Reign of Gaming

So there are a lot of items getting worked on in Season 3 that are being worked on to balance them, but there are a few items that are being ignored. I've decided to look at a few of these items this week and do a little helpful list of things that can be done to make them better. Without further ado, here we go!

Actually further ado. I think League could really benefit from more item diversity, even after Season 3 builds tend to be cookie cutter far more often than not, and with that in mind I'd like to suggest buffs to a couple of items that give different or unique effects beyond "damage" "tankiness" or "AP."

1. Banshee's Veil.

I think BV has been ignored largely because it was a really big Season 1 item and Riot doesn't want it to return to the must-have item tier. However, BV has really been screwed over time, and Season 3 didn't really help it with it's passive becoming worse. The biggest problem to BV is that there are a lot of spell effects that just sort of ... break it. Udyr's phoenix waves for example will break BV and make the item feel incredibly unpleasant to buy. Other things like Tantrum or other spammable AoE abilities tend to also make it feel really unpleasant. For those reasons a simple change I think should be make to BV.

BV should only effect single target abilities. Hard single target abilities. Which is to say that BV isn't an answer to AoE abilities like Curse of the Sad Mummy, but returns to being a hard anti-single target item like it was originally intended to be.

2. Zephyr.

Zephyr suffers from some issues. It's clearly intended to be some sort of bruiser utility item. Giving attack speed, damage, CDR, MS, and tenacity it gives a good package of different effects. However, Zephyr suffers from two big disadvantages: Because it gives so much it tends to be split on what it wants to do. Is it good for CDR? Not really. Is it good for attack speed? Yes. Is it good for move speed? Yes. Is it good for move speed? Yes. Is it good for damage? Not really. However, for the things it does give it doesn't give enough of for it to be a go-to item for that, and it needs to give more total stats. Additionally with a 1200 combine cost it's often hard to buy it as a laning phase item when it would be most effective.

Zephyr should cost an extra long sword but have its combine cost reduced to 800 (no total gold change.) Additionally, it's damage should go up to 25 from 20 giving it a little more of a punch. This would make it better for damage and make it easier to build, giving it a little more gold efficiency and letting players built it easier. This would make it more efficient as either bruiser's damage item, or an ADC's tenacity item. 

3. Frozen Mallet.

FM was decent in season 2 because it was a 2.5 second permanent slow that cock blocked any melee champion from moving. In season 3 it went from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds but gained 10 damage. But not enough damage. In addition phage got nerfed, heavily, making this item's early game much worse. 

Basically FM needs to come down in cost to 3100 or less to be more competitive against the other items. Alternatively FM could go to 35 damage and maybe just become more efficient that way. Either way, it needs to do more because right now it's just not being bought despite many melee champions wanting a perma slow. As a hybrid damage/tank item it suffers from the "isn't doing all this, or all that" syndrome that plagues the system. 

4. Wit's end. 

In season 2 it was really advantageous to split your damage types, in season 3 it's disadvantageous to split your damage types. Combined with the heavy nerfs to wit's end and the cost increase to boot this item just doesn't want to be bought anymore. Even champions that used to live and die off this item are ignoring it in favor of more focused items that do their primary damage type or just are better for magic resist.

I think a new item should be introduced that adds 15 magic damage for 400 gold. This would allow wit's end to have A. A cheaper combine cost, making it easier to build, and B. Do more while being built. This new item should be added in to the built path of wit's end, and the combine cost of wit's end should go down by 450 (net loss of 0.) Additionally, wit's end should probably go up to 45 magic damage to make up for how Season 3 functions as it pertains to split damage. (And how useless MR is now.)

5. Hurricane/Hydra.

These items are good... in theory... but end up being way too expensive for how much effect they have. Yeah. That's pretty much it. In both cases the cost should be reduced by 200 so they're more buyable during the laning phase, and more competitive cost wise against similar items.  Hydra is 3500 gold, that's not cheap. Not cheap at all. Hurricane is a massive gold dump that gives 0 damage. In both cases you're simply sinking too much gold in to these items to make them possibly worth it. 

All of this will do what exactly?

These items will be better, making counter building or building to the situation more feasible since the items that allow that will be better. That's really what it's there to accomplish. If you're graves and you're up against an Amumu maybe you go Zephyr to get some more Tenacity and kiting power. Or maybe you build wit's end on Udyr because you need more MR but still want damage. Things like that. Or if you're Kog'Maw up against a heavy melee line you get Hurricane to do some heavy AOE %health damage. 

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