User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-4068613-20140615123959/@comment-24464243-20140616103246

I ... really don't get most of these concerns. The Leona example especially. She's not gated with her ratios ( which, as a post-Level 6 burst, are on the level of Galio, Anivia, and Kassadin, and a bit under Rumble if he's smart and takes advantage of Danger Zone ) because she might go elsewhere, but because she'd be too powerful otherwise. Heck, Leona jungle doesn't care about AP ratios at all; what she really wants are base values she doesn't have. You did sort of say this, but you took it the wrong way. Just look at her kit: stun, AoE nuke with defense steroid, dash + stun, and high-range AoE nuke with stun and slow. She's already a strong lane bully with her base values, and her kit scales healthier with her going tank because then she doesn't nuke someone down for making one mistake - instead, she can hard engage as much as she want and still soak up the entirety of the enemy team's burst, leaving them with the decision to either waste their resources on bringing her down or trying to kite and control her so she can't make use of her remaining health to disable again.

Now, let's look at Udyr, who you think it's unfair he gets such a power spike from a single item. His kit is an attack speed steroid with an on-hit DoT, a life steal steroid with a shield, a timed 1 second bash with a phase movement speed steroid, and a on-three-hit AoE nuke with a damage aura. No unblockable mobility, a single light bit of crowd control, all extremely reliant on his autoattacks. Tell me, what does he do without damage? What does he do with damage but no tankiness? His base values can do him fine, but only if he keeps his levels up.

So, he needs a powerful offensive item and then a way to stay in combat. As it just so happens, the Spellblade effects are perfect with his stance mechanic, and Trinity Force gives him a buttload of stats he loves and lets him take advantage of his good natural AD. Does he need anything else? No, not really, so now he can concern himself with stuff that'll help him bulk up and actually manage to brawl.

I think one major factor with why you find this so odd is because you only seem to think there's one type of carry, the glass carry. This is probably one of the reasons why Riot changed from the term carries to marksman for their ranged carries and gave their melee ones entirely different roles: they weren't the only carries, just the carries of that particular type. Meanwhile, characters like Jax, Kha'zix, Nasus, and Udyr carry while having completely different play patterns. Sure, their damage may not be as extreme, and Kha'zix doesn't even rely on his autoattacks, but the important part is that they can stay extremely relevant in the late game via their damage or even take it by storm with a proper build. You don't want any of them to spiral out of control because you'll have a harder time stopping them ones they do.

I'm not saying the balance is perfectly fine as it is - I'm pretty sure the bruiser carries are actually a lot more powerful than the marksman carries at the moment, and when do we really see the true mage carries nowadays? - but to properly support these champions' playstyles, you'd need several archetypes per role and at that point you're not really changing anything but giving some poor scalers the option for more AP. Which they'll probably not really care about. Really, what tank Leona gets Iceborne for its AP, anyway? It's just a nice bonus to go with the wonderful additions of mana, armor, CDR, and its Spellblade.

Anyway. What really needs to be tweaked from what I'm reading here really is how these champions scale, if even that. If Udyr's damage scales so well with a single item that he blocks out other options, then sure that's a problem. Having a single item power spike, however, isn't one. Haven't you seen how so much more potent a marksman can get with a single BF Sword and then a Bloodthirster or Infinity Edge? And they don't need tankiness as much or at all, so they're free to gain further power spikes from more power-loaded items.