Talk:Varus/@comment-24383287-20140606232738

Here's my thoughts on the AD vs. AP argument. AD is much better, simply due to damage multiplication. At max rank on all abilities, the damage from Varus's AP scaling doubles his damage around 300 AP, where he gets 120% more damage on each blight stack, 300% damage on the on hit damage, but when added to base ad still only around a 100% damage increase, and his ult will do around 85% bonus damage. The math is slightly wonkier with the likelihood of buying a nashors tooth and the arcane blade mastery, which bring his AP ratio per auto from .25 to .45, giving him +150 per auto straight from AP. Since I'm assuming he's at level 18 so all his skills are maxed, that's 250% of his original damage which has a base of 100 at 18. Now, 300 AP requires at least 3 items unless runes are wonky or a blue pot is bought. Meanwhile, to double the damage on a rank 5 Q, 157 total AD is required. This is anywhere between one item or even half of an item as with ad runes, a single BF sword will bring him to the necessary levels. However, this only gives him 157% damage on autos, and a measly 20% bonus on his E. However, that is half of an item compared to the AP three items. Having transformed his BF into a pre-change BT and stacking it fully, our AD Varus now has around 235 ad. This gives him 225% damage on Q, 235% damage on autos, and around a 40% increase on E damage. While the E damage is underwhelming, Q and Auto scaling will be strong as the ability scalings of AP varus at 3 items when AD Varus has only 1 item.

TL;DR: Varus's scalings double his base damages at 3 items for AP varus, or 1 (BF upgrade) item for AD Varus, meaning AD Varus gains more slot efficiency on his damage, and thus is better.