User blog:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good

As people asked me to explain my views on itemsets and what exactly I mean with it, so here comes a massive wall of text explaining why I think seperate itemsets are a good idea, how they would work, what is needed to make them work, and why the current situation is not good.

What are seperate itemsets and how would they work?
First what is the basic idea? The idea is to seperate items per archetype or per champion. In doing so certain combinations of items and champions will no longer be possible. Certain items would be available to multiple archetypes or champions, and in certain cases one could make several versions of the same item. For example Ravenous Hydra could be made into a ADC version, with high damage, a bruiser version, with lower damage but better defenses, and a tank version which offensivly has very little beyond the active & passive utility but the best defensive bonusses.

There are two rough approaches for this:

The first approach is to simply make a unique itemset for each champion. This is by far the most basic approach, and will result in the best balancing as you can balance each item exactly perfect for each champion. However, it is impractical as in between 100's of champions and 100's of items this'd be quite a lot of work. Especially considering the existing base of champions & items this would be problematic. However once established it becomes considerably easier to maintain and this is no longer of considerable importance.

The second approach would be to make itemsets based on champion archetype. In contrast to balancing each and everyone item for each specific item you merely balance it per archetype. It is easier to establish & maintain as it requires the least amount of effort, however it will also be relativly less balanced due to individual differences between champions allowing for occasional abuse of certain items due to higher synergy.

This second approach also comes in two flavors, first is limiting champions to their specific archetype set. The other being allowing champions acces to every itemset, but once you build something from one set you can't build items from another set, akin to how the current gold items work.

One can also use a combination of both approaches, using itemsets per archetype to broadly balance and further balance the occasional extreme item on a champion specific level. This is most likely the best option in light of practicality and effectiveness.

What are the advantages & disadvantages of seperate itemsets
Seperate itemsets has a number of advantages

First it allows for items that would be acceptable in certain roles but overpowered in other roles. Support items are a prime example of this. Often support items are lackluster statwise because once they are good other types of champions will start to use them.

For example take Runic bulwark, as a support item, this was perfect. It provides all-round defensive stats, improves your allies, is cost effecient, slot effecient, provides enough MR on its own to be usefull as a tank. And then bruisers discovered that bulwark did not only help your allies, but was actually a good item. And thus everyone started to build the thing. As a consequence riot removed the item, as it was supposed to be an item a support would get to help his allies, not the goto MR item on bruisers. Had it not been accesible to bruisers the item would not have been removed when it was.

Another example would be the spellthief's edge line of gold items. In order to prevent certain poke heavy mids from abusing the item it comes with some severe limitations. It has extremely low AP for its cost, and it doesn't work just after killing a minion.

Itemsets would avoid these issues.

Secondly, it stops certain toxic, or extremely effective itembuilds. For example it stops bruisers from building full tank, yet have considerable damage thanks to 1 extremely effective offensive item. Or glass cannons from tripling their effective health with a single high end tank item. More on this will follow in the section where I go into why the current situation leads to issues.

Third, it allows certain utility items to be possible for different types of champions with more appropriate stats while not being vastly outclassed by the other variations. For example take ravenous hydra again, a tank might want its waveclear, however its stats do not exactly fit in a proper tank build. To a degree this is also possible in the current system, an example of currently existing items that attempt this being the upgrades following on sheen, however the attempts at this are limited because of the potential of one of its variations outclassing the others in virtually situation (e.g. trinity force is used almost twice as much as frozen gauntlet according to lolking indicating trinity is much more effective in nearly all cases)

Fourth it allows for a greater distinction between the classes. Currently bruisers can reach (nearly) the same defenses as proper tanks, while still having a massive offensive advantage. Tanks especially suffer from this early on, without items their defenses are barely higher than offensive focussed characters, while the disadvantage in offense is actually significant. Similarly certain glass canon bruisers can put out ridiculous burst while not being particularly squishy thanks to their inherent protection.

Fifth, it allows for new highly specialised items and tactics with new mechanics to be viable. This point is similar to the first point, however the first point merely focusses on stats. Bulwark was abused because it had decent stats, the actual mechanic of buffing your allies was never a problem because the thing didn't stack. Now imagine a bulwark that provides a MR bonus based on your MR, now take an entire team that focusses on using these kind of support items to boost their stats skyhigh when they are together, but leaving them weak when singled out. In the current stat this is impossible because not only would they be able to boost their stats massivly, but thanks to the other items they get they wouldn't be weak when left on their own.

Sixth, it allows for better balancing of champions. Take for example the AP ratio's on leona. They are so low that any AP is just wasted, however if they'd be increased you could get a mage leona that'd be able to nuke down targets. If leona wasn't able to build say 600 AP, the ratio on eclipse could be increased so that the bits and pieces of AP she can gather from items like frozen gauntlet actually does something usefull on it as opposed to adding a mere 12 damage before migitation.

It only has one real disadvantage: it reduces (percieved) choice. If this matters or not is heavily dependent