What's so bad about stat sticks anyway?
Riot has been phasing stat-sticks (items that primarily give high quantities of a single stat, without excess utility or passives) out of the game for as long as I can remember. I'm talking about old bloodthirster, Rabadons/Deathfire Grasp/Ludens (WHICH WAS RELEASED TO BE THE 120AP REPLACEMENT FOR DEATHFIRE, I MIGHT ADD), Warmogs, Thornmail/Frozen heart (the only one that still sorta remains), force of nature, and I guess PD used to be THE attack speed stat stick.
I understand that giving items unusually high levels of one stat and little else can be a balance problem, or seem "boring" or overly dominant, but I feel like it's an important niche. Sometimes you NEED more of a specific stat and nothing else. Sometimes what I need more than anything else is 140 more ap, and I don't wanna walk around with two needlessly large rods and an amplifying tome. Sometimes I just wanna buff up the stat that scales my abilities up without any bells and whistles.
I feel this a lot with mages and assassins. They aren't weak classes, but they can't build what they want. Sometimes you really just want more universal damage and scaling; you wanna hit tanks and squishies just that chunk harder, and pen/utility just adds to the process of the stats you really want. I've fallen behind and my waveclear isn't doing the trick, and pen or cdr won't help. My combo does 4/5 of the enemy's ho, and I'd rather not be forced to get a fucking hextech item or duskblade to do that last sliver when I could just hot harder in the first place with my actual fucking abilities. I'm playing Morgana and want a bigger shield, I'm playing Lissandra and I want more hp back. Mana, cdr, armor, mr, hp, actives, pen, all are nice but _I don't need them right now and you're forcing me to pay out the ass for them anyway when what I really need is 1k more hp _
The worst offenders are Warmogs and Rabadons, which look like stat sticks until you realize that their passives and high costs mean they aren't good until you already have 2-3 hp or ap items! What the fuck?! "Here, I know you really need more ap and nothing elze right here right now asap, how about you buy this item that's shit until you already have 300 ap, and costs more than any other ap item? Deal?
This is literally what I want (numbers subject to silver 4 idiocy, the main point is that they be best in slot for a single stat (by a significant but not insane amount), fairly gold efficient, and build from two of the large basic components + <1k gold combine cost)
+ + 500g = very magical stick, 150 ap (you can tack on like up to 400 gold for some bullshit secondary stats like move speed or flat pen if you must, but I'm adamant about the combine cost being under 1k and the build being the same. Same applies to all of these)
+ + 900g = very large sword, 120 ad
+ + 500g = big boy belt, 1k hp
+ + 300g = thicc armor, 110 armor
Etc for mr, and maybe attack-speed.
I dunno, is this a crazy idea? Obviously the values are high, but in theory the additional value other items get from the diversity of stats and effects would ensure that these couldn't crowd them out. Thoughts?
