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Concept: Tying Items to Champion Classes

Olga Rajecka·5/2/2018, 1:44:20 PM·2 votes·1,632 views

For the longest time, League of Legends has suffered from the unintended itemization issues where an item that originally wasn't meant to a specific character / class suddenly becomes extremely overpowered in the hands of that champion / class. Strongest examples of this were seen with Lethality, first iteration of Duskblade, various iterations of Black Cleaver.

In the situation where items become overpowered on a specific champions that they weren't made for, often times we would see the nerfs given to champions rather than items before nerfing the items themselves leaving nerfed champions in the dust for the remainder of the Season.

This issue arises simply because of the fact that every champion in the game has access to every item in the shop. You don't have to dig deep to understand that it could create massive problems in terms of champion balance.

A proposal on how to contain items to the characters they're meant to be used on is introduction of class items. For example, imagine if only Assassin class champions can buy Duskblade, Ghostblade and Edge of Night. Only ADC's can buy Zeal items, IE, Stormrazor and Essence Reaver. Only Fighters can buy Guinsoos, Steraks, Black Cleaver and so on. This could resolve an issue where a broken build pops up that absolutely destroys the balance of the game which in turn means that a champion has to be nerfed which in turn means that the specific champion gets absolutely dumpstered unless he follows the specific build.

In addition, tying items to classes could allow Riot to balance outliers (OP's, UP's) in the specific champion class really easily - is every champion in the class fine but only Zed is smashing everything? Nerf Zed. Is every Assassin smashing everything? Nerf the items.

Now, of course not every item has to be tied down to a specific class but if an item is specifically designed as an Assassin item, perhaps it would be wise to tie it down to that class so that no one else can use (abuse) it.

Anyway, that's just brainstorming.

17 Comments

Dead flag blues5/2/2018, 9:20:50 PM1 votes

The "ranger-melee" classification is already good enough, there should just be more items added there.

item 3047 item 3156 item 3812 item 3046

Should all be melee ad items, no reason a ranged ADC should ever be "tanky"

Oleandervine5/2/2018, 2:00:38 PM1 votes

I think only a rare few items should be locked into roles - specifically the jungle items and the support items. You won't get this bullshit like they're doing on the PBE where they've made jungle items and support items mutually exclusive of one another so you can't buy a support item with a jungle item - it simply wouldn't be available in the first place.

Support Items, as we have seen over the past season, NEED to be locked into the support role. Their abuse by other roles has caused all kinds of mayhem, and I don't know why Riot won't fix the core issue instead of this constant beat around the bush.

In a similar note, if we lock jungle items to the role, and not Smite, no more will you lose a game if your jungler doesn't have Smite. It's simply win win for all parties involved if Riot just implemented role trading and bound jungle and support items to their role.

Big Lincoln5/2/2018, 2:06:24 PM1 votes

yes, lets completely bar any build diversity or creativity. a fun game is one that restricts all your choices

haaaaaaalp5/2/2018, 1:55:44 PM1 votes

This hurts too many off meta build. Full damage diver builds are more reliant on duskblade than a lot of assassins.

Titanium705/2/2018, 2:28:01 PM1 votes

I think you confuse causalities a little.

Most Champs don't abuse Items and break them. Most Champs abuse broken Items.

GP an Eze aside who're a little special, if you see a class using an Item that's not meant for them, it's not because they have such unique interactions with said Item - it's because the Item in it selfe is broken beyond believe and everyone and their moms are trying to splash it into their builds.

That being said - limiting Items to Champions would further kill diversity and creativity and would be extremely difficult for niche Champions. So thanks, NO.

Modl Ryden l5/2/2018, 4:50:17 PM1 votes

It really takes away the power of choice to the user honestly. It makes every champ feel more or less the same if you start congregate certain items to certain classes.

"Oh only ADCs build IE, therefore I think IE should be locked to marksmen exclusively." Well there goes the Rengar fanbase moaning that they can't build IE anymore.

Or that only assassins have access to duskblade builds and can't have access to tiamat builds.

You will most likely see 5 different champs all with the same build. Which will bring us back to the problem that Riot is trying to solve by adding diversity into a role. In this case they're wanting to diversify marksmen so they don't need to follow the one and only true path the victory, ie: item 3031 item 3087 item 3094. So they're bringing more items in.

Items don't become broken by design, they become broken when builds just 'work' on certain champs, thus creating exceptions to what the item was intended to do.

People like discovering these niche interactions, it's what gives champs a fresh take on what can be good on a champion outside of the everyday norm.

People didn't know you could do Yasuo with item 3078 item 3031 item 3053 for fat crits and sheen procs, getting base AD bonuses and survivability until someone thoery crafted and put it to the test. It only lasted a while but for some players it was fun, some players they thought it was abuse when it was never the intention to abuse. It was just a build that worked.

Because when you start dumbing down and conditioning all these builds and telling what items can work on who. It takes away the control and ultimately has the game holding you by the hand saying that you have to play this way, because you're not allowed to build certain items, because you're not playing a certain class.

5050BS5/2/2018, 9:12:22 PM1 votes

They have that with Jungle and Supports.

I always thought it would be a cool idea to have some items that are tied to your summoner spells you take like the jungle items.

This way If you want Item X you need to take summoner Y

Nyarlathοtep5/2/2018, 2:20:52 PM

Hell fking yeah! Though its going to need heavy tuning and maybe introduce some new items. Buuuuut they wont do it. Reason you might ask? "Muh offmeta bullshit/creative build. Smite has it and they are doing just fine.