Item Suggestions: What You Should Know

Items Need to Fulfill a Purpose An item needs to have a clear purpose behind it's existence. Base/component items fulfill the role of serving a clear function of either a stat stick or having some sort of passive and/or active that will benefit the champion you are playing. An item should either be able to stand by itself and serve your needs, or it should be able to build into something else which will benefit you once completed, and can help you get to that particular point...usually right when your jungler Warwick hits level 6 after AFK farming.

Stats Need to Synchronize Outside of Trinity Force, most items have a few basic stats built into them, and trends among those items tend to be consistent. Critical strike chance is built into items for attack speed or attack damage, and armor and/or magic resist are often paired with health. Generally, if these trends are ignored, the item may not be inherently useful to any general audience, or restricted to a very niche audience, lest you find yourself at Wit's End.

Passives Need to Grant Appropriate Power The passives of many items are what distinguish them apart from one another, as otherwise the worth of most items would be based entirely on the stats they grant. However, passives must grant power that is distinct, effective, and most of all: reasonable. Stats on an item can be adjusted as needed, but the passive interaction with champions are often what are the true source of power of many items, and a passive cannot give a champion too much without certain conditions being met, or without some sort of build-up time. Just like a Rammus, if they see you rolling, and too well at that, there will be hate... a lot of it.

Actives are an Option to be Considered Many effects that would be granted to an item may just be too powerful to have all the time, or too readily accessible on demand, and would be ill-suited to function on the role as a passive without disrupting the balance of the game. As such, actives can be a means to give an item access to an intended effect without compromising too much of it's power, and still allowing that item it's intended vision. An active effect on an item effectively grants the champion access to a new spell, with it's own inherent cooldown and must be managed as any spell would (or which you keybind to T and/or Y key and thus add to your faceroll rotation), but has the potential to be much more effective when needed than a typical passive effect could.

Item Cost is a Thing The cost of an item is more than just a number that you work towards when buying an item. Every item has a cost, and that cost is not there at random: thought and design must go into the item's price. More than just being reasonable for the cost of an item in relation to the power the item grants, the item's cost can also affect at what stage the item can be built during the game, and whether rushing that item may be something worth doing. Even more so, the cost of an item must also be considered for the intended role of the champions who pick it up: you wouldn't give an expensive item to a support like Soraka, due to how limited a support budget like hers' is, while the 720NoScopeAssassin Zed could easily afford a massively expensive item due to the intended purpose of getting kills for assassins like him.

Recipes are a Thing as Well Many of the items in the game are not just one single purchase buy, and often are bought from different items which are then combined. As a result, you must consider - if your item isn't a simple stat stick or some starter item - what goes into building that item, which is more than likely other items. While it would be awesome to make a new AD item coming from two B.F.Swords, unless you're intending to make something purely an AD stat stick like a S.M.B.F. Sword, generally you want to stick to smaller components that can be bought over time. Generally, most people don't want to sit on gold waiting to get an item unless it's genuinely worth it, so putting in smaller items that grant the stats your item provides is often the better way to go, even if you end up promoting longswords as the key to your build.

Balance is Weakness Enforced Equilibrium The power of an item is not just the item itself, but how it interacts with the champions who are able to purchase that item. The hardest part of dealing with item creation is often not the item's own inherent power, but how readily it can be used, misused, and even abused by any other champion. An item could be relatively balanced inherently and could not be a problem most of the time, but if one certain champion - coughEzrealcough - can take that item and get too much from it, it can skew the balance of the game and possibly lead to either that champion or the item being nerfed... sometimes both.

Two is Company, But Three is a Crowd While League may not boast the massive plethora of item selections as other MOBAs, there is a reason why items are not just added willy-nilly. Beyond the issue of balance itself, there is also the fact to consider that other items exist which may fulfill the intended role your item does. Adding in a new attack speed item with an on-hit effect may sound fun and all, but care should be considered so that your item doesn't overlap too much with other items like Blade of the Ruined King or Sated Devourer or Guinsoo's Rageblade or Master Yi Item #4. There is always room for new things, but you can do your part to make your item actually unique, rather than just having 'Unique' as a flavor text.

One Draven Person Does Not a League Make Going back to the first and second point about the item needing to fulfill a purpose and having appropriate stats, your item should be designed with more than just one champion in mind. As cool as it is to design an item that fits your main oh so perfectly, an item that only works well or functions for it's intended role on one champion would be like gifting books in Japanese to a school that only one person in the entire school can actually read; this isn't the Academy, and Fiora isn't your sexy Headmistress.

A Diamond in the Rough Finally, you may have to accept that your item may not work or be accepted even if everything about checks out, the stars align and somewhere out there a dragon is being forced into the role of a ghost. Some people may not like the item, or it may not fill a niche that Riot has been searching to fill, or worst case scenario, nobody but you even knows you suggested an item. Your best bet then would be to just work at it, try to find ways that your item can fill a need that the game has currently, and do so in a way that is truly artful, and can bloom like a flower in the dawn. Or you know... crash and burn like that laner who decided chasing Singed was the best idea they ever had.