With Executioners calling gone...

For the far and vast majority of games, melee users would take the same actions they had been taking before.

Executioner's Calling was not attractive as an item, and there's quite a few things that failed with it.

One of the key strengths with offensive items is in the act of constructing a build. "I can now kill you in this way". Executioner's Calling kind of fell flat here in that it pulled more in the direction of "I [i]have[/i] to do this." rather than "I [i]want[/i] to do this." It pushed more in to the realms of what a defensive item feels like, you are answering a build. You are being directed by the choices of your opponent.

Now obviously there are items that do this as well (Last Whisper, Void Staff, defensive items et all), but all of those are competing for slots and there's limited room available to make build decisions versus reactive decisions.

Which pulls in to the second problem there was with Executioner's Calling. There wasn't a strong point where we could make it feel like it was worth it for the slot it took.

The item did serve an important function though, you're right. When we have more time to address healing and the interaction with healing, we may very well revisit the item and morph it into something new (or... potentially something new entirely to make it not needed at all). Hopefully while also solving the prior issues with it and making it actually exciting to purchase for more players.

Get back to work on the servers.....

For the far and vast majority of games, melee users would take the same actions they had been taking before.

Executioner's Calling was not attractive as an item, and there's quite a few things that failed with it.

One of the key strengths with offensive items is in the act of constructing a build. "I can now kill you in this way". Executioner's Calling kind of fell flat here in that it pulled more in the direction of "I [i]have[/i] to do this." rather than "I [i]want[/i] to do this." It pushed more in to the realms of what a defensive item feels like, you are answering a build. You are being directed by the choices of your opponent.

Now obviously there are items that do this as well (Last Whisper, Void Staff, defensive items et all), but all of those are competing for slots and there's limited room available to make build decisions versus reactive decisions.

Which pulls in to the second problem there was with Executioner's Calling. There wasn't a strong point where we could make it feel like it was worth it for the slot it took.

The item did serve an important function though, you're right. When we have more time to address healing and the interaction with healing, we may very well revisit the item and morph it into something new (or... potentially something new entirely to make it not needed at all). Hopefully while also solving the prior issues with it and making it actually exciting to purchase for more players.

This post has no merit. I have NEVER challenged a rioter, but in this specific case the only counter is taking ignite in champ select. If you took teleport, you are SCREWED. What's the counterplay to champion select?

With no grievous wounds for AD besides in kit (some ADCs) players are now FORCED to take ignite against champions like Dr. Mundo and Swain, previously even if EC was a bad pick they would pick it for the team to deal with those champions. Now the CHAMPION SELECTION dictates what players are allowed to have pre-game. (We talked about this months ago when Riot was considering removing EC, Guess our feedback was ignored, sigh) Morellonomicon is still EXTREMELY efficient for AP champions as well as gives GW as an added bonus.

This extremely limits champion choice for lanes like mid and especially top.

One of the key strengths with offensive items is in the act of constructing a build. "I can now kill you in this way".

Actually it was one of the key items in one of my favorite twitch builds.

With the build that I use on twitch typically I relied on the 20% crit to get to 100% crit.

Once you build iedge, phantom dancer, static shiv, and triforce, there aren't many items left that actually give a unique source of crit, making the options fairly slim. The choices left to finish 100% crit were between ghost blade and executioners calling. I often opted for executioners calling because of a few different reasons.

1. After building Triforce, Shiv, and Phantom Dancer, popping out of stealth put me at approximately 2.47 as, which makes adding more Attack Speed not quite so useful.
2. The healing reduction actually has a rather large effect compared to the 5 (more) damage and 20 armor pen that ghost blade gives. Denying even just life steal health gains has a huge effect.
3. It built out of gold gen. Who doesn't like gold gen?

TLDR: These are just my overall thoughts on the item: it really does add an ability to get 100% (item unique) crit without being trapped into getting ghost blade. It does have a very necessary role in healing reduction. Gold gen is nice.

Also if you ask why I don't have life steal in the build, its because I do have life steal ( I buy BT). I actually opt to have no boots. Having 3 ms items makes up for not having boots.

On to the second part of my argument.

Executioner's Calling was not attractive as an item, and there's quite a few things that failed with it.

The reason it was an unattractive item is because of its low useability, this also falls into your point #2

There wasn't a strong point where we could make it feel like it was worth it for the slot it took.

I actually liked the item a lot more when it could be my life steal item. The problem is that if you don't attach damage to it, the crit that increases damage doesn't really help as much as say a blood thirster that adds damage + more damage when you cit.

Not just that, but you guys also weighted it to be 100% gold efficient (before its passive) which inherently makes it unattractive when compared to items like iedge that are 108% gold efficient (before its passive).

This gold efficiency difference isn't inherently your fault as a balancer though because of the actual impact of grievous wounds.

Edit: As a disclaimer I did originally say what would melee users use to combat hp regen... but I did inadvertently mean AD users. I see this item actually being stronger on adc's, in the case that an adc would go for crit over pen. Crit can be exceptionally useful when the entire enemy team is super squishy (non tank).

Since the main "calling" (sorry) for that item was the effect to mitigate healing couldn't you add that effect on another common item but increase the price. Like say from changing LW by adding in a recursive bow and upping the combine cost. since LW is 2200 adding this in would make it cost say 3300. Perhaps making a new elixer or something that gives your on hit effects apply that but make it cheap and last only a short time to give it a strategic place. Eh what do I know I just like fiddling with things and ideas.

But, isn't all this preseason stuff about how you react to your opponents action. This item fit the theme pretty well (just need some small change like Morrelo or an active instead of passive)

I used executioners calling as a situational item on Fiora and other fighters, because some of the the champions high ability for gaining lifesteal and tankiness makes them virtually unkillable no matter how hard you hit. A great example of that is warwick, with executioners I could knock his lifesteal and hp regen down enough to have a chance of killing him. See but the price of that would be losing damage I could get from another item, but if the situation was right it was worth it. That's smart game play, by removing this even at full build I couldn't successfully chip away at warwick to kill him. He just took it all and walked away with full hp. Your forcing everyone into 1 set of skills and items, which is wrong. I thought riot supported diversity.

It wasn't appealing... so you removed it from the game. Why? just leave it in, people that want to use can still use it. Now for grevious wounds we need to what? get morello's? that's awesome. or just sit around and be like "there ain't shit we can do. let's just sit here and wait for the game to end"

I say put its passive on and let us buy that in SR.

What you did is not a logical conclusion to what you said was happening. You said, "Executioner's Calling kind of fell flat here in that it pulled more in the direction of 'I [i]have[/i] to do this.' rather than 'I [i]want[/i] to do this.'" You pretty much just said that there are situations where players find that the only thing that they can do to have a chance at winning is to counter build with Executioner's Calling. Yet what you did about it was get rid of that last hope. LOL! Rather than expand upon the options that provide grievous wounds and add more build possibilities and counter builds, you got rid of it! Its really hilarious. Why didn't you do the same thing as when you got rid of Runic Bulwark? You got rid of it and then gave two other items the Unique Aura: Legion. Why wasn't it completely tossed? Because in many situations that aura is necessary for that little bit of MR. That is what should have happened here. However, I still think EC should have been kept exactly the same: if it was any better than it already was, then it would have become a core item in so many more AD champions' builds. I think the best option here would be to bring back EC just as it was, then add another either AS or AD based Grievous Wounds based item, and add a defensive item that reduces the amount of health that lifesteal takes from you. In my opinion, Executioners Calling or at least an AD based grievous wounds item is a necessity to a balanced game that is not entirely decided based on champion selection.

WTF DUDE, 0 correct information u work at riot and u awnserd out of the queston i mean wtf is this?? he said once EC no more availible wich item that have same effect and u told him (Last Whisper, Void Staff, defensive items et all) are you kidding us????????????

Nothing was gained by removing the item from the game. The game is not better for this item being gone. I now just look at WW and sigh. Especially in dominion. How would Morello help when WW builds a spirit visage? If builds should never be reactionary, may as well remove items and the shop from the game. Just gain power from gold.

I rarely build thornmail, unless there is a melee carry I'm having trouble with. That's reactionary. Should it be removed? I'll build BotRK to answer health stackers. Remove that too?

I can't imagine a LoL where an item giving grievous wounds doesn't exist. Unless healing is simply removed (RIP Soraka). Or are we just supposed to take champions that have it built in? So rather than be forced into a certain build, we are now forced into an entire champion. Logic.

As previously stated time and time again, the design team welcomes options and variety. Removing an underappreciated item, does nothing to improve the game, and only further focuses builds. Limited options with such a huge variety of champs feels like such a disconnect.

Did it ever occur to you that being able to smite a player would allow you to go into the enemy jungle and smite their jungler and kill him at a buff ? since this solves both roles .... guess whats going to happen ? i'll give you a hint one of them doesn't get used ever.

i dont know. what have melee users being using when the calling was still here?

they definitely were not using the calling

Not having access to grievous wounds as an ad champ can actually have issues though... Especially against champs like swain... mundo...

i dont know. what have melee users being using when the calling was still here?

they definitely were not using the calling

It was a situational item that I purchased when facing champs like Mundo or Volibear

yeah but even when we had the item. no one would pick it up. so why complain about it?

all people did was use ignite or basically do nothing about it. no one bought that item except for maybe noobs below lvl 30 or metabreakers in normal games. it wasnt worth an item slot.

I built the item on occasion... it can actually be more effective than buying more damage in the case of mundo... I also liked the crit that it gave.

You can win a game with no AP champs. You can't win a game with no AD champs. (Talking about realistic games against decent players here)

Please tell me more how AP has the better end of the deal.