An Idea For Reworking Banner of Command

Intro Hey guys, I had an idea for reworking BoC that I thought I'd share and get some feedback on to see if we can maybe shift the item into a better and more interactive place. Any numbers/ranges etc are pretty hypothetical, I'm not a game designer/balancer and the point is really to spitball the idea to see if it's something useable. I'll try to format this to make it a bit more readable.

One of the issues with the old BoC is that it was very uninteractive. It require little input from the user and often pulled a member of the enemy team to lane which usually made it way easier for you to do Baron or take another objective.

I'd like to see BoC become an item which revolves around seigeing. Right now it seems that the only way that people win games is by dancing around/taking Baron (which is great, there should defo be a large objective which heavily rewards a team for getting it) but it has lead, I feel, to the game feeling a bit predictable in how teams go about actually winning the game (get turret to open map - vision - baron - end, to over simplify). I think this change could also address this and give teams another way to win the game.

Idea The change would work something like this; activating banner would place a marker (resembling a planted flag) on the map. This marker would have 5hp (like the old Pink Ward, so would require 5 autos to kill) and its effect would have a radius of 550-650 units (again, not a set figure or anything). The item would cause any minions within the radius to deal 10-50% more damage to structures and take 5-25% less damage from turrets and champions (the number would scale with how many friendly champions are within the range). The active would have a rather large cooldown (210-240s) and the marker would perish after an amount of time (30-45s).

The item's stats should be quite cost-ineffective also. Providing only a small amount of armour/hp (such as 40/200) to prevent it from being a 1 item wonder. Perhaps rather radically the item would have a global team-wide cooldown in order to discourage Top/Jung/Supp from buying it when far ahead and pushing to end super early.

What Does This Achieve? So I think an item like this presents a lot of interesting gameplay. First, it encourages grouping up when ahead to try and press an advantage; the effect of the Banner is stronger when you're whole team is there making it ideal to break open something like Mid turret and then move to an objective like Dragon or Baron. Similarly, it is less effective when used in a side lane by a split pusher as they cannot take it with them and offers minimal use when used by only 1 champion.

Secondly this can also help games from dragging on if the enemy team drafts mega waveclear comp (such as Azir/Sivir) as the ability could stack with Baron buff making 'passive' waveclearing (where you do not interact with your enemy in order to be able to kill a wave) very difficult.

The counter-play to such an item would be quite simple: hard enagage. The item shares the same vulnerability that seigeing without Baron has always held, namely being flanked and engaged on by the enemy team. The marker itself is static meaning that the enemy team have to be quite close together to get full effect. The banner would also have to be somewhat close to the enemy tower if the enemy team wanted it to effect every minion which could leave it vulnerable to long-range ADs (Cait). Similarly, ADs with engage (Ashe/Varus/Jhin) can help facilitate a fight for the objective.

Possible Shortcomings One potential outcome of such an item existing is that it becomes too effective when combined with Baron and simply becomes a "win more" button. Eg, it is only useful when super far ahead, rendering it somewhat redundant. I think that this could certainly be addressed in some ways. One way could be that it did not effect minions with the Baron buff which would solidify the item's identity as that of one used to accrue a lead and not to multiply it.

Alternately, the item's range could scale with what enemy turret is nearest. Eg, when nearest an enemy Outer Turret the range could be large like 700+ but when near an Inhibitor Turret it could be much smaller, such as 450-500. This again would emphasise it as an item to 'get you going' so to speak and would give the enemy team more opportunities for counterplay the more you managed to take from them.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone had to say!

~Daro.