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Riot, stacking the same item over and over again is not compelling gameplay

HalcyonDweller··5 votes·1,085 views

Edit: If you disagree, at least leave a comment as to why. Simply downvoting and leaving is unhelpful.

Players are making extra use of the Transcendence Rune by stacking items like Frozen Heart or Black Cleaver.

I can't think of any compelling reason to leave it the way it is. It would not hurt normal or intended gameplay to make the CDR from every item unique to the item (so that having 2 of the item won't give twice the amount of CDR). And it is entirely unfair for champions to be able to build tons of tanky stats while still retaining high damage output.

This is a case of players optimizing the fun out of the game. They found an unintended exploit in the mechanics of the game, and they are doing gamebreaking stuff with it like being able to assassinate opponents while still being near-impossible to kill. Stacking the same item repeatedly is not compelling gameplay. And I highly doubt it was an intended effect when you introduced the Transcendence rune.

24 Comments

ChargeItDownMid5 votes

[deleted]

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Then it seems like a trap, and something that should be fixed so that players do not fall into the trap.

What fringe cases? Both item's special effects are unique. Stacking them serves no benefit except to give large blocks of CDR.

Edit: That wasn't a rhetorical question. Come on people I'm open to hearing about fringe cases.

Mysticman893 votes

The issue is most of the time it's not actually that effective compared to alternatives. Meddler discussed it a bit in his recent gameplay thoughts thread.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

From what I saw, someone got well over 500 AD on Zed by stacking Black Cleaver when his normal build gives him less usually. So having that plus the HP to be nigh-unkillable in fights seems at least a little bit anti-fun for his opponents.

My point is that it should not be effective at all. Stacking CDR is one thing, but stacking the same item over and over again is asinine.

Stacking the same item repeatedly is either OP or a trap. Either way Riot should remove its viability.

Mysticman891 votes

More AD doesn't necessarily mean more damage though, as they're missing out on lethality, and also they're paying a lot of gold for that AD/HP. They're not necessarily getting that much more survivability either since they're lacking out on resistances.

Apparently it's strong but not overly so, so it's neither OP or a trap at current tunings. They're certainly going to look into whether transcendence itself might need tweaking so it offers more consistent value, rather than getting peak value with an inventory of 20% cdr items, and relatively little value when only offering 10 cdr@10 min.

I agree it's kinda a lame build to have multiples of the same item, but it's not necessarily a problem build.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

There is no convincing either of us then. As you have made it clear that you think it is balanced. And I still believe it is a trap, since players are likely to think they are being clever by taking advantage of it while actually not getting any real advantage out of it.

Sona Ping2 votes

Games should be deep enough to allow the opportunity for mistakes and players should be allowed to make them.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

When such mistakes are convoluted and murky to understand, I wholeheartedly disagree.

Sona Ping2 votes

{quoted}

When such mistakes are convoluted and murky to understand, I wholeheartedly disagree.

I disagree with the premise for you disagreement. The situation is not convoluted nor is it murky; it can be understood through looking at the basic principles of the game and the exact impact of the choices can be seen through elementary math. Now, you can bring up

{quoted}

Meddler stated that it wasn't out of line by being OP, but he did say that it was a rather poor choice.

The game should not be left in a state where players can trick themselves into making such a poor choice.

I should be able to make a mistake. I should not have items restricted and be forced to buy certain items in a certain order out of fear of me making a "poor choice". I should not be forced to level abilities in a certain order out of fear of me making a "poor choice". I should be able to make the poor choice of taking Smite, buying Machete and picking a ranged AD champ for the jungle like, Ezreal. Or building Ninja Tabi on Varus.

I should be able to make strategies that I want to, and feel the sting or reap the rewards of those choices.

Mysticman891 votes

I don't know what the actual statistics are behind the scenes, so I can't really comment on if it is balanced or not, but meddler (who does know those things) said it wasn't out of line. I'm just saying it's possible that it being balanced actually is a possibility, instead of being OP or a trap with no in between.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Meddler stated that it wasn't out of line by being OP, but he did say that it was a rather poor choice.

The game should not be left in a state where players can trick themselves into making such a poor choice.

Tenth Leper1 votes

There is no trick.

As you said about cleaver stacking zed, they get a lot of ad and a lot of hp. If that is what they want then that is what they got so there is no problem

They just end up with less sustain, less pen, (less health if froheart stacking), less vision control and so on.

Leaving it like this let's people focus on one thing if that one thing is important to you.

Tenth Leper1 votes

I would be MUCH less frightened of a zed who built a bunch of cleavers than one who built lethality

honorablenoob3 votes

Stacking the same item, while boring, does leave a champ without as many actives/passives. At that point the alternatives outweigh the redundancy, and the player is only hurting themselves. I feel that balancing of the items in general would solve this problem.

honorablenoob1 votes

Stacking the same item over and over again can feel boring, but on some champs/builds (Singed item 1082 ) it is absolutely essential. So I feel that if they are going to reduce the effectiveness of duplicate items that they do so in a matter that takes these niche builds into consideration.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

That is a great point. However, singed is a special case.

In this case I am only referring to the stacking of the same 20% CDR items repeatedly for use with the Transcendence Rune. Intended and normal use would be to get different items each giving CDR and getting over CDR cap for a fair damage boost. Instead we see people building the same item over and over again (Frozen Heart, or Black Cleaver) to get lots of tanky stats in addition to lots of damage.

Whether it is good or bad, it is not a good thing to have in the game. If it is OP then it is unfair for opponents, and if it is bad then it is a trap. Either way Riot should fix this mechanic interaction.

Khristophoros1 votes

Downvoted because there's already a topic and a redpost in that topic.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Thanks for providing a reason, I appreciate your candidness.

Tenth Leper1 votes

I did down vote you, because I disagree that it is a problem. The rune is intended to cover the lost gold value from wasted cdr over cap.

The rune does not cover wasted gold value from passives, which makes cleaver stacking still bad, and froheart stacking bad if not malphite

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Thanks, I had not heard that reason before and it does explain it in a way that makes more sense.

Xeneth1 votes

Mildly disagree with the OP argument/premise, but not downvoting as this should be seen and is a good thing to think about.

I think it's a bit inaccurate to characterize the interaction as unintended. While it's true that the main goal of the excess CDR conversion was stated as an attempt to validify fringe builds like when a support tries to grab a lot of active items and breaks the cap, I'm sure if early playtests had shown Cleaver stacking to be obviously way out of line, then we'd have seen something like making the CDR unique already. Maybe they're wrong, but there's at least a CHANCE that these builds are functional without being game breaking. Maybe it feels super strong in a game where your opponents don't have any good BotRK users to shred your high health low resistance booty?

Re: stacking same items feeling bad - I get that seeing the same icon side-by-side-by-side LOOKS repetitive and having lots of the same stats FEELS less diverse or interesting, but instead of looking at it in the game theory abstract, try looking at it though a League of Legends item build specific lens. Most upgraded items have unique abilities that take up enough of their power budget that stacking them is bad, and almost all builds are collections of unique items. It's very easy to kneejerk when this system has trained us to see multiple pairs of boots or whatever, something in your LoL player brain screams "something's wrong, same items bad!"

If some of these builds are actually viable, then they're ironically unique compared to the usual collections of unique items.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I guess that makes sense. Thanks for putting the time into a well thought out response. And thanks for engaging with me about this.

Escheton1 votes

Except it isn't unintended or an exploit. It's just what it does.

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