League of Legends champion design team leader – Riot August continues to answer more questions from fans on his stream.
Items are an essential element of League of Legends and any MOBA game in general since they provide champions with significant amounts of power and progression throughout the game. Making and modifying any items will therefore shape the metagame in an entirely different way.
When it comes to item design, according to Riot August, the chief of the League of Legends champion design team, he seldom develops items that reduce the champion’s stats. Riot August explains that such an item always has a favorable impact to compensate for the champion’s reduction in some stats. However, this frequently results in the player finding the item to be too good to use on specific champions and builds without concern for the other negative effect.
Riot August: “Actually, designing an item with a champion’s stat reduction effect is too difficult. Usually, this type of item always ends up being too strong in some champions to overcome the adverse effects it brings. For example, an item that increases AD by 50 but slows the champion by 10% for example, it will become too strong on Master Yi because this champion will not be slowed when he used his R.
In fact, we used to design this item with the old Gargoyle Stoneplate, the active item increases health with reduced damage. However, it became too strong on Cho’Gath, Sett because then we didn’t apply the damage reduction effect with true damage. In the end, the whole team had to redo the effect of the Gargoyle Stoneplate in season 11.”
It is possible to argue that equipment intended to have negative effects in exchange for certain stats is a good idea. However, in a game like League of Legends, such items are rarely used because, as Riot August stated, they become too powerful on specific champions and builds. As a result, Riot is forced to balance the item based on the champions that utilize it the most efficiently, and the item progressively becomes incredibly terrible for other champions.
Even with a common item like Turbo Chemtank, it was nerfed in the past few patches just because it was used so well by Udyr, Hecarim
Riot Games’ intention is obviously not to develop an item that can only be utilized by specific champions. Essentially, Riot strives to promote diversity in League of Legends by providing champions with a diversity of item-building possibilities. As a result, the item form that needs players to trade stats in order to gain a certain effect has been progressively disappearing from League of Legends in the past. Perhaps League of Legends players will have to wait a long time for an item like the old Gargoyle Stoneplate to reappear.