Talk:Diana/@comment-26001789-20190610095128/@comment-26808509-20190618205021

The thing with Diana is that she does indeed has the kit of an AP bruiser (she could use some things to further support that like an HP scaling on the shield or something, but it still is pretty brusery). The problem and the reason she isn't played as such is not that her bruiser parts are too weak, the problem is that she doesn't have itemazion to support that playstyle.

There are VERY few AP bruiser items. Rod of Ages and Abyssal Mask are pretty much the only ones out there, with maybe Liandrys and Rylais as a "soft bruisery" addition (they do give health and their passives could support a bruiser on some way, but they aren't really... enough). So Rod of Ages and Abyssal Mask are the only real AP bruiser items that currently exist and, well, Diana doesn't work well with either.

Abyssal Mask is horrible for Diana because the base values on all her abilites are quite... horrible. 200 on Q, 210 on W, 220 on R, 250 on passive. That means that the bonus magic damage that Abyssal's aura gives, does essentially nothing because the item itself gives no AP and therefore only interacts with the horrible base damages. Not to mention that it does nothing for the shield. The loss of AP on this item was one of the biggest nerfs that Diana ever recieved.

And Rod of Ages... can actually be good on her. It's often build in combination with Nashors Tooth, which goes in this bruisery direction. However, it's still suboptimal for her, because it takes pretty long to stack up. And bruisers usually want to have a quick powerspike, because they either need to snowball hard to carry through midgame or go more into the tanky direction. That means for a real bruisery playstyle, this item is actually not good at all.

That's also why Riot never reworked Diana and it's also why they pulled the changes from PBE. They want to release a few actual AP-bruiser items before they touch Diana. Cause a proper itemazion could allready fix her issues and that without completely deleting assassin Diana.

What Diana would need is an item that gives her some HP, a (low) amount of AP and attackspeed. The reason why AD bruisers are so good is pretty much Trinity Force. It's an item that gives them offensive stats (especially attackspeed) without sacreficing HP. And Diana needs attackspeed AND AP, problem is that Nashors has no HP.