Why this game may need more Items with actives..

I've always wondered why we're not having more Items with active components. It would make balancing easier and the game much more fun and healthier in process. (TL;DR: at the end )

We all remember the Horrors some actives on Items brought with them, such as Death Fire Grasp, Zhonyas "Ring" or the old Blade of the Ruined King. Items that have had Core Identities, but were too oppressive because they either had no counter play OR there were not enough active Items that were able to counteract or be just as strong.

From my experience in other Games that i have played, Passives were regarded as boring, not skillful or at times hard to balance and boring or too op and boring.. and boring....[..]

Actives are fun, give impact and the illusion of being "good or strong", basically the reason why we have Champions with ACTIVE Abilities and not 4 Passive Abilities, right? Imagine you have this Champion with 345 Movespeed, that combined with Swiftness Boots, Deadmans Plate and Runic Echoes would achieve more than 500 Movespeed only through Passives, would it be fun playing against that if you have no ways of getting away of it?

Or would it be more fun for that particular Champion to have an Active Item that lets him Shoot lasers all over the place while flying towards a Location that is lets say 1000 units away, while simultaneously hitting his opponent with a 3 hit Active that will do %current hp true dmg on a 120 second cooldown?

While this sounds ridiculous it actually is limited by a simple but so effective mechanic, cooldown.

While this Particular Champion is able to do all that ridiculous stuff, he could very well just do it every 2 minutes and have counterplay to it, maybe through another item or similar.

There was once in the past an Item that, up to this Date is still hated. Death Fire Grasp. I do however think, that the item had a good concept, but lost it's core identity and balance through all the changes it went through.

If we would for example, change Death Fire Grasp and gave it a core Identity, the item would in this example turn into a good alternative to it's sister Part Liandries, which is mostly used by a niche audience of Mages.

Let's say this would be our final Product, with the Core Identity "Tank Buster" in mind.

80-120 AP DFG Unique Active: Deals XY% Current HP of your Target as Damage over X Seconds. XY second cooldown. Cost: 2800-3300 gold

The Damage would be regarded as Debuff and could be cleansed by QSS or the Summoner Spell Cleanse, this way we make sure that the item is not too oppressive by giving it a %current HP dmg instead of %max hp dmg, it stays true to it's core identity by being a Tank Buster without 1 hit killing everyone else in the process without counterplay.

So we effectively gave this item:

• a core identity ( Tank Buster )
• counterplay ( debuff removable by QSS )
• item stays relevant ( because of Stats )
• fun and/or impactful alternative to playing your Champion

I am by no means trying to revive DFG, i'm pretty sure there are many Players out there who still have a burning hatred for that Item. Though i just wanted to show, that active Items can be fun and easy to Balance as lon gas they keep a core Identity intact. And if at some point there are enough Items with Actives, that supplement a particular "Champion audience", we in return will have a much more diverse and fun way of playing each and every Champion.

Let's talk about already healthy, fun and impactful Items with actives.

Tiamat

Godfather of Active Items, since its removal of it's passive. Since the day it's passive got removed, this item turned into a healthy, fun, balanced and very unique Active that gives many Champions a different approach of how they can be played. While still maintaining it's core identity, that being a Splitpush/Skirmish enhancing Item. Tiamat is in my opinion a very healthy addition to the game, which adds diversity that no passive item or any Champion rework can achieve, because it not only affects one Champion but the whole game.

Here are some examples of existing Items, that could work very well with this "active component" concept quite well:

Here's an example of how i think Deadman's Plate should look like if it were an Active item, while having a distinct core identity and niche audience that could pick this Item up, without being too oppressive:

Dead Man's Plate

Rapidly generate "Momentum stacks" while moving, up to 100, granting up to +60 bonus movement speed for XY seconds. After having reached 100 stacks, your next basic Attack discharges and slows it's target by 50%, decaying over 1 second 60 second Cooldown.

Dead Man's Plate turns into a Niche Item for a Niche audience, without being too oppressive and keeping it's Core Identity, a way of ehancing your Initation/Engage/Chasing power. However, this Time around you wont curse at that Udyr who's been chasing you for an eternity.

I believe that Item diversity and balance, hasn't been addressed properly in the past, every Item that got introduced or changed just felt like a band aid rather than a real Solution. There has been a very vocal discomfort about Item diversity, especially right now where it's extremely hard to achieve 40% CDR as Mage while using CDR Glyphs, while ADC's can get 40% CDR without breaking a sweat.

Zhonya for example being too expensive, while QSS and Hexdrinker being so cost efficient and easy to pick up, which puts quite a few Champions at a disadvantage at Midlane. There are many ways to address this issue, the most obvious one would be to just add equal counterparts to said Items, or in QSS case give it an AP Item that it can be built into.

However, my suggestion would be to give certain Items an Active, for example Seekers Armguard:

Seeker's Armguard

Unique Active - Mini Stasis: Put yourself in Stasis icon stasis for 0.5 seconds, rendering yourself untargetable and invulnerable for the duration, but also unable to move, attack, cast spells, or use items during this time. 60 second cooldown.

Maybe you could even have it at 1 second instead of 0.5, that way you'll have 1300 gold alternative to QSS, that mages can use.

Also i believe, Boots could be made more fun and interactive than they currently are rather than just giving passive, here's an example:

Boots of Swiftness

UNIQUE – Passive: +45 flat movement speed Active – SLOW RESIST: Increase movespeed by +20 and Reduces the effectiveness of slows by 35% for 5 seconds. 45 sec cooldown

Any way, whoever read this all: thank you. Just to make this clear, i wasn't trying to ask to change the Items i used above exactly the way i introduced them, but rather give an inspiring thought of how we could improve League of Legends by making it more fun, less frustrating and "passive" as it is right now. There is a lot of imbalance in our Item choices, so i was hoping for some change through my Feedback, so that maybe one day we'll have a balanced, fun and diverse pool of Items that we can make use of.

TL;DR: Item's define and make Champions, so more Active items could improve the game and make it more fun and add fun and interesting ways of how to play Champions, Tiamat being a good example of that by adding an Auto Attack reset. Check the Item change examples for reference.