Talk:Aphelios/@comment-4636093-20191128071353

The more I think about this champion the more I love his addition and how he plays.

I get the feeling that it'll take literally dozens of games as him before you've even seen half of the combinations of his differant abilities he can have.

At a base level playing him is rather intuitive, his weapons all suit their respective themes so just memorizing those causes his skills and how he plays to come naturally... But when you start to really get into how his offhand weapons interact the effectiveness of the skills fluctuate really dramatically... I originally was going to go into detail theorizing his different combos and uses but chickened out when I realized I'd written a full page JUST about the different uses of his Sentry Turret from the Chakram Q...

As a shorter summary, my favourite weapon is definitely the Chakram for its raw DPS ability. The mechanics of it getting higher attack speed at closer ranges feels way more intuitive than the likes of Graves' shotgun doing more damage at closer ranges. In a perfect situation it theoretically could do 4 attacks per second if you were facehugging a stationary target (and discounted the attack windup so granted in practice that'd be impossible)... and that's before you get to the Spectral Chakrams adding extra damage to each attack, so 3-4 attacks per second doing upwards of 130%AD per auto. The potential seems insane.

The Sniper synergises with all of the other weapons by giving a free shot with your offhand... applying Grav-Cannon's slow, summoning a Spectral Chakram or lifestealing with the Sickle.. Meanwhile calling it via another attack such as the Chakram's turret or the Sickle's Onslaught barrage can constantly proc and trigger more shots of both your main and offhand weapons together... In particular calling it via the Flamethrower's Q charges up a huge nuke onto a single target.

The Sickle gives some much needed mobility as he doesn't have anything else of the sort in his kit, the speedboost is appreciated (although it scaling on AP is iffy). And it allowing you to attack while on the move lets you kite and chase. It synergises very well with the Grav offhand to this extent which only adds to that theme. But other than that offhand Sniper constantly applies and triggers the Sniper mark repeatedly for great damage... and it spams out those Spectral Chakrams too.

Grav Q doesn't have any synergies with your offhand because it doesn't interact with it at all. But on the other hand Grav shots when summoned as a different weapon's ability is great, for example summoning it via the Sniper applies a slow and potential root at insane range, Flamethrower applies it in an AoE, and Chakram Sentry keeps them in range of it for more of the sentry's shots or to keep them in closer range to Aphilios himself for the Chakram's insane DPS to take effect.

Flamethrower is a purely synergy focused weapon, other than waveclear and splashing cheeky poke with the main auto attacks, the main thing to look for is how it spreads other weapon's effects with the Q... like mentioned before the Sniper's mark charges up drastically as more targets get marked and it seems like the Sniper/Flamethrower combo is all about burst damage and instantly nuking someone... The Flamethrower Q can summon a swarm of Spectral Chakrams to start the facemelting stuff, apply an AoE slow with the Grav, or heal you by a massive amount with the Sickle... Calling the Flamethrower itself with another weapon's skill seems less effective by comparison, however one thing it has going for it is that it does 10%AD extra damage compared to the other weapons which is nice. (Although I just know that at some point in the future there's going to be a clip of someone getting a kill with the splash at global range because someone marked by the sniper stood infront of someone on low health...)

And yeah... the Chakram itself seems like an anchor weapon more concerned with what the other weapons do for it than what it can do for the other weapons. Having it gives you the insane dueling power. And when combined with the other stuff it's what ramps the Chakram's damage up... The Turret seems best with the Grav for the aformentioned slowing shenanigans... however note that Chakram/Grav has no way of summoning Spectral Chakrams outside of your ult. Chakram/Sniper seems great because the Sniper mark each summons an extra Spectral Chakram when it's triggered, even when the sniper mark is applied via the Chakram Sentry and you don't have to weapon swap to get it.

I said this was a shorter summary and to be actually honest... it was! The first draft of this was three times as long.

I've been thinking so much about him over the past day or two, and I feel like I could talk for days about what this guy can do given the right circumstances and situations. And that's before I even get to actually play him... I've only played him once on the PBE not for lack of trying, and barely managed to test any of that stuff I just wall-of-text'd here.