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I don't understand the item sets in the guides

Creator: Alonshow January 24, 2017 12:10am
Alonshow
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Can someone explain how the item sets work?

I am following guides in Mobafire for Garen, Ashe, Lux, Sona and Rammus, but I don't understand what to do with the item sets. For instance, the item set in this Rammus guide has a group called "Final build example". What's that? There is another group called "Vs. AD". When do you use that one? When the enemy jungler is an AD (actually, I think all junglers are AD)? Same for the group "Vs AP".
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Alright in order then:

A "Final Build" is known as "Full Build" in most cases, where all 6 item slots are occupied with completed items. in a few cases some players will take their boots slot out to make it another item. a common example is ADCs like Caitlyn will switch out Berserker's Greaves for a Phantom Dancer

"vs AD" and "vs AP" apply mostly to (Top) laners If your opponent is an AD based champion You'll want to build A then B then C, and if AP focus on X then Y then Z instead. For instance a top lane Maokai would build Sunfire Aegis or Spirit Visage first based on the opponent.

And Most Junglers are AD. Elise Nidalee and in some cases Shaco are AP focused. Most others are AD, or more specifically bruisers, in that they take a couple damage items early and then build into a tanky item set. A few jugnlers like Rammus and Poppy rely on Tank stats rather than AD and AP. so they will build tanky straight away.
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You don't build the exact same stuff every game. So item sets are there as a tool to divide different sets of items to account for different situations.

A fullbuild is what you're expected to build by lategame. It's often just there because that's what is shown when you browse for a guide.

A vs AD group would have in account ALL of their team. You know, because you'll have to fight all of them eventually. And not all junglers are AD. You shouldn't build several magic resistance items versus a team that's composed purely of AD champions, so most good guides account for that.

I could go on explaining, but you should use your best judgement to understand what each group means. And if you don't understand some specific groups you should ask for what they mean in the guide, you might get better answers there.
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Against a team of Maokai, Elise, Syndra, Caitlyn and Nami, only 1 out of the 5 champions deals primarily physical damage. This means the magic resistance that you build will be effective against 80% of the enemy team. This is usually what people mean by "Vs AP" (or vice versa for Vs AD).

A team like Poppy, Lee Sin, Ryze, Jhin, Zyra is more balanced, with two sources of magic damage and three sources of physical damage. Against balanced teams, you'll want to build both armor and MR as well as health (unless you're building full damage).

When people put "example builds" or "final builds" it's usually a generalized 6-item build that you can use against most balanced teams. When the enemy team composition is heavily weighted towards one damage type, you can start to focus on countering that damage type earlier and with more items.

And like Ekki said, if there's something in the cheatsheet that isn't clear, check the guide for more information and ask the author if you still can't figure it out. A lot of guide authors check their guide comments and will respond to questions.
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Thank you for the explanations. I asked here because this is a general difficulty I've experienced with many guides. Also, I have asked for clarifications in most of the guides I've read, but I've received very little answers there.

Still not totally sure of when to use the "VS AD" and "VS AP" sets. From your answers I understand it's relatively straightforward if you're the jungler: Your decission depends on what kind of damage the enemy team deals as a whole because you don't have any direct enemy champions. But what if you're laning? Say I'm top with Garen and the enemy top is Darius. OK, that's AD. But what if the other four enemies are all AP? Do I go for AD or for AP?

Also, a more or less related question: It is quite tedious to manually copy the whole item set for each champion you buy. Is there any way of doing this automatically?
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Alonshow wrote:
Also, a more or less related question: It is quite tedious to manually copy the whole item set for each champion you buy. Is there any way of doing this automatically?

Well... I was going to suggest you use the "Cheat Sheet" button to get a very quick and easy cheat-sheet pop-up, but it seems items don't actually appear in that cheat sheet anymore :/

I didn't read any of the other responses, but it's not entirely as simple as "4 AP champions, 1AD champion = buy defense for AP". There are too many scenarios to account for. For instance, those 4AP champs could be doing next to no damage compared to their monster hyper-carry 14 kill Lucian - are you really going to build magic resist against a fed ADC?

Maybe it's a flaw of guide writers to say "vs ad", "vs ap" because it's never that simple. If you're really struggling, many guides have a "balanced" build intended for a little defense and damage against a typical team composition (at least 1 major AP damage dealer and at least 1 major AD damage dealer). Try building the balanced build.
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Alonshow wrote:
But what if you're laning? Say I'm top with Garen and the enemy top is Darius. OK, that's AD. But what if the other four enemies are all AP? Do I go for AD or for AP?
I'll repeat this part because it's important: "use your best judgement".

If you're against an AD champion in lane build armor for your first item (if you can afford to buy several tank items, of course), then build whatever it's needed against the rest of the team. If you're not a tank just build damage and maybe in late game one defensive item against their most common damage type. If you're going to splitpush and mostly face a particular duelist on the enemy team you can build a defense type against that too.

I could go on listing exceptions, but I think you should try to think each one of them by yourself too.
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Alonshow wrote:
Still not totally sure of when to use the "VS AD" and "VS AP" sets. From your answers I understand it's relatively straightforward if you're the jungler: Your decission depends on what kind of damage the enemy team deals as a whole because you don't have any direct enemy champions. But what if you're laning? Say I'm top with Garen and the enemy top is Darius. OK, that's AD. But what if the other four enemies are all AP? Do I go for AD or for AP?

For laners you generally counter-build your lane opponent with your first item (e.g. Abyssal Mask against an AP mid or Spirit Visage against an AP top), then for the rest of your build you'll assume you're going to be team fighting somewhat.

So if you're Maokai laning against a Rumble but the rest of his team is AD, you might start with a Spectre's Cowl into a Bami's Cinder and then Spirit Visage. Maybe Mercury's Treads too. Then you'd start getting stuff like Sunfire Aegis, Frozen Heart and Randuin's Omen to prepare you for team fights.

It does depend a lot on the champion and build of course. Some champions build almost the same thing every game, so a "Vs AP" build might only have 1 item that's different.
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Again, thank you for your answers. I was thinking about how to apply them, and I started to wonder if I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe this whole thing is still a bit too advanced for me. Currently I only own eight champions, so I'm still half way to playing ranked. That means that many times I just don't know who is AP and who is AD. So I'm thinking that maybe it's better for now to simply use the items that the game recommends and come back to these item builds when I have a bit more experience and I know the champions better. What do you think?
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Just have fun and experiment. If you really want some guidance, either stick with recommended items or take some ideas from a guide. You're right that knowing what all the champions do is something that's pretty necessary for adapting your build on the fly, so it'll take some time before you can do that well.

Keep in mind that the people you are matched against will also be pretty new to the game for the most part, so you can get away with a lot of mistakes in terms of build if you play a little bit better than your competition.

Sticking with a "balanced" or "example" build from a guide is usually fine too.
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