Stats, items, and intended users
The current two evil words of LoL: Tank Assassin
Everyone has seen the Ekko or Fizz tank build that's seemingly unkillable, but can tower dive and kill you all day long. People have also seen the unkillable adc with gage, cleaver, and other tank items. Basically, tank items + non-tank character = problem. Even Ezrael dipped into this issue with his abuse of iceborn gauntlet.
This issue has resulted in an almost comical cycle of character nerfs, item nerfs, character buffs, more nerfs, and mini-reworks. But the solution has been there the whole time, and it's even been touched on by a few items already:
Change problem items to scaling rather than flat bonuses.
Look at iceborn gauntlet as an example. It already has two scaling bonuses:
- The sheen proc does damage scaled by your base attack damage.
- The slow radius is scaled by your armor.
But what if Riot took it just one step further. Imagine if the sheen proc scaled with your armor, too:
Deals 1% base attack damage per point of armor, capped at 150% base attack damage, as bonus physical damage to all units within the area of effect and slows them by 30%
Then, only tanks would be likely to get the full pre-nerf value out of it. Other builds could use it, sure, but not as well as tanks.
Other examples:
Scale the base attack increase on bonus life
Scale the damage and/or movement speed based on armor
Scale the armor penetration based on health
Riot has tested this kind of thing already on a number of items (sheen, maw, sterak shield, anything with % movement, iceborn, etc). It would solve a lot of problems if they dove in further.
And remember, just because it scales with a stat doesn't mean it needs to scale infinitely. The stat scaling can function as a limiter, not a growth factor. Imagine the role-specific item possibilities if this approach were more common.
