User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-4068613-20140615123959/@comment-6281696-20140618123947

Ap isn't wasted on Leona, tiny amounts of AP is wasted on her. It's a bonus that doesn't matter and just ends up consuming more gold.

As for bruisers. Bruisers will always be overbearing if they have acces to both high end offense & defense. They're supposed to be a middleground between the two, so a jack of all trades, master of none. But as long as they can combine the two effectivly, they end up being master of both. The same goes for those assasins that are supposed to be squishy but then double their effective health with a single defensive item, or characters like singed who throw in a single offensive item like liandry's and now kill anything in ~10seconds.

A big problem here is the diminishing effect consequtive defensive items have. That first defensive item gives a massive boost, the fifth one only increases your effective health by say 10%, at which point offensive items are much better as doubling the rate at which you kill someone is much more valuable than surviving 10% longer. As a result true tanks only have a very limited advantage in terms of defense. Buffing & nerfing the approapriate values will help, but ultimately will just mean a different bruiser becomes dominant. Or if the buffs/nerfs are severe enough, it'l just push bruisers out of the meta completly which isn't good either.