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Aratarae·11/2/2018, 7:44:55 AM·6 votes·2,452 views

I was recently thinking about the dilemma of Item balancing in relation to ADC's. A constant problem I notice is that Items that help ADC's are also abused by bruiser and assassin characters. This causes a weird place for ADC's where they have to constantly compete with the other AD champions. As such, I suggest this fix.

**Split several items into melee only/Range only items. ** I.E. "Aratarae's Arsenal". Made up of, "Aratarae's Bow" (ranged only) and "Aratarae's Sword"(melee only). When purchased it would Award Attack speed, Crit and flat damage. *maybe Bow has better attack speed and critical and the Sword has lower attack speed and crit but more dmg. rewarding ADC's for harassing but lowering the ease of a 1v5 from Yasuo but rewarding a well executed duel. Splitting in this way would happen across almost all of the 'attack' items.

Benefits

  1. AD assassins like Tryndamere or Master Yi will not being able to abuse items meant to improve a ranged champion's quality of life.

  2. ADC's will be able to gain damage output and stats that do buff the other AD champions.

  3. Devs will gain the ability to buff/nerf more precisely through items and won't have to worry about changes to a core item crippling an entire role.

  4. The items can be tweaked to allow each archetype to take advantage of more stats and an overall greater diversity in playstyle without spilling into others.

  5. A change to 1 side of the item would not impact the other allowing the item's unique effects and benefits to stay in circulation while not crippling other champions that rely on the item.

Possible Concerns/Conflicts:

  1. Confusion regarding the differences between items with similar names. _(Melee vs Ranged stats could easily be implemented within a single item description.)

_2. Too many new items to learn _(implementation could focus on keeping the item a singular item i.e. "Weapons of the Aratarae" broken down in-tooltip or simply just in-game as "Blade of Aratarae" or "Bow of Aratarae" and stats could be differentiated side by side in description.)

_3. What prevents the Melee characters from just buying the item and using its stats anyway? _(The items would be purchased by both types of champions but characters would get stats based on their attack style)

_4. What about dual-stance characters? like Jayce? (going back to the example before; they could simply purchase "Aratarae's Arsenal" and get the benefits of the blade or bow depending on stance)

It would be a sizable change to the game but one that would forever ease the process of balancing roles and diversifying the available playstyles for each champion.

If you read this far, I thank you and will see you on the rift!

6 Comments

Lil Homie busta11/2/2018, 12:43:30 PM1 votes

http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/04/Mezco-One12-Blade-Figure-009-928x483.jpg

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thegamingfamily/images/b/b2/Morpheus-sword.jpg

SexualNuts11/2/2018, 1:33:28 PM1 votes

Seems like a fairly long route to a simple goal in my opinion.

What would be easier is just introduce a global buff/debuff for melee champs. (example - crit is only 80% effective on melee champions, damage is only 80% effective on ranged champions). Items can then be adjusted based on this.

Edit: not totally convinced this is really needed, though - but just an idea how to achieve the same thing without having to add and change a whole bunch of items clogging things up even more.

ZT Xperimentor11/6/2018, 10:39:31 PM1 votes

I don't see how simplifying melee vs ranged builds would make it more confusing, seems pretty common sense to me. As to your fourth problem, that's already a thing, go ahead and try jayce in training mode; he can buy both the hurricane and hydra, and while he benefits from the stats of both at all times, only the relevant passive takes effect depending on form.