The revival of sword of the occult

TLDR: Sword of the occult can be revived using riot's new adaptive force that was introduced in runes reforged, making the item available for more people

A backstory Okay. So I've been thinking ever since runes reforged about the positives and the negatives compared to the old system and I was thinking of making a detailed post regarding whether some changes need to be made to make the runes reforged feel a bit more polished, and while writing a draft I talked about adaptive force and how I thought that if anything really really good came out of runes reforged, it was adaptive force. so I thought of other ways riot could implement adpative force into our items to make more items accessible for every champion, when I came across Mejai's soulstealer (and you can probably see where I'm going with this). since I buy mejai's somewhat regularly in my games and have gotten used to abusing early kills with dark seal on someone like katarina or veigar and upgrading the dark seal after it has 10 stacks to a mejai's, the concept of changing its passive to be adaptive force instead of flat ap was interesting to me. perhaps it didn't mean too much to me since I don't play assassins too often anymore. but as I thought about it more, it made more sense. Although riot never formally mentioned it, the community (at the time sword of the occult was removed [preseason 6] ) came to the conclusion that the reason riot deemed sword of the occult toxic was due to specific champions being able to abuse it, and not a full class of champions that typically would use the item. At first, we thought the reason riot removed sword was because of champions like zed or talon, who were very easy to play against mages, and by building sword you could almost guarentee your victory. However, that would not explain why they decided to keep Mejai's in the game (and even making it a safer buy) when the same class of champions (assassins) who use AP instead of AD could still abuse mejais in a simillar fashion if not even more often. as a reminder, in preseason 6 when dark seal was introduced, Anivia mains all around the globe rejoiced to see that by building dark seal not only do they help with their mana and hp sustain early in the game, but they could also upgrade the item for a very small amount and get a 10 stack mejai's pretty early on. safe to say, nerfing assassins wasn't why riot removed sword. so after some more time, the community thought maybe the removal of sword had something to do with the cost efficiency combined with the much greater pushing power the item allowed champions (with attack speed stereoids especially!) to have and the ability the item had to end the game quicker. push comps weren't in the meta and split pushing was more than in, it was something that was expected from the player to do, so the community had reason to believe it had something to do with that. that too, though, we figured out wasn't the case. because of champions like veigar and fizz who could effectively build lich bain and mejai's in their builds without losing too much (and with a very cost effective price tag), the sheen-powered soul stealers could effectively clear towers in much better time, and in the case of fizz, probably even survive. So what was it really? we eventually came to the conclusion that sword was being removed because of champions being able to abuse both sword and mejai's at the same time, with consistent results that made the combination of the two neither fun nor counterplay-able. champions who benefitted from both ad and ap (looking at you Katarina/Akali) gained huge profits from building the items and instant deletes were not uncommon. even old mordekaiser mains remember bulding Mejai's, sword of the occult and Leviathan (if you're not familiar with Leviathan, it's probably for the best. think of season 5 tank meta only made possible to play with every single champion.) so assuming those were riot's true intentions with the removal of the item, nowadays, that problem should not exist anymore. with adaptive force, one item can have both passives (maybe even leviathan but god I hope not) and more champions can benefit.

The proposal in case you didn't read that last line above, my proposal is for riot to create a new starting item with the same passive as dark seal's only for ad, and have that item upgrade into Mejai's soulstealer, only that Mejai's soulstealer would be changed to give players adaptive forced instead of flat AP, therefore making the item more diverse and more than a nieche item that is usually bought only by one trick ponies.

conclusion Do I think riot is going to try to do this? I really don't think so. not yet anyways. but I do suspect riot will very soon try to implement adaptive force into more items as to diversify every champion's build paths. it would not be beyond them to come across Mejai's soulstealer too and think : "Hey, maybe we should change this one too".

would love to see some reactions to this post, whether in the comments or by the survey. (you too riot employees!)