You also forgot Alistar and morgana as an ap bruser, similarly they can both be played with everfrost and fimblewinter to play as a hyper ap tank that can peel
I mean Veigars last 2 items are mostly full tank items. He only needs Everfrost Rabadons and Void Staff and then he mostly takes items like Anathema's Chains, Gargoyle Stoneplate, Force of Nature and Dead Man's Plate.
But the thing is tank veigar will never work in the early and midgame you would have to build full ap then once you get enough ap you sell your items and build tank
I feel like talking about Gwen would have been important, since she is the incarnation of AP Dps with her Q and E. She also builds lots of the AP Bruiser Items, making her very viable for this list.
And she has inbuilt lifesteal like most bruisers too. It is not that only bruisers have it, but it is an iportant stat for them. I actually really like gwen and I would say... Maybe she is the only bruiser(like [if not exactly]) champ I play if I would have to answer quickly.
I'm pretty sure Gwen is an AP skirmisher and not a bruiser since she has consistently high mobility and persistent damage from her Thousand Cuts. She is a Skirmisher
No AP bruiser iteams (mostly). Also the way their sustained damage comes across: an AD bruiser (like Darius) has decent base tankyness, self-protection (Q self-heal), but has good sustained damage, all of his abilities apply his DoT, but he can also auto attack. Comparatively, a Rumble's damage comes almost entirely from abilites. Many AP bruisers have an artificial auto attack buff, Rumble has overheat, Mordekaiser's autos apply the passive AoE burn, but really only Gwen's autos deal enough sustained damage to fight against an AD bruiser. (A Rumble would never stat check a Darius if they are both in auto range)
This about sums it up - The lack of designed AP bruiser items. The champion's kit has to make up for the lack of items with essentially its own items. That can consume power budget easily.
@@doodlegarbage6769 I mean, the only two ap bruisers that I can see being reguraly usefull in the meta wich are Morde and Rumble get most of the "magic yet tanky" stats from their abilities(mostly their shields and natural magic pen) when they build Riftmaker if that, then demonic embrace and after that they just go full tank or full mage.
yup I was mildly disappointed when I started playing him, expecting a bruiser. Every guide plays him more like an assassin and his kit is, like you said, more tank-like
That's because he's technically not an AP bruiser, people just used to call him that because the legacy class system classified him as a fighter/mage. In reality, Gragas is just a Vanguard, that being a type of tank. But in his case, building AP is actually reasonable because of his good scaling.
A bruiser item that's gotten too big for it's britches recently and moved outside of it's intended role is deaths dance. You can build it on any ad champ and it'll work.
The closest thing we have to an AP bruiser item is...Nashor's Tooth. Most mages don't want it. The fact that Riftmaker has backloaded damage means that Riot knows that AP bruisers need something that most mages don't, I'm just not sure if it's enough.
Their items are just horrible. There has never been a time where AP bruiser items (do we even have those? lmao) have been better than AD bruiser items. Mythics: Riftmaker and Protobelt Riftmaker is just a worse Goredrinker, while Protobelt is too squishy and doesn't provide what AP bruisers want. Magic pen? Why? AD Bruisers have 4 mythics, which all at least have their own use. We don't have anything comparable to Death's Dance, Maw, Black Cleaver, or in the past, Steraks. We've got Rylai's for AP, HP, and a slow. We've got Demonic for AP, HP, and a burn... then there's Hourglass that is balanced around mages, since a stasis is much stronger on a squishy target. I don't want to stasis in the middle of the fight and lose my Conq stacks, passive stacks (as Morde), or have the enemy have time to reposition and get into kiting range. Give me something like DD or Maw that let you KEEP fighting while becoming durable. Also full builds generally only hit 15 - 25 Haste, while AD bruisers hit 70+ without even trying to itemize for it.
@ً So the difference is reliable combat mobility, typically tied to hurting an enemy? Gwen's dash gets massively reduced cooldown upon auto attacking an enemy and she can fairly effectively chase down most people in the game. Seems like a skirmisher to me
Basically every AP item (with some exceptions) are made for shorter fights, there are only "extended fight" mythics for AP: Riftmaker and Liandry's, even then only one of them provides meaninful defense, and it's just because it's the only AP item that gives AP people sustain. Another point is, as i've said: Meaninful defense AP Defensive items are Crown, Banshee, Zhonya's.... and they all last for what? a few seconds or one hit. Why come AP champions get only Riftmemer for Sustain while AD bruisers have Jax's real weapon (that's sunderer btw), Anti-armor cleaver, Eclipse, Viegoblade, R.Hydra? AD champions also have stuff like Maw of Malmorbius and Balance's Dance, Mage's end and Zilean's Angel? Gwen doesn't have any item that gives her defense over longer fights, so she is forced to take an absolutely stupidly designed W to make up for it, Mordekaiser at least is a juggernaut and can reliably tank a little bit more because the juggernaut class has a big statline. Allow me to remind you: Acording to the LoL fandom wiki, the only AP divers are Diana and Elise, and despite the fact that they have a "dive'em" playstyle, they play it more like assassins. We just need an item like DD, Cleaver that allows AP champions to "ramp up" during longer fights.
The reason is that regular mages would be absolutely busted with AP bruiser items. Imagine a malzahar or teemo with an AP deaths dance. They'd never die because they get takedowns just by existing. I'm not sure what the solution is and I don't think riot is either. You give mages a slightly tanky item and everyone who is squishy will build it and run rampant. Just look at hourglass For the cleaver side of arguments, most mages don't wanna stay in fights if they don't have to. If I just slept someone on Zoe, then I wanna paddleball then run before they can run me down while my damage is on cooldown. I don't wanna be trading autos while waiting for cooldowns to make the most out of an item. It would also be hell to balance since liandrys, demonic,Teemo/singed poison, malz aids keep you in combat so the item would be constantly at full stacks Again I'm not a game dev but I do play a lot of mages and bruisers so I have a bit of experience with both types of items
Funny enough, Morde doesn't have a big statline for juggernauts. His base HP is average for melees and his base armor is one of the lowest of all juggernauts and even most melee champs.
@@volcanicviper5984 Sylas is also a skirmisher and I'd argue that he's more mobile, bursty, and squishier than she is (when Rumble, Singed, and Gragas are even less bruiser-like). Gwen thrives in extended combat, has decent durability, and has backloaded damage. I think it has to be a miss like the enhanced abilities video with Karma.
Surprised that Lillia wasn't in this category, considering that she always goes for more healthy and ap itens in top and even jungle. She can use ludens and more squishy itemazation, but that's niche, just like crit garen and such.
I don't know why people default to Liandry's tbh. Riftmaker, Demonic Embrace, Cosmic Drive is insane on her. 3000 HP with 600 movement speed in combat while healing indefinitely from passive and Riftmaker Omnivamp is insane.
It's because Lillia has a lot of burst and mobility, and not a lot of innate defense in her kit other than mobility. Sure she has a small amount of healing off her passive but it's not a whole lot.
Some of them are less bruiser-like now. Mordekaiser is a "juggernaut". Meta around Grag shifts from bruiser to tank a lot. And the others can flex into bruisers but are more like assassins (looking at you Sylas and Diana). I think the main issue is itemization. There are mage items that are glass cannon or provide too much safety. It can be seen with tanks as there are so limited "meta" AR/MR items. As an a Pan, Gnar, who flexes, I think they need to bring the other roles to par with AD itemization (despite a couple gripes with that category)
@@Tlafsiy its just riots term for a tank-brusier. They are suppose to be an aggressive, oppressive tank. So, darius, garen, skarner, yorick, aatrox, etc. This differents from fiora, cam, jax, pantheon, etc. These are definitely squisher (and so are bruisers or duelists).
@@baptistecochennec5956 might as well be its own thing. There is enough of a differentiation. Otherwise assasins who build some tank or duelists, the list goes on, could be considered a bruiser.
Well If aatrox q is already used as an example: to limit the oneshot potential for ap bruisers give them abilities that need to be used multiple times before giving the full Effect. Similar to aatrox q or old mordekaisers. And to give them something to do between the activation e.g. give them ap scaling AA after landen the first hit
The itemization argument still stands in this case. Ap bruisers just don’t have the items to stay alive long enough to build up for that big attack. And if they did, we would see a revert to tank assassins like akali fizz etc. the reason irelia was so absurdly, wickedly overtuned post rework is because she was able to build literally any ad item aside from crit. She had backloaded, front loaded and sustained damage. If you were to give Ap bruisers the itemization to incentivize backloaded damage, it would give champs that already have insane frontloaded damage way too much build diversity.
@@Ghosta085 Easy... Rework how auto's work on magic characters, give them all different scaling to suit their jobs and give more character, lower AP ratios across the board and delete Akali from the game. Smite has done 2 of the things I've mentioned the magical autos and different attack chains/scaling and it works well.
I feel like that'll be awful tho. Akali does like 30 damage with her entire kit, burns you to death with Sunfire while being invisible and then kills you with her ult lol
Gwen is a Skirmisher, that would place her alongside Master Yi and the other duelists, who are then placed in a bigger group called Slayers, which also cointains the Assassin class. She's not a bruiser by definition, even though it may feel like it.
@@Super_Top_Secret_Area Rumble is in the thumbnail and he is a battlemage (the "bruiser" part is mostly early game). Gwen is much tankier and more suitable to melee combat than he is, and even though she's a skirmisher, her gameplay is more similar to mordekaiser than that of master yi. There's no reason why Gwen wouldn't be considered an AP bruiser (ambiguous term) when Rumble and Gragas are. There's only so many champions that can fit onto the image, so we'll see.
@@sabrinaflores795 Pretty Sure bruisers need AOE to be classified that, and I dont think Gwen has that good of AOE to be a bruiser. For example Urgot, Mord, Sett, Darius have high AOE dmg to completely destroy team fights if they can get in range that is.
My suggestion for an ap bruiser item would be an ap item that gives armor and mr for each second you are in combat until a certain cap. This wouldn’t make any mages tanky since they get oneshot anyway but would be excellent on champs like sylas, singed or mordekaiser Edit: As some people pointed out this would be severely reduced for ranged champions
Mages have cc, long range, sometime shield and a lot of hp they won't get one-shot u combine this item with say crown u get an invincible Viktor or cassiopea
The fun part of Shyvana is being a hybrid bruiser. Even when you build a crap load of ad, you end up doing primarily magic damage. Your w and e do magic damage, no matter what. And both gain damage from ad. Her e has better ap scaling of course, but if I remember right, her w damage scales with ad but it converts ap into move speed. That’s why sorcerer’s shoes are always good for her. This is why I end up with weird looking builds on her, I like experimenting with her
Even when going AD, maxing E first is still the best for dmg, although W is better for clear speed/moving around the map. the rest of her kit simply isn't on par/up-to-date
Only AP bruisers are Mord, Diana (if built like one), Elise (in spider form), Rumble, Sylas, and Gwen. Lillia and Singed are arguably bruisers. The rest, are either assassins (Eve, Kat, Akali, Nid, Kass), tanks (Cho'Gath, Malph, Amumu, Galio, Nunu, Gragas, Zac, Mao, etc.), or straight up cheese build bruisers who have hybrid scaling like AP Shyv, Voli, Udyr, WW, Jax, Xin, etc.
Sylas and Gwen are skirmishers, not bruisers, they don't even count. It really is only Mord, Diana, Elise and Rumble Edit: Allow me to remind you another thing: Rumble never sees play, and Diana(Kinda) and Elise are "bruisers" because they break one specific rule of the assassin class therefore cannot be considered assassins: Elise is ranged and Diana has too much AOE In other words, the only viable AP bruiser is fucking Morderkaiser, and he is basically useless if he misses his E. How fun.
AP Bruiser idea: diminishing returns on their AP scaling on abilities. Give them CRAZY high AP scaling on their abilities, but only for, say, the first 100 AP. Every 100 AP after that gives less scaling than the 100 AP before. Then, make AP Bruiser items that give only a small amount of AP (say 45 at most) and some defensive stats, ability haste, and what have you. These items are still good on the AP bruisers because their scaling is amazing with lower values of AP. But standard AP mages, assassins, and even enchanters and the like just can't justify it, because their scalings aren't high enough to make that 45 AP Mythic viable. Meanwhile, the bigger ticket AP items like Deathcap are just less valuable for the AP bruisers, because all that extra AP beyond the first 100-200 kind of gets wasted, and they'd be better off going fort more defensive stats instead.
i feel like malphite could afford to get some changes to become an AP bruiser, seeing as his only crowd control is in his ultimate, which feels less impressive to me nowadays seeing that other champions feel like they can do the same and better, like Diana's enguage being unable to flash away from it, or Tahm's new W having the same range and radius(though slower i know) and Vex's combo from a mile away. especially with Malphite's W claps being an ability he has feeling a bit underwhelming. not sure what exactly i would change, probably his passive is all he would need, since the shield cooldown feels terrible when garen and sett can fullheal while in a minionwave.
i feel like replacing Q entirely with something another melee-range ability might force him to actually fight in lane, maybe a anti-auto ability like rammus W.
@@jojod1029 i would not be against a slam like Aatrox/redKayn/Bel'veth has for a short knockup to replace the dreaded cheesewheel and make him more threatening upclose
@@segafan2437 I'd say, turn his Q to something similar to Mega Gnar's Q. Match his theme as a rock tho. Just hope Riot rework him already. He is pain to play against.
He's R is great tool for assassination, Unstoppable long dash with 1.5 seconds of uncleanseable hard cc and heavy magic damage that can effect all 5 members of the enemy team
can't wait for this one. I just realized this issue myself a couple months ago when I wanted to find an ap jungler that fit my playstyle. (or more specifically, an ap drain tanking bruiser if one even existed)
Lillia's conqueror riftmaker into tank items could work as an AP drain tanking bruiser, but tbh it takes so long to scale into something that feels remotely powerful on your own. Gwen jg also works and you're naturally pretty tanky even when going full AP and just defensive boots, and tank items like spirit visage, FoN, and randuin's also work on her (but yeah AP bruiser itemization is and has always been somewhat of a mystery).
@@sophiaascart484 yeah that's the exact issue I had with conq/rift lillia. Plus I found her mana to be a real issue if I'm doing any sort of extended sequence w/o blue buff. Haven't tried gwen yet but I'll save up for her!
I’ve found that Lillia can be built in a lot of different ways that can be pretty successful. The classic Conq/Rift build is probably what you’re looking for as a drain tanking bruiser. If mana is your issue, I’ve found that building a Tear into Archangel or a Frozen Heart work just fine for it. A bit more out there build that I’ve had a weird amount of success with is Everfrost into Fimbulwinter. It’s a good pick if your team needs more utility or the enemy has very slippery champs, especially Yasuo since Everfrost ignores windwall. Heck, I’ve even tried Sunfire Lillia, and it’s surprisingly decent. Basically really fun champ, highly recommend.
@@Limrick1029 maybe I'll give her another chance. I did play her a lot on release and loved zooming out of everyone's reach, but it feels a lot harder to reach that point since then
Actually, yes. I do have an AP bruiser in mind. I will keep it short this time, but I don't mind elaborating further if necessary. P- Your next ability cast won't go on cooldown. (24 seconds cooldown) Q- Dash on the targeted direction, leaving behind an area that deals magic damage over time. W- Deals magic damage and stuns all nearby enemies affected by damage over time and converts said DoT into instant damage. E- Becomes untargetable and ignores unit collision for a short duration. R (avaliable from level 1)- Empowers your next ability cast. Q gets extended range and speed, W extends the stun and the conversion from DoT to instant damage won't consume the DoT, E also grants movement speed and ignores terrain collision.
I think technically gwen is considered a skirmisher. When Vars refers to brusiers he's mainly looking at like juggernauts and divers. Then again I do agree that Gwen and Lillia should be included on this list since they included Diana which she's primarily an assassin rather than a diver.
@@NastyBuckos diver are like assassin but actually the difference it's more on the mobility part, diver are one dimensional on everything they have is to go in in a quick period, while assassin have more tempo on their mobility in general.
my experience with an ap bruiser (im a gwen main lol) like I really wish we had better items.. the idea is so interesting and I love playing gwen but damn they are forgotten lol great video as usual!!!
An AP bruiser item that I'd like to see is when you have higher max HP that your target you gain bonus AP that scales with resistances. Mages won't buy those cuz they need armor, MR and HP just to make it viable.
Replying for the algorithm thats the single best way to make an AP bruiser item with respect to the other AP champs rn. Hell making an AP Maw of Malmorbius-like item wouldnt be bad either its base stats would be just as strong as the other ap resistance items but the passive would mostly give defensive stats that only ap bruisers would like. Temporary omnivamp and a at base weak shield that scales kinda hard off the defensive stats is what im thinking. Any inputs?
But then if that item provided meaningful AP once those conditions are met, all mages would build that item cause you get meaningful AP for building defensive stats which is any AP assassin of squishy mage’s dream
Yeah, no. Imagine how that item would affect Katarina, that nowadays goes Sunderer almost every game, with Dd and maw sometimes, that can also make use of demonic embrace. It doesn't sound that fun to face a champ that heals with every E, with 3150+ hp, 250 ad, 100+ ap and 120+ armor/Mr right?
@@innstafr3547 ...But she aint bursting you down in 3 or less seconds unless you were an adc, which is kinda the point of items and builds like these. Its just doing a good job at what that build wants. Its like saying Nashors sucks design wise as AP Xin Zhao loves the shit out of that item. You realize a single item making a truly offmeta* strategy almost or fully viable is Good overall for the game right? Besides at that point the problem is its numbers not the effect itself which means inherently the design is good, you need to make sure the application isn't bad. Which means its actually fine as an item, despite how bad the peak of its brokenness may be to fight against. *the build you described is not meta, at most they get Bork and maybe one of the other 3 you named then its full AP from there. Ive kept an eye on masters+ builds of Kat's for multiple seasons, trust me they value kill power over getting to be a bruiser, they just know when they need an onhit item instead of an ap one for that damage, including the times they need a few seconds more to kill and will buy what they need for that.
It's a dilemma with these bruisers and ap assasins when it comes to itemization. Whatever items ap bruisers have, will be deadlier on ap assasins. I mean we witnessed ad assasins use bruiser items for a while before it got nerfed heavily. Whats to say a scenario like that won't happen to the ap bruisers and ap assasins?
It wouldn't really be fair tho I mean if you want to go full letha one shot renekton u can even if his not an assassin why because one of the main mechanics of the game is that u need to find the best build for your champion so you need to be able to try everything, locking like 10-15 item just because you badly designed ur game at the origin isn't the solution
The problem with them is the fact they’re AP. AD Brusiers need HP/Def and Damage but Marksmen need AS/ Crit and Damage, thus allowing for two separate item pools. What does an AP Bruiser want? HP/CDR and AP, the exact same thing other mages want. You can try making AP bruiser items not give mana, but even then, mages would still happily give up mana for more damage and survivability. When the only true APB is Morde and maybe Gwen, there aren’t enough AP bruisers in the game to find out what type of stat combinations would work in their favor, but not general mages.
I think damage reduction based on HP and on what range you're fighting the enemy would be cool, like no mage would be dumb enough to jump into the battlefield and get cc chained to death so only actual AP bruiser who can survive like Mordekaiser can build them
Swain is pretty much a bruiser, since he is classified as battle mage, but he lacks the burst damage most bruisers have, and his consistent damage even got nerfed after the mini rework.
@@martingarm2872 Dude, they massively reduced his damage, his burst is lower now than it was before the rework. His ult ap ratio got nerfed, pull doesnt do damage and iirc his q also got it's damage nerfed.
The fix for the ap bruiser exclusive item being broken on normal mages just give them a condition if they're used by ranged champions half their effects or something and make their passive something that would be effective on ap bruiser like staying in combat or taking damage
For me AP bruiser items should have a similar case like DE where the burn is stronger for melee users than ranged users since most AP bruisers are melee. further classifying them from mage and an AP bruiser As there are only a few AP bruisers out there and most of them have to force buy some standard mage items because there isnt much options overall for their class. Having Ap items that are for melee champs only could be of help so that melee ap scalers are the only ones that could use them similar to how the old both hydras was only for melee champions
Gwen yea. Fiddlesticks? wtf no. Fiddlesticks doesn't go for long fights. He relies on frontloaded burst damage nukes, building full pen and ap. I've seen some go tank fiddlesticks, but that seems more like a meme than an alternative playstyle.
Gwen: am i a joke to you or am i a true damage bruiser like camille ? Apart from that lil bug great vid as always keep it up i'm always glad to watch them 👍
Riftmaker's effect is probably the best way to go about this. giving stacks to ap bruisers of omnivamp or other useful stats over extended fights , like how conqueror rune works (not now that half champions can fully stack it in 2 seconds) can go a long way. and it won't make burst champions busted as it forces those extended interractions.
I think that for make a good ap bruiser like mordekaiser, we would need to make all mages have a passive like pyke (his passive which doesn't allow him to scale from health items like warmog), so that even if a mage build an ap black cleaver, the health wouldn't scale, but this would be absurd for riot to do just so they can make new ap melee champions that aren't ad
u forgor about gwen and I suppose Lilia is fitting in this catergory since she isn't anything else and since she is basically an ap darius but with less health and more mobile
Well there is my point Make ap bruisers have high magic base dmg Make some ap bruisers that gives hp/resistances and a small amount of ap + some magic pen Make mages have less base dmg and more ap scaling so they won't be able to use the news ap bruisers items And finally nerf veigar cuz he will be the only one able to abuse ap bruisers items
Honestly, I do think AP bruiser items could take a lot of inspiration from AD bruiser items, you just have to put in the same restrictions. GA is a very low damage item, and we all already know Zhonya’s gimps a mage’s damage if built 2nd. A low amount of AP on an AP GA could make it a good AP bruiser item. Further, Death’s Dance and Sterak’s Gage all have a major penalty on ranged champs compared to melee champs, that’s a big reason why not many marksmen go DD, not because they need crit or attack speed more, but because the effect is immensely weaker on them.
an AP GA would make mages even more infuriating than they are already. Even if it granted like 40 AP a lategame mage could build it and still have like 800 AP and still oneshot. Veigar would be a nightmare even moreso than it already is.
@@TaconIStenen You'd have enough to be a major threat to anything not packing a significant amount of MR. That item, Zhonya's, DCap, Horizon, and Void Staff would be both awful to kill and high damage.
Out of curiosity have you ever considered a topic in the future on the differneces between on-hit vs Crit vs lethality for adc’s and certain fighter classes? It’s a topic I had to learn latter on playing League and I’ve seldom seen anyone tackle those classifications. Much like how I haven’t seen anyone go into full AP vs magic pen builds and which is appropriate when
corki the brusier. it would also be really bad as it has to be that there abilities scale off ad and dose magic dmg like corki not the ad be converted into ap as ad is more expensive than ap so gives less per item
What about Volibear? True he isn't strictly AP Bruiser, but he has pretty much the same amount of AP and AD scalling. A hybrid bruiser so to say. I played AP Volibear in the botlane with Darius as a support (Off meta much) and I was still doing decently in the team fight as a front line bruiser with
So I've always had a theory about item abuse relative to classes: passive class scaling from stats. For instance tank items are too strong on akali, assasins should have a 90% scaling ratio on Armor and MR while maybe tanks get 110% making it way easier to balance the items to a specific class without completely locking them off. Apply that same concept to AP bruisers, what if they had a 110% Resitance scaling. Then you could release a fairly weak defensive mage item or two that are solidly mediocre at best, but when placed on a champ with the correct scaling ratios becomes pretty strong?
in fact a lot of champs that were initially designed as tanky juggernauts became more glass cannon in a bid for viability, Gragas was once a tanky ward-placing cinderhulk who would engage fights and last a while as a disruptor, now he either builds AP predator jungle or full support on occasion with yasuo and blows the fuck up whenever he engages or doesn't get to 100-0 someone from brush. Galio had a brief stint with Full AP builds(not the overtuned PBE disaster, he just built more AP for a while years ago), and Zac was even reverted to encourage people to build demonic embrace as we stray further and further from the S7 worlds deathball tank meta. With the durability update fast approaching maybe we might even see a resurgence of some bruiser builds but with the damage creep since the item rework, likely not.
I think the best thing to do for AP bruisers is to make items that can shift their damage from the front to back. Items like Riftmaker and Embrace come to mind, items that let you be stronger later in a fight. Nashor's tooth also fits here. It's stat profile also makes it not the best at up front combat. Lich Bane also sort of fits but it's ability to be preped means that it's more used as burst tool rather than an extended fighting tool. Basically they need to make attack speed more appealing to AP champs for a bruiser identity to be better than a burst one
This Vid is so wrong, Wdym AP items can be built by everyone??, If an Akali builds Liandry and Demonic Embrace they will become more tanky and dps reliant champion than a burst assassin, It's literally the same with AD, If a Yi builds bruiser they will become more tanky but deal less damage but if they build crit they will deal more damage but be less tanky, If you build Luden Echo on Morde his playstyle will become more of an assassin bc Luden gives more damage than Riftmaker but gives less defensive stats but that doesn't mean he's equal to Lux in damage, You can't say Lux is op bc she can build all the items like you said, AP Champs have restrictions too, Burst champs can't build sustain dmg bc they will deal less damage and probably will never utilize the sustain it gives, DPS champs also can't build burst bc their kit relies on spamming and if you build burst on them they will only deal damage on the first the falls off or probably dies in the first second due to the fact that burst items gives no sustain or defense(That's like saying Kayle can run Night Harvester as good as Akali) and It's not just AP that matters in mages AH is good for battle mages since they rely on DPS, If an Ahri builds AH it can be hard to burst someone bc you're trading things like MPen, Item passives exists too, A Burst can use Luden and Night Harvester better than DPS, A DPS can use Riftmaker and Liandry better than Burst, Yes Bruiser can build Burst but they aren't as tanky as before that's the same with Assassins building Bruiser
Im curious to see where my main Sylas stands, as he is much more a hybrid of bruiser/skirmisher and assassin. I almost feel like they added the healing to his kit to supplement the trash ap bruiser items we have, so since he doesn’t really need an item for healing, everfrost became such a perfect item for him simply because of it’s utility and cdr. To this day he is still my favorite league champ for sure.
I will always standby that if Riot were to ever do a League of Legends 2 or other kind of extreme megapatch that overhauled things more than all preseasons combined, they should remove the concept of Physical & Magic Damage. I would even remove Armor & Magic Resist, let everything just be true damage. This would make building a team comp much more forgiving since you could focus on actual synergy between champions instead of trying to balance out damage types. Imagine if you're playing Top & the rest of your team comp is Kha'Zix/Akshan/Jhin/Pyke. Now you absolutely NEED to play someone that can both frontline & do a lot of Magic Damage, but ofc the enemy team banned both Singed & Tahm Kench, & the enemy top is playing Sylas who usually wins against Cho'Gath, Mordekaiser, Rumble, & ESPECIALLY Malphite, so what's left? Lillia? Gwen? AP Volibear? TBF that last 1 COOOULD be worth, but that's a massive rut to be in assuming you're not a 1-trick & they somehow didn't ban it
I miss Rod of Ages + Nashors conqueror diana lol. The healing with ravenous hunter and taste of blood was insane. Was the best at taking towers while splitpushing while being great at teamfights and can even duel. Had very little weaknesses
I miss when gragas's abilities scaled off of defensive stats tbh, when his passive scaled with health and his w scaling with his armor and magic resist and allowed him to be more about durability and cc while still having decent damage that wasn't broken. Now it feels like you can only play him full ap or you're trolling.
My idea for an AP bruiser is actually taken from Karma's tether - multi powered abilities. Q could be a slow but if the target remains close to the caster, they take damage once the slow times out. Basically, design the first part of their abilities to be some kind of CC or sustain tool and then give them damage if a condition while using those abilities is met.
They can make items specific for AP bruisers like: Item: Pure Blood Wine (Unique: Grant Drunken Bloodlust if you have at least 850 bonus health. Unique: Druken Bloodlust: Increase current Ability Power by 50% and grant 18% bonus Omnivamp). Loose idea, but might work.
I think to make up for the lack of itemization AP bruisers need to have well designed abilities that take the poor item choices into account. Mordekaiser sits really pretty with mostly AP+Health items like rift maker or embrace, and morellonomicon. I've been playing him a lot and I'm here to tell you his biggest weakness as a juggernaut is a lack of resistances. Due to is lack of resistances you need to be very careful when your W is down or else a fed enemy talon will oneshot you from 70% health because your mid-laner is a monkey named Kayle.
This video taught me that turrets deal physical damage. I had legit no idea. This explains why that Malphite basically set up shop and lived under our turrets the other day.
I've only been playing League for a few months but years ago I played a MOBA called Smite. In Smite they had items that were locked from certain characters that could abuse or weren't meant to use them. I think this would be a good thing for class specific items to be implemented and balanced around certain characters instead of punishing everyone who can use it. Shieldbow (before this attack on healing) for example should've been locked off to Marksman only and then they implement something different for people like Yas/Yone/Irelia etc. I also understand though that the ability to abuse and use all kinds of items is what makes League kind of unique.
As to items, there is the cosmic drive route - lock the full potential of an iten behind a stat requirement, only defensive this time. Say, item X gives you 60 ap, but if you have over 3000 health, it ramps up to 100.
I can see a champ like Ornn, who interacts with itemization, and converts AD from items into ap. He would obviously have to be tuned like mordekaiser, since ad items tend to give less stats than ap items, but I can really see it working like a more complex corki passive.
That is why champions like Mordekaiser take the only real ap bruiser item (riftmaker) and maybe one or two mage items (including demonic embrace) and then goes tank items (thornmail, spirit visage, he also usually builds plated steelcaps).
I think the best options for designing an ap bruiser would be either: 1. Have autos that scale from ap and balance that with lower ability damage aswell as some sustain focused abilities 2. Have your abilities scale from AD but they deal AP damage, kinda like warwick but less hybrid. This would be far easier to balance since it wont screw with items
Tbh I've even gone as far to build Zhonya's on my ADC a couple times, and it has worked. Some games you just get deleted out of the fight and your peel either doesn't exist or isn't good enough. There was one game a Zed would just beeline for me and my peel would totally ignore him, so he'd kill me way before I could do much in a teamfight. So i sold one of my adc items and bought a stopwatch. It worked. It worked amazingly well. The Zed didnt even seem to know what to do, and I was in stasis long enough for my team to turn on him. So i built it into a full Zhonya and it worked. I've done it a couple more times since then as well. It's rare. It's maybe only solo blind/draft picks too cos in a ranked game, your peel should be peeling, but it has worked.
With the future release of Bel'veth, more champions whose abilities scale more with stats beyond raw AD or AP seem to be coming at the forefront, and this gives me an idea about what kind of ap bruiser could exist in the game. What this AP bruiser type would need is to favour a stat that is different to the one usual battle mages would need, either through kit synergies or extra scaling. One good example would be AS scaling a la Yasuo or Yone in one of their abilities, to make them consistently spam them in the middle of a fight while staying close to their targets. It is not enough that they stay in close range, they have to favour a playstyle that differentiates them from their ranged counterparts. Itemization cannot come first, because there is no specific direction in which they could go. There can't be a Steraks for AP Bruisers if we do not fully know yet how AP bruisers are supposed to look like in the first place. Some ramping up effects are a good place to start, and Riftmaker and Demonic Embrace already go in that direction, but what else would they need would have to come from having a pool of AP Bruisers in the game first..
The only manaless Ap bruiser item is Riftmaker. In order to make AP bruisers more viable give them another item choice. The item I chose to rework is night harvester currently it's just Rocketbelt without Pen. The stats will stay the same it gives 90 ap and 300 hp. The passive I want to change completely. It will have an active called "The harvest", a temporary speed, a shield based on AP, and a small AP, boost for 5 seconds. After "The harvest" is complete it will heal you for a percentage of the damage dealt during the harvest. I think this would be good for AP champs that want to go in for more than 5 seconds. I don't want the damage on it to be the primary focus but rather it gives an eclipse-sized shield and a small ms boost to go in and deal as much damage as you can then heal off harvesting the enemy souls. The heal is going to be the main focus but the caveat is that you can't use it for instant sustain. I would see this item on champs like Elise, Gragas, and rumble who are frontloaded but when their CDS are back up they can go in once more.
I think the key thing to do is give ap bruisers an item that boosts some stats the closer you are from enemy champions (and make it unviable for long ranged mages)
Depends on how you build him, but I'm particular to AP Bruiser Volibear myself. Going PtA, rushing Nashor's Tooth, then building Riftmaker is a fun time for me. That damage isn't frontloaded as he needs to stack up his passive to really get the damage pumping, but going AP also allows him to have more survivability/damage with his E.
I liked playing Soraka as an AP bruiser, back when Starfall was an aoe around her. AP + spirit visage + situational tank items meant tough enough to stick in the fight. And though Starfall's AP ratio was a bit low, the stacking MR debuff meant escalating damage. So: tough, some damage, which was escalating / back-loaded. Definition of bruiser. 🙂
I think there are plenty of tools out there to design AP bruisers without allowing them to just build full AP: backloaded damage. This could be implemented through a stacking system, like Vel'Koz or Varus, or perhaps a delayed mark like Evelynn or Zed. Give them the high damage when they pop the stacks / mark, and maybe depending on how they pop it they can do either flat damage or %hp damage. But by locking the damage behind these systems (and giving them low target access), you would force them to go off-tank to be able to survive long enough to actually do the damage, and their full damage build would be relegated to meme tier, like full lethality Yorick.
I do have an Idea for Ap bruiser. The main concept is that to prevent him to oneshoot you because he builds Ap, his damage scales are based in how well he can manage his spells. So instead of having a normal Ap ration like: 90%Ability power, he wold Have X(Where X is the number of times he pleased the condition)%ability power. So the dinamic is that he would need time to have his numbers high, that's why he would need to build durability. Let's name him: Project Ap Passive: Sand Hourglass Project Ap have a Hourglass above him with two poles:Foward and Backward, those poles are visible to the enemies as well. Every third ability will make the Hourglass drop(after 0,25 seconds), doing AoE damage and creating an effect based in wich pole the hourglass was. If the Hourglass was in the Forward Pole, Project Ap, and his allies inside the area affected, will gain Move speed. Project Ap will reduce his spells remaining cd by 25% per enemy affected. If the Hourglass was in the Forward Pole, enemies affected will receive slow and project Ap will receive a Shield, those effects scales per enemy affected. Second Passive: Traveling to the infinity. Project Ap spells scales are based on his Hourglass, each drop that successfully affect at least one enemy champion in the last 5 seconds gives him 10% bonus in his basic spells scale's numbers.(Each drop can only give him 10% ) Basic Spell number 1: No Cost Active: Turns the Hourglass in the Foward pole when casted. Project Ap buffs his next 3 autos to be AoE, doing damage in a cone and granting him move speed per each enemy hit. Passive: While armed, everytime he hits someone with his sword, he reduces his spells remaing cd in one second.(0.5 if not a enemy champion) Basic Spell Number 2: 50/55/60/70 Mana Active: Turns the Hourglas to the Backwards pole when casted. Project Ap will create a circular area, after 0.25 seconds, that follows him while activated, enemies inside the are when activated will receive a slow and damage. When Project Ap damages an enemy champion inside the area he will receive a shield based in how much damage he delt to them. Project Ap can cancel the spell to damage everyone inside and gain move speed and slow resistence based in how many people where there when he closed the area. Basic Spell Number 3: 70/75/80/85/90 Mana If activated in close range, Project Ap will attack everyone in his front leaving a temporal copy that will do the same after 0.25 seconds, both attacks do damage, but the second one does more. He will gain a shield based in how many targets hit by both activations. If casted on long range, Project Ap will throw his sword to the target area that will apply damage and slow around the the area when it lands. If he hit at least one person, he can re-cast to teleport to the sword after 0.25 seconds, to do the same damage again, and refund his basic spells cd per enemy affect by it. If he Project Ap doesn't go near the sword, it will stay there for some time making Project Ap disarmed, while disarmed he only does 60% of his the total damage. Ultimate Marks a big area that transforms itself in a giant sandstorm after some time. Enemies inside the area the moment that the storm is formed will have their vision reduced. Enemies receive damage while inside the storm. Project Ap can prolong the storm duration by affecting people with his Hourglass.
Based on what you said, I think its "obvious" how one would need to go around building an ap bruiser Acknowledging the fact that AP itemization doesnt support a bruiser playstyle and that solving that problem with items would create more problems(although I think Crystaline reflector from Wild rift is a tasteful and successful attempt) its easy to see that the resilience that a bruiser inherently needs has to come from the kit itself This would also solve the problem of allowing the bruiser champion scaling of ap to frontload its abilities for damage, as their primary purpose would be optimizing your mitigation, not your damage I would imagine something thats a lot akin to how Taric's passive works, making subsequent autoattacks after ability casts have increased damage and massive ap scaling, making it so you have to space out ability usage for optimal damage. You can solve the same problems AD bruisers can solve with items with the champions kit instead, knowing the items will mainly only scale player AP and HP Something like: After ability cast, your next 3 autoattacks deal x(+30/30/50% AP)bonus damage, the last of these empowered attacks deals damage in a small area around the target(built in hydra as you cant buy it) Abilites could deal less damage but apply a mark to your enemies, consuming the mark on a champion with your autoattacks would make it have additional effects.(basically make shyvana E into a champion lol) just some *very* haphazardly thrown together idea would be Q - The ability you will spam on around 5 sec cd come lategame Damages a short cone(or other geometric shape of preference) shaped area and marking enemies hit. Triggering a mark on an enemy hit consumes the mark from all enemies in a range, shielding you(scaling from hp and ap) for each mark consumed. Consuming the mark on a champion has a higher base value, additional marks after the first triggered shield for less (the usual stuff) W- Mandatory damage aura (kek) Generates a damaging aura around you for about 6 seconds(or whats the standard damage aura length nowdays?). Landing your 3rd passive attack on an enemy inside the aura latches a tether to them stealing a portion of their resistances and movespeed, increasing to full effect over x seconds, after which the tether triggers once more before dissipating, shredding enemy defenses and increasing your own for another y seconds (weak trundle ult without damage portion) E - Weird ability for "skill expression" Throw out a long range mid-speed *blob* or *thing* (no visuals ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) That deals damage and slows enemies hit, marking champions. Passive empowered attacks(not just the 3rd) gain increased range and magical vamp against marked champions and *prime* the mark. Landing the 3rd of your empowered attacks after casting the ability detonates all marks, further damaging, slowing enemies and stunning them if their mark was *primed* (Ekko Q+E lovechild) For ult there is only really 2 options, big teamfight scary AOE CC or a big bag of stats, self-steroid that will make ppl cry "200 years" I prefer the latter ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) R- Unfair self buff that makes ppl actively lose LP if they engage in a fight with you if you have it on(jk) Get armor and magic resist based on your AP, because unlike jax, you have a real weapon and you only need to build 1 stat to do this Furthermore, while you have the buff ongoing, gain increased tenacity while you have your passive up and for each 3rd passive attack triggered over the duration of the ultimate, extend the duration and increase the armor and magic resist bonus provided during the buff (Basically the last thing to solve from itemization was defensive stats so ofc it had to be forced in somewhere and sprinkled some tenacity on top because that makes the ability sound more unique than it is, which is still not a lot) So yeah, i dont have 200 years of experience, i didnt even spend 20 collective minutes on this save for writing it down, the above kit would have to be number tuned unlike any other kit in league, having no ap scaling or 10-30% scaling on base abilities, budgeting all that into the passive, knowing ppl will prob buy mainly spellblade effects and the like anyway to artifically put in the scaling And i didnt even go into cooldowns and the like, however, if you give a low enough base attackspeed, you can make cooldowns really low and the 3 autoattacks will artificially create a cooldown between abilities anyway
To add, ap bruiser itemization suffers from same issues ad bruisers had before the items rework. There were simply not enough items for a full build, and after getting 3 slots you just went tank. Cleaver/trinity-steraks-dd+hydra if you lack waveclear, you’re out of items, now you go tank or buy ga. Same for ap bruisers, it’s mythic+rylais+de, now you just go tank, maybe get a grevious or an hourglass. Gwen was supposed to be an ap bruiser btw.
I feel like a massive missing part of this are effects that add magic damage/ap scaling to auto attacks. Champs like kayle, morde, and gwen(and nashors tooth) break the idea of ap not being used for auto attacks. Sure the damage comes from an ability but it serves to make ap function like ad for those champs.
If it where up to me, I would make the main damage ability of the ap bruiser, have 30% ap scaleing, and between 2% to 5% hp scaleing, this would make the champ build items with both ap and hp, and give him/her the option to go tank items, and a passive that deals damage like a sunfire aegis, that cakes with ap and hp. And I would give him/her a team fight oriented ult.
Brusier Diana. I love the reducing of one shots which means bruiser Lady Di is more in the mix. And again I will point out- Guinsu's rage blade causes a double cleave. When the double proc of rage blade kicks in it is Hit, cleave, hit cleave. Combine this with Nashor's, Riftmaker, and Conquerer it makes for (on paper) a very fighty ap champ that lives for the extended fight. You can even choose tanky runes by going tear/archangles for more healing and cdr meaning more up time on your shields up time.
Also- the introduction of MELEE only effects (fumblewinter as an example) I would think could be the best way. The code for AP items would take in effect if a champ is melee or ranged. AP bruiser items would less effective on ranged champs. Build that distinction into them like Riot does with other items.
My idea on how to make AP bruisers a thing would be to give them said AP+defense stat items, but lock them on AP Melee champions or something (similar to how they locked Runaan's to ranged champions and the old Tiamat items to melee ones).
The best way to deal with the AP bruiser problem is to have champs have base AP increasing similar to AD. For example they could then give bruiser items scaling off of base AP, and other mage items scale off of bonus AP. That way xerath wouldn’t get great mileage out of the AP bruiser items, but a dedicated AP bruiser would be happy using them. Current example being Sterak’s Gage. Only gives AD scaling from base AD which assassins don’t have much of, so assassins don’t itemize it anywhere near as much as an AD bruiser
Answers to your question: 1) Make a hybrid bruiser like the 2nd iteration of Morde (yes Ik that went terribly wrong but how come Yone's 1/3 of dmg is magic and true hmm?) 2) Some kind of Ap scaling passive like vlad where the more hp/ap he builds, the more ap/hp he gets so that he may go with underwhelming items but he still has the stats to back it up.
Here’s the thing. Every AP melee champ that functions as a bruiser currently in the game has one of two things, or sometimes both: an auto attack AP ratio scalar (Diana, Mordekaiser, Gwen for example), and/or a consistent DoT effect + a low cooldown spell (Lillia, Singed, Shyvanna, Mordekaiser for example). Why do these exist? Well, the first one exists for a simple reason. It exists to incentivize building Nashor’s tooth. Out of those three champs, only mordekaiser doesn’t have nashor’s as a core item, but as a situational instead. The other one is much more simple. It’s given to champs in order to keep their pressure up. Lillia was always an AP bruiser, even with her full AP builds because she fits the role of a bruiser. High damage, high survivability, very short ranged. However, she is unique in that her survivability comes from speed, not tankiness. Recently though, a build for her that has always existed has become much more popular: bruiser Lillia. Riftmaker, Demonic Embrace, tank items, maybe a deathcap somewhere. This build became super popular, because it fit way more with Lillia’s playstyle. You will see on every AP bruiser one of the two things I mentioned above, simply because that’s the only possible way to design an AP bruiser. They need consistent damage. And you can’t get consistent damage out of abilities. Therefore, they need consistent damage effects and auto attack scalers. Also, in most cases, AP bruiser is synonymous with AoE. They have the advantage of making it so that if your team clumps up, everyone gets fucked. I honestly wish they would make another AP bruiser item cause currently the only two AP bruiser items in the game are Riftmaker and Demonic Embrace.
As a thought for designing AP bruiser items, what about tying their offensive stats to the champion's defensive stats? For an example, an item the grants AP based on either total health or on bonus health. These would be suboptimal on most AP mages and assassins as they'd have to divert funds from their big damage items into stats they don't have in order to make up the gap in damage the item would give on a bruiser.
As someone who mains akali I can say she is somewhat of a AP bruiser, as her q and passive make her do very high amounts of sustanded damge. The only real sorce of burst in her kit (other then generally having very high Base damage and scalling) is her E having 450 + 120ap damage. The twighlight shrowd lets her stay engaged with the enemy for the time needed to lanch severy attacks realistically, even if in pratice it is very unrelable. Her ult has low damage for the first strike, mostly being a gap closer, but the second attack dos a max of 600+90ap exitute damge but has a delay of 2.5 seconds, backloading it. This means it is nearly always the best idea to go conquer, and choses between the 2 ap bruserish mithics, hextec and rift. She can just be a ad bruser or a tank at the same level as the meta build due to good hybrid ratios and base numbers, but those are uncommon builds even if they are more relable due to much lower burst. That being said, with the lack of good iteams beond mithics that give any health or restanse and ap make it so she can't fix her problems staying in the fight well truely being ap.
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you forgot about gwen
@@fsdggsdf I was about to say that
You also forgot Alistar and morgana as an ap bruser, similarly they can both be played with everfrost and fimblewinter to play as a hyper ap tank that can peel
What about gnar?
“I don’t wanna run into 4000 hp Veigar who still oneshots me”
Late game full tank Veigar: Allow me to introduce myself
min 40 4000 hp and 200 armor with 1.6 k ap
@@nsreturn1365 with a banshees. 🤢🤮
I mean Veigars last 2 items are mostly full tank items.
He only needs Everfrost Rabadons and Void Staff and then he mostly takes items like Anathema's Chains, Gargoyle Stoneplate, Force of Nature and Dead Man's Plate.
My favorite mid lane build to play.
But the thing is tank veigar will never work in the early and midgame you would have to build full ap then once you get enough ap you sell your items and build tank
I feel like talking about Gwen would have been important, since she is the incarnation of AP Dps with her Q and E. She also builds lots of the AP Bruiser Items, making her very viable for this list.
I was wondering why Gwen wasn't on this list
And she has inbuilt lifesteal like most bruisers too. It is not that only bruisers have it, but it is an iportant stat for them. I actually really like gwen and I would say... Maybe she is the only bruiser(like [if not exactly]) champ I play if I would have to answer quickly.
Didn’t riot market Gwen as a AP bruiser when she was getting teased
I'm pretty sure Gwen is an AP skirmisher and not a bruiser since she has consistently high mobility and persistent damage from her Thousand Cuts. She is a Skirmisher
@@The_White skirmisher and bruiser are the same
No AP bruiser iteams (mostly). Also the way their sustained damage comes across: an AD bruiser (like Darius) has decent base tankyness, self-protection (Q self-heal), but has good sustained damage, all of his abilities apply his DoT, but he can also auto attack. Comparatively, a Rumble's damage comes almost entirely from abilites. Many AP bruisers have an artificial auto attack buff, Rumble has overheat, Mordekaiser's autos apply the passive AoE burn, but really only Gwen's autos deal enough sustained damage to fight against an AD bruiser. (A Rumble would never stat check a Darius if they are both in auto range)
This about sums it up - The lack of designed AP bruiser items. The champion's kit has to make up for the lack of items with essentially its own items. That can consume power budget easily.
@@doodlegarbage6769 I mean, the only two ap bruisers that I can see being reguraly usefull in the meta wich are Morde and Rumble get most of the "magic yet tanky" stats from their abilities(mostly their shields and natural magic pen) when they build Riftmaker if that, then demonic embrace and after that they just go full tank or full mage.
Paladins enjoyer spotted, opinion tolerated
maybe diana can win against gwen in aa idk
i would say, swain gwen and vlad are bruisers too!! like vlad has to combo and has no mobillity etc
Gragas doesn’t even feel much like a bruiser, with his kit so centered around denial and disruption, he’s more like a tank
True
yup I was mildly disappointed when I started playing him, expecting a bruiser. Every guide plays him more like an assassin and his kit is, like you said, more tank-like
Hes kinda split between a tank and an assassin i'd say
That's because he's technically not an AP bruiser, people just used to call him that because the legacy class system classified him as a fighter/mage. In reality, Gragas is just a Vanguard, that being a type of tank. But in his case, building AP is actually reasonable because of his good scaling.
I see most people building everfrost and playing him like a mage
A bruiser item that's gotten too big for it's britches recently and moved outside of it's intended role is deaths dance. You can build it on any ad champ and it'll work.
it sucks on ranged champs
@@squidproquo4803 jhin be like
@@squidproquo4803 samira,akshan,vayne,quinn build it
@@squidproquo4803 I disagree.
@@squidproquo4803 Not true
When you build Renekton as AP does he also become an AP bruiser cuz R AP scaling? WIZARD LIZARD
ha ha, no shut up this isnt about you man, let the ap bruisers have some fun
jk all love
Common mage: But you don't know how to shoot that thing.
Renekton: Yes, but it still hits.
*Proceeds to bonk with an unnecesarily big staff*
This is the true way to play league. I'll let you in on a secret..... Double burn AP yorick.
@@RapTapTap69 please don't, at least in my games
Wouldn’t Gwen also be an ap bruiser of sorts?
It's sort of interchangeable, but Gwen/ Sylas seem more of Fiora/Riven category than pure bruiser
The closest thing we have to an AP bruiser item is...Nashor's Tooth. Most mages don't want it.
The fact that Riftmaker has backloaded damage means that Riot knows that AP bruisers need something that most mages don't, I'm just not sure if it's enough.
Their items are just horrible. There has never been a time where AP bruiser items (do we even have those? lmao) have been better than AD bruiser items.
Mythics: Riftmaker and Protobelt
Riftmaker is just a worse Goredrinker, while Protobelt is too squishy and doesn't provide what AP bruisers want. Magic pen? Why?
AD Bruisers have 4 mythics, which all at least have their own use.
We don't have anything comparable to Death's Dance, Maw, Black Cleaver, or in the past, Steraks. We've got Rylai's for AP, HP, and a slow. We've got Demonic for AP, HP, and a burn... then there's Hourglass that is balanced around mages, since a stasis is much stronger on a squishy target. I don't want to stasis in the middle of the fight and lose my Conq stacks, passive stacks (as Morde), or have the enemy have time to reposition and get into kiting range. Give me something like DD or Maw that let you KEEP fighting while becoming durable.
Also full builds generally only hit 15 - 25 Haste, while AD bruisers hit 70+ without even trying to itemize for it.
all facts
But all items that are good on ap bruisers, will be absolutely broken on any mage.
#crown of broken bullshit, imagine being able to face tank an entire rengar combo / talon and after proceed to kill him while taking onky 200 damge.
I'd argue thay Riftmaker is stronger than Goredrinker
It feels like ap bruisers don't have build options though. Riftmaker, get one ap bruiser item, maybe Zhonyas and then only tank items
I always thought AP Skirmishers were more like AP Bruisers as well rather than Slayers. People like Gwen, Lillia, Diana and Elise.
I thought that too
i would say, swain gwen and vlad are bruisers too!! like vlad has to combo and has no mobillity etc
@@vsauce1066 Vlad plays more like a burst mage
@@mozzy2968 pre-rework Vlad was kinda battle-mage/ap Bruiser. The Empower Q just push him toward burst mage
Bruisers are supposed to be slow but tanky, Gwen Lillia Diana Elise etc. are not slow…
forgot about gwen too she was supposed to be a ap bruiser when they wanted to release her
And then she became a skirmisher.
gwen's got a ton of mobility that bruisers inherently lack in her 4 second cd dash on E
@ً Is Aatrox counted as a skirmisher or a bruiser? I guess the line to me isn't clear.
@ً So the difference is reliable combat mobility, typically tied to hurting an enemy? Gwen's dash gets massively reduced cooldown upon auto attacking an enemy and she can fairly effectively chase down most people in the game. Seems like a skirmisher to me
@ً I was under the assumption that it was a one or the other type deal, not both. That's why he separated them in the video no?
Basically every AP item (with some exceptions) are made for shorter fights, there are only "extended fight" mythics for AP: Riftmaker and Liandry's, even then only one of them provides meaninful defense, and it's just because it's the only AP item that gives AP people sustain.
Another point is, as i've said: Meaninful defense
AP Defensive items are Crown, Banshee, Zhonya's.... and they all last for what? a few seconds or one hit.
Why come AP champions get only Riftmemer for Sustain while AD bruisers have Jax's real weapon (that's sunderer btw), Anti-armor cleaver, Eclipse, Viegoblade, R.Hydra? AD champions also have stuff like Maw of Malmorbius and Balance's Dance, Mage's end and Zilean's Angel? Gwen doesn't have any item that gives her defense over longer fights, so she is forced to take an absolutely stupidly designed W to make up for it, Mordekaiser at least is a juggernaut and can reliably tank a little bit more because the juggernaut class has a big statline.
Allow me to remind you: Acording to the LoL fandom wiki, the only AP divers are Diana and Elise, and despite the fact that they have a "dive'em" playstyle, they play it more like assassins.
We just need an item like DD, Cleaver that allows AP champions to "ramp up" during longer fights.
The reason is that regular mages would be absolutely busted with AP bruiser items. Imagine a malzahar or teemo with an AP deaths dance. They'd never die because they get takedowns just by existing. I'm not sure what the solution is and I don't think riot is either. You give mages a slightly tanky item and everyone who is squishy will build it and run rampant. Just look at hourglass
For the cleaver side of arguments, most mages don't wanna stay in fights if they don't have to. If I just slept someone on Zoe, then I wanna paddleball then run before they can run me down while my damage is on cooldown. I don't wanna be trading autos while waiting for cooldowns to make the most out of an item. It would also be hell to balance since liandrys, demonic,Teemo/singed poison, malz aids keep you in combat so the item would be constantly at full stacks
Again I'm not a game dev but I do play a lot of mages and bruisers so I have a bit of experience with both types of items
Funny enough, Morde doesn't have a big statline for juggernauts. His base HP is average for melees and his base armor is one of the lowest of all juggernauts and even most melee champs.
"Balance's Dance" LMAO
Death's Dance is genuinely an insane item tho
Something like black cleaver ap already exist its demonic embrace
@@baptistecochennec5956 Demonic Embrace doesn't do anything against Magic Resist.
I might be wrong somewhere, but isn't also Gwen an AP bruiser?
She builds survivability AP items - sometimes even tank ones - and is melee?
Was thinking the same. Maybe she's missing because of her mobility which makes her a bit assassin like
@@fis001r nah there is no way he classified her as assassin , i think he simply missed her (just like galio)
@@fis001r she IS designed to be a ap bruiser
Shes a skirmisher
@@volcanicviper5984 Sylas is also a skirmisher and I'd argue that he's more mobile, bursty, and squishier than she is (when Rumble, Singed, and Gragas are even less bruiser-like). Gwen thrives in extended combat, has decent durability, and has backloaded damage. I think it has to be a miss like the enhanced abilities video with Karma.
Surprised that Lillia wasn't in this category, considering that she always goes for more healthy and ap itens in top and even jungle. She can use ludens and more squishy itemazation, but that's niche, just like crit garen and such.
Lillia is actually an interesting way to give AP champions damage that is back loaded.
She is more hit and run skirmisher than a bruiser
I don't know why people default to Liandry's tbh. Riftmaker, Demonic Embrace, Cosmic Drive is insane on her. 3000 HP with 600 movement speed in combat while healing indefinitely from passive and Riftmaker Omnivamp is insane.
It's because Lillia has a lot of burst and mobility, and not a lot of innate defense in her kit other than mobility. Sure she has a small amount of healing off her passive but it's not a whole lot.
Some of them are less bruiser-like now. Mordekaiser is a "juggernaut". Meta around Grag shifts from bruiser to tank a lot. And the others can flex into bruisers but are more like assassins (looking at you Sylas and Diana). I think the main issue is itemization. There are mage items that are glass cannon or provide too much safety. It can be seen with tanks as there are so limited "meta" AR/MR items. As an a Pan, Gnar, who flexes, I think they need to bring the other roles to par with AD itemization (despite a couple gripes with that category)
wdym mordekaiser is a "juggernaut"
why add the quotes
@@Tlafsiy its just riots term for a tank-brusier. They are suppose to be an aggressive, oppressive tank. So, darius, garen, skarner, yorick, aatrox, etc. This differents from fiora, cam, jax, pantheon, etc. These are definitely squisher (and so are bruisers or duelists).
That term indicates how long you have been playing the game. It was an large old update to like 5 champs at a time.
Juggernaut is literally a subcategory of bruiser
@@baptistecochennec5956 might as well be its own thing. There is enough of a differentiation. Otherwise assasins who build some tank or duelists, the list goes on, could be considered a bruiser.
Well If aatrox q is already used as an example: to limit the oneshot potential for ap bruisers give them abilities that need to be used multiple times before giving the full Effect. Similar to aatrox q or old mordekaisers. And to give them something to do between the activation e.g. give them ap scaling AA after landen the first hit
I was wondering about that as well. They could also do something like darius, where their big finisher needs set up, just with AP.
The itemization argument still stands in this case. Ap bruisers just don’t have the items to stay alive long enough to build up for that big attack. And if they did, we would see a revert to tank assassins like akali fizz etc. the reason irelia was so absurdly, wickedly overtuned post rework is because she was able to build literally any ad item aside from crit. She had backloaded, front loaded and sustained damage. If you were to give Ap bruisers the itemization to incentivize backloaded damage, it would give champs that already have insane frontloaded damage way too much build diversity.
@@Ghosta085 Easy... Rework how auto's work on magic characters, give them all different scaling to suit their jobs and give more character, lower AP ratios across the board and delete Akali from the game.
Smite has done 2 of the things I've mentioned the magical autos and different attack chains/scaling and it works well.
"I don't wanna see a 4000 hp akali that can 1 shot"
*_Tank Akali enters summoners rift_*
I feel like that'll be awful tho. Akali does like 30 damage with her entire kit, burns you to death with Sunfire while being invisible and then kills you with her ult lol
@@SaiKisaragi tank akali was actually a thing a few months ago-they had to rework Chemtank because of it lmao
@@BlackfeatherMain ew wtf
@@SaiKisaragi yeah it was awful lmao. Lots of high elo akali players played it be aise it was super strong.
Akali atm has 3000 hp and one shots... So I don't really see the issue with another 1k hp...
One could argue that swain encompasses an ap bruiser, especially after his mini rework. Battle mage/bruiser is what I’d personally classify him as
The fact that he didn't put THE ap bruiser in the thumbnail i.e gwen
I think your forgetting about the OG AP Bruiser....Diana
Gwen is a Skirmisher, that would place her alongside Master Yi and the other duelists, who are then placed in a bigger group called Slayers, which also cointains the Assassin class. She's not a bruiser by definition, even though it may feel like it.
@@Super_Top_Secret_Area Rumble is in the thumbnail and he is a battlemage (the "bruiser" part is mostly early game). Gwen is much tankier and more suitable to melee combat than he is, and even though she's a skirmisher, her gameplay is more similar to mordekaiser than that of master yi. There's no reason why Gwen wouldn't be considered an AP bruiser (ambiguous term) when Rumble and Gragas are. There's only so many champions that can fit onto the image, so we'll see.
@@sabrinaflores795 Pretty Sure bruisers need AOE to be classified that, and I dont think Gwen has that good of AOE to be a bruiser. For example Urgot, Mord, Sett, Darius have high AOE dmg to completely destroy team fights if they can get in range that is.
@@crazygamer1030 have you ever played against a Gwen her q and ult is a lot of aoe damage
My suggestion for an ap bruiser item would be an ap item that gives armor and mr for each second you are in combat until a certain cap. This wouldn’t make any mages tanky since they get oneshot anyway but would be excellent on champs like sylas, singed or mordekaiser
Edit: As some people pointed out this would be severely reduced for ranged champions
Mages have cc, long range, sometime shield and a lot of hp they won't get one-shot u combine this item with say crown u get an invincible Viktor or cassiopea
Tanks with ap ratios would probably build this more
And make it melee exclusive to make sure Cassiopeia and the likes won't abuse it.
Kassidin is looking from a far: *”i like this dude”*
that's called abyssal mask
The fun part of Shyvana is being a hybrid bruiser. Even when you build a crap load of ad, you end up doing primarily magic damage. Your w and e do magic damage, no matter what. And both gain damage from ad. Her e has better ap scaling of course, but if I remember right, her w damage scales with ad but it converts ap into move speed. That’s why sorcerer’s shoes are always good for her. This is why I end up with weird looking builds on her, I like experimenting with her
Even when going AD, maxing E first is still the best for dmg, although W is better for clear speed/moving around the map. the rest of her kit simply isn't on par/up-to-date
@@alexandregehin8665 yep, I always max e first these days. It still slaps either way
Only AP bruisers are Mord, Diana (if built like one), Elise (in spider form), Rumble, Sylas, and Gwen. Lillia and Singed are arguably bruisers. The rest, are either assassins (Eve, Kat, Akali, Nid, Kass), tanks (Cho'Gath, Malph, Amumu, Galio, Nunu, Gragas, Zac, Mao, etc.), or straight up cheese build bruisers who have hybrid scaling like AP Shyv, Voli, Udyr, WW, Jax, Xin, etc.
Shyvana
@@Nik-oj7je no
Sylas and Gwen are skirmishers, not bruisers, they don't even count.
It really is only Mord, Diana, Elise and Rumble
Edit: Allow me to remind you another thing: Rumble never sees play, and Diana(Kinda) and Elise are "bruisers" because they break one specific rule of the assassin class therefore cannot be considered assassins: Elise is ranged and Diana has too much AOE
In other words, the only viable AP bruiser is fucking Morderkaiser, and he is basically useless if he misses his E.
How fun.
AP Jax is the only real AP bruiser
Actually I'd even say the only real champ
@@SonOfSparda03 the only real champ is only mana items mordekaiser it got me to challanger its busted as fk
AP Bruiser idea: diminishing returns on their AP scaling on abilities. Give them CRAZY high AP scaling on their abilities, but only for, say, the first 100 AP. Every 100 AP after that gives less scaling than the 100 AP before. Then, make AP Bruiser items that give only a small amount of AP (say 45 at most) and some defensive stats, ability haste, and what have you. These items are still good on the AP bruisers because their scaling is amazing with lower values of AP. But standard AP mages, assassins, and even enchanters and the like just can't justify it, because their scalings aren't high enough to make that 45 AP Mythic viable. Meanwhile, the bigger ticket AP items like Deathcap are just less valuable for the AP bruisers, because all that extra AP beyond the first 100-200 kind of gets wasted, and they'd be better off going fort more defensive stats instead.
i feel like malphite could afford to get some changes to become an AP bruiser, seeing as his only crowd control is in his ultimate, which feels less impressive to me nowadays seeing that other champions feel like they can do the same and better, like Diana's enguage being unable to flash away from it, or Tahm's new W having the same range and radius(though slower i know) and Vex's combo from a mile away.
especially with Malphite's W claps being an ability he has feeling a bit underwhelming. not sure what exactly i would change, probably his passive is all he would need, since the shield cooldown feels terrible when garen and sett can fullheal while in a minionwave.
i feel like replacing Q entirely with something another melee-range ability might force him to actually fight in lane, maybe a anti-auto ability like rammus W.
@@jojod1029 i would not be against a slam like Aatrox/redKayn/Bel'veth has for a short knockup to replace the dreaded cheesewheel and make him more threatening upclose
@@segafan2437 I'd say, turn his Q to something similar to Mega Gnar's Q. Match his theme as a rock tho. Just hope Riot rework him already. He is pain to play against.
He's R is great tool for assassination, Unstoppable long dash with 1.5 seconds of uncleanseable hard cc and heavy magic damage that can effect all 5 members of the enemy team
can't wait for this one. I just realized this issue myself a couple months ago when I wanted to find an ap jungler that fit my playstyle. (or more specifically, an ap drain tanking bruiser if one even existed)
Lillia's conqueror riftmaker into tank items could work as an AP drain tanking bruiser, but tbh it takes so long to scale into something that feels remotely powerful on your own.
Gwen jg also works and you're naturally pretty tanky even when going full AP and just defensive boots, and tank items like spirit visage, FoN, and randuin's also work on her (but yeah AP bruiser itemization is and has always been somewhat of a mystery).
@@sophiaascart484 yeah that's the exact issue I had with conq/rift lillia. Plus I found her mana to be a real issue if I'm doing any sort of extended sequence w/o blue buff. Haven't tried gwen yet but I'll save up for her!
I’ve found that Lillia can be built in a lot of different ways that can be pretty successful. The classic Conq/Rift build is probably what you’re looking for as a drain tanking bruiser. If mana is your issue, I’ve found that building a Tear into Archangel or a Frozen Heart work just fine for it. A bit more out there build that I’ve had a weird amount of success with is Everfrost into Fimbulwinter. It’s a good pick if your team needs more utility or the enemy has very slippery champs, especially Yasuo since Everfrost ignores windwall. Heck, I’ve even tried Sunfire Lillia, and it’s surprisingly decent. Basically really fun champ, highly recommend.
@@Limrick1029 maybe I'll give her another chance. I did play her a lot on release and loved zooming out of everyone's reach, but it feels a lot harder to reach that point since then
Actually, yes. I do have an AP bruiser in mind. I will keep it short this time, but I don't mind elaborating further if necessary.
P- Your next ability cast won't go on cooldown. (24 seconds cooldown)
Q- Dash on the targeted direction, leaving behind an area that deals magic damage over time.
W- Deals magic damage and stuns all nearby enemies affected by damage over time and converts said DoT into instant damage.
E- Becomes untargetable and ignores unit collision for a short duration.
R (avaliable from level 1)- Empowers your next ability cast. Q gets extended range and speed, W extends the stun and the conversion from DoT to instant damage won't consume the DoT, E also grants movement speed and ignores terrain collision.
Quick question,
why isn't gwen on the list of ap bruisers?
I think technically gwen is considered a skirmisher. When Vars refers to brusiers he's mainly looking at like juggernauts and divers. Then again I do agree that Gwen and Lillia should be included on this list since they included Diana which she's primarily an assassin rather than a diver.
@@NastyBuckos diver are like assassin but actually the difference it's more on the mobility part, diver are one dimensional on everything they have is to go in in a quick period, while assassin have more tempo on their mobility in general.
Really great Insights.
The thought of Itemization is something I never thought of; Up until now.
my experience with an ap bruiser (im a gwen main lol) like I really wish we had better items.. the idea is so interesting and I love playing gwen but damn they are forgotten lol great video as usual!!!
An AP bruiser item that I'd like to see is when you have higher max HP that your target you gain bonus AP that scales with resistances. Mages won't buy those cuz they need armor, MR and HP just to make it viable.
Replying for the algorithm thats the single best way to make an AP bruiser item with respect to the other AP champs rn. Hell making an AP Maw of Malmorbius-like item wouldnt be bad either its base stats would be just as strong as the other ap resistance items but the passive would mostly give defensive stats that only ap bruisers would like. Temporary omnivamp and a at base weak shield that scales kinda hard off the defensive stats is what im thinking. Any inputs?
But then if that item provided meaningful AP once those conditions are met, all mages would build that item cause you get meaningful AP for building defensive stats which is any AP assassin of squishy mage’s dream
Yeah, no. Imagine how that item would affect Katarina, that nowadays goes Sunderer almost every game, with Dd and maw sometimes, that can also make use of demonic embrace. It doesn't sound that fun to face a champ that heals with every E, with 3150+ hp, 250 ad, 100+ ap and 120+ armor/Mr right?
@@innstafr3547 ...But she aint bursting you down in 3 or less seconds unless you were an adc, which is kinda the point of items and builds like these. Its just doing a good job at what that build wants. Its like saying Nashors sucks design wise as AP Xin Zhao loves the shit out of that item. You realize a single item making a truly offmeta* strategy almost or fully viable is Good overall for the game right? Besides at that point the problem is its numbers not the effect itself which means inherently the design is good, you need to make sure the application isn't bad. Which means its actually fine as an item, despite how bad the peak of its brokenness may be to fight against. *the build you described is not meta, at most they get Bork and maybe one of the other 3 you named then its full AP from there. Ive kept an eye on masters+ builds of Kat's for multiple seasons, trust me they value kill power over getting to be a bruiser, they just know when they need an onhit item instead of an ap one for that damage, including the times they need a few seconds more to kill and will buy what they need for that.
@@innstafr3547 i mean tbf shes broken and those on hit "adjustments" they gave her last season are what makes her use sunderer
It's a dilemma with these bruisers and ap assasins when it comes to itemization. Whatever items ap bruisers have, will be deadlier on ap assasins. I mean we witnessed ad assasins use bruiser items for a while before it got nerfed heavily. Whats to say a scenario like that won't happen to the ap bruisers and ap assasins?
I think you forgot Gwen in your list of ap bruisers.
She's a skirmisher not a fighter.
Funny thing is, Veigar is the only burst mage who can build almost full tank items, And still one shot you like a Syndra
They could create another window in the shop for AP Bruissers, and directly lock you out of it if you are a mage or a AP assassin
It wouldn't really be fair tho
I mean if you want to go full letha one shot renekton u can even if his not an assassin why because one of the main mechanics of the game is that u need to find the best build for your champion so you need to be able to try everything, locking like 10-15 item just because you badly designed ur game at the origin isn't the solution
Gwen is an ap bruiser??!
The problem with them is the fact they’re AP. AD Brusiers need HP/Def and Damage but Marksmen need AS/ Crit and Damage, thus allowing for two separate item pools. What does an AP Bruiser want? HP/CDR and AP, the exact same thing other mages want. You can try making AP bruiser items not give mana, but even then, mages would still happily give up mana for more damage and survivability.
When the only true APB is Morde and maybe Gwen, there aren’t enough AP bruisers in the game to find out what type of stat combinations would work in their favor, but not general mages.
I think damage reduction based on HP and on what range you're fighting the enemy would be cool, like no mage would be dumb enough to jump into the battlefield and get cc chained to death so only actual AP bruiser who can survive like Mordekaiser can build them
Despite him being primarily a mage, I see a lot of Swain players wanting him to be a bruiser. I do see where they’re coming from,
Swain is pretty much a bruiser, since he is classified as battle mage, but he lacks the burst damage most bruisers have, and his consistent damage even got nerfed after the mini rework.
@@milonchello1643 Imagine saying swain lacks burst damage lol.
@@martingarm2872 Dude, they massively reduced his damage, his burst is lower now than it was before the rework. His ult ap ratio got nerfed, pull doesnt do damage and iirc his q also got it's damage nerfed.
@@martingarm2872 he doesnt check all his rations his main dps is q and ult (and w every 18 secs or so)
The fix for the ap bruiser exclusive item being broken on normal mages just give them a condition if they're used by ranged champions half their effects or something and make their passive something that would be effective on ap bruiser like staying in combat or taking damage
Old demonic embrace be like
For me AP bruiser items should have a similar case like DE where the burn is stronger for melee users than ranged users since most AP bruisers are melee. further classifying them from mage and an AP bruiser
As there are only a few AP bruisers out there and most of them have to force buy some standard mage items because there isnt much options overall for their class.
Having Ap items that are for melee champs only could be of help so that melee ap scalers are the only ones that could use them similar to how the old both hydras was only for melee champions
Fiddle and gwen could also easily be added to that category, being that they do build a few tankier items from time to time, also including riftmaker.
Gwen yea. Fiddlesticks? wtf no. Fiddlesticks doesn't go for long fights. He relies on frontloaded burst damage nukes, building full pen and ap. I've seen some go tank fiddlesticks, but that seems more like a meme than an alternative playstyle.
@@joseph4445 but swain tho?
Gwen: am i a joke to you or am i a true damage bruiser like camille ?
Apart from that lil bug great vid as always keep it up i'm always glad to watch them 👍
Riftmaker's effect is probably the best way to go about this. giving stacks to ap bruisers of omnivamp or other useful stats over extended fights , like how conqueror rune works (not now that half champions can fully stack it in 2 seconds) can go a long way. and it won't make burst champions busted as it forces those extended interractions.
I'd love to see them bring back Rod of Ages in some way for AP bruisers. I miss it so much on Galio
I loved playing him like a juggernaut in season 9 and 10, but now he either goes full ap or is essentially just a Support
@@Eldex0 yeah he's really not my tanky magic boi anymore 😭
kassadin suffered a lot since the removal of RoA
I play Wildrift, but Rod of Ages is there. Is it removed on PC?
I think that for make a good ap bruiser like mordekaiser, we would need to make all mages have a passive like pyke (his passive which doesn't allow him to scale from health items like warmog), so that even if a mage build an ap black cleaver, the health wouldn't scale, but this would be absurd for riot to do just so they can make new ap melee champions that aren't ad
Simple way to fix them but not for balance: Each mana is converted to hp or something like that.
So giving them Singeds old passive?
So, Fimbulwinter? Doesn't work for Mordekaiser and Rumble since they don't have mana to begin with
u forgor about gwen and I suppose Lilia is fitting in this catergory since she isn't anything else and since she is basically an ap darius but with less health and more mobile
Well there is my point
Make ap bruisers have high magic base dmg
Make some ap bruisers that gives hp/resistances and a small amount of ap + some magic pen
Make mages have less base dmg and more ap scaling so they won't be able to use the news ap bruisers items
And finally nerf veigar cuz he will be the only one able to abuse ap bruisers items
Honestly, I do think AP bruiser items could take a lot of inspiration from AD bruiser items, you just have to put in the same restrictions.
GA is a very low damage item, and we all already know Zhonya’s gimps a mage’s damage if built 2nd. A low amount of AP on an AP GA could make it a good AP bruiser item. Further, Death’s Dance and Sterak’s Gage all have a major penalty on ranged champs compared to melee champs, that’s a big reason why not many marksmen go DD, not because they need crit or attack speed more, but because the effect is immensely weaker on them.
an AP GA would make mages even more infuriating than they are already. Even if it granted like 40 AP a lategame mage could build it and still have like 800 AP and still oneshot. Veigar would be a nightmare even moreso than it already is.
@@BlackfeatherMain if it have 40AP you would not have 800 AP lategame consistently without gathering storm.
@@TaconIStenen You'd have enough to be a major threat to anything not packing a significant amount of MR. That item, Zhonya's, DCap, Horizon, and Void Staff would be both awful to kill and high damage.
Also I love how Vars uses Akali when mentioning Lethality and Armor Pen
Out of curiosity have you ever considered a topic in the future on the differneces between on-hit vs Crit vs lethality for adc’s and certain fighter classes? It’s a topic I had to learn latter on playing League and I’ve seldom seen anyone tackle those classifications. Much like how I haven’t seen anyone go into full AP vs magic pen builds and which is appropriate when
Here is an idea: design ap bruiser that converts all AD they build into AP. Boom issue solved lol Or is that 200 years?
He is not ap then he's just ad that does magic damage
corki the brusier. it would also be really bad as it has to be that there abilities scale off ad and dose magic dmg like corki not the ad be converted into ap as ad is more expensive than ap so gives less per item
What about Volibear? True he isn't strictly AP Bruiser, but he has pretty much the same amount of AP and AD scalling. A hybrid bruiser so to say.
I played AP Volibear in the botlane with Darius as a support (Off meta much) and I was still doing decently in the team fight as a front line bruiser with
So I've always had a theory about item abuse relative to classes: passive class scaling from stats. For instance tank items are too strong on akali, assasins should have a 90% scaling ratio on Armor and MR while maybe tanks get 110% making it way easier to balance the items to a specific class without completely locking them off. Apply that same concept to AP bruisers, what if they had a 110% Resitance scaling. Then you could release a fairly weak defensive mage item or two that are solidly mediocre at best, but when placed on a champ with the correct scaling ratios becomes pretty strong?
Some champions are hard to pinpointed the class/subclass they're in so I don't think that's gonna work.
Make a ap bruiser that gains resistence from ap, so they have lower damage, range e mobility, but still can have resistences from building damage
ah yes, the bruisers that can't build death dance and maw
Unfortunately no bruiser can build law.
@@komgoo4974 lmao I just noticed my error
@@komgoo4974 Yeah. As long as Sterak exists, there is no reason to take Maw for any bruiser.
in fact a lot of champs that were initially designed as tanky juggernauts became more glass cannon in a bid for viability, Gragas was once a tanky ward-placing cinderhulk who would engage fights and last a while as a disruptor, now he either builds AP predator jungle or full support on occasion with yasuo and blows the fuck up whenever he engages or doesn't get to 100-0 someone from brush. Galio had a brief stint with Full AP builds(not the overtuned PBE disaster, he just built more AP for a while years ago), and Zac was even reverted to encourage people to build demonic embrace as we stray further and further from the S7 worlds deathball tank meta. With the durability update fast approaching maybe we might even see a resurgence of some bruiser builds but with the damage creep since the item rework, likely not.
Is Gwen not an ap bruiser?
I think so, she can mitigate "infinite" amount of dmg and cc, heals a lot and constantly and has extreme dps.
I think the best thing to do for AP bruisers is to make items that can shift their damage from the front to back. Items like Riftmaker and Embrace come to mind, items that let you be stronger later in a fight. Nashor's tooth also fits here. It's stat profile also makes it not the best at up front combat. Lich Bane also sort of fits but it's ability to be preped means that it's more used as burst tool rather than an extended fighting tool.
Basically they need to make attack speed more appealing to AP champs for a bruiser identity to be better than a burst one
This Vid is so wrong, Wdym AP items can be built by everyone??, If an Akali builds Liandry and Demonic Embrace they will become more tanky and dps reliant champion than a burst assassin, It's literally the same with AD, If a Yi builds bruiser they will become more tanky but deal less damage but if they build crit they will deal more damage but be less tanky, If you build Luden Echo on Morde his playstyle will become more of an assassin bc Luden gives more damage than Riftmaker but gives less defensive stats but that doesn't mean he's equal to Lux in damage, You can't say Lux is op bc she can build all the items like you said, AP Champs have restrictions too, Burst champs can't build sustain dmg bc they will deal less damage and probably will never utilize the sustain it gives, DPS champs also can't build burst bc their kit relies on spamming and if you build burst on them they will only deal damage on the first the falls off or probably dies in the first second due to the fact that burst items gives no sustain or defense(That's like saying Kayle can run Night Harvester as good as Akali) and It's not just AP that matters in mages AH is good for battle mages since they rely on DPS, If an Ahri builds AH it can be hard to burst someone bc you're trading things like MPen, Item passives exists too, A Burst can use Luden and Night Harvester better than DPS, A DPS can use Riftmaker and Liandry better than Burst, Yes Bruiser can build Burst but they aren't as tanky as before that's the same with Assassins building Bruiser
Im curious to see where my main Sylas stands, as he is much more a hybrid of bruiser/skirmisher and assassin. I almost feel like they added the healing to his kit to supplement the trash ap bruiser items we have, so since he doesn’t really need an item for healing, everfrost became such a perfect item for him simply because of it’s utility and cdr. To this day he is still my favorite league champ for sure.
He's really comparable to an ad bruiser that scale well a bit like Jax but full ap if you ask me
I will always standby that if Riot were to ever do a League of Legends 2 or other kind of extreme megapatch that overhauled things more than all preseasons combined, they should remove the concept of Physical & Magic Damage. I would even remove Armor & Magic Resist, let everything just be true damage. This would make building a team comp much more forgiving since you could focus on actual synergy between champions instead of trying to balance out damage types. Imagine if you're playing Top & the rest of your team comp is Kha'Zix/Akshan/Jhin/Pyke. Now you absolutely NEED to play someone that can both frontline & do a lot of Magic Damage, but ofc the enemy team banned both Singed & Tahm Kench, & the enemy top is playing Sylas who usually wins against Cho'Gath, Mordekaiser, Rumble, & ESPECIALLY Malphite, so what's left? Lillia? Gwen? AP Volibear? TBF that last 1 COOOULD be worth, but that's a massive rut to be in assuming you're not a 1-trick & they somehow didn't ban it
ew fuck no amor and magic resist are the only good stats in this game
I miss Rod of Ages + Nashors conqueror diana lol. The healing with ravenous hunter and taste of blood was insane. Was the best at taking towers while splitpushing while being great at teamfights and can even duel. Had very little weaknesses
I miss when gragas's abilities scaled off of defensive stats tbh, when his passive scaled with health and his w scaling with his armor and magic resist and allowed him to be more about durability and cc while still having decent damage that wasn't broken. Now it feels like you can only play him full ap or you're trolling.
His Passive still only scales with HP
My idea for an AP bruiser is actually taken from Karma's tether - multi powered abilities. Q could be a slow but if the target remains close to the caster, they take damage once the slow times out. Basically, design the first part of their abilities to be some kind of CC or sustain tool and then give them damage if a condition while using those abilities is met.
They can make items specific for AP bruisers like:
Item: Pure Blood Wine
(Unique: Grant Drunken Bloodlust if you have at least 850 bonus health.
Unique: Druken Bloodlust: Increase current Ability Power by 50% and grant 18% bonus Omnivamp).
Loose idea, but might work.
I think to make up for the lack of itemization AP bruisers need to have well designed abilities that take the poor item choices into account. Mordekaiser sits really pretty with mostly AP+Health items like rift maker or embrace, and morellonomicon. I've been playing him a lot and I'm here to tell you his biggest weakness as a juggernaut is a lack of resistances. Due to is lack of resistances you need to be very careful when your W is down or else a fed enemy talon will oneshot you from 70% health because your mid-laner is a monkey named Kayle.
This video taught me that turrets deal physical damage. I had legit no idea.
This explains why that Malphite basically set up shop and lived under our turrets the other day.
I've only been playing League for a few months but years ago I played a MOBA called Smite. In Smite they had items that were locked from certain characters that could abuse or weren't meant to use them. I think this would be a good thing for class specific items to be implemented and balanced around certain characters instead of punishing everyone who can use it. Shieldbow (before this attack on healing) for example should've been locked off to Marksman only and then they implement something different for people like Yas/Yone/Irelia etc. I also understand though that the ability to abuse and use all kinds of items is what makes League kind of unique.
As to items, there is the cosmic drive route - lock the full potential of an iten behind a stat requirement, only defensive this time. Say, item X gives you 60 ap, but if you have over 3000 health, it ramps up to 100.
Now you have to make a video on galio 🗿
I can see a champ like Ornn, who interacts with itemization, and converts AD from items into ap. He would obviously have to be tuned like mordekaiser, since ad items tend to give less stats than ap items, but I can really see it working like a more complex corki passive.
That is why champions like Mordekaiser take the only real ap bruiser item (riftmaker) and maybe one or two mage items (including demonic embrace) and then goes tank items (thornmail, spirit visage, he also usually builds plated steelcaps).
I think the best options for designing an ap bruiser would be either:
1. Have autos that scale from ap and balance that with lower ability damage aswell as some sustain focused abilities
2. Have your abilities scale from AD but they deal AP damage, kinda like warwick but less hybrid. This would be far easier to balance since it wont screw with items
Tbh I've even gone as far to build Zhonya's on my ADC a couple times, and it has worked. Some games you just get deleted out of the fight and your peel either doesn't exist or isn't good enough. There was one game a Zed would just beeline for me and my peel would totally ignore him, so he'd kill me way before I could do much in a teamfight. So i sold one of my adc items and bought a stopwatch. It worked. It worked amazingly well. The Zed didnt even seem to know what to do, and I was in stasis long enough for my team to turn on him. So i built it into a full Zhonya and it worked. I've done it a couple more times since then as well.
It's rare. It's maybe only solo blind/draft picks too cos in a ranked game, your peel should be peeling, but it has worked.
With the future release of Bel'veth, more champions whose abilities scale more with stats beyond raw AD or AP seem to be coming at the forefront, and this gives me an idea about what kind of ap bruiser could exist in the game.
What this AP bruiser type would need is to favour a stat that is different to the one usual battle mages would need, either through kit synergies or extra scaling. One good example would be AS scaling a la Yasuo or Yone in one of their abilities, to make them consistently spam them in the middle of a fight while staying close to their targets. It is not enough that they stay in close range, they have to favour a playstyle that differentiates them from their ranged counterparts.
Itemization cannot come first, because there is no specific direction in which they could go. There can't be a Steraks for AP Bruisers if we do not fully know yet how AP bruisers are supposed to look like in the first place. Some ramping up effects are a good place to start, and Riftmaker and Demonic Embrace already go in that direction, but what else would they need would have to come from having a pool of AP Bruisers in the game first..
What about Riftmaker into Nashors into full tank Volibear?
Now we need a video on AP Marksmen: Azir, Teemo, Corki, AP Kayle, Twitch, Kog'Maw, Kai'Sa, Ezreal, Varus, Tristana.
how is Tristana an AP marksman?
The only manaless Ap bruiser item is Riftmaker. In order to make AP bruisers more viable give them another item choice. The item I chose to rework is night harvester currently it's just Rocketbelt without Pen. The stats will stay the same it gives 90 ap and 300 hp. The passive I want to change completely. It will have an active called "The harvest", a temporary speed, a shield based on AP, and a small AP, boost for 5 seconds. After "The harvest" is complete it will heal you for a percentage of the damage dealt during the harvest. I think this would be good for AP champs that want to go in for more than 5 seconds. I don't want the damage on it to be the primary focus but rather it gives an eclipse-sized shield and a small ms boost to go in and deal as much damage as you can then heal off harvesting the enemy souls. The heal is going to be the main focus but the caveat is that you can't use it for instant sustain. I would see this item on champs like Elise, Gragas, and rumble who are frontloaded but when their CDS are back up they can go in once more.
I think the key thing to do is give ap bruisers an item that boosts some stats the closer you are from enemy champions (and make it unviable for long ranged mages)
Depends on how you build him, but I'm particular to AP Bruiser Volibear myself. Going PtA, rushing Nashor's Tooth, then building Riftmaker is a fun time for me. That damage isn't frontloaded as he needs to stack up his passive to really get the damage pumping, but going AP also allows him to have more survivability/damage with his E.
I liked playing Soraka as an AP bruiser, back when Starfall was an aoe around her.
AP + spirit visage + situational tank items meant tough enough to stick in the fight. And though Starfall's AP ratio was a bit low, the stacking MR debuff meant escalating damage.
So: tough, some damage, which was escalating / back-loaded. Definition of bruiser. 🙂
I think there are plenty of tools out there to design AP bruisers without allowing them to just build full AP: backloaded damage.
This could be implemented through a stacking system, like Vel'Koz or Varus, or perhaps a delayed mark like Evelynn or Zed. Give them the high damage when they pop the stacks / mark, and maybe depending on how they pop it they can do either flat damage or %hp damage.
But by locking the damage behind these systems (and giving them low target access), you would force them to go off-tank to be able to survive long enough to actually do the damage, and their full damage build would be relegated to meme tier, like full lethality Yorick.
I always thought of Gragas as either an Assassin or an Off tank, specially with that cdr build that lets you spam E to stunlock people
I do have an Idea for Ap bruiser.
The main concept is that to prevent him to oneshoot you because he builds Ap, his damage scales are based in how well he can manage his spells. So instead of having a normal Ap ration like: 90%Ability power, he wold Have X(Where X is the number of times he pleased the condition)%ability power. So the dinamic is that he would need time to have his numbers high, that's why he would need to build durability.
Let's name him: Project Ap
Passive: Sand Hourglass
Project Ap have a Hourglass above him with two poles:Foward and Backward, those poles are visible to the enemies as well. Every third ability will make the Hourglass drop(after 0,25 seconds), doing AoE damage and creating an effect based in wich pole the hourglass was.
If the Hourglass was in the Forward Pole, Project Ap, and his allies inside the area affected, will gain Move speed. Project Ap will reduce his spells remaining cd by 25% per enemy affected.
If the Hourglass was in the Forward Pole, enemies affected will receive slow and project Ap will receive a Shield, those effects scales per enemy affected.
Second Passive: Traveling to the infinity.
Project Ap spells scales are based on his Hourglass, each drop that successfully affect at least one enemy champion in the last 5 seconds gives him 10% bonus in his basic spells scale's numbers.(Each drop can only give him 10% )
Basic Spell number 1: No Cost
Active:
Turns the Hourglass in the Foward pole when casted.
Project Ap buffs his next 3 autos to be AoE, doing damage in a cone and granting him move speed per each enemy hit.
Passive: While armed, everytime he hits someone with his sword, he reduces his spells remaing cd in one second.(0.5 if not a enemy champion)
Basic Spell Number 2: 50/55/60/70 Mana
Active:
Turns the Hourglas to the Backwards pole when casted.
Project Ap will create a circular area, after 0.25 seconds, that follows him while activated, enemies inside the are when activated will receive a slow and damage. When Project Ap damages an enemy champion inside the area he will receive a shield based in how much damage he delt to them.
Project Ap can cancel the spell to damage everyone inside and gain move speed and slow resistence based in how many people where there when he closed the area.
Basic Spell Number 3: 70/75/80/85/90 Mana
If activated in close range, Project Ap will attack everyone in his front leaving a temporal copy that will do the same after 0.25 seconds, both attacks do damage, but the second one does more. He will gain a shield based in how many targets hit by both activations.
If casted on long range, Project Ap will throw his sword to the target area that will apply damage and slow around the the area when it lands. If he hit at least one person, he can re-cast to teleport to the sword after 0.25 seconds, to do the same damage again, and refund his basic spells cd per enemy affect by it. If he Project Ap doesn't go near the sword, it will stay there for some time making Project Ap disarmed, while disarmed he only does 60% of his the total damage.
Ultimate
Marks a big area that transforms itself in a giant sandstorm after some time. Enemies inside the area the moment that the storm is formed will have their vision reduced. Enemies receive damage while inside the storm. Project Ap can prolong the storm duration by affecting people with his Hourglass.
Based on what you said, I think its "obvious" how one would need to go around building an ap bruiser
Acknowledging the fact that AP itemization doesnt support a bruiser playstyle and that solving that problem with items would create more problems(although I think Crystaline reflector from Wild rift is a tasteful and successful attempt) its easy to see that the resilience that a bruiser inherently needs has to come from the kit itself
This would also solve the problem of allowing the bruiser champion scaling of ap to frontload its abilities for damage, as their primary purpose would be optimizing your mitigation, not your damage
I would imagine something thats a lot akin to how Taric's passive works, making subsequent autoattacks after ability casts have increased damage and massive ap scaling, making it so you have to space out ability usage for optimal damage.
You can solve the same problems AD bruisers can solve with items with the champions kit instead, knowing the items will mainly only scale player AP and HP
Something like:
After ability cast, your next 3 autoattacks deal x(+30/30/50% AP)bonus damage, the last of these empowered attacks deals damage in a small area around the target(built in hydra as you cant buy it)
Abilites could deal less damage but apply a mark to your enemies, consuming the mark on a champion with your autoattacks would make it have additional effects.(basically make shyvana E into a champion lol)
just some *very* haphazardly thrown together idea would be
Q - The ability you will spam on around 5 sec cd come lategame
Damages a short cone(or other geometric shape of preference) shaped area and marking enemies hit. Triggering a mark on an enemy hit consumes the mark from all enemies in a range, shielding you(scaling from hp and ap) for each mark consumed. Consuming the mark on a champion has a higher base value, additional marks after the first triggered shield for less (the usual stuff)
W- Mandatory damage aura (kek)
Generates a damaging aura around you for about 6 seconds(or whats the standard damage aura length nowdays?).
Landing your 3rd passive attack on an enemy inside the aura latches a tether to them stealing a portion of their resistances and movespeed, increasing to full effect over x seconds, after which the tether triggers once more before dissipating, shredding enemy defenses and increasing your own for another y seconds (weak trundle ult without damage portion)
E - Weird ability for "skill expression"
Throw out a long range mid-speed *blob* or *thing* (no visuals ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
That deals damage and slows enemies hit, marking champions. Passive empowered attacks(not just the 3rd) gain increased range and magical vamp against marked champions and *prime* the mark. Landing the 3rd of your empowered attacks after casting the ability detonates all marks, further damaging, slowing enemies and stunning them if their mark was *primed* (Ekko Q+E lovechild)
For ult there is only really 2 options, big teamfight scary AOE CC or a big bag of stats, self-steroid that will make ppl cry "200 years"
I prefer the latter ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
R- Unfair self buff that makes ppl actively lose LP if they engage in a fight with you if you have it on(jk)
Get armor and magic resist based on your AP, because unlike jax, you have a real weapon and you only need to build 1 stat to do this
Furthermore, while you have the buff ongoing, gain increased tenacity while you have your passive up and for each 3rd passive attack triggered over the duration of the ultimate, extend the duration and increase the armor and magic resist bonus provided during the buff
(Basically the last thing to solve from itemization was defensive stats so ofc it had to be forced in somewhere and sprinkled some tenacity on top because that makes the ability sound more unique than it is, which is still not a lot)
So yeah, i dont have 200 years of experience, i didnt even spend 20 collective minutes on this save for writing it down, the above kit would have to be number tuned unlike any other kit in league, having no ap scaling or 10-30% scaling on base abilities, budgeting all that into the passive, knowing ppl will prob buy mainly spellblade effects and the like anyway to artifically put in the scaling
And i didnt even go into cooldowns and the like, however, if you give a low enough base attackspeed, you can make cooldowns really low and the 3 autoattacks will artificially create a cooldown between abilities anyway
To add, ap bruiser itemization suffers from same issues ad bruisers had before the items rework. There were simply not enough items for a full build, and after getting 3 slots you just went tank. Cleaver/trinity-steraks-dd+hydra if you lack waveclear, you’re out of items, now you go tank or buy ga. Same for ap bruisers, it’s mythic+rylais+de, now you just go tank, maybe get a grevious or an hourglass. Gwen was supposed to be an ap bruiser btw.
I feel like a massive missing part of this are effects that add magic damage/ap scaling to auto attacks. Champs like kayle, morde, and gwen(and nashors tooth) break the idea of ap not being used for auto attacks. Sure the damage comes from an ability but it serves to make ap function like ad for those champs.
If it where up to me, I would make the main damage ability of the ap bruiser, have 30% ap scaleing, and between 2% to 5% hp scaleing, this would make the champ build items with both ap and hp, and give him/her the option to go tank items, and a passive that deals damage like a sunfire aegis, that cakes with ap and hp. And I would give him/her a team fight oriented ult.
Brusier Diana. I love the reducing of one shots which means bruiser Lady Di is more in the mix. And again I will point out- Guinsu's rage blade causes a double cleave. When the double proc of rage blade kicks in it is Hit, cleave, hit cleave. Combine this with Nashor's, Riftmaker, and Conquerer it makes for (on paper) a very fighty ap champ that lives for the extended fight. You can even choose tanky runes by going tear/archangles for more healing and cdr meaning more up time on your shields up time.
Also- the introduction of MELEE only effects (fumblewinter as an example) I would think could be the best way. The code for AP items would take in effect if a champ is melee or ranged. AP bruiser items would less effective on ranged champs. Build that distinction into them like Riot does with other items.
My idea on how to make AP bruisers a thing would be to give them said AP+defense stat items, but lock them on AP Melee champions or something (similar to how they locked Runaan's to ranged champions and the old Tiamat items to melee ones).
Old mord had decent backloaded with triple Q, demonstrating how it’s possible to back load an ap kit
The best way to deal with the AP bruiser problem is to have champs have base AP increasing similar to AD. For example they could then give bruiser items scaling off of base AP, and other mage items scale off of bonus AP. That way xerath wouldn’t get great mileage out of the AP bruiser items, but a dedicated AP bruiser would be happy using them. Current example being Sterak’s Gage. Only gives AD scaling from base AD which assassins don’t have much of, so assassins don’t itemize it anywhere near as much as an AD bruiser
Answers to your question:
1) Make a hybrid bruiser like the 2nd iteration of Morde (yes Ik that went terribly wrong but how come Yone's 1/3 of dmg is magic and true hmm?)
2) Some kind of Ap scaling passive like vlad where the more hp/ap he builds, the more ap/hp he gets so that he may go with underwhelming items but he still has the stats to back it up.
Here’s the thing. Every AP melee champ that functions as a bruiser currently in the game has one of two things, or sometimes both: an auto attack AP ratio scalar (Diana, Mordekaiser, Gwen for example), and/or a consistent DoT effect + a low cooldown spell (Lillia, Singed, Shyvanna, Mordekaiser for example). Why do these exist? Well, the first one exists for a simple reason. It exists to incentivize building Nashor’s tooth. Out of those three champs, only mordekaiser doesn’t have nashor’s as a core item, but as a situational instead. The other one is much more simple. It’s given to champs in order to keep their pressure up. Lillia was always an AP bruiser, even with her full AP builds because she fits the role of a bruiser. High damage, high survivability, very short ranged. However, she is unique in that her survivability comes from speed, not tankiness. Recently though, a build for her that has always existed has become much more popular: bruiser Lillia. Riftmaker, Demonic Embrace, tank items, maybe a deathcap somewhere. This build became super popular, because it fit way more with Lillia’s playstyle. You will see on every AP bruiser one of the two things I mentioned above, simply because that’s the only possible way to design an AP bruiser. They need consistent damage. And you can’t get consistent damage out of abilities. Therefore, they need consistent damage effects and auto attack scalers. Also, in most cases, AP bruiser is synonymous with AoE. They have the advantage of making it so that if your team clumps up, everyone gets fucked. I honestly wish they would make another AP bruiser item cause currently the only two AP bruiser items in the game are Riftmaker and Demonic Embrace.
I last played back when Ryze was building mana-cooldown-and-armor items, which effectively make him a magic bruiser.
As a thought for designing AP bruiser items, what about tying their offensive stats to the champion's defensive stats? For an example, an item the grants AP based on either total health or on bonus health. These would be suboptimal on most AP mages and assassins as they'd have to divert funds from their big damage items into stats they don't have in order to make up the gap in damage the item would give on a bruiser.
As someone who mains akali I can say she is somewhat of a AP bruiser, as her q and passive make her do very high amounts of sustanded damge. The only real sorce of burst in her kit (other then generally having very high Base damage and scalling) is her E having 450 + 120ap damage. The twighlight shrowd lets her stay engaged with the enemy for the time needed to lanch severy attacks realistically, even if in pratice it is very unrelable. Her ult has low damage for the first strike, mostly being a gap closer, but the second attack dos a max of 600+90ap exitute damge but has a delay of 2.5 seconds, backloading it. This means it is nearly always the best idea to go conquer, and choses between the 2 ap bruserish mithics, hextec and rift. She can just be a ad bruser or a tank at the same level as the meta build due to good hybrid ratios and base numbers, but those are uncommon builds even if they are more relable due to much lower burst. That being said, with the lack of good iteams beond mithics that give any health or restanse and ap make it so she can't fix her problems staying in the fight well truely being ap.
really she is a hibrid between a bruser and assian(like Irelia), which is most likely the cause of her being to do so much stupid nonsense.
Talks about assassins needing lethality, show picture of Akali.
Running sunderer and demonic on a champion like sejuani feels so good the dual pen scaling from divine sunderer is so good on an ap tank