I see your point for easy damage. So IMO easy damage comes at the cost of gold efficiency. I also think that any short CC pseudo "roots" ASOL locking him into an obvious movement pattern with less room for maxing dps. Maybe the argument for escaping combat works, but there is already a stun and move speed in his kit and possibly other items/runes. ASOL is weirdly started like an all rounder so balancing his numbers gives more consistent results over many games. Of course some games you can just full AP one-shot people, but that won't be every game. Won't catch me betting on it at least. I'm not that good so maybe someone better has more useful insight.