Full AP Kayle VS. On-Hit AP Kayle (details in description)

Описание: Blade of the Ruined King, Kraken Slayer, and Guinsoo's Rageblade are items that a few Kayle mains build to have more agency during the laning phase, but allegedly they give up late game scaling in exchange. Consensus among Kayle players is that a full AP build is ultimately her strongest build, especially in the late game.

I wanted to see what would happen if I married Kayle's on-hit build with her AP build to see if there is a middle ground that works, in an attempt to give her some early game agency in addition to her iconic late game scaling.

So, I set up a four-dummy-test: Deal as much damage as I can in 10 seconds to each of the four dummies individually. The first two dummies are being hit with Kayle's standard Full AP build (Nashor's Tooth, Lich Bane, Rabadon's Deathcap, Shadowflame, and Void Staff) so we can see a rough average in case I slightly mess up. The last two dummies are being hit with my hybrid On-Hit AP build (Blade of the Ruined King, Guinsoo's Rageblade, Nashor's Tooth, Lich Bane, and Rabadon's Deathcap).

I also tested to see which build contains more AoE burst from Starfire Spellblade using another four dummies.

Same goes for her ultimate, Divine Judgement.

Results: In the 10 seconds single target test, my hybrid build did slightly more damage overall on average, roughly ~1800 extra damage in total or ~180 extra damage per second. In the singe use AoE tests for both Kayle's E and R, the traditional AP build did slightly more damage overall, doing roughly 110 more damage on E, and roughly 80 more damage on R.

Conclusion: This test proves that my hybrid build is better. You lose a tiny amount of burst in exchange for an even greater amount of auto attack dps. Kayle's E has a five seconds cooldown no matter which build you pick, so if you factor in how much auto attack dps you can get between uses of E, my hybrid build loses 110 burst damage in exchange for 900 auto damage in the same amount of time. If we exclusively calculate the damage during Kayle's 2.5 second ultimate, my hybrid build loses 190 burst damage against one target in exchange for 450 auto damage through that duration. Even if you hit four targets with R, the hybrid auto's are still doing 20 more damage overall. So in order for Full AP Kayle to deal more damage than my On-Hit AP Kayle, she would need to consistently hit all 5 enemy champions at once, and let's be honest, that will not happen for most of your games.

But I have not even mentioned the best part yet. Since you build Blade of the Ruined King and Guinsoo's Rageblade first, you get to enjoy a stronger early game with more agency and power in the laning phase, without sacrificing any of your late game scaling. In fact, your late game scaling is slightly better!

I was met with resistance on reddit, people are telling me I should have given the dummies extra HP and MR to have a realistic late game test. So I did, here are the results:

I created a target dummy with Force of Nature, Spirit Visage, Hallow Radiance, Kaenic Rookern, Jak'Sho the Protean, and I added addition HP to bring the dummy up to 7050. I hit the dummy a bunch first to get rid of it's magic damage shield from Kaenic Rookern so that the test would apply to just straight HP.

In 10 seconds Full AP did 5627 damage. Q+E did 705 with 21% missing health damage. Q+R did 636. W says it will heal 283 hp and grant 89% move speed.

In 10 seconds my On-Hit AP build did 8944 damage. Q+E did 713 with 17% missing health damage. Q+R did 389. W says it will heal 231 hp and grant 72% move speed.

This didn't confirm anything I didn't already confirm in the first test. The dps is way higher, the E damage is about the same and will execute pretty closely to each other (only 4% off), the R damage is weaker (but with 2.5 seconds of invulnerability you more than make up for it with autos), and W is not that much weaker, you still heal for a good chunk and grant a huge move speed bonus.

Yes, my build is better. You hit huge powerspikes sooner, start carrying the game earlier, and lost hardly anything in the late game. You become more useful in more areas than just one, without realistically giving up your ability to one-shot. Just to throw this in here, you also heal ~30 hp per auto thanks to the lifesteal on BotRK, it's not much, but it covers the healing you lost on yourself from W with just 2 autos.

Also, don't forget that the 10 second test is not just auto attacks, I used Q and E as often as I could when they were off cooldown, so it's true total damage test, not just an auto attack test.

tl:dr
You should build BotRK and Rageblade first, then finish with Nashor's Tooth, Lich Bane, and Rabadon's Deathcap. It's just better.