Board Thread:Wiki discussions and announcements/@comment-3308937-20150122092301/@comment-25003900-20150205165701

I would agree with a number of people regarding the point that cost effectiveness is largely irrelevant to the grand scheme for several reason.

I think the primary point I'm going to be trying to make can be summarized as "People are going to buy what fits well with what they're trying to do, and the theoretical cost efficiency of an item doesn't apply in the same way in all cases to every champion."

I would argue that focusing specifically on the statistical values of an item loses some things in the translation, an example of that would be how can be more effective on say,  due to the active synergy with his leap, in addition to the application of more passive effects due to how well he can reset his auto attacks. That's not exactly something that you can fully quantify easily, and it gets lost in the translation when you focus on statistical values exclusively.

You also run into an issue with percentage values on items such as, this item's passive has a much higher value against tanks when 35% translates to chopping off 70+ armor as opposed to on squishies where you may be ignoring as little as 25 armor. Where is more cost efficient when combined with a slow and a target with higher health because it degrades a higher quantity of health that way. has the % health on hit with situationally increasing value depending on who you're attacking. {{ii|Rylai's Crystal Scepter} has different values depending on if a single target ability or an AoE ability caused the slow, additionally the value is changed based on how long the slow is, and if there's CC reductions or removals on the enemy team.

Furthermore there are items with passives that as far as I'm concerned can't be translated into mathematical values such as ignoring unit collision from. If you would have been minion blocked resulting in a death or not picking up a kill, but due to the effect got through those minions and escaped death or picked up a kill for yourself, then it had value. Otherwise it's virtually useless aside from the exceedingly passive effect that it causes on your entire game, which in the end is more or less intangible.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that items have so many extra bizarre situational effects, as well as synergy when built together, or when built on specific champions, or even against specific champions, that it's largely impossible to assign a proper value to an item in terms of efficiency because they'll be more efficient in certain circumstances than in others, in some cases they're largely priceless, where in other they can be a waste to purchase. Masteries modify the value of items all over the place due to percentage increases. So unless it can be applied through to specific champions I frankly don't see it as a very valuable(ha ha) piece of the item pages at all.