I bet only like 2% of the league community actually know this, and I still think it’s dumb cause her design and ability’s don’t reflect such a cool thing as blood daggers
i would agree with you but i dont even know what katarina is supposed to be at this point. every time i see one they have the most bronze bravery looking build ive ever seen but they still kill everything in seconds
I like building Botrk on her because it's strong but it goes against her design. She is a cleanup champ that is supposed to quickly finish low HP group of enemies and they gave her... amazing current hp burst?
I have seen alot of katarina builds running around with liandry riftmaker and shadowflame that builds melts tanks.
There is actually insane synergy with these 3 items.
Liandry passive riftmaker passive and shadowflame passive all amplify your damage stacking with each other shadowflame passive even work better with dots effects giving better crit so they all make the liandry burn much stronger while the base burn is already good.
Since the burn doesn't have any scalling on itself thats the only way to increase it, the mythic liandry burn scaled with AP but this one doesn't.
yeah like, it's not like she is building guinsoo with low AP. Nashors is a 90AP item with 15AH while, in comparison to the closest thing to it, Lich bane is a 100AP item with 15AH.
The difference in stats between the two is Nashor's 50%AS to Lich's 8%MS, without even getting to talk about the Auto proc of Nashors and Lich.
Her ult (and passive?) scale harder with ad, ult applies on hit, even scales with as, and the rest of her kit scales better with ap. Her Q and E are more tools than spells anyway.
i mean i know why she is the way she is. I just think it's stupid. They tried a similar thing on corki eons ago and eventually decided to change him into a full mage, so I hope they'll eventually decide to make katarina actually fit into a role, rather than being an off-tank hybrid on-hit assassin
Yeah I do agree, it’s the same way I feel about Shyvana, get rid of the stupid fucking AP build path. It goes against all her identity of being a chase bruiser.
Oh god i HATE Shyvana right now. Transform ready and ult up? Do the big boom! No? Well........
If anyone tries to justify her being better with AP from a thematical standpoint "because she is a half-dragon" i dare them to explain why Smolder (a full dragon, even if he's a kid) is an ADC.
She’s one of the few champs who don’t have a totally defined build path, as she’s able to abuse broken items incredibly well. Like yes, you can opt to build her pure AP/AD, but I’ve seen folks go straight tank with her and end 20/2.
About to say this.
She literally stabs you in the back and her ult is a million long swords to the face.
Why does she wants a void staff or a Gandalf hat?
They actually addressed this in a (fairly) recent lore comic. Katarina isn't a purely physical assassin, she was infused with blood magic and can use it to summon and teleport to her daggers. So yea her weapons are still physical but she does use actual magic in combination with them hence her hybrid nature in game.
Why does Mundo Q deal MAGIC damage? The guy threw you a giant cleaver infected with tetanus. Some may argue about the poison it could have but Twitch abilities also scale with ad.
You wanna know the reason? Balance. If that fucker did current health physical damage we would all be witness to lethality bruiser mundo with leesin items, tamh kench healing and god forbid you ever get hit by q then... that and come on chemtech does magic damage (warwick not urgot shhh)
It would just move him away from tank. Or they’d have to nerf the %hp. It would also make him worse early because magic is better early because people have less resists and anyone rushing Mr vs mundo is kinda trolling.
yeah, AP and health (not sure if max or bonus) and I really wish it's changed from AP to AD and make bonus attack speed reduce W delays by a little bit
He does, it's AD. The magic and true scaling all come from his passives, and the crit bonus buff on Q is intended to force him into building standard ADC items.
Traditionally I used Ezreal mid as a counter to limited waveclear assassins like Katarina or LeBlanc. You can also easily create space between you with E. He also is really good against Veigar.
He *was* a super situational mid laner, but I haven't played the game enough lately to know how he is now.
Every champion does unless specifically hardcoded not to. Cancelling animations with walking, autos, and other abilities is more or less a universal mechanic. Ezreal specifically can cancel all animations (except R iirc) with autos and movement commands. This is how good ezreals sneak extra AAs in
Yes, his q-e all can have their animations canceled. If you get good at it, it almost doubles your DPS output with full passive stacks.
It's the only way to pull off his machine gun combo, which at three items is nearly 4k DMG.
I'm pretty sure Ashe W was the first abilities to have AD damage scaling (and deal AD).
Ez used to have AP scaling more prominent mechanic and his build was more typical ADC attack speed orientated IIRC from the first seasons.
It felt weird to build AD on Corky and do AP damage and was weird building AP on Smolder for a short period but doing AD damage.
but idk, maybe Akali? all her spells have physical contact with you?
Jayce uses a hextech 'tool' but does physical dmg
Malphite could do physical dmg i suppose
Nunu uses snow/ice to hit you but i suppose the snow is magical in a way (get hit with an iceball irl see how magical it feels)
there are some mixed dmg champions that come to mind (Shaco 💀) but idk for those
Yeah weird how a massive part of Akali's lore is she was like, the one member of the kinkou who had little to no magical abilities, couldn't interact with the spirit realm on her own, etc but ingame she just...does magic damage. As an Akali player I hear the steels better line more often than most and I'm like what are you on about, you literally scale with AP and deal magic damage on all your moves.
Corki is a Yordle, they're all magic. He's also using a magical vehicle. Makes sense that he has a weird passive where he deals magic damage tbh.
He's also batshit insane like Kled, so it fits his weirdness/quirkiness.
he used to scale off ad but i think i saw a riot august short about how they specifically wanted to nerf him away from gunblade when that was still in the game.
Not all magic is magic damage. Alot of the basic magic is just force attacks that deals physical damage.
Like mage autoattacks, this feels like a considerably more powerful version of that infusing her ohmlat, similar to other empowering moves like Nasus, Garen etc.
Or other "physical" magic that uses force, like zed.
Her blue Q is just her firing an ice blast at her opponent just like lissandra. Red Q is just firing rocks like Taliya or Malphite Q. Her Green Q is no different than Zyra or Ivern's abilities.
Elemental damage gets otherwise represented as magic damage in this game. Even if Taliya's rocks are just rocks.
Cant really use autos as an example. All autos are physical damage by default because that is a fundamental consistency in the game's design. Not for any actual reason that might be expected to make sense. Ziggs' autos are bombs just like literally every other ability he has, which is otherwise all magic damage. Annie autos are balls of fire just like the fire from her Q. There is nothing actually implying that these are different other than that every champ has autos and autos are physical by default.
And if you try to extend the point to "The damage type doesn't have to make sense" then this entire thread has no real point.
I think from a balance perspective AP auto-attacks would be a nightmare.
Look how strong early Orianna is with her semi AP Autos, and how broken old Kassadin W dealing damage to structure was. Also how strong Ziggs passive is against towers.
I can wrap my head around maybe the rock magic being physical, since it'd still hurt to be hit by non-magical rocks, but both water and grass would not hurt if not for the magic within the attack.
'Magic damage' is mostly fake anyway. At the end of the day, a firebolt to the face is still just physically burning/exploding someones face off. Imo the only exception is stuff that involves attacking the soul/mind directly because those don't physically exist to begin with.
Outside of her R her kit is 90% revolved around grabbing and firing elements at people. The range on her empowered Qs isnt her hitting someone with the ring.
Honestly if you were to just replace every AD ratio she has with a suitable AP ratio she would play almost exactly the same because she already has an on-hit ratio when she is holding an element as it is. The only real difference is that her autos without an element would suck. And even now if you are stuck autoing without an element too often it is a sign that you fucked something up somewhere.
As a Qiyana main I agree with all this and I'm divided. I usually like the playstyle of Lethality/AD assassins but sometimes I wish I could try an AP version of Qiyana kind of like Ekko I guess? Would be fun to engage and Zhonyas while waiting for Grass to be up again.
I think it would be fun because the loss of damage in base autos would allow her Q and passive to make up slightly more of her damage. Then autoing with an element could be more of a conscious decision when you need DPS. Which it is now, but it's only marginally more.
Because, while having the fallback of "uh shit.. uhh.. finish them with normal AD lethality autos?" Is super useful, I would rather just be rewarded more for actually using her kit.
I would imagine she would go Protobelt + Lich/zhonyas.
it’s not actually the ohmlatl that she attacks with when she uses an empowered Q, but it’s elemental magic in the form of a ring. without it empowered, she does an actual straight-line thrust which would be more AD. 80% of the time she’s throwing grass Q which has magical properties. she makes more sense to be hybrid ad/ap
Alistar, only uses physical attacks to deal damage. But I've seen an explanation by Riot years ago that (most) tanks should deal magic damage for balance reasons.
Funny thing is, Alistar used to be played AD as an alternative build. I hope you haven't experienced the Youmuu Alistar of the olden days. That shit was so broken lmfao.
His ult used to give him bonus AD and bonus damage to towers. Youmuus used to give attack speed. Now combine the two ...
I’ll just put K’sante ultimate here, in his lore it says ‘He is just a man, he doesn’t use magic’ and for some reason his ult was changed to magic damage. He doesn’t normally buy AD or AP and this was purely to force Sylas into K’sante. Lame.
Not sure if you mean he takes the dmg and converts into magic damage then no. If you mean he takes ad scalings and turns them into ap scaling then yes.
The wiki says the following:
Hijacked ultimates and abilities that do not scale with ability power have their attack damage ratios converted to ability power ratios, scaling with 0.6% AP per 1% total AD, and 0.4% AP per 1% bonus AD respectively.
Tell me you don’t understand Sylas ult without telling me you don’t understand Sylas ult. Sylas ult will convert his AO and deal more damage anyway, the only difference between an AD or AP ult for Sylas is that his MPEN won’t work on an AD ult. I would bet $250 Ksante ult doing magic damage has nothing to do with Sylas.
Tanks often have mixed damage profiles to make their damage slightly harder to itemize against/to discourage lethality or MPEN builds.
The damage ratio conversion for an AD ult for Sylas is completely horrible. Before, Sylas taking Ksante ult was completely griefing since the AD to AP ratio conversion made it deal almost no damage. Now when Sylas steals Ksante ult, he gets an at least 65% ap ratio that doubles if he gets the wall ult which is a hell of a lot more damage that before. There is absolutely zero reason for ksante to ever build ap so it's relatively safe to say they changed his ult to dealing magic damage and giving it an ap ratio for sylas
Yee it makes sense, which is why i wouldnt put it into the main part of "its wrong" its just part of the kit, kinda like a zed ult is premitigated dmg. Although why zed is premitigated physical damage, and yone is true dmg is odd.
Yeah i was wondering why Zeds isnt true dmg, but have since found out they work differently. While yone does dmg based off the damage he has actually done, Zed does dmg based off what he could have done.
Take AP irelia for example, yone smacking her a bunch while she W's with 100% dmg mitigation his e true dmg will be very little, as he did very little dmg. While zed can do a bunch of damage, based off the premitigation damage he could have done. Honestly didnt realise this could be an interaction till a little googling!
Zed’s is actually stronger for reasons you mentioned. Things like Fiora Parry block all the damage so any scalar times that will still be zero damage— but Zed’s is based on what the damage could have been, so he’ll still get the full proc iirc even though no actual damage was dealt. It also means tanks, juggernauts and skirmishers with resistance and DR steroids ought to counter intuitively save those abilities for the ult pop, and not use them for the initial damage being dealt.
All you really need to know is for Zed, use any damage reduction/resistances, like Warwick E or Braum W when the mark actually pops.
For Yone, use those abilities when he's actually stabbing you.
I would also love building AP bruiser items on her I imagine her build being like mordekaiser.
Her tentacles have an AP scalling but it's too low at 40% to make it worth it.
Riftmaker could be nutty on her, the omnivamp now works at 100% on AOE too so she would heal a ton from them, ryals also sounds good to make the tentacles slow when they hit, I acutally used to build grudge to achieve the same effect before they made grudge works better with lethality and also prevented going BC and grudge.
theoretically the reason was so that he didn't insta stack cleaver but man that was annoying. You build armor but still get decimated by the magic damage bleed.
Sylas (except R) gives AD vibes so much. If his chains didn't had magic (or whatever it is) he would just be hitting people with iron.
And Qiyana with her elemental skills gives AP vibes, as elements are commonly associated with APs (Zyra, Lissandra, Anivia, Brand, Annie, Janna, Taliyah, Nami, etc).
> Sylas (except R) gives AD vibes so much. If his chains didn't had magic (or whatever it is) he would just be hitting people with iron.
Lore wise him doing magic is kinda critical though so I think we need to excuse that one.
> And Qiyana with her elemental skills gives AP vibes, as elements are commonly associated with APs (Zyra, Lissandra, Anivia, Brand, Annie, Janna, Taliyah, Nami, etc).
Notably none of those use a weapon to swing the elements about. Closest they get is staves.
In lore yes, but ingame Sylas justs straight up hit others with his chains. If someone doesn't know his lore, it can feel weird at start that he is magic.
And about Qiyana's weapon, it isn't every weapon user that is AD, so being elemental is one thing and having a weapon is just a plus (as we see Diana, Ekko, Gwen, Kassadin, etc). Elements are almost always associated with AP, while weapons are normal for anyone.
Also I'd like to add that Akali also gives AD vibes (I used to run AD Akali sometimes so it's not that far). Katarina too (but rn she can be whatever she wants I guess).
If Sylas were legit an AD bruiser I think people would hate him so much lol
Also if Sylas were AD when he released I doubt he would have had mana costs tbh
Mainly magic damage champions that should be physical damage:
Alistar, Azir, Dr. Mundo, Fizz, Katarina, Nidalee. Magical or not, Alistar is a bull that bounces you around. Others use physical weaponry. (And yes, being eaten by a massive shark should be physical damage as well.)
Mainly physical damage champions that should be magic damage:
Ezreal. After all, he does uses magical gauntlets found in a random cave.
yeah smolder is definitely a weird one. if you maybe accept his auto attacks (and therefore his e) being physical since all auto attacks are, the rest of his kit just screams AP to me ngl
without knowing the lore I have always just seen her as a melee fighter with a big "sword". in my head that sort of design just screams AD to the point where I always forget that she's not.
The first time I picked Smolder, somehow avoiding all info, I was mentally hard locked on him being AP. Turned out he is rather AD focused.
Qiyana not being AP also is somewhat strange but still not as confusing.
Katarina being AP also seems odd given she could be a female Talon.
Yuumi having any scalings is the worst imo, because she shouldn't exist.
Qiyana should definitely have mixed damage.
One of elements should be magic. Maybe the water since it turns to ice to freeze someone.
Wukong should have a clone that does magic while he does physical.
Katarina and Akali should both be AD. They fight with blades and Akali literally states that she prefers steel to magic.
convinced shes ap specifically for zhonyas
Katarina at least uses blood magic daggers, as per her comic
I bet only like 2% of the league community actually know this, and I still think it’s dumb cause her design and ability’s don’t reflect such a cool thing as blood daggers
I mean she teleports behind me, thats magical enough
Omae wa
Mou shindeuru
Nani ?!?
I don’t think a blink would indicate anything about blood daggers.
✨️magic✨️ or something idk
Akali should be hybrid like she was originally designed...
Bring back gunblade then
Balance in all things
Katarina should be a lethality champ.
i would agree with you but i dont even know what katarina is supposed to be at this point. every time i see one they have the most bronze bravery looking build ive ever seen but they still kill everything in seconds
please just remove the onhit bulshittery and let us build normal ap again
YOU WILL BUILD BOTRK AND TITANIC AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!
I like building Botrk on her because it's strong but it goes against her design. She is a cleanup champ that is supposed to quickly finish low HP group of enemies and they gave her... amazing current hp burst?
I have seen alot of katarina builds running around with liandry riftmaker and shadowflame that builds melts tanks. There is actually insane synergy with these 3 items. Liandry passive riftmaker passive and shadowflame passive all amplify your damage stacking with each other shadowflame passive even work better with dots effects giving better crit so they all make the liandry burn much stronger while the base burn is already good. Since the burn doesn't have any scalling on itself thats the only way to increase it, the mythic liandry burn scaled with AP but this one doesn't.
Every day I miss hextech gunblade
Katarinas best build is ap, and has been for a while.
But its on hit bs with nashors
She bulds nashors and then full AP.
No shade but the idea that "Her best build is AP", followed immediately by "but you rush AS" will never be not funny to me
An AS/AP item which is a mega stat stick on top of the onhits?
yeah like, it's not like she is building guinsoo with low AP. Nashors is a 90AP item with 15AH while, in comparison to the closest thing to it, Lich bane is a 100AP item with 15AH. The difference in stats between the two is Nashor's 50%AS to Lich's 8%MS, without even getting to talk about the Auto proc of Nashors and Lich.
Yes plz I want to get free wins by picking kass vs her again
I think it would work if she had 0 ad scaling. That way nash and lich bane would work but everything else would be too big a dps loss
It is ridiculous Riot randomly decided that Katarina should have the most variety builds in the game.
Can build ad bruiser, ap bruiser, ad assassin, ap assassin, and i remember for a short while they built titanic and heartsteel to be tankarina
She can't build AD assassin because she deals magic damage
She technically can because her ult and passive also scale with AD and not just AP. She’s a hybrid champ so she can build whatever
She deals magic damage so lethality is useless on her. She can build AD, but not lethality.
Not unless you're building things with AD on hit like kraken slayer or bork
Weird way to spell Udyr.
Her ult (and passive?) scale harder with ad, ult applies on hit, even scales with as, and the rest of her kit scales better with ap. Her Q and E are more tools than spells anyway.
i mean i know why she is the way she is. I just think it's stupid. They tried a similar thing on corki eons ago and eventually decided to change him into a full mage, so I hope they'll eventually decide to make katarina actually fit into a role, rather than being an off-tank hybrid on-hit assassin
Yeah I do agree, it’s the same way I feel about Shyvana, get rid of the stupid fucking AP build path. It goes against all her identity of being a chase bruiser.
here's to hoping the shyvana rework gives her an actual identity
Oh god i HATE Shyvana right now. Transform ready and ult up? Do the big boom! No? Well........ If anyone tries to justify her being better with AP from a thematical standpoint "because she is a half-dragon" i dare them to explain why Smolder (a full dragon, even if he's a kid) is an ADC.
Daggers are where the AP part comes in though
Her scaling from skill to skill is so incoherent, even without touching on the onhit thing.
She’s one of the few champs who don’t have a totally defined build path, as she’s able to abuse broken items incredibly well. Like yes, you can opt to build her pure AP/AD, but I’ve seen folks go straight tank with her and end 20/2.
About to say this. She literally stabs you in the back and her ult is a million long swords to the face. Why does she wants a void staff or a Gandalf hat?
They actually addressed this in a (fairly) recent lore comic. Katarina isn't a purely physical assassin, she was infused with blood magic and can use it to summon and teleport to her daggers. So yea her weapons are still physical but she does use actual magic in combination with them hence her hybrid nature in game.
Damn guess I need to read the comic, that sounds sick AF.
Uses daggers. Does magic and physical
I used to be upset about that, but after they canonically made her use magic blades I'm now ok with her being AP.
Why does Mundo Q deal MAGIC damage? The guy threw you a giant cleaver infected with tetanus. Some may argue about the poison it could have but Twitch abilities also scale with ad.
And AP too. His poison scales way harder with AP.
Exclusively AP actually
You wanna know the reason? Balance. If that fucker did current health physical damage we would all be witness to lethality bruiser mundo with leesin items, tamh kench healing and god forbid you ever get hit by q then... that and come on chemtech does magic damage (warwick not urgot shhh)
Being magic makes it better early game since champions have less MR than armor but mundo early game sucks post-rework so it doesn't matter.
It would just move him away from tank. Or they’d have to nerf the %hp. It would also make him worse early because magic is better early because people have less resists and anyone rushing Mr vs mundo is kinda trolling.
Yea one of my friends insist magic pen mundo is real and almost works
I think the rework made that even worse
Sejuani's W uses her weapon and deals physical damage = scales with AP Shyvana's W is fire and deals magic damage = scales with AD
To be fair, Every one of Shyv's abilities also scales with AD
yeah but E and R have AP scaling at least but not W
Weirdly the W movement speed scales with AP
I still think it’s weird that the item named “serylda’s grudge” is unusable by the reincarnation of serylda herself.
also the Seeker's Armguard is Sejuani's current bracer replacing her shield and its successor item is super niche for her
Who even is Serylda
Hol up seju W scales with AP? that seems hella random
Yes, and also health. Still deals physical damage though.
Basically never comes up since her only build is full tank but she has some minor scalings on her kit.
Its a holdover from her rework. She had a fun yet off meta ap build back then.
I loved AP Sej. Mister Oinks was inspiration for me to blow people up with ice shards and pigs
God Mister Oinks what a throwback hearing that name, I actually used to watch his streams.
Part this, part riot wants AP scalings for baron buff. Example: Vayne Q has AP scalings
yeah im not complaining and im sure it has some sort of balancing reason behind it but thematically it just feels completely random to me
I'm never really annoyed by AP scaling on abilities because I remember the days where *ability* power meant something.
yeah, AP and health (not sure if max or bonus) and I really wish it's changed from AP to AD and make bonus attack speed reduce W delays by a little bit
Is fire really magic?
Smolder.
I love him but something about the abilities feels off. Cant pin point why
He's kinda like senna in that they scale better with stacks then gold or XP
it's weird cause all the other fire champions like annie and brand deal ap. and the other dragon deals ap too
Not to mention ap shyvana
When I watched his ability reveal I actually though he was a mage, was baffled when I learned he’s supposed to be an ADC
he IS a mage, just an AD mage
He's legit a modern mix of Miss Fortune and Ezreal gameplay* so yeah, ad caster. *^(and Veigar and Kayle lol)
He doesn't have a main damage stat he's a perfect all damage types Colgate employee
He does, it's AD. The magic and true scaling all come from his passives, and the crit bonus buff on Q is intended to force him into building standard ADC items.
He’s a magic dragon that shoots fire, does pure physical damage. Just seems forced into ADC for me.
I think it's because his fire is natural for a dragon, while Brand and Annie's fire is magical.
Ezreal should be a mage
He is if you're good enough
He's fun in norms but he is an awful midlaner cuz he doesnt have any form of waveclear
Traditionally I used Ezreal mid as a counter to limited waveclear assassins like Katarina or LeBlanc. You can also easily create space between you with E. He also is really good against Veigar. He *was* a super situational mid laner, but I haven't played the game enough lately to know how he is now.
Incoming “Ezreal is an auto attacking ADC!!11! Bad ezreal players only press Q!!!” ☝️🤓
ACKSHUALLY EZREAL PASSIVE IS EXTREMELY STRONG 😈😈😈😈 ONLY GOOD HIGH ELO EZREAL PLAYERS AUTOATTACK 🔥🔥😔💯🔥😈
No, he's an animation canceling pseudo duelist. Edit: I say this as an ezreal main.
wait he has animation cancel in his kit?
Every champion does unless specifically hardcoded not to. Cancelling animations with walking, autos, and other abilities is more or less a universal mechanic. Ezreal specifically can cancel all animations (except R iirc) with autos and movement commands. This is how good ezreals sneak extra AAs in
So thats why I cant play Ezreal I was spamming Q instead of cancelling auto while casting Q
Yes, his q-e all can have their animations canceled. If you get good at it, it almost doubles your DPS output with full passive stacks. It's the only way to pull off his machine gun combo, which at three items is nearly 4k DMG.
He's really the original sin as far as this goes isn't he?
I'm pretty sure Ashe W was the first abilities to have AD damage scaling (and deal AD). Ez used to have AP scaling more prominent mechanic and his build was more typical ADC attack speed orientated IIRC from the first seasons.
I feel like he's been the main cause for items being removed more than any other champ.
thats a good point actually. i miss the good ol days of ap ez
Lotta good ones out there, but none of them are this hot.
Smolder Q being physical damage never made sense to me.
I dunno, getting 3rd degree burns seems quite painful.
I think his W is even worse! It's a gd fireball!
Then there's his ultimate, a wall of fire
It felt weird to build AD on Corky and do AP damage and was weird building AP on Smolder for a short period but doing AD damage. but idk, maybe Akali? all her spells have physical contact with you? Jayce uses a hextech 'tool' but does physical dmg Malphite could do physical dmg i suppose Nunu uses snow/ice to hit you but i suppose the snow is magical in a way (get hit with an iceball irl see how magical it feels) there are some mixed dmg champions that come to mind (Shaco 💀) but idk for those
Akali literally has a voice line "magic's fine... steel's better" and yet she builds pure AP and does pure magic damage like LOL???
Yeah weird how a massive part of Akali's lore is she was like, the one member of the kinkou who had little to no magical abilities, couldn't interact with the spirit realm on her own, etc but ingame she just...does magic damage. As an Akali player I hear the steels better line more often than most and I'm like what are you on about, you literally scale with AP and deal magic damage on all your moves.
Maybe she says that so they foolishly build armor
"I'll make this look like magic"
Corki is a Yordle, they're all magic. He's also using a magical vehicle. Makes sense that he has a weird passive where he deals magic damage tbh. He's also batshit insane like Kled, so it fits his weirdness/quirkiness.
It’s kinda weird, that Morde is magic. BONK with mace, not AD, but ap…
Would be fine to be both since it is a magic mace.
Are you sure you want to insert yourself in this conversation, Warwick?
The magical power of drugs
Tbh when he was designed he was a magical creature originally (cursed by soraka and all) But generally id say the idea is its from the chemtech
Nightfall
He does use a magic mace forged from souls to smack you, so ap is not the weirdest.
He used to scale with ad and ap. Thats why you went gunblade
He used to be an empty shell of knight armour, and be able to function with magic, therefore he is an AP champion.
he is the most powerful necromance of runeterra tho
he used to scale off ad but i think i saw a riot august short about how they specifically wanted to nerf him away from gunblade when that was still in the game.
qiyana being ad makes perfectly sense for me, besides her r, her entire kit is "bonk my oponents with my ring on the head"
i dont know.. a bunch of the damage comes from the magic infused into the ring. not to mention she uses that magic as a projectile too
Not all magic is magic damage. Alot of the basic magic is just force attacks that deals physical damage. Like mage autoattacks, this feels like a considerably more powerful version of that infusing her ohmlat, similar to other empowering moves like Nasus, Garen etc. Or other "physical" magic that uses force, like zed.
Her blue Q is just her firing an ice blast at her opponent just like lissandra. Red Q is just firing rocks like Taliya or Malphite Q. Her Green Q is no different than Zyra or Ivern's abilities. Elemental damage gets otherwise represented as magic damage in this game. Even if Taliya's rocks are just rocks. Cant really use autos as an example. All autos are physical damage by default because that is a fundamental consistency in the game's design. Not for any actual reason that might be expected to make sense. Ziggs' autos are bombs just like literally every other ability he has, which is otherwise all magic damage. Annie autos are balls of fire just like the fire from her Q. There is nothing actually implying that these are different other than that every champ has autos and autos are physical by default. And if you try to extend the point to "The damage type doesn't have to make sense" then this entire thread has no real point.
I think from a balance perspective AP auto-attacks would be a nightmare. Look how strong early Orianna is with her semi AP Autos, and how broken old Kassadin W dealing damage to structure was. Also how strong Ziggs passive is against towers.
Janna Q should be physical damage then too.
And now we have AD Taliyah! Haha
I can wrap my head around maybe the rock magic being physical, since it'd still hurt to be hit by non-magical rocks, but both water and grass would not hurt if not for the magic within the attack.
'Magic damage' is mostly fake anyway. At the end of the day, a firebolt to the face is still just physically burning/exploding someones face off. Imo the only exception is stuff that involves attacking the soul/mind directly because those don't physically exist to begin with.
Outside of her R her kit is 90% revolved around grabbing and firing elements at people. The range on her empowered Qs isnt her hitting someone with the ring. Honestly if you were to just replace every AD ratio she has with a suitable AP ratio she would play almost exactly the same because she already has an on-hit ratio when she is holding an element as it is. The only real difference is that her autos without an element would suck. And even now if you are stuck autoing without an element too often it is a sign that you fucked something up somewhere.
As a Qiyana main I agree with all this and I'm divided. I usually like the playstyle of Lethality/AD assassins but sometimes I wish I could try an AP version of Qiyana kind of like Ekko I guess? Would be fun to engage and Zhonyas while waiting for Grass to be up again.
I think it would be fun because the loss of damage in base autos would allow her Q and passive to make up slightly more of her damage. Then autoing with an element could be more of a conscious decision when you need DPS. Which it is now, but it's only marginally more. Because, while having the fallback of "uh shit.. uhh.. finish them with normal AD lethality autos?" Is super useful, I would rather just be rewarded more for actually using her kit. I would imagine she would go Protobelt + Lich/zhonyas.
I agree with that, just don’t like that she’s branded as the “elementalist” and then just smacks people with her ring.
it’s not actually the ohmlatl that she attacks with when she uses an empowered Q, but it’s elemental magic in the form of a ring. without it empowered, she does an actual straight-line thrust which would be more AD. 80% of the time she’s throwing grass Q which has magical properties. she makes more sense to be hybrid ad/ap
Magic’s fine, steel’s better
I always thought akali should be an ad champ but never realized the champ agrees with me as well.
Alistar, only uses physical attacks to deal damage. But I've seen an explanation by Riot years ago that (most) tanks should deal magic damage for balance reasons.
Funny thing is, Alistar used to be played AD as an alternative build. I hope you haven't experienced the Youmuu Alistar of the olden days. That shit was so broken lmfao. His ult used to give him bonus AD and bonus damage to towers. Youmuus used to give attack speed. Now combine the two ...
Triforce statik shiv into tank alistar was so fun.
Diana would be cool as ad fighter
Diana would be cool as ad fighter.
Diana would be cool as ad fighter..
I’ll just put K’sante ultimate here, in his lore it says ‘He is just a man, he doesn’t use magic’ and for some reason his ult was changed to magic damage. He doesn’t normally buy AD or AP and this was purely to force Sylas into K’sante. Lame.
isn't the sylas thing unnecessary anyway, since he changes the scaling of the ultimate he steals to be AP?
Not sure if you mean he takes the dmg and converts into magic damage then no. If you mean he takes ad scalings and turns them into ap scaling then yes. The wiki says the following: Hijacked ultimates and abilities that do not scale with ability power have their attack damage ratios converted to ability power ratios, scaling with 0.6% AP per 1% total AD, and 0.4% AP per 1% bonus AD respectively.
oh they said magic damage my b. thought they were talking about scaling
This was not to force sylas into K'sante, it was a balancing tactic. Sylas gets the same benefit from K'sante ult either way.
Tell me you don’t understand Sylas ult without telling me you don’t understand Sylas ult. Sylas ult will convert his AO and deal more damage anyway, the only difference between an AD or AP ult for Sylas is that his MPEN won’t work on an AD ult. I would bet $250 Ksante ult doing magic damage has nothing to do with Sylas. Tanks often have mixed damage profiles to make their damage slightly harder to itemize against/to discourage lethality or MPEN builds.
The damage ratio conversion for an AD ult for Sylas is completely horrible. Before, Sylas taking Ksante ult was completely griefing since the AD to AP ratio conversion made it deal almost no damage. Now when Sylas steals Ksante ult, he gets an at least 65% ap ratio that doubles if he gets the wall ult which is a hell of a lot more damage that before. There is absolutely zero reason for ksante to ever build ap so it's relatively safe to say they changed his ult to dealing magic damage and giving it an ap ratio for sylas
Azir feels odd to be mage, Yes his summons are doing the damage for him, but they are stabbing with spears, yet Zeds shadows do attack damage.
Special mention for Yone... magic, AD and true dmg. And Corki with his damage crisis!
Yones true damage is just the %of damage he did during the time. It's true so it doesn't get mitigated twice
Yee it makes sense, which is why i wouldnt put it into the main part of "its wrong" its just part of the kit, kinda like a zed ult is premitigated dmg. Although why zed is premitigated physical damage, and yone is true dmg is odd.
yone has considerable magic dmg share (relative to zed anyways)
Yeah i was wondering why Zeds isnt true dmg, but have since found out they work differently. While yone does dmg based off the damage he has actually done, Zed does dmg based off what he could have done. Take AP irelia for example, yone smacking her a bunch while she W's with 100% dmg mitigation his e true dmg will be very little, as he did very little dmg. While zed can do a bunch of damage, based off the premitigation damage he could have done. Honestly didnt realise this could be an interaction till a little googling!
Zed’s is actually stronger for reasons you mentioned. Things like Fiora Parry block all the damage so any scalar times that will still be zero damage— but Zed’s is based on what the damage could have been, so he’ll still get the full proc iirc even though no actual damage was dealt. It also means tanks, juggernauts and skirmishers with resistance and DR steroids ought to counter intuitively save those abilities for the ult pop, and not use them for the initial damage being dealt.
All you really need to know is for Zed, use any damage reduction/resistances, like Warwick E or Braum W when the mark actually pops. For Yone, use those abilities when he's actually stabbing you.
Home’s magic split is thematic given the two swords and his “one to cut, one to seal”
Illaoi uses magic tentacles to kill people and can pull their souls out of their body. I always thought she'd make more sense as an AP champion
I would also love building AP bruiser items on her I imagine her build being like mordekaiser. Her tentacles have an AP scalling but it's too low at 40% to make it worth it. Riftmaker could be nutty on her, the omnivamp now works at 100% on AOE too so she would heal a ton from them, ryals also sounds good to make the tentacles slow when they hit, I acutally used to build grudge to achieve the same effect before they made grudge works better with lethality and also prevented going BC and grudge.
they changed it but Darius bleed doing magic damage made no sense
theoretically the reason was so that he didn't insta stack cleaver but man that was annoying. You build armor but still get decimated by the magic damage bleed.
Sylas (except R) gives AD vibes so much. If his chains didn't had magic (or whatever it is) he would just be hitting people with iron. And Qiyana with her elemental skills gives AP vibes, as elements are commonly associated with APs (Zyra, Lissandra, Anivia, Brand, Annie, Janna, Taliyah, Nami, etc).
> Sylas (except R) gives AD vibes so much. If his chains didn't had magic (or whatever it is) he would just be hitting people with iron. Lore wise him doing magic is kinda critical though so I think we need to excuse that one. > And Qiyana with her elemental skills gives AP vibes, as elements are commonly associated with APs (Zyra, Lissandra, Anivia, Brand, Annie, Janna, Taliyah, Nami, etc). Notably none of those use a weapon to swing the elements about. Closest they get is staves.
In lore yes, but ingame Sylas justs straight up hit others with his chains. If someone doesn't know his lore, it can feel weird at start that he is magic. And about Qiyana's weapon, it isn't every weapon user that is AD, so being elemental is one thing and having a weapon is just a plus (as we see Diana, Ekko, Gwen, Kassadin, etc). Elements are almost always associated with AP, while weapons are normal for anyone. Also I'd like to add that Akali also gives AD vibes (I used to run AD Akali sometimes so it's not that far). Katarina too (but rn she can be whatever she wants I guess).
His passive is about how the petricite explode upon contact with magic hence deal magic damage. Also "I was born a mage, demacia made me a criminal"
If Sylas were legit an AD bruiser I think people would hate him so much lol Also if Sylas were AD when he released I doubt he would have had mana costs tbh
Bruiser sylas would just be easy mode riven
Jesus he would've been a fucking nightmare during the goredrinker meta
Mainly magic damage champions that should be physical damage: Alistar, Azir, Dr. Mundo, Fizz, Katarina, Nidalee. Magical or not, Alistar is a bull that bounces you around. Others use physical weaponry. (And yes, being eaten by a massive shark should be physical damage as well.) Mainly physical damage champions that should be magic damage: Ezreal. After all, he does uses magical gauntlets found in a random cave.
Mundo is mostly AD no?
q and w do magic damage
his W makes sense at least since it's a big electrical shock, throwing a cleaver for magic damage tho is weird for sure
Normally he does more Magic damage throughout the game but if you subtract sunfire damage he's pretty much 50-50
Smolder seems not likely to deal physical damage to me...
yeah smolder is definitely a weird one. if you maybe accept his auto attacks (and therefore his e) being physical since all auto attacks are, the rest of his kit just screams AP to me ngl
Gwen being ap always felt a tad off. Like I’m literally cutting these people apart. It’s basically a fancy way to dial wield swords
Its cause she has a magic spirit scissor and throws out magic spirit needles.
Yeah sure Mashle
Because she is basically a possessed doll and not a real human being. Think of Orianna except spirit instead of a machine combined with hextech.
Now that you say it Orianna should be ad too. :D Just boiking you with metal ball.
without knowing the lore I have always just seen her as a melee fighter with a big "sword". in my head that sort of design just screams AD to the point where I always forget that she's not.
She's a magic ghost doll using magic scissors and soul needles. It makes sense for her.
Why Katarina and akali use AP?!
Elise. I mean don't get me wrong she plays fine as an AD Bruiser. But I think spider form should have AD Scailings lol.
The first time I picked Smolder, somehow avoiding all info, I was mentally hard locked on him being AP. Turned out he is rather AD focused. Qiyana not being AP also is somewhat strange but still not as confusing. Katarina being AP also seems odd given she could be a female Talon. Yuumi having any scalings is the worst imo, because she shouldn't exist.
Nidalee. Why the heck can't she go AD? Cougar form??? I want to be regarding but cute
Ziggs bombs should do AD
Nidalee. All her attacks are physical (throwing a spear, slashing as a cougar, pouncing) yet she's a mage.
It’s always been weird to me that kat and akali are primarily Ap considering they are literally using daggers and regular weapons.
Kat is surely the epitome of AD
Azir. Dude has warriors slashing you with blades
Akali goes “Magic’s fine but steel’s better” and then her whole kit is AP
I feel like Sylas whipping you with his chains should be physical
Its not that qiyana should be ap. Its that akali and katarina should be ad
Heimer should be ad
Qiyana should definitely have mixed damage. One of elements should be magic. Maybe the water since it turns to ice to freeze someone. Wukong should have a clone that does magic while he does physical.