[Diamond Design] How do Items Affect Champion Balance?
Ah man it’s been close to a month since my last discussion! Well good news is finals are over and I’m on spring break now (unfortunately not enough money to go to Cancun or what have you). Probably gonna see another one relatively quickly after this one. Part of the reason why this is one is coming out is because holy balls my sleep schedule is screwed up. Going to sleep at 5am and waking up at 2pm does not for a social life make.
Couple other things you probably don’t care about but I feel like sharing anyway: Really excited for Spring Quarter here at university. Our local club is gonna be putting on a lot of cool events this quarter, with huge plans for next year. Some of you will probably hear about one of the events I’m working on if you live in SoCal (I don’t but I should be there sometime in May). If you’re interested, I’ll also be casting this weekend for the last tournament of Winter Quarter, you can check it out here. We’ll be going from noon to probably around 4 or 5 pm this Saturday.
Also, I still don’t understand the Kassadin changes to Riftwalk. In my opinion, Riftwalk has never been Kassadin’s problem, his problem is still centered around his Null Sphere, since it gives him way too much power in the early game to justify his later mobility. The changes to Riftwalk I expect to simply be a bandaid until his problems are correctly defined.
Done with that stuff, make sure you go check out our previous discussion and go take a look at everything else over in the Central Hub. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not gonna pretend this is weekly anymore, so they’ll just be a surprise when I’m not busy and/or inspired.
Finally, same disclaimer that I’m going to be putting here instead of at the bottom. I am not the be-all end-all prophet of design and balance. What I say could very well be wrong in its entirety, but I think there’s something important behind the topic I’m discussing that makes it worth adding to the discourse for. If you disagree, say so! Just be sure to specify why, and this is why.
Cool, onto today’s discussion!
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#How Do Items Affect Champion Balance?
Obviously this discussion is based on the recent changes to the jungling items, particularly Cinderhulk and the new Sunfire Cape. They have created a massive change in the meta for the jungle by bringing more tanky junglers back into vogue without really hurting the current group of champions that calls the jungle home. This isn’t the only time that items have caused a shift in play or the meta. First, we’ll talk about some of the principles of balancing through items and then we’ll look at some specific examples. This discussion will be more of a historical lesson, and less of an argument. There aren’t any current item sets that are completely out of line in my opinion. Similarly, there are many other factors that contribute to champion balance than the strength of items, but in order to accent the point of the discussion, many of these factors will only be briefly alluded to, if at all.
#Principles of Item Design
Before we go too far, it’s important to remember that this discussion is not about the balance of items themselves, but rather that the focus is on how changes to itemization affect the balance of champions. With that said, there’s a couple important points to think about whenever changes to items are made.
Champion Ties to Items
Oh boy. There are a number of champions who are so incredibly synergistic and tied to specific items that any changes to said item is going to massively affect their individual strength. A couple examples of this are:
- Yasuo and Statikk Shiv/Infinity Edge
- Jayce and Muramana
- Akali and Hextech Gunblade
- Vladimir and Will of the Ancients
We’ve seen these champions (particularly Yasuo and Vladimir from what I remember) have significant spikes and dips in power based on the power of these items. The reduced critical strike chance on Infinity Edge made Yasuo even weaker than he already was due to the fact that Shiv + IE would no longer give him 100% crit chance without significant investment from runes.
Class Ties to Items
A generalization of the previous point, classes are often fairly dependent on how strong their items are at a given point. We all saw how upset these boards got after the changes to Morellonomicon and Athene’s Unholy Grail, but a lot of us remember these as well:
- League of Warmog’s
- League of Cleavers
- Triforce Dominance
Other recent changes, like the change to Abyssal Scepter’s recipe and the removal of Deathfire Grasp, have also had significant impacts to what champions are strong. The biggest ones I can think of are probably the support and jungle items introduced at the beginning of Season 4.
Class Oppositions to Items
The reverse of the previous point, sometimes changes to items can be a net buff or nerf to champions that the items is in direct opposition to. The best example of this is the changes that occurred when Randuin’s Omen and Frozen Heart were nerfed. These were not as much nerfs to tanks as they were buffs to ADCs.
#Specific Instances
There are a number of major itemization changes that we will not be talking about here, including both incarnations of jungling items, support items, and trinkets. These have received plenty of attention elsewhere and I don’t feel the need to repeat them here.
Let’s start with the inspiration for this discussion: the introduction of Cinderhulk. This will be short as there are plenty of other discussions on this topic. This item, along with all the buffs to the expected users of it, has significantly increased the power of tank junglers. While we have yet to see this patch in competitive play as far as I’m aware, we can expect to see a number of champions returning to competitive play. I expect Zac to probably be on the top of this list, with Nautilus probably not too far behind. These changes are also interesting because of how specific the changes to the items are in such a way that they only really increase the power of one class of champions without having a large effect on any other group except top lane tanks. This is an excellent example of itemization profoundly affecting balance.
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/038/e/2/digi_art_throwdown_contest__runic_bulwark_op__by_skrubhjert-d5u5pya.jpg -by Skrubhjert
Aegis, Runic Bulwark, and Abyssal Scepter
Back in Season 4, Aegis and Locket were completely separate items. Aegis also built into a very strong MR-aura item called Runic Bulwark. It was often a topic of discussion amongst teams and players as to whether the jungler, support, or top laner should build each one. The general assumption though was that a team would have both of them on their team.
The strength of the combination of these two items was that every character in the game had significantly more magic resist than they do now, which made double AP comps relatively unpopular and double AD compositions were generally favored, sometimes triple with the inclusion of Zed. From what I remember, Zed was actually incredibly powerful during this period, partly because he was one of very few mid laners who dealt physical damage and thereby bypassed the glut of MR that the meta saw.
Naturally, with the strength of these tank items, the meta also saw tanky junglers reign supreme, with Zac and Nautilus being the top two. When Runic Bulwark was removed in 3.10 and Aegis and Locket were unified, an overall nerf to tanks and a buff to mages was evident.
Fast forward to now, when the recipe, stat, and cost changes to Abyssal Scepter, we see a reversal of this previous trend. Where Aegis of the Legion gives your entire team 20 MR, Abyssal removes the same amount. For squishy characters who don’t build a lot of MR, the prevalence of Abyssal has really hurt their survivability to magic damage. This has also spawned a significant number of double AP comps coming into popularity, as they synergize incredibly well with champions like Lissandra, Ahri, Kennen, and Viktor, who tend to be fairly short ranged and therefore applying the Abyssal aura to much of the enemy team. The changes to these items has (possibly unintentionally) shifted the meta to a reverse of what it had been before.
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Morellonomicon and Athene’s Unholy Grail
These two items have had an interesting interplay in the last several months. The changes to the way that mana regeneration works, as well as the nerfs and buffs to these items created a unique dynamic. Obviously, Athene’s was nearly unplayed for several patches due to how much stronger and cheaper Morellonomicon was. After a while, Athene’s was once again buffed and has seen a solid amount of play since then, fairly well intermixed with its rival.
The rivalry between these two items did a couple of interesting things. First, when Athene’s was more popular, AD mids were stronger due to the somewhat wasted MR stats that Grail gave. Morellonomicon was buffed, from what I remember, to serve as an alternative to Athene’s when facing AD opponents. Second, the prevalence of Morellonomicon served to weaken sustain based characters. When grievous wounds is being applied to every low health character, characters who rely on in-fight sustain mechanics are weaker. Dr. Mundo might be the only exception to this generalization due to his incredible resilience to burst damage, which mages tend to bring. Third, champions with small mana pools who relied on Athene’s for the constant regeneration saw reduced play during the nerfs to this item. Ziggs might have been the biggest victim of this change. Champions like Fizz, Kassadin, and Cassiopeia, who didn’t need mana regeneration items or relied on other items like Tear and Catalyst, were thereby indirectly buffed.
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Vladimir and Will of the Ancients
Will of the Ancients has gone through a number of different iterations over its history. When I first started playing, it served as a spell vamp aura, building out of Blasting Wand and Hextech Revolver. Later it built out of Kage’s Lucky Pick (a now removed gold per 5 item), probably as an attempt to make it a support item. That didn’t solve the problems of what exactly WotA was, so they tried having it build out of Revolver and two Faerie Charms and removed the spell vamp aura, leaving it only a personal stat. It was during this period that WotA was considered so bad on Vlad that he instead built Spirit of the Spectral Wraith, a jungling item that gave spellvamp, cdr, mana regen, and health regen. After the removal of Spectral Wraith, WotA was made to build out of fiendish codex, where it currently sits.
The only champions where WotA can be considered “core” are Vlad and Mordekaiser. As such, we definitely saw big differences in their strength based on how strong this item was at the time. Interestingly though, Vlad might have been at his strongest when WotA was weakest, because he found another source of spell vamp. Vlad’s case of strength or weakness is interesting because he received almost no buffs or nerfs within this period of time, other than quality of life updates and bug-fixes, and is therefore a good example of a champion who has been almost completely balanced based on itemization.
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A Shining Beacon of What Not to Do: Feral Flare
Oh boy. This was an item that I’m sure most of us remember fondly. Or not so much. Feral Flare was an item that only junglers could use that massively increased your on-hit damage and healing based on how well you farmed or killed enemy champions. When this item became popular, Master Yi saw one of the largest indirect buffs I think I’ve ever seen, going from nearly unplayed to instantly banned in solo queue. Master Yi is another instance of a champion who received no direct buffs or nerfs from the introduction of Feral Flare until its removal from the game, yet one who saw significant changes in his power simply based upon the power of this item. While reasonably powerful and popular until its removal, the changes in 4.6 and 4.7 (the two right after Flare’s release), he was never as powerful as he was in patch 4.5.
#Conclusions
Well hopefully this proved informative. I don’t think there’s anyone in here who would disagree that itemization is hugely important to the power of champions, and there are tons of case studies to do on the topic. An as of yet unmentioned one would definitely be Blade of the Ruined King, which went through many incarnations in its infancy before finally settling on what it is today.
We didn’t even begin to talk about the changes to jungle items at the beginning of Seasons 4 and 5, the introduction of trinkets, or the addition of the current state of support items. An entire article could be written about any of these, as well as the effects Heart of Gold had on the game when it was still available.
Well that’s that. Like I said, more of a history lesson than anything else. Part of the problem I’ve been having recently (other than being busy) is finding inspiration for topics. Last time I wrote about why I thought the changes to a number of champions were based on what I thought to be faulty assumptions, something I cared about. It’s been hard to find topics that just shout out at me, so if you have something please share!
Thanks for the patience guys and definitely let me know if this kind of article is something I should do again in the future.
