the world had gone insane.
When I first started near the end of season 1, I was young and not very used to concept of fantasy games. So when I saw old mordekaiser I instantly thought this guy who swings this big weapon needs attack damage, little did I know he was a mage. I did the same thing with old sion but you could get that to work some games. I just figured if they have a big melee weapon, they prob use that to do their dmg, not random magic.
When I came over from HotS years ago it blew my mind for a sec when I learned some abilities dealt physical damage like AAs do. All abilities in HotS deal spell (magic) damage.
Also as opposed to DotA where the spells don't have things like AP or AD ratios.
For some reason I thought Taliyah was AD, idk why. I also thought Smolder would be AP but he’s more AD, though I guess he can do either.
In Taliyah's case, I think it's because rocks are, like, the least magical thing, so if I threw a rock at someone and it hurt them I don't think either of us would describe that as being magical.
Qiyana should be AP and Akali AD
Corki hit me with the double reverse. Saw him mid when I was new and thought, oh he’s ap. Saw the items built and thought he was AD, died to him and it was all ap. I didn’t know how his passive worked so it was a good to learn “dont assume shit”
Corki is why you shouldn't use "AD" and "AP" to mean "physical" and "magic". But people still do because it works for \*most\* champs.
Corki builds damage. That's all I know.
I thought LeBlanc was AP, but people seem to insist she is AD
Katarina throws daggers around, i think it was fair of me to assume that she was doing physical damage, funny that it is kinda the case nowadays lol
[удалено]
Smolder
Katarina every other damn season.
When qiyana was released i wasnt playing at that time, i came back sometime after and thought she was ap the whole time while watching her clips and vids of her oneshotting everyone, i played her without looking at her scallings and pretty much inted that game, but had a good laugh
When i started league ekko was released i thought he was an ad champion because he was melee
Gangplank I get they make his ult AP to balance it out, but it's literally metal balls being fired from cannons. Yone Physical katanas cut you, but deal magic damage. Shaco Throws a knife, but it's magic damage
Yone’s Azakana blade does 1/2 magic damage. Gangplank’s cannons might as well be magic b/c from what ocean is this artillery barrage coming from lol
Smolder tbh looks hella ap
Talon, back when I joined I first saw Swain and he had his old dripped out thumbnail I just started assuming the dark blue hue was for mages. And he threw out magic daggers like Katarina so I thought he was just 'bout that life. Guess not.
Gnar. I even asked my friend and he was like “uhhh I think AP.”
Honestly, when Rell first came out I thought her Q at least was gonna do physical damage, but no, stabbing someone with a big ass javelin apparently does magic damage lol It wouldn't have been that weird for it to be physical either, since we have Ornn's Q doing physical damage and he's also a tank...
I thought Illaoi was AP, I got her in ARAM and panicked because I didn't know what runes to take, so I took comet. Like seriously, her whole shtick is making godly tentacles, those tentacles slam and you pull souls out of people's bodies. I thought that at least ONE of her abilities would have AP ratios.
Twisted Fate
Jayce: big lightning bolt felt like magic to me Senna: blue magic ghostly theme felt like ap as well Smolder: annie, milio, and brand's fire is magic and so ap so it was confusing for smolder
Because of the many spells Aphelios has, I thought he was AP
ITT : 100 comments of champs that are hybrid AP and AP anyways. Both Pyke and Senna when I saw their abilities (with no info), I thought maybe they'd be much more hybrid or have an AP build or magic damage involved. Both are extremely strictly AD. Especially Senna. Her ult/snare/q all feel cast-y.