Making items more interesting. Situational passives.
I was inspired by Raptor Cloak. I think there is a lot more potential with the concept of passives that work in specific situations.
A problem I see with items in general is that they don't have enough gameplay changing effects, which leads to them feeling like stat-sticks. There are exceptions such as 
, 
, and more which have big effects on gameplay but most items are less interesting.
An issue I believe is holding back item design is the reluctance to make tons of actives. This is completely justified because honestly, do we want the game to become overloaded with strong active items? More buttons to press doesn't necessarily equate to more gameplay but does result in more difficult execution which detracts from enjoyment. On the flip side, fully passive items struggle to offer interesting gameplay so we have a conundrum.
Another issue is that even the active items struggle to change when and where a champion is able to engage enemies. Generally it's just a flat boost to your ability to engage enemies no matter the situation.
Finally, another problem is that because most items benefit you in every situation, it's hard or impossible to give a variety of options to champions that the player feels like they should have. For example, ADCs have very limited defensive/survival options in order to give them enough vulnerability to justify their sustained damage scaling. Unfortunately, it makes them frustrating to play in some ways. But if they had more survival options that worked in all situations, they'd be broken.
Now look at Raptor Cloak. It is fully passive but it only activates in a specific situation. This changes the when and where. That is arguably more interesting than most actives because it makes you think about where you want to engage opponents, which compels you to take different actions than you would otherwise take, trying to bait them to fight you under certain conditions rather than just anywhere. Of course, ideally you want to fight near your turrets in the first place, but this item expands that to enemy turrets. A tank can move faster when diving, which is incredibly valuable.
There are so many other situations that exist in the game, and thus potential for other interesting items.
- A passive that scales off number of nearby allied minions. It could buff pretty much any stat you want and be an interesting passive.
- A passive that reduces your mana costs while near an allied turret. This would be a sustain option if you're able to freeze your lane.
- A passive that activates while unseen by enemies. For roamers probably. Maybe don't have it deactivate when spotted by wards, as that could add too much utility.
- A passive that triggers when an enemy is detected by one of your (or maybe your team's) wards.
- A passive that triggers when you attack the same enemy as one of your allies. Would be useful in small fights, and useful for focus fire in teamfights. Maybe needs diminishing returns per user to limit teamfight power.
Stuff to be wary of:
- Passives that scale off nearby allied champs. This would be similar to when Aegis of the Legion was stronger. People would buy it and 5 man group for the whole game. In my experience (from both LoL and DotA) things that encourage 5 man grouping are hard to balance.
- Passives that allow you to infer ward placement or enemy position as a side effect. This is such a powerful utility that it's pretty much impossible to balance when it is a side effect of the main effect.
- Passives that subvert fundamental gameplay. For example, something that makes you stronger for being in a pack of enemy minions. This subverts the fundamental gameplay that your opponent would normally use. It's bad design.
Riot, I'm sure you can think of more interesting things than I did. I just think the concept of situational passives has a lot of potential.
and 
, are stat sticks. Although we have 
, whose awesome passive encourages moving around and kiting, we still have 
, which offers the exact same stats in higher amounts but with a much less interesting unique effect. It's also harmful to low-mobility marksmen, since high-mobility ADCs can get comparable amounts of damage, but with much better escape/kiting potential on top. We need a more diverse set of marksman items that offer less raw damage and give alternative forms of power instead.
and 
are alot more than stat sticks. Along with 
. They added some more depth to 
too by having it grant that shield.
, 
or 
, but otherwise it's mostly picked on melee champions.
is core to a lot of melee AD champions and has a ton of gameplay). Even mages and AP assassins get to play around with active items and cool effects more often, despite 
itself being a stat stick on par with Infinity Edge, and generally have a lot more freedom in their build options. Although it's appropriate for IE and Last Whisper to be stat sticks in the current state of itemization, that's also because ADC items are designed to be completely focused on statistical optimization (also heavily dependent on crit, which needs an overhaul). I'd have more fun picking an Infinity Edge with less raw stats but that offered additional gameplay, than the IE we have now, and I think it's worth changing the state of marksman itemization so that the main concern shouldn't be the statistical efficiency of an item, but rather the unique contribution it makes to the wielder, along with the options and gameplay it opens up.
become viable some day. It's always been kept in a suboptimal state where only on-hit marksmen can make good use of it (and even then, every other alternative is better), under the argument that AoE damage is an "alternative fantasy" for marksmen. There are a few ADCs out there who are heavily AoE-focused (
, 
and 
's stack system to build up attack damage and attack speed over time, and that would be a way of providing tons of marksman-oriented stats while still having a lot of gameplay.
so much armor/mr to share
and 
are both completely reactive, and often hard-counter plays that are far more difficult and should be far more rewarding to prerform (
and 
suffer whenever Mikael's Crucible is popular, due to how it negates their ultimates).
, whose movespeed is tied to a single highly visible landmark, it's overly complicated to have to count the exact number of minions to precisely gauge you or your opponent's power while in combat. A minion wave as one entity, on the other hand, would be a visible enough unit to communicate the passive's effect clearly ("fighting me in my minion wave puts you at a disadvantage").
. This would be perfect for assassins and counterjunglers.
's, where you select an ally to interact with and give the passive a cooldown, would add awesome gameplay. While this is a bit tangential, I think this could potentially be the best way to rework 
.
) into active spell shields (more like 
's Spell Shield than 
's Black Shield, though) would make them a lot more interactive and interesting, and would certainly help address the issue of CC-focused ultimates (that aren't knockup) being too easily countered. This would, however, also warrant changing a few ults, namely massively damaging point-and-click CC abilities such as 
's Nether Grasp (it's impossible to counter without QSS, but is itself hard-countered by the Quicksilver active) or 
's Infinite Duress. In the end, I think whichever anti-spell items are in the game need to be able to offer really satisfying moments where you get to block otherwise fatal CC, but don't just end up buying a get-out-of-jail-free card against important crowd control abilities.
or 
), whereas marksmen should be able to fill out on utility / survivability if they're lacking in it without becoming less useful, perhaps at a cost in less overall damage for all marksman builds (so champions with tons of kiting potential like 
and 
and 
give you more time to react. That also doesn't prevent his abilities from being undodgeable in most cases once you're in range.
. Again, counterplay is something that should be widely available, and not just something you can only do if you have the exact item or ability. Skillshots tend to have great counterplay because anyone, even 
(and, more specifically, 
) is an antiquated item that is made redundant by the recent changes to mana regen, but I disagree that anti-siege mana regen has no real problems just because it's more situational. 
might give stronger mana regen overall, but this item you propose would be exceptionally powerful against siegers: you'd have to either buff the effect so that it surpasses Morellonomicon when under siege, which risks leading to abusive mana regen in that precise situation, or you'd just be giving it comparable regen with more difficult access, in which case there's no real advantage to picking the item for regen over any other 
item.
or a 
, who has clear windows of strength and vulnerability through his three-attack proc and his stun, is still clearly stronger and weaker at specific moments when he has massive amounts of attack speed and/or CDR. A 40% CDR 
or 
with a Grail can poke a lane non-stop from a mile away, but both still provide clear windows of opportunity. Situationality is also not a silver bullet to providing additional gameplay: what matters, even more than the situational aspect of your bonus, is that it fosters interesting and fun gameplay. An effect that works in practically every situation, such as 
or 
(The aforementioned is actually a completely legit Janna build against multiple stealth comps. Akali + Rengar + Vayne, that sort of thing.)