Talk:Udyr/@comment-5494818-20140507183808/@comment-1957439-20140604080230

There are...a few things that need to be said.

First of all, 70% bonus attack speed does not mean 70% more attacks per second. It means you get an additional 70% * baseattackspeed attacks per second. This essentially means that the more attack speed items you purchase, the less significant the bonus is to you. Basic example: getting .5 additional attacks per second is less meaningful when you have 2.0 attacks per second (for a total of 2.5 attacks per second and a relative increase in speed of 25%) than it is when you have 1.0 attacks per second (for a total of 1.5 attacks per second and a relative increase in speed of 50%). See: Attack Speed.

Second of all, Pheonix Stance and Tiger Stance both offer steroids for melee combat, Pheonix in the form of AoE DoT and on-hit procs, and Tiger in the form of bonus attack speed, a single on-cast on-hit proc, and bonus physical damage on attacks. It doesn't matter whether or not you're building AD or AP (and I would not recommend AP, which Riot has stated exists on primarily physical champions to allow them to have some kind of bonus from AP they might gain without building heavily into it, i.e. Trinity Force, Guinsoo's Rageblade, Elixir of Brilliance late game, Iceborn Guantlet, etc.), both of these stances serve a similar purpose: get close to something and deal damage.

To finish, given Udyr's melee range and lack of any jumps or dashes, he's an all-in champion. This automatically puts Phoenix leagues ahead of Tiger when prioritizing which abilities to put points into. Phoenix stance, without any AP at all, deals a significant amount of magic damage (read: the damage type that people are less likely to build resistance against) in an area (read: hitting more than one target with any of its damage means you effectively double, triple, etc. the damage output of the ability). Tiger Stance, while powerful on top of Phoenix Stance, is, by itself, a very weak ability that only hits one target (if you even get to hit the target) for physical damage (when armor naturally scales higher and armor items are very common) and the damage it deals is heavily dependant on Udyr's AD. In isolation, Tiger is never better. By the same token you level Phoenix Stance up first, you level Overload up first on Ryze, and Cull the Meek up first on Renekton, and Defile up first on Karthus...do you get what I'm saying? It's not that their other abilities are bad, it's that they have an ability that is innately better, does more by itself, and scales better with points put into ranking it up.