User blog comment:Emptylord/Class Reworks - Itemization Follow-up/@comment-5035765-20160512211319/@comment-5035765-20160519202909

It doesn't matter if you parse them into balance changes and design changes, they both affect game balance. You're distracting from the point. You shouldn't ignore patterns in game balance that happened before, otherwise you'll likely make the same mistake again. Plus, the changes spawned from those times reach further than you'd think. Like, to give an example that's more obvious, look at the jungle; the items are way restricted to junglers and kind of on the weak side, and if you don't have said jungle item, the monsters don't give EXP worth beans. When it wasn't like that, you'd have ADCs building the jungle items and the jungles being emptied out by the nearest laners. So, those items got nerfs and the monsters got buffs (but nerfed exp). The other characters who were doing things off were able to go back to their normal builds and be perfectly fine, while champs who had that stuff as part of their normal style were kinda SOL. Basically what I'm saying there is that the off-build stuff tends to screw over the normal stuff in the long term when it's the strongest choice.

Oh boy, the full list of gunblade builders... okay, lets go down it.

Akali, Jax, Eve, and Kayle- all true hybrids (Hybrid itemization kinda sucks, which is why most of them lean one way or the other)

Teemo, Morde, Fizz, Kennen, and AP Shaco- all APs who have core abilities that trigger on autoattack, so AD is not wasted at all on them.

and I'm still not seeing how Transmutation doesn't have gaps in healing while Omnivore does. Like seriously, what are you talking about?