I wanted to look at how some of the changes in Season 3’s items are predicted by Xypherous’ opinions years ago. And in some cases it seems Xypherous has changed his mind or become more nuanced in his positions. I can’t pretend to know the precise rationales behind all of the Season 3 changes or the thought process of my favorite Rioter but let’s see what we can do.


In Season 3, Tier 2 boots can be enchanted, upgrading them to a pseudo-Tier 3 boot for some gold by adding an additional movement-related passive.

But Xypherous said in a "make an item, I'll comment on it" thread on January 13, 2011: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...98#post5373198

Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: There’s not much there to look for inconsistencies. No reasoning is given for why end-game boots weren’t needed back in 2011. If indeed the boot enchantments were added to give money-value to the slot in the late game, I’d be interested in what changed in Xypherous’ thinking. But if it’s to address some other problem (kiting, perhaps), then no real explanation is needed.

But we do find another boots opinion from a thread the previous year.

November 27, 2010

My best guess is that boots were devalued in Season 3 by moving some of the MS on boots into the base movement speed of all champions. This made the boots slot less efficient than it used to be and opened up room to add endgame boots. That and more options are fun. Xypherous might have also figured out a way of adding endgame boots without just adding more MS to it; adding conditional enchants rather than flat speed bonuses could have been the perfect solution in his eyes.



Liandry's Lament

So a few things about this item. First, it builds out of Haunting Guise, a welcome upgrade to the item that otherwise felt bad in endgame builds. Take a look at Xyph’s opinion of Chalice of Harmony (which similarly used to have no upgrade path before one was added recently).

January 23, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: Inconsistent? It seems he changed his mind or has new priorities. This is demonstrated with a sweeping overview of the new items. We used to have more early game items that lost relevance later because they didn’t have upgrades. This created design space - certain items could be timing-oriented to do very well and be efficient at low gold costs, but as the game went later they became no-upgrade duds.

Xypherous explained in the item previews that you shouldn’t have to build Warden’s Mail and feel forced to buy a Randuin’s Omen. But I think old Xypherous would have characterized that as a choice you made when you decided you wanted the efficiency of a Warden’s Mail for the early game - you chose to make an item that at the time was good for you but later restricted your options or denied you slots, like a Doran’s or old Chalice.

Notice that many of the low-cost, non-upgradable items are gone from the game. Haunting Guise got an upgrade. Moonflair Spellblade and Cloak and Dagger were removed. Brutalizer now scales into the late game and has additional upgrade options. Aegis got an upgrade. I wonder what changed in Xypherous’s thinking about dead-end items as design space.

Mikael's Crucible.
January 14, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: I guess he changed his mind or decided the negatives of a cleanse-other were outweighed by the positives. It’s certainly still true that you feel bad that you can’t cleanse yourself with this item (unless I’m wrong and you can!).

Movespeed Items for Mages?
January 14, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: No, we didn’t get movement speed items for mages (except Hextech Sweeper for Dominion and Twisted Treeline). The Lich Bane change didn’t happen, but we did get another Sheen variant that a mage looking for Armor instead of MR could buy, in Iceborn Gauntlet. Mages got the gauntlet and some other CC options which might suit a similar purpose as MS in teamfight scenarios. Mage CC items were also predicted btw!
EDIT: I'm completely wrong! YES, old Xyph's opinions predicted that Lich Bane was made less niche - he took out the Magic Resist component! And Twin Shadows is a movement speed item buildable by mages. Thanks to Wyatt Cole and S1AL.

Shard of True Ice, Iceborn Gauntlet, Twin Shadows as Mage CCs.
January 23, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: Predicted. We didn't get a sheepstick. We got slows on a few active items for mages.


Banner of Command added. Ohmwrecker added.
February 3, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: Yeah! Siege items were predicted, and even the idea that there could be another way of helping a push against towers through something other than promoted minions.


Lisandry’s Lament added:
February 12, 2011
Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: Yes. Xyph made his sustained DPS mage item.


Leviathan removed:
October 3, 2010

Comparing Old Xyph to Current Item Change: Yes, predicted.

This is a neat, interesting post and I applaud you for it.

Interesting. Very well thought out and informative!

Mages actually did get a move speed item through Twin Shadows.

I'm pretty sure that Lich Bane DID get changed.

It's almost as if people change their minds after they get more data to base their opinions on.

or he is a hypocrite

The main point where I've turned around on is boots - because it turns out that boots were too cost-efficient and shut out a lot of MS% itemization from being in the game not attached to large stat sticks.

After it became apparent that every class needed MS options - it seemed like the best way to solve this was to simply add another tier of MS upgrades to already existing boots, one that both worked with specific boots to produce slightly different effects - so we removed a lot of heavy MS options and just gave everyone ways to upgrade MS through the conditional boot enchantments. However, we knew that Boots 1 was far too efficient and that it was super powerful - hence the nerfing of Boots 1 down to 25 MS. The idea behind this being that the total MS given by the slot is still roughly the same on average (25 + 20 + 15 = 60 and Boots 2 used to be 70, for example) - but allow people to buy into a bit at a time.

On the targetted cleanse part - yeah, you're right in that I didn't think that one through properly but we kept trying 'Cleanse Other' on champion kits and it became really apparent that if this effect was to exist in a game it *had* to be on an item. Since Pre-S3 was all about trying the crazy scary things that we thought might work - I threw it in there on the healing item we had.

The MS% items that do still exist in the game are there to facilitate very specific playstyles - Shiv has movement speed because it is a poke/movement item. Twin Shadows has movement speed as its an offensive scout item. Phantom Dancer has MS% because it's.. well.. it was kind of grandfathered in. :P

DASH SENDAI HAS SPOKEN

you can no longer change your opinion from 1-2 years ago, ESPECIALLY when its your job to look at data and make the best decisions based on that data.

Grow up mate,

Nice maturity