Talk:Varus/@comment-4916873-20121201102617



I'm a Varus player for a very long time now, started playing him a small while after his release. I've been playing him as an AP carry since summer, even though his ap ratio's where lower at that time.

Varus is listed by me (in my countless posts in LoL communities) as an ''' AP Hyper-Carry DPS. ''' What does this mean? AP obviously stands for ability power, dealing damage in a way involving ability power. Hyper-carry stands for 'strong lategame carry', defined with the strongest single-target dps champions with item build currently in the game: Tristana, Vayne and Kog Maw. You can't compare this category with burst mages properly, in the same way that comparing Karthus with LeBlanc may not serve any purpose.

A small thing criticised was the 'on-hit' parameter I gave AP Varus. All of his [W] (Blighted Quiver) damage is registered as on-hit, and by such does not proc spell vamp (the sole reason why Gunblade is not worth it's price).

Another minor(?) thing I'd like to get out of the way quickly is that AP Varus is a champion that ordinarely is played in the  middle  lane and not in the  bottom  lane as you suggested. When queueing with a team you may consider to play him in other lanes.



Now let's focus on DPS. I want to explain this very clearly and basically, if you want more precise calculations (with less assumptions), please contact me. Post below claims that AP Varus performs underwhelmingly with an endgame item build (5 items) to AD Varus. We will assume both type of carries are fighting in a teamfight. I will show you that your claim is untrue by making a clear and simple model of both builds that does not look at effective DPS, but just the scalings on each autoattack.

AD Varus deals his damage with his auto-attack. Every autoattack has an 1 AD scaling; that is, every auto-attack dishes out damage equal to your AD. To add to this, an auto-attack may crit, dealing 250% of the damage it would've normally done. When running the standard AD carry build (berserker, IE, PD, BT, LW) 55% of every auto-attack will critically strike: (0.45 * 1.00) + (0.55 * 2.50) = 1.825.

<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">So every auto-attack will deal 1.825 of your AD in damage (on average).

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">Let's change the perspective to AP Varus (Berserker, Nashor, Rageblade, RoA, Rabadon). Here things are a little more complicated. AP Varus is also a champion that dishes out his damage via auto-attacking. Every auto-attack has an 1 AD scaling. AP Varus, however, does not benefit from critical strike chance or critical strike modifier. AP Varus will deal 1.0 of his AD in damage every auto-attack.

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">We are building AP though, and for a reason. Every auto-attack will flatly deal magical damage equal to 0.25 of your AP. Auto-attacks will also effectively deal 0.02 of targets max HP in magical damage for every 100 AP you have. This means that, against an average (simplified) target with 2400 HP, every auto-attack will deal an additional 48 damage per 100 AP, which is equal to 0.48 AP scaling on his auto-attack.

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">If we add the numbers this will make his auto-attack have an AP scaling of 0.73 and an AD scaling of 1.0. If we want to compare AD and AP Varus, we will have to convert one type of damage to the other. Now, roughly (in favour of AD) 1 AD is equal to 1.8 AP on the current set of items. If we use these numbers, AP Varus will dish out 1.0 + (0.73 * 1.8) = 2.314 of his AD in damage (effectively).

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">1.825 AD : 2.314 AD

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">The difference between these number is huge and with a clear conclusion: An AP Varus with 5 items will simply deal more damage than an AD Varus with 5 items. If you doubt these results, keep in mind that AP Varus Rabadon's Deathcap (which passive we did not include) plus the fact that more than half of the damage output is magical damage heavily overpowers the DPS benefit AD Varus may get from having a Last Whisperer. Additionally, in hands of a proper player, the amount of time required to detonate blight will not weigh hard enough to make AP Varus' DPS be lower than AD Varus'. Lastly, AP Varus makes use of hybrid items, which are generally much more cost-efficiënt than flat AD items.

<p style="margin:12pt0cm;line-height:17.6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#D9D9D9; mso-themecolor:background1;mso-themeshade:217;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">Conclusion: AP Varus will deal more damage endgame (yet will obviously be weaker early game).