Itemization in League: Lack of Diversity, Simplicity, and Ubiquity

Badgerino·Aug 20, 2018·43 votes·14,393 views

I've looked at the forums from time to time and two common thing I see is: "X Item is too Strong" which is often times countered with "But nerfing it kills X style of gameplay" or "I wish X style of champion had more tools" which often devolves into arguing which style has the least tools. The problem is that no one is particularly addresses the root issue; The Lack of Build Diversity, The Simplicity of League's Items, and the Ubiquity of Leagues items.

Now this is going to be a long post and I should perhaps preface this post with that I have been playing league since in alpha and the notion of cookie cutter builds have existed for years, the concept behind which is that for each champion there is a "Perfect Build" of which there is a limited standard of deviation. These styles of build path encourage that your build the same items in the same order every game. A perfect example of this are crit ADCs who tend to build: -> -> -> -> / / every game. Same is true for assassin type characters who build: -> -> -> every game. And wouldn't you know the same is true for bruisers who build: / -> -> / -> -> every game. I could go on. But the idea is that in broad strokes, regardless of the game there is The Build and nothing much else. Leaving players with usually only 1 item slot for flexibility, which is generally only found later into the game. As such we should question why this is the case, seeing as there are a few reasons. As far as I see it the reasons are as follows: Ease, Timings, Efficiency, and most importantly Stat Checks; of these however I really want to focus on the last one, and perhaps a bit about efficiency as well.

Most items in league cause stat checks pure and simple, the lack of meaningful active abilities cause items to be nothing but passive bonuses. Do I have enough Lethality to nullify my opponents armor? Do I have enough AD/AS/Crit to push well? Am I tanky enough to tank? These are how the cookie cutter builds function, they shoehorn you because its what's "Optimal". You will never not build the "Optimal" path because you will find it hard to function within your role without it. Buying the most effective item in league for your given champion is often times not a meaningful choice, and in most cases once you've bought said item you forget it and move on. The overall impact of the item rarely ties into how you use it, after buying a or for instance requires no skill to use, your champion suddenly just does more of the thing it was already doing; same can be said for every non-active item in league, which is the majority of items, and even some of the active ones. Due to the fact that the decision of which item to purchase in league is so simple and the nature of the items we purchase are so simple there is a distinct feeling for lack of counterplay when facing particular builds.

I find that **True Supports **are in a unique position on this matter however because they have the ability to purchase active items that uniquely influence themselves and their team's gameplay; true support can push a style of gameplay not just with their abilities but also their items. Think of it like this, picture Nami To dumb it down, Nami heals, gives movespeed, and CC. It is not out of the question for Nami to build either or , as they give her Redundancy in Her Gameplay, now redundancy is not bad, in fact its great, but how many items exist within league that one can say make up for a champion's deficiencies in a way that seriously alters the way a champion functions?

To look at that last question I am going to depart from league for a bit and talk a little about Dota 2, I know I know, but still. I'm not here to say one game is better than the other I just want to borrow some examples from it, I love both games in different capacities. I want to talk about a couple Heroes in Dota 2 for my examples, Lina, and Slark. Both of these heroes has any number of build paths they can follow; there is a slew of Damage, Defensive and Utility items that each of these Heroes can purchase in order to emphasize the style of play the player wishes to achieve, furthermore this allows players to adapt their builds on a game to game basis much more so than with league's current item pool.

Lets talk about **Lina **First. Lina is a nuke mage who is played either mid as a carry or as a support, you can think of her sort of like a . She has the option to build items that increase her attack damage or her spell damage, the only difference is that in dota there are very few items that provide the latter of the 2. Because of the lack of "AP" items in Dota most players opt to go for a third category of items: Utility. One of Lina's Abilities "Light Strike Array"is a powerful AOE Nuke and also a 2.5 second Stun, however the biggest problem can be landing it as it has a 0.5 second delay. Due to the delay a lot of players purchase an Item called Eul's Scepter which does a lot of great things for us as Lina, it gives attack damage, mana regen and movespeed, great for a mage, but most notably is it's active ability _"Sweeps a target unit up into a cyclone, making them invulnerable for 2.5 seconds. Cyclone can only be cast on enemy units or yourself." _. The active of Eul's Scepter does two things, it gives you a defensive tool as it can be cast on yourself, or it can be cast on enemies for the perfect stun set up. The great thing is though, is this is never the only option, not all linas buy this item, but if you want to play a pick off style its great.

Next up is Slark. Slark is akin to , a high mobility bruiser carry that can lock you down and force you to fight. However a Slark player must make many build decisions from the start of the game: am I going to build Shadow Blade, Blink Dagger or Neither? The AD and AS from Shadow Blade is a good tool to fight with early and its active: _"Makes you invisible for 14 seconds, or until you attack or cast a spell. While Shadow Walk is active, you move 20% faster and can move through units." _ allows me to easily pick off squishy heroes, but is easily countered by pink wards. Do I want blink dagger: _"Teleport to a target point up to 1200 units away. CD 15 sec" _ (Flash x 3 on a 15 sec CD) to be able to jump on enemies from out of nowhere because my gap closer doesn't have the longest range, this item also lets me move across the map faster increasing my farming rate. Both options are great early game main items for creating plays around the map, but again neither are the "correct" option and one can always just sit back, buy some tanky stat items farm up and rely on the champion's raw fighting capabilities.

To end this Dota tangent I just want to bring up 2 more items. It is not uncommon for players in Dota to have a fill inventory of activatable items by the time they are 6 slotted, in fact its fairly uncommon for players to have less than 3 activatable items, 2 items in particular, on top of the ones I mentioned prior, I find to be very interesting in how they change the way a hero plays: Black King Bar (BKB) and Orchid Malevolence. BKB gives a player complete magic immunity (infinite morgana shield) for 10 seconds going down 1 second each time you use it down to 5 seconds. BKB is a phenomenal defensive tool for players of any role in the game although to cost of the item means its generally used by carry type heroes, that being said supports who wish to channel important abilities in a teamfight will want to get this item as well. Once you have a BKB, the way you use it and the way you play completely changes the game. Orchid Malevolence on the other hand gives Players an instant silence for 5 seconds that also provides a spell damage amp. While Orchid is generally considered a spell caster item, Attack focused carries will occasionally pick this up for the utility it provides against certain heroes as well as the attack speed it provides (and it can later be built into a stronger crit item variant). So where each item in league is fairly ubiquitous regardless of situation, each item in dota is situational and its up to you to make the choice for what you'll need in any given situation.

Now thats probably more Dota than anyone wanted to hear but the point I was trying to get across is that, here exists one game where items are functionally similar to abilities or summoner spells that allows players to act and react to what their opponents pick and also what they build, we lack that currently in league and we lack it in spades. Unfortunately there is no easy solution that wouldn't require a complete shop overhaul. Do we add more options to the shop, slap a bunch of actives on already existing items, or tone down the existing power level of all items so that champions function more based on raw power and abilities?

**Option A) **Adding more options to the shop is a start but it'd have to be done tactfully (remember when Meki's Pendant and Fairy Charm were in the game? It didn't add anything). The way I see it is there are 2 types of items that could be very useful to add the first, and my favorite, being what I call Dead End Items. A Dead End Item is a usually a cheap item priced around the 1500 gold margin that provides useful early game stats and power that can be sold late game for a better item. Now League actually used to have a few Dead End Items in the game back in the day things like Cloak and Dagger, Staff of Flowing Water or if we look even further back Wizard's Regalia , whereas nowadays the only Dead End Item that exists is Mejai's Soulstealer which is a snowball item. There's positives and negatives to adding Dead End Items, the first being: will the meta allow for it? When was the last time you sold a full item? Can the meta be slow enough for these cheap early game value items to be just that. On the upside however you open up so much more build options; do I buy a BF sword for my storm razor that I'm going to build or do I stop off and get this thing that costs 200g more to further help my early game, in order to better reach my storm razor. The second category of items League could add are active items, less impactful items stat wise but with powerful actives that require nuance with the player, I find to be a good example of this design. Of the active items that exist currently, the very impactful ones are spammed (to list a few) the rest are delegated to supports, and then there's ....

**Option B) **Add active effects to League's existing item pool, now this doesn't completely solve the issue of standard build paths but it could make more niche items more appealing and add depth to the game (I know that a couple of times I've picked up Zhonyas on an ADC purely due to the lack of armor items for carries and its active). I could totally see have an active that tosses a Frozen Mallet at an opponent Rooting or Slowing them for a brief period, allowing you to catch up and actually use the item's passive. Have an active on that explodes around the user igniting units for amplified damage. Toned down but give it an active that lets you go camouflaged for 2 seconds, or turn the ward spotting active into sweeper lens. Maybe has an active where when you activate it it consumes your overheal shield and grants you bonus damage based on a percent of it. can go up in counters as to how many spells have hit you in the last 4 seconds and when you activate it you gain 1% bonus movespeed for each spell counted. That being said those are all just ideas.

Option C) Tone down items and rely on champion abilities and such but no one want that.

TLDR; I'd like to see a larger variety of build options for champions in league. I think it'd be great if items provided less so passive effects and more substantial active gameplay. I think some cheap early game items could make for interesting purchasing paths. I believe dota 2 has good examples of the last 2 statements. Much like how we've had the mage rework, the marksman rework etc, I believe it's time for a shop rework. I would love to discuss this further with anyone who managed to read through this whole post. [poppy-wink]

Badger

Edit Due to a lot of the comments being about Dota 2 I'd like to clarify that I am by no means stating that League's Item pool should just be Dota's item pool. I too do not wish to have 3-6 active items every game, but I think that having more than just one on anything but support would be a nice change of pace. All I wanted to do with bringing up Dota was show how and why something is working in one game, and how in this game, league, things aren't working.

Please don't make this post just be about active items, I'm here to discuss solutions and what could be implemented. Active items shouldn't exist for the sake of more active items, but active items could exist for champions looking to do a specific thing, again I find and accomplish this.

I will not respond to comments remarking that increasing the amount of active items will overwhelm players. Active items are already an integral part of the game and increasing the number of active items available does not inherently mean each champion suddenly has a full inventory of them. Passive items are a part of the game and I'm not trying to do away with them, once again: active items that fulfill certain niches could be an interesting way to diversify build paths by trading some form of stat power for an effect that would be synergistic to certain champions. There are also alternative solutions I and others have suggested that have nothing to do with active items at all, so if your comment is going to be one as mentioned previously perhaps look at the other routes.