I set out to find a solution to a problem (unfinished, but take a look)

So, Riot has stated recently that AP Itemization was in a pretty decent spot, and after the changes last year, I have to agree. The total of finished AP item, looks like its really good, with a distinct set of choices made with specific champion playstyles in mind, but with the ability to be at least usable for most AP champs, besides a few exceptions (exceptions are alright, as long as theyre not too numerous and bad for game health). The cast of final items looks pretty good, but theres something else that bothers me about the majority of them: The build paths.

I dont know about you guys, but i feel like the build paths for a lot of items look pretty ugly, the most notable offenders being Rylais, Morellonomicon, Athenes, and Lich Bane. Others, aren't as bad, but still feel a little weird, like Liandrys, Abyssal Scepter, Void Staff, RoA, and even Rabadon;s Deathcap. I kinda based these items that have ugly build paths on how many loose ends there are (such as amplifying tomes being undesireable, and blasting wands just being kinda meh). Now, I know theres no way to fix the build path for all of these items all at once, but something to wrap the majority of these items up really nicely so that theres only a small number of bad looking item build paths. But my problem with all of this is that it would be difficult to shove advanced items into these build paths without overloading these items with a bunch of unnecessary stats (does Morellos really need movement speed?). And besides, its not like theres any sort of catch all stat the i could put into all of these items, most of the worst ones already have CDR, and the ones that dont really dont need it. And its not like I can just make another stat out of thin air...

...Or can I?

It was at this point that I thought of something, WWCTD (what would CertainlyT do). Now, CertainlyT has always been one of my favorite designers, just because he was never afraid to psh the boundaries of what this game is capable of, he was never afraid to draw outside the lines, and most importantly, he never liked the idea of 'but you cant do that'. But that wasnt enough to convince me, so i went to the stats page and looked at all of the stats. I thought of how every stat had a magical and a physical half. You have AD for your AP, Armor for your MR, Attack speed for your CDR, Armor Pen for your Magic Pen, Health for your Mana, life steal for your spell vamp, and Crit strike for your.... uh.... nothing i guess? So this is where i found room for a new stat. but i had to look deeper into this disparity, to ensure it was truly there. So I started looking at who these stats could be used for.

First off, AP and AD. Both are very widely used amongst a lot of champions, but cant be used on all champion. Except for the fact that AD can be built on anyone, and though sometimes it will be a very bad choice, it still can increase the power of your base autoattack, unlike AP, which is entirely unusable for 11 champions in the game without an external AP scaling (such as Thunderlords or the damage on Nashors Tooth). but 11 is a small number compared to the 128 total champions that exist. There are far more champions for whom AP is not an optimal stat, and a competing amount of champions for whom AD is not an optimal stat. But lets look at classes. Mages like AP while Marksmen like AD, Assasins can go either way, Fighters prefer AD scaling, and Tanks and supports prefer AP scaling. So this looks like AP actually has a plus on Usability, but the scaling that suports and tanks get often make ap not as worthwhile as AD on most fighters, where a lot of members of the class like to stack pure AD (along with a few supplementary stas like a little bit of HP, CDR, and lifesteal). Tanks and supports generally do not build straight AP, and the ones that can usually will onyl do so as n off-meta build) So while I could go through and count the number of champions who like to scale primarily off of AD or AP, and also Secondarily, and then supplementary, I think its safe to say with this amount of analysis that AD and AP are about equally as useful across the entire list of champions.

So, lets look at Attack Speed vs CDR. I compare these two because they both increase the rate at which physical and magical champions respectively deal damage, or so it could be assumed. Both stats are inherently useful for all champions, meaning every champion can scale off of these stats, because every champion has an auto-attack that scales off of attack speed, and every champion has at least one ability whose cooldown will be lowered with CDR. But when we look at the usefuless of each stat across the board, we easily see that there is a trend towards CDR. There are quite a numerous amount of champions who legitimately like the CDR stat, a number who even like to max it out, and very few for whom the stat would be wasted/almost entirely wasted. Marksmen who don't build essense reaver are somewhat part of this list, but for most marksmen, the choice between Essence REaver and Infinity Edge is often times a personal one. I can't think of any marksmen who would choose IE over ER because ER is bad for them rather than IE just being better for them than ER (Ashe wouldnt be awful with the CDR offered from ER, but I feel like the damage from the IE is so much better for her). on the other side, Most build Attack Speed. Most Mages look at CDR as a godsend, but dont often itemize for maxing it out because then itemization for Mage CDR is a little difficult to do that with without sacrificing total damage output. Attack Speed for most mages isnt a very good stat, even for those that look like they should stack it, like TF or Orianna. Even Azir, though he likes Attack Speed, is more concerned with his AP damage output, at least from a lot fo the builds and guides that i see for him. Assassins tend to make decent use of both, but not great use of either. CDR is generally better so that their rotation is up more often, especially for AP Assassins like Fizz and Leblanc. Supports and Tanks almost dont ever use Attack Speed, while CDR is one of their favorite stats. Fighters tend to be the only champions who seem to use both somewhat equally, but even then, its mostly dependant on the champion. So the score is now physical with one stat thats mostly specific to AD champs, and CDR an almost universal stat. I will give an honorable mention for on-hit champions and builds, but the universality of CDR i think largely overshadows the small amount of champions that build a magical on hit build, and even smaller pool of champions whose primary build is an on hit build.

Looking now at MPen and ArmPen, we can see the champions that use MPen also like AP, and the same with ArmPen and AD. Marksmen, when they build penetration, build for Armor. Mages, for Magic. And Assassins for both, depending on the type of Assassin. Now, Armor Penetration, is much more of a stat that seems to favor Fighters more so than it does for Marksmen, because their damage is a lot more multiplicative with that stat because of their lack of crit/AS synergy. For some fighters, this isnt the case, but because of how these champions deal their damage, and the way Armor Penetration itemization is built. But for these champions, Armor Pen is usually not the most important stat, just like on the champions that do like MPen, its not the most important stat for them. So I wouldnt really say either of these stats are really universal, but they both have their places amongst the champion roster. No real disparity there.

Magic Resist and Armor are an easy couple to look at: both are great to at least have some, the choice between one over the other is largely game/meta dependant. The only thing i can really say is that Armor scales into damage for more champions than magic resist. But the list for either of these champions i feel is too small to be anything really, and i feel is negligible. Neither are really shared more than the other.

Lifesteal Vs Spell Vamp is a really tricky one because of the current state of Spell Vamp. While Lifesteal is ususally really nice for Marksmen, fighters, and ad assassins, Spell Vamp is usually built on Vlad. And anyone who builds Gunblade, but they usually dont really get it for the spell vamp, but moreso just the hybrid stats that it offers. Spell Vamp is a stat that needs to be heavily worked and iterated on, but until then, we can count this as another stat made specifically for the Physical Champions that doesnt really have a legitimate Magical counterpart.

And last, we would look at HP vs Mana. I'm not sure theres much to look at here, because I dont count either as inherently Physical or Magical, but if I were to, I would classify Mana as a magical stat, while pegging HP as another universal stat, like CDR, and like movement speed. However, the champions that dont get use out of mana/mana regen are a small list of assassins, fighters, and tanks. Mana itemiztion tends to slip itself between both magical and physical properties (RoA and Archangels vs Manamune and Essence Reaver) while also having plenty of defensive itemization and not so inherent defensive attributes (FH, Iceborn Gauntlet, RoA, Seraph's active). Its not a stat that really stacked on anyone besides Ryze. Because of the way that the stat is bundled with the stats on these items, it could be argued that Mana is made for Magical Classes, with no real AD conterpart. In my opinion, this is a difficult argument to argue, and i count it as only a very minor victory for stats that are Made for magical classes.

So we have Lifesteal and Attack Speed that are primarily made for physical damage dealers, while CDR and Mana are a little more accessible for most classes, Spell Vamp thats good for almost no one, it seems like AP damage dealers dont really have "Their own stat" that isnt shared by or at least has a counterpart in the physical class. And then, almost to add insult to injury, Crit chance (and damage) exist, which is a stat with just about no actual magical counterpart, and is not useful to any magical champions at all, nor does it have any synergy with building an AP or even a hybrid build. It stacks only with AD, Armor Pen, and AS, and the nature of the stat makes it and on hit very unsynergistic with each other.

So what's the deal? Are AP champions just being left in the dust? Looking at both a lot of the AP items, and all of the stats, it looks like there easily is room for there to be another stat in the game, geared for magical classes. However, there's now the very obvious problem that is now staring us in the face: What stat are we going to add?

Well, If we look at crit strike, what is this stat doing? It amplifies the damage that AD champions deal. AP hasan item that does that, Rabadon's Deathcap, so lets just take that AP damage amp, turn it into something a little more accessible, and make it a stat. That seems easy enough and seems to be the best solution, right?

Wrong. There are so many problems and implications for making this kind of thing a stat that is not only easily accessible but is thrown at all champions in the game, it would throw the entirety of League of Legends into chaos just for a dumb little stat, that, lets be honest, didnt really need to exist in the first place. Rabadon's deathcap does its job well in amplifying the damage an AP Champion does, and most AP Champions dont even need rabadons if they want to feel useful, it does help them to acheive that fantasy of dealing tons of damage(tm).

So thats out the window. What else can we do? What kind of a stat could we even make that would benefit the magic classes, and though they can be used by most classes, no one would really want to build it besides the Mages and Supports, and maybe even the Tanks, cause they seem to also have an affinity for magic damage as opposed to physical. Preferably not as useful on assassins, cause, lets be honest, giving them one more tool to work with is not what the game ever needs. And just impractical on Marksmen and most Fighters. Probably not all fighters, cause fighters just seem to want to benefit from every stat under the sun, no matter how much you try to make it not for them, they tend to like it anyway.

But so far we've been talking about Magic classes, and pinning them down as Mages, Tanks, and Supports, and half the Assassins. Thinking about all this, for a long time, i had been thinking of it in terms of "made for mages, usable by the other guys". But what if thats wrong. What if we made a stat for someone else, thats magical, but not necessarily MADE for the mages. Which class is the class that seems to not be able to strongly benefit from anything other than the most universal stats, like CDR and Movement speed, and often times HP? What class is everyone always saying we need to show them some love? Supports! And what do Supports love? Utility.

Thats great and all, but utility isnt a stat, its just... a force in the game thats affected by other stats. Well, mostly. Sometimes, its just there. The ability to peel for your teammates isnt really something that can be calculated into a number. I mean, besides Heal amounts and shield amounts and CC durations and numbers for damage buffs and defense buffs and stuff like that. But all of these things already scale with numbers already in the game, and it seems just arbitrary to tie all these numbers to one stat with no reasoning.

But there's still one more scaling that we havent looked at yet, one that a lot of people dont even think about. One that's tied mostly to supports and mages and tanks, and somewhat fighters, but not so much assassins or marksmen. Well, wait, what is this stat? If it already exists, why are we even asking this question? Why don't we put this stat on all of these items?

Well, because, its not a stat. It's your level. Your level affects many item passives and actives, and directly affects how strong your abilities are by giving you skill points to make your abilities stronger. Except for the Assassins and Marksmen, who scale mostly off of items. Levels are the games way of giving power to champions that dont snowball off of kills. But we already know all of this. What good does this do? We cant put levels into items, that would be entirely too strong. We couldnt even put Experience into items, for the same reason.

So, now, our goal is a stat that expresses power through champion experience that doesnt directly affect the level curve. We have the implications in place, its a stat that would increase utility by scaling up with your heals and sheilds and CC and active items and we could put something like that on plenty of AP/Support items, create a few items based around this stat, and give us another lever to balance the game around to change the power levels of champions without lowering their damage output. So, what if we made this stat, not necessarily increase your level or experience, but rather, scales off of it.

I Present to you: WISDOM

I will be back later, to talk about specifics as far as certain champion abilities, item scalings, and everything else. But so far I've typed myself into exhaustion, so I'll be back either later tonight, or sometime tomorrow, to flash out the specifics. But for now, go ahead and give out your opinions on my concept so far, if you have any problems with logic, or if you wanna take a crack at some of the specifics yourself. This idea is mostly for fun, but I would appreciate feedback because this is something that i have put a lot of thought into, but have not yet had anyone to tell me anything about it. So, its now out there, in the open. I'll be back :D