Talk:Ezreal/@comment-109.122.182.10-20120829022647/@comment-94.6.98.252-20120829231138

AP Ez isn't a 'competitive' pick, this is true. He suffers from the same weaknesses that keep Brand confined to the bottom of the AP carry tier lists, i.e. he's gold-reliant and has little to no utility.

However, he does have his strong points. He's useful in poke comps, since he brings two long-range short-cooldown pokes; both have high damage once a Lichbane is acquired. He brings an attack speed shred and a huge AoE ult. And he brings fantastic mobility coupled with decent burst.

Now, you could argue that AD Ezreal still ticks many of these boxes. However, AD Ez's poke falls off dramatically past mid game, as its AD ratio is only 1:1 scaling and he builds no AP for his W. By contrast, an AP Ez will have a 1.2 AP ratio on his Q with lichbane, and will combine that with his W for double-pokes.

AD Ez does bring the AS shred, but equally as the ADC, AD Ez is target number one for the enemy team. He has to be much more careful about his positioning, and therefore is less likely to be able to blanket-debuff an entire enemy team. He also builds little to no CDR, which makes him unable to maintain the debuff full time (AP Ezreal generally builds Ionian boots and receives blue buff).

Most importantly, however, AD Ezreal's ult is near-worthless. It's basically only useful for getting your passive stacked up prior to a fight and maybe picking off a fleeing enemy. It scales badly with AD, and it's magic damage so an AD Ez won't have any penetration. On an AP Ez, however, that ult can happily strip half the health off a carry on its own past 30 minutes. If cast early in a close teamfight, it can deal a couple of thousand damage spread across the team, and is immediately followed by a W for more burst-AoE.

Note, to the person above considering matchups: AP Ez also tends to do well against champions like Ryze and Annie who have range issues. His W has good damage, good range, and a low cooldown; it's ideal for poking down an enemy who can't get anywhere near you. The only champions that will really give Ez a problem in mid are champions with a built-in gap closer, such as Ahri and Kassadin, and perhaps champions with extremely high single-target burst like LeBlanc (due to his natural squishiness). He's actually a surprisingly solid pick for lane phase mid, it's just his weak farming, gold reliance and lack of utility that let him down.

In conclusion... no, you're not going to see any AP Ezreals in 2k+ ELO play. But he's far, far from a useless pick, and entirely valid to be taking in normals or even <1500 ELO ranked. And he's very fun to play ^^

Yippo

P.S. Sorry, another essay-post. I wrote an extensive guide on AP Ez in these comments a month or so ago. What can I say, AP Ez brings out the talker in me.