The latest League of Legends patch preview tells me what I already knew about those alternative builds

I’m always willing to try out some funky build in League of Legends – AP Twitch, if you can consider that an alternate build, is a personal favorite of mine. Being able to throw my Venom Cask into a crowded teamfight and watch everyone disappear never gets old, and because the play rate is much lower than the ADC version, I always get the sense that nobody knows how to deal with me.

When Riot recently opened the door to alternative builds for other characters, it piqued my interest. Adding decent AP scaling to Ezreal, in theory, meant that he could operate in a similar fashion mid lane, and that on-hit, Statikk Shiv Teemo looked to be a tempting option for applying poison. I can now say that, after bearing witness to dozens of these mavericks over the past few days, I never want to see them in my games again. On my team, at least.

League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison puts out patch previews ahead of changes to the MOBA. It lists buffs, nerfs, and any major systematic shifts Riot is planning for the next update. Interestingly, this time around, Phroxzon talks about alt builds and how weak they appear to be.

He jokes about “people claiming 36% winrate AP Ezreal is busted” and how players have been trying to make some of these alternative builds work, but that they “may just be too weak.” This has been my experience so far. I understand why players want to reach for something different, but when I see a Teemo shroom do approximately no damage because they would rather clear waves more efficiently with their auto attacks, it does make me wonder.

If I queue up and see I’m facing Irelia, I will generally let out a small sigh. She’s brazen, super mobile, and doesn’t mind jumping on my little mage head whenever she feels like it. When I see that Irelia is building AP, however, I rejoice. I don’t want League of Legends to be this rigid thing where only one strategy is viable, but sometimes it’s good to just admit when something doesn’t work.

I’m not really sure what direction these alt builds will go, or how, other than just upping scalings, they can be improved. The use case for many is clear: Xin Zhao, when he has a lot of ability power, heals a ridiculous amount, but his damage suffers as a result. This turns him into a drain tank, in a way, as he sustains by attacking. The issue is that other champions do this much better – Warwick, for instance, has a kit that revolves around this very thing, and he can dispatch squishy opposition much more efficiently.

Ruining my games aside, I can’t blame players for wanting to try something new, but these alternative builds have a long way to go before I see an Ezreal with AP runes and feel joy. At least, for now, I can just sit back and enjoy my free LP when someone on the opposite team wants to experiment.