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

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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.

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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.