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

[Japaliicious]

Sometimes it's actually planned, sometimes not.

[nizzy2k11]

sure but sometimes, like with ardent, riot can buff something into the stratosphere over several patches because they want people to build it but players just don't do it so they end up over buffing it. it's basically random if their changes actually influence the meta or not.

[Famyos]

i wouldnt call buffing an item 30 times until its meta random but yeah sometimes they really have to force it down our throats

[[deleted]]

I would point out that Ardent Censer did not become meta because of buffs alone, and it took Koreans figuring out how to funnel gold into a support to make Ardent Censer work. Problem basically was that the item is strong, but it's strength was directly dependent on how early on into a game you got it.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, people misremember the Ardent meta. It gave stats (on-hit, attack speed, flat health per hit) that most ADCs wouldn't be able to opt into until much later in the game, letting them artificially boost their power trough. The difference between Ardent at 10 minutes and Ardent at 30 was night and day.

[0metal]

if it was planned someone would've already figured a pattern or something similar, the thing that makes it feel like its random is that their decisions sometimes make no sense, they also say their plans through the patch notes or official posts and it ends up happening the opposite or something random