Why HotS has no Items, and what LoL could learn.

Think about what items do. They provide bonuses to stats you already possess. Because all items are thus comparable, is it any wonder we (the players) have worked out the most optimal build for each character? How often do we deviate? How much are you hindering yourself by purchasing the wrong items?

HotS has no items because items as statsticks add no gameplay. Whats more, items thoroughly genericise what would otherwise be unique champions.

Lets be clear here: Items are nothing more than a proxy for power. Whats a Bloodthirster? 70-100AD + 12-18% lifesteal for 3200g. I contend it's something different. It's power, and it takes about 10-12 minutes to get. Whats an Infinity Edge? It might be 70 AD, 25% crit chance and and 250% crits, but it's power. A different amount of power.

Why are we even bothering with proxies? We know what we're going to buy, and we almost never deviate.

Proposal: In the shop, you directly buy increases to various stat groups in say, 100, 500 and 1000g increments, being more efficient the large chunk you spend at once.

What stat groups are these? Attacks, Spells, Physical Defense, Magical Defense. Purchasing an increase to the Attacks stat group would purchase an amount of crit chance, AD, and AS. Purchasing Physical Defense would purchase an amount of health and armour.

Additionally, we have now removed many problematic stats: Lifesteal, Spellvamp, various Regen, purchased mana, various penetration. These items are problematic because they cause the balanced levels of regen, mana, CD, penetration / armour whatever are there to intentionally limit champions.

However, the second major thing we lose is unique effects. We now divide the store into three sections: Consumable, Stat purchase, and a list of unique effects. These effects can be unlocked by spending gold on the related stat group. For example, after spending 2000g on physical defense, I get one physical defense unique effect. I choose to obtain a level dependent passive damage aura. After spending another 2000g on physical defense, I can buy an active effect to slow enemies around myself.

What do we have now? We have the raw stats of items cleared away as much as possible. Gold is a direct translation into power now. Whats more, it's a translation into power in a healthy manner.

We can now focus on unique effects, and incorporate incomparables here. The overriding design thought should be that no two unique effects should be able to be compared. That means absolutely nothing which is simple raw damage you could obtain with higher stats. Sorry Infinity Edge, there is no place for you. Frozen Mallet, welcome.

In addition, we no longer have the problem where we run out of things to spend gold on. Keep dumping into stats and keep getting more unique effects.

Now, the cookie cutter builds are gone, in fact, almost no attention is paid to the stats other than a means to an end. And what is the end? A wide variety of interesting and balanced unique effects, some active, some passive, some aura's, some we haven't even seen. Those are interesting, those are the bits of our builds we actually change, and those are what we should focus on.

tl;dr: Stats on items are boring. Unique effects are cool. Lets get rid of items as statsticks, lets focus on unique effects as the real choices.