Talk:Gragas/SkinsTrivia/@comment-186.221.109.34-20111214174420

For anyone who thinks AD or Tank Gragas is better than AP, here's an explanation on why building AP is better (usually). Credits to wRAthoFVuLK, a fellow MOBAfire user. "Why AP over tank Gragas?

Think about it this way: you will basically ALWAYS be able to have your Drunken Rage buff on. This means you will basically ALWAYS be taking 18% reduced damage from ALL sources, which is ALREADY more tanky than most tanks! Plus, you have great escape mechanisms and mobility with Flash and Body Slam. If that isn't enough, if you get caught in a sticky situation and your Body Slam AND  Flash are down (which is highly unlikely), you can just  Explosive Cask the enemies away from you! With all of this built-in survivability, plus with the Will of the Ancients for sustainability and  Lich Bane and Mercury's Treads you will be getting later on, you are ALREADY extremely tanky! And Gragas has some of the best AP ratios in the GAME. 0.9 on his Barrel Roll, and a whopping 1.0 on his  Explosive Cask. That means, building AP, you can instantly kill squishies with your ult + Q combo and completely wipe out over half of everyone else's health at the same time, thanks to AoE damage! With AP Gragas, you get the BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: tankiness with high survivability, while still dishing out mean damage. And, don't even think about AD Gragas. Yes, he gets bonus AD from his Drunken Rage, but that doesn't make him viable as AD. By going AD, you are losing the potential AoE burst from  Barrel Roll and  Explosive Cask, and since the AD scaling is a little better on  Body Slam than AP (.66 vs .5), but each unit of AD is way more expensive than each of AP, you are getting around the same amount of damage on  Body Slam both ways. So, extremely survivable ranged AoE burst, or more melee damage but making no use of Barrel Roll or  Explosive Cask for extremely high, AoE burst damage on low cooldowns? You choose."

Too long for most people to read, but the thing is that you sacrifice awesome AP ratios and natural tankyness, as well as a high burst,for either more damage on your basic attacks or more tankyness, while having really no utility in teamfights, drawing no "aggro".