User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-1330314-20140617111554/@comment-6281696-20140617165244

I do consider him toxic, in fact tryndamere I just consider toxic in general. Having drawbacks does not mean the build is not toxic. But that's not the point here. There are two reasons I'd rather restrict his itemchoices than remove the ratios. 1) people will call it a nerf (even though with the intended build you wouldn't even notice it) and demand a buff somewhere else & 2) giving him some ratios reduces the amount of pointless stats like Trinity on Talon.

As for leona, yes technicly the AP helps her more than the AP on trinity helps Talon. However it's still neglectible. And as a support I'm already forced to use items I don't really want in order to get gold, wards & not be 10 times slower than everyone else. So I don't want a tiny amount of a stat I don't scale well with. Which is why I consider it to be much more of an issue for supports than for talon. Ultimatly I do think that both would benefit from slightly adapted items in those cases.

As for her damage. The point isn't to make them powerhouses, the point is to make their damage RELEVANT. It is idiotic that unless you can burst down your opponent you literally cannot win anything as a support. Fleeing from bruisers who have 10% health left while you are still (near) maximum is just increadibly lame. As for increasing their base or ratio's, it might help, however it's increadibly likely to lead to them being used in solo lane enviroments because suddenly they do now have mage/bruiser-level firepower. I don't think there's ratio's low enough to discourage solo-lanes but high enough to give relevant damage with support builds. Just look at the constant buffs and nerfs LuLu recieves because she is viable in solo lane and then to weak in support and then too strong solo again and too weak again etc.

The issue with support items mostly lies in their stats for the support. Mikaels has a brilliant active. Except that I don't want a quintillion manaregen on Thresh, or leona, or Braum. Zeke's aura is immensly powerfull with a mostly AD team, except the stats for the carrier are bad and can be gotten in a million other places. Sightstones active is increadible, it's stats are awefull. And so on. AP supports do have it better in that respect, they've actually gotten some half decent items, but it's still lackluster. And the few support items that were actually good were abused by bruisers so they were removed (bulwark). Especially tank supports suffer from this. The items have improved compared to the start of the game, but they're nowhere near good.

As long as bruisers have acces to both high end damage & high end tank gear they will always be too strong regardless of how you nerf them because they will simply be able to combine tank & damage stats increadibly effectivly. It also doens't help that due to diminishing returns a full tank barely has any advantage defense wise.

You can still build AP vayne, you just can't build AP vayne with a blood thirster and randuins. As for the whole freedom mantra I despise the recent obsession with that. Though that's more of a philosophical debate than anything as that goes much further than just a simple game. Anyway, if you want a game to be balanced absolute freedom won't work because people will simply find ways to abuse it. Hence some limitations are needed. As for making stuff confusing, I wouldn't consider this system confusing, in fact I'd consider it clearer as each itemset now has a clear goal (mage, tank, support, assasin, whatever you want to make a set for) It makes it considerably easier to figure out what would work well in combination with your inherent statistics & mechanics.

I actually love utility supports, the issue is that because the average fight lasts like 5 seconds utility doesn't get a chance to shine. It's also the reason why I consider those mage supports to be borderline toxic. Bringing more damage isn't inherently bad, but because champions like annie just end up effectivly killing carries on their own without allowing for any response thanks to the stun it kinda defeats the purpose of the other support as there is no oppertunity for their advantage in utility to shine.

All champions could in basis use each itemclass, with the possible exception of stuff like tryndamere being excluded from the AP mage class. Just only to one class at a time. Potentially allows for some currently unviable stuff (e.g. support marksman). As for it being what Riot is already to do, well yes ultimatly it is. However I don't think riot will ever manage to get things balanced as long as everything has acces to everything. Bruisers will abuse the fact that they can acces both high end damage & high end defense. Assasins will use it to double their effective health with a single high end defense item. The occasional tank will abuse something like Liandry's, bruisers & mages will abuse support items as soon as they get decent stats (after all no harm in helping your team while you help yourself), tanks will never get a significant advantage over bruisers, supports will remain irrelevant damagewise or be abused in sololane and so on.