How do champions abuse items? (discussion welcome)

Hello there! My name is The Goodest Boy and I'm a bit new to posting my own stuff on the boards, so criticism is welcome.

I saw a post earlier where somebody said that they believed overloaded kits tended to break items through abuse way less often simple kits, because they had more ways to be balanced. I had my own opinions on this but my comment got so huge I felt it warranted it's own post.

Discussion is welcome!!! Even if you say I'm flat out wrong, explain why and we can talk about it.

Tl;dr at the bottom

Abuse of items

Personally, I don't think abuse of items (or keystones) comes from a basic or overly complex kit, I think it comes from distribution of power throughout a kit and how a champions specific strengths are expressed in their kits.

For instance, I'm sure we can all think of simple champions that haven't outright broken an item or keystone because they abused it. Ammumu, Malphite, Lux, Xerath, Nautlius, the list goes on. Likewise, there are champions that are considered high skill, complex champs that haven't broken any items through abuse. Thresh, Irelia, Riven, (characters that have been strong, but not through abuse of an item.)

So how do champions break/abuse items? From my view, it tends to be because of kits that create their own strengths without limiting them. What does this mean exactly? Let's look at a few well known examples of item abuse.

Sated Devourer/Simple Kits

First look at a trio of well known abusers of an old item, Sated Devourer (as well as on hit items in general.) Master Yi, Old Warwick and Xin Zhao. All 3 are champions who have/had a large portion of their power loaded into their auto attacks. For Yi, EVERYTHING is in his autoattacks. His E gives him massive auto attack damage, and the more he autottacks the more mobile he is because of his Q. Warwick was 90% auto attacks as well; every auto attack dealt bonus magic damage and healed him. Xinzhao had a ton of his kit loaded into auto attacking. His Q reduced all your cool downs the more you auto attacked, your W gave you a guaranteed crit and heal, you get the point here.

Why did this allow for devourer/on-hit abuse? Because for all these champions, their kits have a "built-in win condition." For the 3 mentioned above, their kits basically say "auto attack as much as possible and as fast as possible and you will unlock your full strength." This allows these 3 fellas to stack a bunch of things into their auto attacks (like on-hit damage) and basically create a mega win-condition. For Yi, Xin, and old Warwick it became "keep auto attacking and you WILL win."

These are examples of simple kits breaking items. Like I said, this is because their kits create a strength of "auto attack and be strong!" without LIMITING that strength.

I'll go through 2 or so more examples so you really get what I mean.

Fizz

Look at pre-rework Fizz. He essentially had DFG removed from the game single-handedly. This was due in no small part to his ultimate. Why? Because his ultimate creates this scenario of "land the shark and you will kill your enemy, because your shark amplifies your base damages as well as doing its own massive damage."

When DFG came along and allowed him to increase his already one-shot levels of damage; it created the kind of mega win-condition I mentioned earlier. Land your ultimate and use DFG, and they WILL die 99% of the time. That's because his kit gives him everything he needs to thrive without limiting it.

Lucian

And now look at Lucian. Lucian has gotten the poor item blade of the ruined king nerfed and buffed and nerfed based almost entirely on his personal state of balance. This is due mostly to his passive. After casting any spell, he will instantly fire two auto attacks in quick succession. Firing two free auto attacks by itself is quite strong, but objectively not overpowered.

Except, for some reason, both of these attacks apply on-hit effects fully. All on-hit damage, lifesteal, on-attack effects like black cleavers passive, they do everything.

This creates a strength of "you synergyze well with on hit effects" without sufficiently limiting it. Because the second attack applies on hit effects, he essentially gets double the value any other character would get. They create a strength without limiting it.

To end this post, I'll touch on Pyke and Irelia. In my personal opinion, these characters have unique strengths that don't become overbearing with items because they are sufficiently limited. Can they be strong? Absolutely. Item -breaking? Doubtful.

Irelia/Pyke/Complex Kits

Irelia also synergizes very well with on-hit effects. Her Q can be an insanely powerful spell because it provides mobility, base healing, and essentially functions as a more powerful auto attack. The thing is, though, it isn't an auto attack. It has a mana cost, a reasonable cooldown, and places her in way of danger. The real caviat here though is that the use of this spell is her most powerful tool, but is limited within her kit.

To get the absolute most out of her Q, think about the conditions she must meet. First, she must land her E skillshot. This ability applies one stack and has a standard ability cooldown. Then she must land her ultimate skillshot. This ability applies one stack to one person and has an even longer ultimate ability cooldown. Landing her entire kit, she gets a total of 4 Q casts on one person. For landing every skillshot perfectly, she gets 4 Q casts. For reference, Lucians entire kit gives him a total of 8 passive auto attacks without any required skillshots.

This setup gives irelia a massive potential powerspike. But this power is gated by cooldowns and, even when done perfectly, has its limits.

And lastly, Pyke.

Look at pykes ultimate. A skill that literally instantly executes everyone in an aoe if they are low enough HP. Imagine how strong this would be on ANY other assassin. Zed? Talon? Jumping over a wall and penta-executing your whole team instantly? But. Pykes designer foresaw the power and potential balance issues and added limits to his kit.

Firstly, unless a Pyke is extremely fed, he isn't going to be to deal one shot damage all on his own. This means he's never going to be a massive threat that can barrel down and instantly execute an entire team on his own.

Secondly, they balanced his kit around dealing damage. They gave him the abilities that they did thinking that he will build only damage. So, they added his passive, which prevents him from building anything BUT damage. Pyke builds nothing but HP? He gets only damage. This prevents pyke from becoming a mega-tank with an aoe execute.

tl;dr: the abuse of items/keystones doesn't come from a complex or simple kit; it comes from the creation of strengths and win conditions without sufficiently limiting said strengths.

And that was my... long list of thoughts. If you have any thoughts or opinion on this, I would love to hear them. Stuff like this greatly interests me so I'll read any comment, no matter the length.

Have a nice day :)