User blog:Dj0z/AP on supports - quick analysis

A post in the Lulu page was asking what's so great about AP Lulu. I could hardly find a reason, i find the tanky way to build her more efficient, so i decided to check out support AP ratios quickly.

That is assuming you want to support your team, but with AP items, as opposed to typical AP-less support items. Here is the list from greatest to weakest, with some sharing the same seat:


 * 1) Taric has 2 formulas, a minimal one couting Q on himself and lowest use of E, and a maximal couting Q on an ally (which doubles the ratio essentially) and E at max power. Minimum = 0.86 + 0.6 + 0.4 + 0.7 = 2.54, Maximum = 1.2 + 0.6 + 0.8 + 0.7 = 3.3! Here's the god of AP supports. I didn't even count the extra AP from his Ult.
 * 2) Janna = 0.75 + 0.8 + 0.9 + 0.175 = 2.625 with instant ult, up to 3.85 if you channel ult to the max (never happens, trying could get you killed). Nothing special about cooldowns.
 * 3) Soraka = 0.4 + 0.45 + 0.75 + 0.7 = 2.3, one goddess of AP supports. Super-spammable 0.4 (Q). Lore-wise she is a goddess anyways. And ranged.
 * 4) Zilean = 0.9 + 2.0 = 2.9, but here too, the formula is abit irrelevant: his 0.9 can be doubled over a second with Rewind (W). However his Ult will only apply the ratio if your ally dies, and whenever enemies can afford to do that, they'll just wait for the buff to wear out before easily killing the ult'ed ally (if you take the risk of waiting until just before said ally dies, he might just die before you cast). Else they can kill it and group around the to-be-revived corpse. That means his heal/R AP ratio is highly unreliable. All in all i don't think he deserves to be higher than Soraka. He's even arguably on par with the 2 worst just below.
 * 5) Karma = 0.6 + 0.7 + 0.8 = 2.1 . Take note than this one has particular mechanisms, and will get deceptively more efficient with lower HP, which then improves her Q in its special way. In those cases she becomes extremely AP efficient.
 * 6) Sona = 0.7 + 0.25 + 0.8 = 1.75, with no surprise in cooldowns. We're starting to get AP-inefficient compared to the others here (some Alternative ways to use her might be just as good).
 * 7) Lulu = 0.6 + 0.6 + 0.5 = 1.7, no special cooldowns either. She's one of the most inefficient AP rentabilizers, roughly equal at that with Sona. There's only little harm in building her other ways than AP. See Tank Lulu guide for example.
 * 8) Alistar is pretty fashionable these days and has a heal. Here we go, including a full 3 seconds of passive: 0.3 + 0.5 + 0.7 + 0.2 = 1.7 . Nothing amazing either. Note that the heal will have lower cooldown with enemies dying nearby but is on 0.2 ratio & 12 seconds cooldown so that's a weak difference for your AP. That, and the fact that he's melee makes full AP Alistar not really viable, as we already know.

Tiers for that specific analysis, for those who find that more relevant, which it might just be:
 * 1) Taric, Janna, Soraka,
 * 2) Karma, Zilean
 * 3) Sona, Lulu, Alistar

Disclaimer:
 * Leona and Nunu, are tanks (it's mainly the meta calling them supports). They have no heal/shield they could use on allies, let alone AP ratios that are supportive: that's why i didn't include them in this analysis, same for other special supports (Shen etc).
 * Lux is a different story (AP nuker with shield, strong CC and zero heals), i didn't feel she belonged there either.

Feel free to share you point of view and alternate builds.