[Patch 4.10] Nidalee/Skarner Rework General Discussion - P…

In the last patch, Riot did a once over on AD itemization and they did some pretty interesting and valuable things for AD's. And at the same time they did a pretty bad thing for supports. In this thread i want to talk about why that is and about how Riot needs to think about itemization, and support itemization in particular, in the future.

Generally we can think that there are three types of efficiency a) gold efficiency b) slot efficiency and c) build efficiency. Efficiency is a statistic which is relative, defined not by absolute values, but by the relative value compared to other items. Typically we want to think about stats like health, resistances, ability power, and attack damage as more valuable than things like HP/5 and MP/5 because sustain items aren't valuable now. After all if you spend a lot of gold and slots on MP/5 and HP/5 someone who has only a handful of immediate power will out fight you and be able to use that advantage to snowball

1) Gold efficiency: Raw Power per point of gold. Items which are very gold efficient are things like Doran's items. Things that are very inefficient are things like Ardent Coin, or Tear of the Goddess.

2) Slot efficiency: Raw power per point of slot. Items which are very slot efficient are things like Triforce, Infinity Edge, Mercurial Scimitar, Bloodthirster, Deathcap, DFG... Pretty much most big completed items and the more expensive it is the more slot efficient it is. Items which are very slot inefficient are things like Rejuv beads.

3) Build Efficiency: This one is a bit harder to define. It is basically the amount of deadspace in the build leading up to the item. This comes in two ways, slot and gold. An item which uses up more slots before its purchased is build inefficient and an item which costs large amounts of gold between value is build inefficient

A great example of an item which is build efficient is Twin Shadows. It takes up at most two items in your inventory at any time in its build path and the largest price jump is 630 gold. Which means that if you ever have to go back with >630 gold you can progress towards the item so long as you have the slots.

A good example of an item which is build inefficient is Warmog's Armor. Warmog's armor takes up at most 4 slots of space and its highest component cost is 1050 gold (1410 if you don't purchase the very slot inefficient. A good example of an item which is gold build inefficient is Deathcap. The smallest portion is 840 gold and the largest is 1600.

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Obviously different efficiencies matter more at different points in the game. Gold efficiency matters most early when you have a bunch of open slots. Build efficiency matters more in the mid game where you have to balance your ability to build into an item with gold and slot considerations both about equally important. And of course slot efficiency matters most in the end game when you're finalizing builds.

Similarly different champion types have different efficiency concerns at all points in the game. Carries are most concerned with slot efficiency, because they're concerned mainly about purchasing multiplicative stats (E.G. AP, Mpen, DFG Active, Deathcap Bonus Scaling damage) for the end of the game. Because they get the most gold on average due to farm priority they're less concerned with having to wait for a big item. Supports are more concerned with gold and build efficiency similarly, because they never have all that much gold and waiting for a big purchase leaves a very large hole in your power.

Additionally some item types have systematic efficiencies which represent this. AP and AD damage items are the highest slot efficiency items in the game. While there do not exist particularly any slot efficient tank items as the most expensive pure tank item in the game costs 3000 gold (Randuin's Omen) while the most efficient pure damage items cost upwards of 3830 gold. At the end of the game when slots matter most an AD carry can hold upwards of 3000 extra gold worth of items. That is pretty big, and part of that was accomplished by making Scimitar and BT partially defensive while still being good AD items so that an AD can forgo a traditional 6th defensive item in favor of a mixed option.

OK so what does this have to do with Supports? Well if you have three kinds of item efficiency and efficiency is a relative stat then some obvious structure about how items should be balanced should appear. The problem is that support items do not conform to this structure and the needs of support champions

A) An item which is slot efficient, build efficient, and gold efficient will be OP. After all it has no downsides at any point in its build path. You can buy it early, without sacrificing potions and wards, and then end up with an item which you never need to get rid of. Because its gold efficient and build efficient you don't suffer at all for having a superior 6 item build. More or less everyone who can make use of an item like this will buy it early

B) An item which is slot inefficient, build inefficient, and gold inefficient will be terrible. After all it has no upsides at any point. You can't buy it early without sacrificing potions and wards, there are long periods with no power increases and when you do get power increases they're weak.

C) An item which has only one efficiency has to have it in spades and so two is the gold standard of efficiencies for most items. Items should be slot efficient and gold efficient, but not gold efficient. Good examples of these are the big AD/AP carry items, all of which have significant build lulls due to the 1500-1600 per unit cost of BF Sword and NLR.

So while ADC's need items which are gold efficient and slot efficient. Supports need items which are gold efficient and build efficient. Slot efficiency doesn't much matter because you're almost never going to fill up. For this reason the change to Mikaels was terrible. While it used to be gold efficient and build efficient and very slot inefficient (because it only had some MR and MP/5 on it besides the active) now its gold inefficient (more MP/5 than you could possibly use filled with other items which give MP/5, CDR which caps, and ok some MR that isn't too bad) and almost build inefficient as well (870 to upgrade). Maybe the active still makes it worth it, its a pretty good one. But in terms of our structure of items the exact opposite of what we would want happen to items happened to Crucible.

So why don't support items fit this mold? Besides specific problems with specific items* the answer comes down largely to Cooldown Reduction and MP/5. A significant chunk of the gold efficiency of every support item is tied up in CDR and many have MP/5. Support masteries emphasize CDR. Oh and of course there is a hard CDR and effective MP/5 cap. So all the items which supports should consider building, that is the build and gold efficient items which end up being slot efficient, that is items which a carry or tank would not consider past the very early game are suddenly gold inefficient as well. And 1 out of 3 isn't good enough unless the 1 is amazing. The only way to make a really good build efficient item given that its gold inefficient and slot inefficient is if it builds yourself in your inventory as you gain gold, letting you effectively shop from the middle of the lane.

Clearly that isn't going to happen. And because of it, the support items need a complete redesign:

1 )There can only be a few support oriented items which have high amounts of CDR on them. Maybe they can be, more or less, mutually exclusive items that you would not tend or want to buy together because their only stat is CDR and they don't build into anything but 20% CDR and an active for 1000 gold.

2) There can only be a few support oriented items which have high amounts of mana sustain on them. They need to be more or less mutually exclusive with each other so that you probably aren't going to stack them

3) Other items need to not have CDR or sustain and provide immediate "now" stats. Sustain stats for supports should not be smattered around on all of the items, because when this happens the gold you're paying for the sustain rapidly becomes as worthless as gold you're paying for CDR when you're capped.

4) All of these items need to be gold efficient and build efficient but not slot efficient.



*Like the 1700 gold gulf between the valuable part of Zeke's Herald and the finished item. A finished item which offers a decent amount of team power but holy lord when are you going to have the time to wait on a 1700 gold item on a support with zero farm priority? And holy lord how do you use the massive 20% CDR on it without capping later in the game? The carries who would use this most would probably have Talisman which means they're now capped at 40% CDR with two items not counting and 2 other slots worth of support items which have CDR which they're probably going to build and the fact that they also are probably strongest with CDR boots because they don't get much out of the other options. If they have 0% CDR in masteries the items they would otherwise want to build at 6 items would give them 75% CDRwhich is a whole mess of wasted stats