Let's talk about active items!

Ok, we all know that in the current design of league there is the trend to more active items - at least that's what the devs stated some time in the past when they introduced and among some other things. But somehow... Those items don't seem to be really popular. , , , ... Even when I see people BUILDING these items they barely use them (the merc once a game maybe). And That's not a bronze problem, I'm talking about Gold league here. Now it's easy to say "GIT GOOD!" and stop the whole discussion here, but that would be kind of boring.

The actual problems of many actives is that they are downright underwhelming - especially for the price (looking at you here, gunblade). The item price might be justified for the stats, but the active doesn't appear to be a vital part of it, more like a "buy this item and get one extra weak ability for free". A tiny slow, a promoted minion... while that might sound good on paper, it just doesn't FEEL good in the game. I build banner myself sometimes and the minion has its uses, but even when you are aware of that it just doesn't feel that rewarding to use.

So, we need to make the actives somewhat more impactful for that to work.

Some might be comparing this to Dota 2 now, with items giving mechanics, but that's not the game I want to talk about - mostly because I have never played dota2 and therefore I have absolutely no idea how they do it. No, I want to take another game that is also a Warcraft-Mod and a Moba (although functiong somewhat differently, but the basic rules are the same): "Battle Tanks" - team vs team destroy the enemy base and towers on the way.

You had items that could either way give stats (damage or durability), or those that could be used active. And boy, those were quite some items: One let you spawn a minion wave, another spawned tower-wrecking minions (those could be combined in a super-minion-pack for some cost).

An item for short time personal stealth - something that, with certain tweaks, could work in league.

And the most powerful feeling of them all: a consumerable that placed a bomb that simply blew away everything (including yourself if you didn't get out fast enough) The bomb could be destroyed by the enemy tho...

And some others I can barely remember since the last time I played this was years ago.

While surely not completly balanced (the game had its flaws after all), I cannot deny that those were INCREDIBLY fun to use. You could even play the game with actives ALONE, which would mean winning with zero combat power. Spawning minions, stealthing into the enemy base and planting bombs was downright AWESOME. (imagine it like splitpushing, but harder to pull of with way more devastating results when it actually worked since the "inhibitors" in this game were the actual minion spawners).

So... I wondered: couldn't we take some inspiration of this? Of course copying a concept 1:1 does never work, but those are all ideas that can be used for LoL to some degree.

Also they had something that until now doesn't even exist in league: offensive consumerables. The only consuming items we have are for sustain (potions) and utility (wards), but we have none for actual fighting (apart from endgame elixiers which are also just stat boosts). Especially in the early game this idea has a LOT of potential for riskier tactics and more variation apart from the choice if I buy a dorans item or longswords with pots. Those consumerables could be literally everything: a grenade to throw at your enemies (think of a Dark Souls Firebomb), a one second somescreen to use to turn the fight while trading, a glue bomb to create a slow field (think of Singed), etc etc, there are TONS of possibilities for this.

And and it would be a perfect chance to add Piltover/Zaun themed content, which in my opinion is ALWAYS a good thing ^^

Are what do you guys want active items to be? Do we even need them at all? Or what kind of active item do we need? I'm curious to read your opinions ^^