Talk:Kayle/@comment-165.24.201.148-20120412140248/@comment-50.103.9.51-20120415164732

I'll take a stab at this. Be warned, this can get quite long.

The general definition of "Carry" is somewhat fuzzy, since most champs can snowball out of control and essentially "Carry" the game. This isn't due to a champ being innately powerful so much as it is a result of the power curve in the game. EVERYONE is squishy compared to that runaway train.

So something more specific is required. Something that uses the behavior of a champ's "best" or "ideal" role to define how they're played. We need to idealize the conditions to eliminate false positives.

So rather than defining "Carry" as a champ who can just kill everyone quickly at all stages of the game, lets say that a "Carry" champ with a very strong LATE-GAME.

More specifically, a Carry needs to have high SUSTAINED DPS in late-game. Two reasons:

1) It means they aren't at the mercy of cooldowns. This separates them from Mages and Assassins, who have high burst damage but are limited by cooldowns (or energy, in the case of the Ninjas and Lee Sin).

2) We want to define Carries as being champs who scale well into late game since they're the champs most likely to break a defensive dead-lock and push through to victory. (I've played games with all-tanks/supports in DotA that went on for bloody HOURS because nobody was dealing damage fast enough to actually push).

Or more briefly, a fully-built Carry is a high threat until they're dead. A fully-built Mage is a high threat until they're either on Cooldowns, or dead. Burst vs Sustained.

As you might have guessed, sustained damage is more easily attained on Auto-attack based champs than spell-based champs. No mana/energy management for one, but auto-attack "cooldowns" are puny compared to spells. (This is why %-based damage skills and steroids are found on Carries; they scale into late game.)

However, there *are* genuine AP Carries in LoL. It's just that most players don't correctly identify them.

I think the main misuse of the "AP Carry" definition is that most players see a Mage snowball into a dominant position quickly, win the game, and they erroniously conclude that the champ is an "AP Carry". (yet we've already established that ANY champ can snowball into such a position. This is why we limit the definition to late-game.)

There is some subjectivity to these definitions since role-overlap exists in many champions. But don't stretch too far in your interpretations. There are logical limits to the definitions of these roles.

Zilean is an odd Mage that skirts the line of AP Carry because of Rewind. Personally, I'd still place him in the Mage category. Why? His damage comes almost entirely from Double-Time Bomb, which although strong, is still entirely bursty and irregular compared to any carry.

Even with max level CDR and high AP, Zilean will only briefly attain the damage levels of an Attack-Speed-Crit-train like a fully-built Tristana or Vayne (among MANY others). And that's if the enemy bunches up a lot. It's effective but circumstantial. The AD Carries I mentioned can work all the time every time. But for a more fair and direct comparison, we'll look at an ACTUAL AP Carry.

Karthus, is the purest definition of an AP Carry. He has TWO spells with high sustained DPS (Lay Waste basically replaces his auto-attack and Defile just melts people) and low cooldown; he has positively INSANE raw magic damage late game; much higher than Zilean. Once Karthus puts the pressure on, it doesn't end until he dies or runs out of mana (and even if he dies he may still get one last nuke on the enemy anyway).

Finally, as the last cavet, we only use these definitions for the champ's dominant/best role: Technically, even Annie could become an auto-attack AD Carry with the right items, but she will always be worse at that role than the champs actually designed to perform that role.