User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-8506165-20140620104839

"In the case of Udyr, unless his base AD becomes nonexistant Trinity will always be a massive powerspike to him. Or any sheen item on him for that matter. In this case it's the mechanic of the item that becomes broken as opposed to the actual values."

that... would seem to be a major problem with this idea, not a point in its favour.

I mean... say the "tank" itemset had attack speed items. Some tanks do like attack speed after all: Shen, Nautilus and Cho'Gath spring to mind. But oh hey, there are bruisers that scale really well off just a little bit of AS! So... they just go into the tank item set and buy some attack speed stuff, then they're golden. Still end up as tanky as tanks, because they're building from the tank itemset, but still do a lot of damage. Whoops. Some item stats or mechanics are just really strong on certain champions. How do you make sure none of these end up still combining in an itemset? Realistically, you can't.

"Similarly on brand liandry's adds 8% current health damage to all of his damage with just the passive, you can nerf brand all you want, the item will still be a must have offensivewise."

So... do you ban Brand specifically from buying Liandry's Torment, or do you not include it in the APC itemset? Again, this just highlights flaws with the notion that this proposal will stop some champions doing really well off specific items. If they're doing so well out of it that they're too strong, solving this is better achieved through rebalancing the champion, the item, or both. Say Liandry's Brand was way OP and practically free-win (lol) - do the very thing you disdain and nerf Brand! Yeah, Liandry's will still be good on him afterwards. But put it this way - if you make all of Brand's abilities deal 0 damage and just apply his passive, will anyone pick him even though Liandry's still works really well with his passive? Not unless Liandry's is somehow strong enough for Brand to still be way OP even with 0 damage abilities. In that case, I think you know what the answer is to that. Obviously, that's extreme, but the point is there's some kind of sweet spot you can hit where balance happens, unless there's some kind of toxic champion mechanic in play which means they need to be reworked, not given a restricted item set.

I don't know, on the one hand this is kind of a neat idea in theory, but on the other hand - it makes the game massively more complicated and imposes a larger burden of knowledge on less skilled or new players, would require a shit-ton of balancing to be done to compensate for everyone getting different items (which might, ironically, just bring things back to the way they are at the moment), and its goals would be better achieved through improving the current itemisation. For instance, are tank items too good on bruisers, or on squishies that just pick one up? Adjust them so that combining lots of them makes them more effective, then reduce their power as single items. Admittedly, this is easier said than just done, and would require a fair bit of work, but I don't think you can't honestly say your idea wouldn't require more.