If you're so concerned with people feeling bad when their champion loses strength as the game goes on, can we expect support buffs anytime soon? Alternatively, it might just be fair to have early-midgame dominance champions actually pay for their strength in some fashion...

Seems like changing BotRK to be an ADC attack speed option wasn't a terribly good idea. Revert it back to being a bruiser item and come up with some better way to counter the tanky meta-like nerfing health.

That could be a very good direction to take it - and it's in-line with our current direction of nerfing the AD on it and raising the cost.

We may eventually end up there - but it's obvious that our community wants us to slow-roll this rather than doing it all at once.

BotRK is a resilience focused item - that is supposed to be somewhat ineffective or unattractive if you are already winning. Having cheap prices allows BotRK fit into this resilience pattern a bit more - as anyone who's ever tried to save 1550 on a B.F. Sword while behind will attest.

My core problem is that I under-estimated the power of the components in lane. Cutlass + Double Dagger looked like a fairly poor combination in lane compared to any of the B.F. Sword paths - so I completely undershot this.

*Or* it could be that the 650 gold finish cost doesn't allow enough time for the weakness of the Cutlass + Double Dagger path to show through in lane. I'm uncertain at this point.

Statistically, Supports actually perform better as the game goes on. Their individual contributions are more powerful - the more people they can support.

They have nerfed health. Multiple times. The S3 changes to Penetration still make health a more appealing option.

I hope brainless item like this will not appear in the future. It turns the game into a horrendous pile of mess. U must rush it as auto attacker otherwise there is no way u can trade damage with anyone having it. Randuin doesn't hard counter it, in fact it makes the passive and active more effective. Frozen Heart and Thorn mail hard counter it, problem is AP will rip u apart building those items.

Yes but this active is so strong that there is no real alternative, I mean why youmuu, when for the same money you can get a slow and speed up and heal and nuke all in one... BotRK is strong enough that there is no real alternative first AS/AD item...

Xypherous after you're done talking about BotRK, could you talk a bit on Hurricane? (In a different thread of course)

Or we could talk about it here if you want.

Wouldn't this turn it into, essentially, an "on-hit" item, and push it out of the hands of AD carries and into the bruiser AS slot that Wit's End held in Season 2? Not that that's inherently bad, just that it seems a little limiting.

I like the idea of bruisers having a use in late game, but don't you feel that maybe it should be done in an alternative way then just focusing about team fights?

For example nidalee is mediocre in team fights late game, but she picks a good niche in having high vision; good movement; good waveclearing; and good turret pushing capabilities. Instead of having her retweaked to handle team fights you let become a strong backdoorer that allows a team to develop a unique strat around it.

Why not do something similar for bruisers? Not backdooring per say, but I know there is other niches that could be filled.

Making an item designed for handling disadvantageous fights could be very interesting. An item that's use would sacrifice 50% damage to allow the champion to be incredibly bulky for 10 seconds could be amazing on defense to slow down pushes.

It's just one quick example, but there is more to this game then team fights and I feel as if they aren't played with enough.

Potentially - it's unsure how far you'd have to go before it sits in a middle place between carries / bruiser AS.

It's a tricky question - because I'm not sure how much strategic depth the map has and how many strategic points of focus there are.

Additionally - it's also about whether or not we can make those strategic patterns particularly engaging. Backdooring is something we've generally liked as a strategy, for example - but the lack of engagement or interactivity to fight against are highly penalizing for our game.

That's one of the reasons we introduced Homeguard, for example, to be able to better enable Backdooring as a strategy while also enabling it to be a interactive/engaging thing to fight against. (Kind of - Not an 100% success on this part - but we've helped it a little.)