Item Balance Idea: Separate Power and Ability

Paragon Fury··3 votes·372 views

So one of the things I had been thinking might be good for League and help counter some of the ridiculous snowball and how overpowering some champions can become is that the Power enhancing effects (IE: +70 AD, +120 AP etc.) should be on separate items from the utility/ability effects (IE: Lifesteal, Extra Damage, etc.).

As it is right now, its fairly easy to afford an item like Ravenous Hydra, Blade of the Ruined King, Deathfire's Grasp etc. that not only give you an immense power boost but also give you extra abilities to boot. These provide massive increases in strength in only a single item; and make builds kind of linear and not very open to personalization/preference.

So what if we separated them, so that you had to pick between pure power or more abilities/utility, or buy both items (and take up 2 slots) in order to have both? It would definitely tone down the ridiculous snowball in League, and maybe make options for how to build your champ a little more interesting.

4 Comments

ValyrianBlade4 votes

I think it would be kind of annoying. Like so you'd have a pure ad item, so you want to build this item but you get no attack speed, crit chance, lifesteal, etc... Then you build an item that gives only attack speed (and maybe crit chance too). It just sounds... boring. I mean, you get BF sword as your pure ad item now, then you build say vamp scepter as your lifesteal item, then you combine them in to BT as a final item that offers a variety of stats you want in one item. It just allows more customization. If you have 1 stat in each item and can only upgrade the level of the stat, you'll just see build as Ad / As / Crit / lifesteal / movement speed / armour pen. Every game. Being able to get an item with a lot of ad and some crit chance and bonus crit damage, then an item with a lot of as and crit, so together you can land huge crits is just more exciting.

Kuroi862 votes

The effects of each individual items would need to be massively buffed to compensate, the result would be league needing to be completely rebalanced just for this.

SmokingPuffin2 votes

As it is right now, its fairly easy to afford an item like Ravenous Hydra, Blade of the Ruined King, Deathfire's Grasp etc. that not only give you an immense power boost but also give you extra abilities to boot. These provide massive increases in strength in only a single item; and make builds kind of linear and not very open to personalization/preference.

League strongly prefers items to have a power spike effect. They want "I just finished a big item" to be a natural time for you to be aggressive, and "my opponent just finished a big item" to be a natural time for you to be defensive. Also, League wants big items to both have a statistical effect as well as a unique effect, so that there is more difference between item 3031 and item 3072 than there is between item 1038 and item 1037.

If you move to a model where each item has only stat focus, or only ability focus, what you end up with is an itemization that leads to unbalanced builds. In particular, champions with high scaling will be strongly pushed towards buying stat sticks -- if you don't staple the interesting unique effects to their stat sticks, they will have no interesting itemization at all in serious play.

There is another problem worth mentioning here. If you move to a model where each item is focused on a particular stat boost, you will end up breaking champions with irregular scaling (Ryze Vladimir Yasuo DrMundo Hecarim ). These will all need reworks.

The way I see it, you're proposing something that is tons of work for not much benefit. If you want to tone down snowballing, there are many better ways to achieve that goal.

FarRockBF1 votes

Nah this is a bad idea. However adding a pure AD sword say, with 120 AD costing 3800 gold sounds good for players not wanting lifesteal or crit.

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