User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-1330314-20140617111554/@comment-1330314-20140617152909

I don't think AP is actually toxic. It makes no thematic sense, but the gameplay is actually designed to prevent free damage and healing: his main burst is extremely spaced out and his heal requires him to gain Fury to make proper use of. In building AP, he sacrifices a lot of damage and lifesteal-based sustain, and forgoes his AD steroids. Removing the playstyle wouldn't harm AD Tryndamere, but I don't think there's a real gameplay reason to remove it. In any case, it would boil down to removing his AP ratios, not restricting his item choices.

As for Leona and IBG, despite her piddly AP ratios, you're not wasting anything. Even if the AP is insignificant, it's still a small boost to your damage, so you're making use of every stat (which is more than you can say for building, for example). Giving her more damage and maintaining her current level of tankiness and CC would be unhealthy, so you'd have to hit her strengths. Most supports are not meant to focus on damage, and if you want to deal damage with them you can always do so by building AP. As a support, you're meant to be assisting your team, not going solo unless it's to ward or gank. In any case, if you wanted supports to deal more damage you could always do so by either increasing their base damage or increasing their AP scalings, not necessarily to mage levels but by just enough to make the aforementioned 30 AP give them more oomph.

I also disagree with support items being next to useless. Traditional support items bring massive amounts of utility ( is getting nerfed because its utility is too good for its cost, for example), and ever since the beginning of Season 4, traditional caster supports can build AP and still do really well, thanks to their utility scalings. The changes to also made AP support itemization more attractive, offering them a bit more damage and utility plus offensively-oriented utility actives. Again, the balancing issue here revolves more around the bases and scalings of supports, not on their choice of items.

While I agree that bruisers are too strong, I again think this is because of bruisers themselves, and not because of itemization. Riot's planning an all-round nerf/rework of bruisers in the future to tone down their free stats, but in the end they should still have access to tanky items. You want greater differentiation between tanks and bruisers, and look disparagingly upon resistance boosts, but it's these scalings with tanky stats that make tanks particularly good at filling out their role. Bringing the power level of fighters down a notch would allow for greater differentiation than by restricting their options. Fighters who spike with certain items, such as or  with, are designed with that spike in mind, so if you feel like a champion is doing too much with certain items, that again stems from the champion itself, unless the item is so good it's being used overwhelmingly, even in situations where it's not supposed to work (as was the case with pre-nerf ). In the latter case, that would just warrant a nerf on the item, not segregation according to role.

The idea of locking out item choices is, by nature, inhibitive to creative play. You might lock out AP items from, for example, and while that would have little impact that would still impose an artificial limit to Vayne's build options, when she already has natural limitations in the form of her scalings. Similarly, fiddling with items from champion to champion obfuscates potentially new builds, and directly forces players to follow your intended path instead of suggesting it to them and leaving full room for experimentation. Rather than let players figure out what works in a sandbox on equal ground, and let their own characteristics determine what they should build, you're changing the rules for every champion.

You also do not seem to value utility much, when utility is one of the most powerful tools in the game. Sure, mage supports bring crowd control and damage to the table, but traditional supports are unique in that, in addition to their CC, they bring huge amounts of utility to their team that can also scale, and therefore have the potential to contribute a lot more than damage. Mage supports with damage and CC are fine insofar as neither are overwhelming, since there is nothing wrong with bringing additional damage to a lane.

The general issue here also lies in what criteria you're going to use to separate items: which champions would fit into which class? What about champions who fit in multiple classes? What about playing champions as a class they weren't originally made to fit in? What is the point of unified stats and scalings if they don't mean the same thing for different classes? Lich Bane may not be the first item you'd consider on Tryndamere, but that's not a reason to ban it on him. If someone wants to go AP Tryndamere and has the options to do so, let them build the way they want. If a build happens to be unhealthy or too strong on a particular champion, fix the champion. If a certain item is unhealthy or too strong across multiple champions, fix the item. What you're proposing is effectively a very roundabout and heavy-handed way of balancing champions in the same way Riot is trying to do now.