Why hasn't RIOT included negative effects into their over-powered items yet?

Milodic Mellodi·Jan 2, 2016·2 votes·400 views

It's just something I've been wondering for awhile now. Why hasn't RIOT decided to place negative effects on any of their items? Wouldn't that cancel out the need to delete the item? For example, remember Sword of the Divine? Why not take away its Crit Percentage increase and give it a reduction Ability Power percentage, to make up for the increased Attack Speed (this would passively reduce the power of Guinsoo's Rageblade so people wouldn't be able to break the game with it). It's just a thought, and there are many other items (both deleted and still in the game) that can benefit the game by having negative effects included in them. What do you all think?

2 Comments

ZephyrDrakeJan 2, 20163 votes

because the last thing anyone wants is to buy something just to get a negative effect, for an item to have a negative effect then the positive effect needs to be so huge that people would actually want to pick the item despite the negative effect. Why bother having a item 3089 if it meant you got stuck with something bad? might as well nerf the item itself instead of making the player feel bad for buying the item. Or just boost how much AP you get by quite a bit to compensate. Items are balanced around the stats they currently give, if you want to add a negative effect then it would mean that whatever the item currently gives needs to be buffed because what would be the point then? to make it weaker? just nerf the item directly then

Woook3rJan 2, 20161 votes

this is called counter play. riot cannot put counterplay into an assassins kit because that would gimp the assassins. Therefore riot cannot put a negative on items bought by assassins. People would take it amiss if every item had negatives except the items built by assassins. Therefore riot will not adopt this.