Originally, Ability Power was a way for ability based champions to scale into the late game. Well that's great! That's a definite advantage over DotA. It opens up a lot of itemization. It has the unfortunate side effect of eliminating a lot of the cool active items that DotA had which mages itemized for, but whatever - you already have 4 spells, who needs more?



But now all I see is...







Quote: Morello: These are just a couple ideas we're tossing around.



* E becomes physical, scales with AD.



* R scales with AD.

Oh. Cool.Abilities that scale with AD was a concept played with originally with gangplank. Parrrley was magic damage and functioned basically as a magic damage autoattack at range. It added a niche game dynamic to a single champion. Ability power was still the primary method of scaling spells for all champions.Skip forward a little and we've got Kat, who has the option of scaling with either AP or AD - another somewhat interesting concept, original at the time. She's hybrid now, but originally Kat basically had a single build: stack BF Swords then upgrade them into Bloodthirsters. Spin2Win - Sorry Garen, she was spinning 2 win before you were a twinkle in your creator's eye.Later down the road, Pantheon is released. He's got an even greater niche carved for himself, having non-attack physical damage abilities that scale with AD. This was the real start of the problem. Pantheon has historically been the worst balanced champion in the game, constantly overpowered or underpowered, never in a good place - largely due to the way he scales with AD, allowing him to boost his primary damage abilities and his melee attacks at the same time. I know, this seems like it isn't a problem right now, because we're so used to it - but at the time it was a bit of a novelty and made Pantheon one of those champions who either goes 40-0 or does nothing all game. He's still like this to a degree.By Season 1 we had a growing cast of AD scaling champions, and the idea behind it was pretty clear: melee were underpowered at the time, so hey let's make melee scale theirdamage with attack damage rather thanpower.I'm fairly sure that many champions, if they were released today, would have AD scaling rather than AP scaling. I can almost assure you if Tristana were a new champion, Buster Shot would scale with AD. If Blitzcrank came out last patch instead of Brand, Rocket Grab would be an AD scaling ability. Alpha Strike is a no-brainer. In fact, there's still a good chance these abilities will scale with AD in the future. As quoted above, Xin is getting more AD scaling. Many abilities that have existed since beta or at least for a long time that used to scale with only AP now scale with AD - Boomerang Blade, Pick a Card, Missile Barrage, Trueshot Barrage, Spinning Slash, the list goes on.It was fine when it only existed on some champions, or on niche abilities within kits not based solely around AD scaling.of the last 10 champions, Brand, Maokai, Cassiopeia, Karma = AP, while Nocturne, Lee Sin, Trundle, Caitlyn, Renekton and Jarvan IV are AD. 60% of recent champions scale off of AD rather than AP. You can argue that the latter all have at least one AP scaling ability, but guess what? Everyone scales 1:1 with AD. On every single attack. Not to mention Olaf and Garen who scale solely with AD, having no AP ratios at all - and if the change to Xin's charge goes through, he'll join this exclusive club.So now I have to ask, how did this start and why did it snowball out of control? It seems to be causing a lot more problems than it solved (assuming it really solved any), and I can only see it getting worse in the future. Should we just prepare for Cannon Barrage, Enchanted Crystal Arrow, Hate Spike, Jack in the Box and basically every other ability on any autoattack champion in the game to scale with AD? Ability Power might as well not exist as a stat anymore, we may as well make Annie throw fireballs that scale with the amount of swords she's carrying.The reason I bring this up now is that Riot is looking into increasing AD ratios on current AD scaling champions - which will truly nullify AP champions, as what is the point of scaling your abilities with a stat that only boosts your abilities, when you can scale your autoattacks at the same time? The only reason AD scaling was considered "balanced" for a long time was because you generally got less damage added to your abilities per point of gold, which was compensated by getting additional damage on autoattacks. I can only see mages falling into obscurity now as "AD casters" get better and better scaling. We're reverting back to DotA - soon the only reason to keep a mage on your team will be for their CC. Oh, wait... Jarvan IV has two uncleansable AoE CCs already. Nevermind, there will be no reason to pick a mage whatsoever.