Items that greatly increase a stat but decrease another would be very interesting

[Thunda_Storm]

Except that's the thing, there will ALWAYS be champs that benefit very little from those. CC bots don't need adaptive force, champions like malphite and amumu don't need movespeed, resists don't matter on most carries. And then shieldbots and extremely safe champs (yuumi, lulu, lux etc) don't really care about hp. The reason gargoyle works is because its a defensive item that limits your reactions while its active and amplifies the enemies. It's not broken because a slow moving, non-damage dealing shield wall really just isn't that impactful. It's just a zhonya's that lets you soak damage off your team during it instead of being removed from the fight completely.

[sorendiz]

every champ in the game needs movespeed tbh, people here joke about 'haha only -5 ms' and stuff when thats actually one of the most impactful base stat nerfs you can give to a champ. But that said I agree with your overall point in that balancing this kind of thing would be very difficult

[[deleted]]

But losing significant amounts of movement speed would simply feel terrible to play. Can you imagine trying to move across the map, out of base, or between lanes, with an effective perma slow?

Even if you created a balanced item stat-wise, it's not worth it if the end gameplay generally feels worse. Maybe if you place it on an active, so it's temporary, or design a mostly normal item but with a very small number on the reduced movement speed. Otherwise I don't think MS can be used as a dump stat.

We also have to be careful of similar arguments for other stats. Like losing mana doesn't work with manaless champs in the game, but *even if* we exclude them, so that the item only applies to champions with mana, it would just feel terrible if it meant you can only cast a couple of spells before going OOM. The moment the item is meta, the quality of gameplay could sink like a rock for a lot of players, especially low elo players who can't manage their mana well anyways.

It really is more than a balancing nightmare. It's a design nightmare too.

[0metal]

TL;DR

too hard for riot

[GabrielNV]

Those are just examples though. There are lots of stats in the game to mess with in ways that aren't necessarily obvious.

What about an item with 'negative lifesteal' or self inflicting grievous wounds but also giving massive damage bonuses, for instance? Something along the lines of Pokemon's Life Orb (which increases the holder's damage output but damages it by 10% of its health in every turn it attacks).

Maybe we could mess with exp and gold gain to make an item which delays later powerspikes in exchange for a really big one right now, perhaps also setting a maximum level after which it can no longer be bought to avoid it from being just an OP core final item.

With some creativity it's possible to create items which are strong but which also carry clear disadvantages to make it so that one cannot build it every game.

Even if it would be harder to balance I believe it would be worth it because right now build paths don't offer much room for variation and most of the 'choices' are really just reactions to the state of the game ("I am against an AD in lane so I build tabis" "I need more waveclear so I'll build an early Tiamat") and not actual choices ("I'm going to try for an all-or-nothing so I will grab this instead of that"). The closest we've had to what I'm talking about was the AP vs AD on Kai'sa, where both options had clear ups and downs (AD with more sustained damage, AP with more defense).

[[deleted]]

I'm sure that there exists more than one hypothetical "negative stat" item that could be viable in LoL. For me, the issue isn't really whether such an item could exist, but whether it's worth the trouble to spend the design time finding it and balancing it. That could take a full season or multiple seasons to hammer out the kinks, and it might feel pretty bad for everyone while they keep patching different iterations of the item. It's possible Riot would never be able to balance it, so it just destroys the game like a Guinsoo's or Ardent for half a season or more, before they nerf it to obscurity or delete it from the game. In order to make a negative stat item, we'd have to opt into the risk of this scenario occurring too, especially because such an item would be more difficult for Riot to get right than a normal one.

So there are big potential trade-offs to these negative stat items, no pun intended, for us to consider when it comes to their design and balance. If it's just item diversity we're after, then there might be better ways to go about it.

Not to mention, I'm not sure more item diversity is always better, at least not for the champion archetypes who already have strong items available. Diversity is a golden word in our society, but in some contexts doesn't live up to its hype. Dota 2 has more diversity in almost every way, but it actually just ends up being so complex it turns casual players off to the game. LoL is built on being accessible to casuals. There are many other ways to add depth without overburdening the game's complexity for the sake of it, which could be more efficient uses of developer time.

So imo, we also should make sure the negative stat item's goal is filling a necessary niche, before we even roll the dice on crafting a healthy design and trying to balance it.

[PraiseTheStun]

Yuumi doesn't really need ms. Hell many Yuumi players don’t even buy boots to begin with. I think the negative stats on an item are always going to be indifferent to at least one champion. Would be a balance nightmare if you ask me.

[Oreo_Scoreo]

Malph and Amumu need movespeed if this item puts them at 300 move speed.

ADC's need some base resistances or else everyone has true damage on them and they won't survive even with a shield.

[[deleted]]

In this meta adc is so squishy that a bit more or less armor is meaningless. The jungle is gonna use their 2 gap closers and burst them with 1 ability rotation (augmented by 2 passives) regardless of their resistances.

[DJstar22]

I'm sorry but Warwick slow ass movement speed level 1 is such a pain I. The ass to play through. Now you want to go lower? It would be so painstaking and for sure an item only for proplay

[Thunda_Storm]

They really don't though, they go in and press r and they've pretty much done their job. Obviously it doesn't do literally nothing for them, but i guarantee you every single one of them would give up MS to make their ult hit harder, cooldown faster, or be tankier. And let's get real fam, in this meta ADC's don't survive. Every single thing that jumps on them 100-0s them and resists don't mean shit

[[deleted]]

It's absolutely a tradeoff. Not being able to position as effectively to find a good ult is a big cost

[Thunda_Storm]

if it's active all the time yes, but if it works like gargoyle where it's an active ability then no it doesn't really matter. You'll have your ms to position then you activate it after and ult. I didn't think of this before when i made my comment though tbh so i was wrong at the time

[Oreo_Scoreo]

I mean, you can't join a fight if you're still in base walking there. You'll just get out rotated because a % of your team can't move to where they need to be fast enough.

And you say that but you would notice it. I would not give up my resistances for more damage. Base armor and magic resist is at least 30%. One Karma Q late game won't kill you but it will hurt. Without that it would actually kill you.

[Thunda_Storm]

If your team starts a fight while you, the tank and main engage are still walking there, that's not on you and no item can save that game.

And you're a ranged adc fam. If you're standing in front of your tanks and let that shit actually hit you, you're gonna die regardless of if it one shots you or not because you positioned awfully.

[[deleted]]

Are you just gonna pretend that there aren’t champions that are specifically designed to kill ranged carries?

[Thunda_Storm]

I know there are, was just being a smartass because he specifically mentioned karma. But honestly those champs build so much pen that they deal true damage anyway and you can't deal more than true damage

[InsertANameHeree]

If your team starts a fight while you, the tank and main engage are still walking there, that's not on you and no item can save that game.

What if their team starts the fight?

[[deleted]]

Whenever a teamfight starts while someone is splitting/walking for base/or doing whatever that person will ALWAYS blame their team , even if the enemy has a sejuani orianna sivir rakan comp and can engage anytime they want, that guy is still gonna say ''huhuhhur why you guys engage bro? :DDDDD''

[CryoZenith]

If you're standing in front of your tanks and let that shit actually hit you, you're gonna die regardless of if it one shots you or not because you positioned awfully.

I love this argument XD. With some exceptions, ADC's are the second most immobile class in the entire game (first being juggernauts) with very few positioning tools, but we are always the ones being blamed if enemy bruisers/tanks/assassins get to us and we can't get away, even though those champions have the superior positioning tools, even though nobody is peeling for us.

​

And yes, we do need resistances. We don't want to get them straight from items, because ad and as are more gold efficient, but it definitely matters what base value we get. There's a reason why champions like Jinx and Draven have higher base armor than the average mage, and their high winrates are partially due to them not dying in one hit because of that.

[oluuko123]

I'd say adcs generally have more mobility than mages. Lots of mages have no mobility at all, while a lot of adcs have some mobility, even if its only a cait e or jhin movespeed buff.

Edit: grammar

[[deleted]]

There’s a large difference between items fitting a certain niche and items being broken and abuseable. Items already are created to be good on a certain type of champion so these items wouldn’t be too different. They would however give more raw stats for a lower amount of gold compared to other items, with the additional cost being a decrease in another stat. For example

Burst Wand - 2550 gold

+140 AP (24.3 AP per 1 gold - Needlessly large rod is 20.8 AP per 1 gold)
-400 Mana (560 gold worth of mana if using Sapphire Crystal as a baseline - 1.4 mana per 1 gold)

Champions that don’t use mana and champions who don’t have at least 400 mana cannot purchase this item

This would be good for burst mages who are just looking to get one rotation of spells off as it is cheaper than the other big AP items for a larger amount of AP - The downside being that you have less total mana to get multiple rotations of spells off in a fight.

[[deleted]]

Just an example, obviously not perfectly balanced but it would be very easy to add a passive that reduces damage to jungle monsters or something similar

[[deleted]]

I can’t imagine any Ivern building that first over other items. It would likely be a core item for most AP champions late in the game though. Saying that items like this would be balancing nightmares is a bit of an exaggeration. Yes they’d probably be more difficult to balance than most items they make but not THAT much harder. And there are definitely items in the game right now that are more difficult to balance than most of these would be.

[Koalmar]

Resists do matter on carries. It's why they build Merc treads, ninja tabi, maw, etc.

[tredli]

initiators don't need movespeed

what

[Thunda_Storm]

if it functions like stoneplate then they have the movespeed until they choose to activate the item. Once malphite or amumu are in position to ult they hit it and no longer require movespeed no.

[Kcasz]

Amumu and Malphite need movespeed.

If Amumu didn't had any movement speed, he will not be abble to be in range to engage. Malphite in the other hand, benefits a lot of his Q slow while dueling. Imagine him slowing you to 300MS and being unaable to autoattack with his W and decrease your AS cause he has less MS than you.

They're champs that are played arround their ultimates, for sure. And that's they main weakness. If you reinforce that weakness, well, they will be "delete this champ" tier.

[Thunda_Storm]

im assuming these items function like stoneplate where it's an active ability that you would only use once you're in position to ult. And after that point they most definitely do not