So instead of fixing Atma's Impaler, Riot, you're removing it. Can we get some context?

You may not get a Riot response (but you never know), but you can definitely ask the community. We've been debating Atma's ever since it was nerfed in Season 2.

The core problem with Atma's Impaler is that it's trying to do two, high-synergy jobs at once. Atma's Impaler gave AD based on the champion's total HP--offense scaled from defense--and it was also, by nature, an offense/defense item--AD and Armor.

The Crit on it was originally to justify building it on a Marksman. So you could have an offense/defense Marksman item that doesn't give them too much free power. However, Marksmen didn't tend to use the item, and most melee carries didn't want an item with mediocre offense and defense.

Then, bruisers became a thing. A very large number of things, actually. Fighters based on a certain balance of offense and defense. Offense and defense both scale together to increase their offense potential by either dealing DPS faster or living longer to deal more DPS.

Suddenly, Atma's Impaler is powerful. It grants offense and defense, offense based on defense, and you have an archetype that scales its offense on both offense and defense.

You might be thinking, "But all they did was nerf the AD from 2% to 1.5%, and it was almost entirely unused." And you're right.

You see, the other issue with Atma's Impaler was that it was just a stat stick. It didn't offer any niche abilities like Maw of Malmortius or Will of the Ancients. All it had was the stats. But it had good stats, just far enough above average when compared to the alternative builds. The popular Atmog's and Fratma's combos cost a little over 5k gold for more than double your effective lifespan and a bonus of over 40 AD. And it scaled up, 55-60 AD by the time you hit level 18 if you didn't buy any other health items (but, as a bruiser, you probably did).

That minor nerf to the AD scaling, as well as a few HP items getting minor nerfs, was all it took for that stat advantage to not be worth extra item effects and variant builds. Several other nerfs shaved power from things that scaled well with Atma's, and it pretty much fell off the grid.

In it's current iteration, Atma's Impaler is not an item capable of balance.

I agree with justmybasscannon. Atma's Impaler was an item that was trying to do two jobs that were rather different. I would say to fix it would be to completely remove the crit( which is pretty much useless if you don't have an IE). Maybe give it bonus health. But honestly in my own opinion. Atma's impaler needs to be replaced with a new item, as atma's impaler is very rarely built.

Master Yi, Yasuo, and some other champions say hi.

But making Atmas viable just makes every single Melee bruiser the exact same. It would be S2 all over again.

Capping the bonus AD would just turn it into "this is an X AD item, but only once my health reaches an arbitrary number."

Which wouldn't be necessarily a bad thing. Merely, it would be a tool to control how the power spike from the AD gain played out, by coupling reaching the state of full efficiency to either extra XP (having more levels = more HP) or gold (to buy an accompying HP item).

The fact that it's a stat stick is not the only argument. It's one of three problems with Atma's.

Stat sticks themselves are not bad. 80% of the reasons that you buy an item are the stats. The fact that Atma's is a stat stick, combined with its other issues, create binary balance.

IE is also a stupid item.

Anyway I'm kinda disappointed that they don't rework Atma's into some kind of AD+Armor option for both bruisers and ADCs but mainly bruisers. I don't see why it has to be removed. Just scrap the passive and make it into a new item.

Smite has multiple items in game that add AP and AD based off of your health/protections. And yet the game isn't broken, and HiRez certainly isn't removing any of them. It is possible to balance these items, but that would involve an itemization overhaul and Bruiser rework, something that is coming Soon(TM).

There was no singular ADC meta. It's been a significant part of the game since the code that limited the attack speed of champions was improved. And that was Beta/S1. To say there was an ADC meta is foolhardy at best and outright stupidity at worst. Even during the alternative carry metas, ADC's were, and still are, dominant parts of the game. Besides, if you were to have a double bruiser bot lane, your ADC could mid or top. There are quite a number of bully caster ADC's that are capable of being mid laners (Kennen, Ezreal), and there are high mobility kiting ADC's that can do well top (Vayne, Quinn).

The problem is just that Riot pigeonholed the bot lane into being the Marksman/Support lane. I don't mind if it was the Support lane, where a 'carry' champion was paired with a Support, but it's the lane that is supposed to only have a Marksman ... and an AD Marksman at that. Teemo, Urgot, Gnar, Azir, and you could even argue things like Varus and Ezreal, do not fit that description.

You used to play tank Eve. That's like playing tank Yi, or tank Caitlyn. Oh it can work; there are videos out there of people doing just that. But you're using a champion outside what it was supposed to do. It's two very different things to play off meta positions and to play off champion positions. I can see Master Yi bot carry, but you're doing something like ADC Malphite.

Actually, the meta is the way it is because of optimization within the playerbase. Simply enough, we found that we only have X gold on the map, and 3 champs with 33% of that gold, and 2 with 0%, was stronger than all 5 having 20%. It would be even more "stressed" if it wasn't for the fact you can only be in one place at a time. Changes to the jungle have shifted this a little because it is now worth gold to them, but it is still pushed in the favor of maxing lane farm, jungler half/half on ganking/farming, and the support still grabs 0 CS except in very few situations.

From this point, we know we only have 4 sources of XP/Gold on the map per team, and 5 champions. So we figure out how to max it's value out. Mages/Assassins scale very hard with level, so they can't be in a duo lane. They tend to be squishy, so need a tower to protect them. Mid lane set. Bruisers scale very well with gold and level, so tend to also benefit from a solo lane. They are durable, so they can survive a longer run to tower usually. Solo long lane set. Tanks tend to only need a bit of durability, focusing more on lockdown than said durability, so a lower farm/xp case doesn't hurt them as bad. AD carries almost exclusively scale on gold, meaning they don't need to worry about xp sharing. Supports don't really scale much in any way, because utility/CC tends to not scale effectively after a certain point, so sharing XP doesn't hurt them, and it lets them protect their ADC. Duo long lane set. The support gold items have helped the support gold value a bit, but it still comes down to the fact they have to share XP, which limits the class selection of who can go with the ADC. Instead of just being supports, now it is supports and tanks.

So why not duo top? Why do we always have the duo lane on bot? Simple. Dragon. By having 2 people on top, you limit your access to controlling dragon. We had a stint of duo top early game in S3 when fast tower shove strats were possible, but they have been removed for the most part by tower mechanic changes. Locking it to the duo bot setup.

So yea. Until they add an entire extra lane's worth of gold/xp to the map, we will always have a 1/1/2/J meta. Got nothing to do with riot having a bias to ADCs, and everything to do with how we, the players, have optimized the game to the point every single point of gold and XP matters.

Avarice Blade is a problem all on it's own. It's a marksman-based gold gain item.

You know, the class that spends 70% of the game farming gold. The one that other classes got gold-gain items so that they could keep up with them.

Youmuu's and Shiv are both items that do not benefit someone built later; they are the kind of items you rush or build 3rd-slot for the boost mid-game. Atma's is the only Avarice-based item whose benefits are better late-game, and it's being removed.

Atma's just isn't necessary anymore. It was meant for a game in which everything scaled off AD and AP. Tanks needed something like Atma's to be a threat if they didn't have kits overloaded with CC. Now, though, we have tanks that have offensive power scaling off their health and armor/mres. That's healthier for the game, really. Atma's had to be balanced for EVERYONE, because anybody could walk up to the shop and grab one. That is what got it nerfed; a few bruisers were far too effective with it. Scaling innate offensive power off of health and defense means tanks build tank items and still feel like they are contributing, while Riot has an easier time balancing. If you find one tank who has too much offensive power, then you don't end up nerfing all the tanks who didn't along with them.

Actually it has been a problematic item ever since beta started. I still remember the history of this item.

Early 2009: Atma's had health on it and gave like 3% health to AD. This one guy stomped every game with an Atma's Kayle build because she had a different kit and it was perfect on her. Atma's was nerfed.

Late 2009: People found out that getting Frozen Mallet + Atma's, and then stacking additional Atma's, was the best build for Trist and Ashe. Atma's was nerfed AGAIN and also the passive was made unique.

Season 2 (I think): Atmogs became popular because Warmog's was buffed to finally be viable. Atma's was nerfed again.

There has never been a point in the history of this game when Atma's was a healthy part of the meta. It was either ruining the game or not being bought.

Then what about Zhonya, Maw, ROA And all the other items that gives damage(AP/AD) and durability (HP/Armor/MR)