User blog comment:Shinen-san/Shinen's thoughts on AP itemization/@comment-24420226-20151119212439/@comment-4996845-20151119224023

Here's the deal though (and now read that aloud). It is easier to build both tanky and damaging as an AP - I'm not aiming at changing that here. However I feel you are mistaken in one point - in that ADs do not have opportunities to counter-build.

Let's take two wildly different champs, say, Miss Fortune and Riven. Both are usually built glasscannon, but both can react to potential threats by building countering items both offensive and semi-offensive. Also both like doing ability wombo-combos and weaving attacks in between. MF can go full damage with PD into IE if she's bullying her lane opponents hard or with Statikk and ER to shove her lane. Or she can build a sustainable duelist-like build with DD into PD. Or she can go anti-tank with an early GS into BotRK. Similiarly Riven can go full attack with YG into Hydra (if she wants to shove her lane even harder) or sustained with DD into BT, or tankbuster with GS into DD, or mage killer with MoM into DD... There are quite a few possibilities.

Sure, it still boils down to maths, as in "what's the most effective item at this time". However I feel that ADs have (at least for the moment) far more options to their problems than APs, whose main choice still remains "go more defensive or go more offensive". My aim was to give APs more possible approaches to go offensive, so that "the best build" becomes more varied from game to game. I'd like seeing a Brand going ZG and laughing off into a Malzahar's face before he pumps him full of flames, confident that a SS will make him pull through the fight. In the current meta if they build similiarly and start out full, a Brand should ALWAYS retreat in this situation, as a Malz will 90% of the time beat him 1-on-1. What I'd wish to achieve is that Brand COULD do a duelist-like build and make it work to beat a Malz going a more generalist approach.