Dear Riot: Adaptive Helm (In Depth Discussion)

As I've mentioned before, this item really shouldn't be added. The item affects nearly every ap mid laner in this game, and it affects each one with a different proportion. One of two things will happen if this item is added: 1). Riot won't buff any mid laners for compensation and we'll be locked in a meta with only a small pool of viable mid laners that are capable of dealing damage to tanks that build this item. 2). Riot will try to buff mid laners in ways that correspond to how hard they were affected. (Karthus/Azir are affected a lot more than Ahri would be for example). Now, let's assume we live in a fantasy land where doing this kind of a balance compensation project is easy and takes a few days rather than months and months of time. There are still balance issues because you are assuming a 100% chance that someone builds this item in a game. If someone is playing a champion that requires a different subset of items (Riven, Fiora, Irelia, Jayce, etc vs Any Tank Ever) then those champions that were given compensation buffs suddenly seem to borderline on broken, because they were buffed to compensate for an item that the enemy isn't building. Furthermore, if the item were to ever get removed or nerfed, all of those compensation buffs would have to be revised.

Now, to me, this is an obvious lose-lose scenario. This isn't about not wanting to see a certain mid laner gutted or whatever. This is about not wanting season 1 jax/vlad level of balance in mid lane for the rest of the season.

THE FOLLOWING IS A FOLLOW UP DISCUSSION YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST. THE TEXT ABOVE WAS WHAT PRIMARILY MOTIVATED ME TO MAKE THE FORUM POST.

Now, I actually have a theory as to why Riot is adding this item that I will post below. 1). The discussion begins with MR. MR isn't a thing you see a lot of people building. Mid laners a large majority of the time take only +4 MR if that in glyphs (10% cdr), so any MR they get will pretty much come from abyssal scepter. (Sometimes merc treads if you're an assassin). AD carries don't really build MR items all that often, and when they do, it's normally just a 4th or 5th item Scimitar or GA. Top laners you can normally count on building enough MR to warrant void staff, and the same can be said for junglers. However, that's not even true 100% of the time for junglers and top laners. I won't bother going into examples. Supports will purchase Locket and that's about it for MR.

2). Now, let's consider changes: GA is having MR removed and Scimitar's MR isn't high enough to warrant a Void Staff buy on its own. We also know that the new Banshees Veil (Aimed to replace Abyssal) will have 15 less MR and won't build from negatron cloak. And this is a very old change, but obviously locket doesn't give aura magic resistance anymore. So an AP mid laner doesn't need void staff almost ever to put the hurt on the enemy carries, and a decent portion of the time will be able to go till ~3 items before significant enough MR gets purchased on a top laner or jungler. We also know that we are approaching another tank jungle meta. In case it's not obvious yet, this all spells out mid lane Liandris meta. Pros already do it, mainly because it allows you to delay your void staff buy (if you even need it) and purchase other core items that you need (and it offers HP!!!!!!).

3). Alright, so now we have to figure out some method to make sure we don't enter Liandris meta. When Riot approached this problem, which I'm willing to bet they were able to identify, I'm guessing this was their first thought (or one of them): "What if we added an HP MR item llike spirit visage, but instead of increasing healing, we made it decrease damage from repetitive sources (In other words, decrease damage from Liandris torment)." As I have hopefully made apparent earlier on, this solution is not a good one. It overlaps with too many champions in too many different ways to make way for a well-balanced, well-diversified meta. Now, let's discuss how else Riot could approach this problem (which I'm betting was their primary motivation for introducing Adaptive Helm at all).

• We could just not change GA the way it's being changed, and we can not make the new Banshees Veil a strictly worse version of abyssal scepter. Since these two items are some of the prime motivators for building void staff over liandris.
• We could reword Adaptive Helm to apply exclusively to Liandris Torment, but that would both be awkward and potentially just turn the item into a niche item that's only there to make Liandris less viable.
• We could just reword Adaptive Helm to apply to all forms of magic damage, so that it at least makes AP assassins and mages worse with a more equal distribution. And then the item passive could just be modified over time without having to change the damage of other champions. If it's too strong, simply nerf the passive on it.
• We could specifically target the item towards affecting damage over time. This would victimize significantly less champions (I don't think Riot is intending to victimize any champions, but it's a well-known fact that that's what this item is going to do) than it would in its current state, but it would still victimize some champions.
• Similarly to how Lord Dominik's Regards amplifies damage based on an HP discrepancy, we could make Adaptive Helm reduce all magic damage based on an HP discrepancy. Pros: This will be more specific to items than actual champions, and it would only be useful when built on tanks that are HP stacking. Cons: It could mean a mid laner building HP has their overall damage reduced after building an item, and it inadvertently targets mid laners that build other AP hp items.

4). As is probably apparent, there are a lot of different solutions that also pose new problems. It just so happens that the solution which is the easiest, also poses the least problems. (First bullet point). There are probably other ways to go about changing things, but whatever you do will most likely inadvertently change a lot of things that you're not supposed to change. Regardless of what happens, I think that Riot should remove Adaptive Helm. It will pose too many balance issues if you ask me.