A lot of players see a basic problem with certain items in the game, namely Haunting Guise, Executioner's Calling, the Tenacity items (Cloak and Dagger, Elysia's Miracle, and Moonflair Spellblade) along with the Quicksilver Sash and Tiamat. The problem with all these items are that they simply aren't used enough because other items offer more consistant rewards and a higher degree of damage output or mitigation, which in the end makes them seem very pointless to purchase with little exception. Some people think the items are the problem, they just aren't good enough or have no upgrade into viable endgame items.

I think a part of this problem is the items themselves, not having the viable upgrades does hurt these items, but I also think that the general flow of gameplay and the process of building defeats most of these items.

First of all the Doran's items should be unique like the Prospector's items in Dominion, or just removed. The general strategy is to just buy 2, maybe 3 of them and farm for 20 minutes until you can purchase your Bloodthirster or Rabadon's or whatever your building into. If the Doran's items weren't there you'd see more variation. It's even to the point where it's so standard that in Champion Spotlights Phreak recommends doing that now instead of varying the itemization for individual champions, which is sad when Riot is perpetuating their own problem instead of trying to fix it.

Secondly, too many items give gold passively, grab two of these, wait 20 minutes while maybe farming a bit, and get free endgame items worked into your build. Having AN item that does this, mostly for supports is fine but having 4 of them also stagnates builds and isn't very promoting for game variation. So I say take the passive gold gain off of Avarice Blade, Heart of Gold, Kage's Lucky Pick and the Philosopher Stone.

The Philosophers stone is actually pretty good in and of itself and I'm not sure what I'd put on it to make up for the loss of passive gold gain, maybe improve the mana regeneration on it to 10 or 12 up from 8 but that's about it really, it serves it's purpose pretty well in and of itself.

Avarice Blade, replace the gold gain with Unique Active, boosts attack speed by 20% for 4 seconds. This makes it a early on contender for people looking to build into Youmuu's, 900 up from 750 on the gold price either increasing the price of the ghostblade or reduce the final recipe cost to accomodate the 150 gold difference.

Kage's Lucky Pick should probably gain some mana regeneration itself or a small amount of cdr, like 5% or 8-10 mana per 5, if you upgrade it into a DFG you won't take a very big hit on either stat and if you actually build Morello's then your just building into the stats MET gives in the first place.

Heart of Gold should probably pick up the 5% CDR since that's a part of Randuin's that is just kind of randomly given, none of the other items that make Omen give CDR why not put a 5% cdr on this to have the final Randuin's make a little more sense.

So that should take care of the passive gold items and allow people to start varying their builds. Onward to the other Tenacity items and HG and EC.

Cloak and Dagger - I think instead of a dagger, this should combine with Stinger. Stinger only builds into Nashor's and all it gives is AS and CDR. This could give C&D the following stats. 20% Critical strike, 50% attack speed, 15% cooldown reduction, +35 Tenacity. You give it a higher AS boost and some CDR and it becomes a lot more viable on all kinds of characters, some ranged and some melee, It also allows adc's and some other melee's who benefit more from Berzerker's greaves over Mercury's Treads to grab Tenacity without detracting from the core of their build.
Overall - Cloak of Agility (830), Stinger (1400), Recipe (400) Total Cost 2630
Recommended Champions - Warwick, Tryndamere, Olaf, Garen, Twitch, Fiora, Gangplank, Master Yi, Lee Sin, Rengar

Elysia's Miracle - This item is overall underpowered and doesn't ever give enough benefits to ever honestly be considered over Shurelya's Reverie, I'd say add 2 Sapphire Crystals to it, increase the regeneration rates and give this item AND THIS ITEM ALONE passive gold gain. That keeps it in keeping with basic support principles of lettign champ your supporting get more farm without sacrificing your ability to build into items and purchase wards. Elysia's Miracle should probably be more in the area of 35 Health regen, 25 Mana regen, +550-600 Mana, +35 Tenacity and passive gold gain.
Overall - Philosophers Stone (800), 2 Sapphire Crystal (800) Recipe 450
Total Cost - 2050
Recommended Champions - Soraka, Lux, Morgana, Janna, Alistar, Lulu, Kayle, Taric, Karma, Sona, Zilean

Moonflair Spellblade - The Moonflair Spellblade is a potent AP item with a dedicated caster in mind, as such it should give a lot of AP, more than it does but not at the cost of making it an overly expensive item. Right now it build out of a Blasting wand, which makes it pretty blaze and overall, just kind of "meh". I suggest that it be changed to a Blasting wand an Amplifying Tome and a Regrowth Pendant, this serves many purposes and fills a small niche that's really not touched right now. By making the Moonflair Spellblade a +75 AP, Regenerate 30 HP/5 seconds and +35 Tenacity you make an item thet gives most mages a defensive edge they don't have right now without sacrificing sheer AP value. While this doesn't give any heath directly it allows a mage to play defensively or regain more health when moving from lane to lane. Without addint any direct health you don't run into mages who will simply stack ROA, RCS, and this new variation of MFS to get even MORE health. It gives mages a fair amount of sustain without having to rely directly on Spell vampirism.
Overall - Blasting Wand (860), Amplifying Tome (435), Regrowth Amulet (435), Recipe (550)
Total Cost - 2280
Recommended Champions - Vladimir, Kennan, Akali, Rumble, Cassiopeia, Ahri, Evelynn, Heimerdinger, Mordekaiser

Haunting Guise - Leave the amount of Spell Pen alone, flat 20 is good enough, but it goes need to either give more AP, or give more HP. I say instead of making it build out of a Ruby Crystal and an Amplifying Tome, make it grow out of a Blasting Wand and a Kindlegem. Add a recipe of about 500 and you wind up with +350 Health, +55 AP, Unique Passive 10% Cooldown reduction, Unique Passive 20 Spell Penetration. Not an intense change to the item overall, keeping it very much to it's core self but allowing it's values to be on par with other items, making it a more viable option in builds while not costing any more than a Rageblade or Zeke's Herald.
Overall - Kindlegem (850), Blasting Wand (860), Recipe (500)
Total Cost - 2210
Recommended Champions - Rumble, Vladimir, Akali, Kennan, Fizz, LeBlanc, Katarina

Executioner's Calling - This one is kinda crzy to balance mainly because it combines critical strike with lifesteal and adds a greivous wounds ability on top of that as an active ability. Now having the greivous wounds as a static happens all the time pric would make it instantly OP as it would shut down too many champions (Dr.Mundo, Garen, Fiddlesticks, Fiora, Volibear, and Akali primarily). So add 1 more Brawler's Gloves, and make the final cost 2250. Final Item would be +20% Critical strike, +18% Life Steal, UNIQUE PASSIVE: Your basic attacks have a 20% chance to inflict your opponent with Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds, reducing healing and regeneration effects on them by 50%. UNIQUE PASSIVE : Your basic attacks apply a mark to the target which deals 4 magic damage to them every second for 6 seconds. This mark can stack up to 5 times (20 magic damage per second for 6 seconds). Overall the core of the Executioners calling is preserved while the values don't allow it to be incredibly devastating unless you put it into a more Attack speed dedicated build.
Overall - 2 Brawlers Gloves (800), Vampiric Scepter (450), Recipe 1000
Total Cost - 2250
Recommended Champions - Warwick, Graves, Teemo, Volibear, Twitch, Gangplank, Nocturne, Rengar, Tristana, Xin Zhao

Quicksilver Sash - I am of the opinion that this item is almost never used because it only gives magic resistance, and it doesn't even give any more MR than a Negatron cloak does, and for 900 extra gold you can remove all debuffs once a minute, which is really solid as a use effect, but nobody wants to use a slot just to get 48 MR. In this regard the QSS really does need armor added to it if it's going to become any kind of a contender for a viable item. You really can't add HP to it since that's very problematic for casters in the first place. So add 2 cloth armor to the item, adding 600G to the cost and adding a final amount of 40 armor to it as well. Increase the amount of MR gained to at least 55 and keep the active use ability of the item for it's utility purposes.
Overall - 2 Cloth Armor (600), Negatron Cloak (740), Recipe (900)
Total Cost - 2240
Recommended Champs - Galio, Amumu, Alistar, Riven, Darius, Rammus

Tiamat - Your attacks deal splash damage I think all in all that's a pretty good function for an item however the upgrade on a lot of the stats besides the damage just don't really make it a solid choice for many builds. Honestly I think that this item would be better if it was a Pickaxe, Longsword, Ruby Crystal and Rejuvination Bead, Granting 225 Health instead of the 5 mana regeneration. If your starving for mana then getting 1 more per second won't really help you too much, and if your not needing mana regen then it's not even a necessary feature of the item. The other Items that give Health and Damage are Phage, Frozen Mallet, and Trinity Force. FM gives a lot of HP and some damage, and Trinity Force maintains a balance while boosting many other stats. So why not have Tiamat be the Opposite of FM in the sense that it's a higher damage, lower health item. That'd make it a lot more viable for many more champions than it is currently.
Overall- Pickaxe (975), Longsword (415), Ruby Crystal (475), Rejuvination Bead (250) Recipe (300)
Total Cost - 2415
Recommended Champs - Renekton, Malphite, Tryndamere, Jayce, Jax, Volibear, Wukong, Talon

While I know this is bound to get a lot of downvotes would you mind telling me why you think so at least, when you just give a "-1" your basically just saying "That's stupid", without saying why you disagree.

Not really; a downvote is a person's (negative) opinion of your post. It can be because they think it's stupid, it can be because they think you're wrong, or it can be because they don't like you personally.

As for my personal opinion of your post, gimme a sec to read it.
Actually, Haunting Guise has seen more use lately, and ExCa and QSS are situational items, not go-to-for-every-build-ever items. The Tenacity items are going to be worked on, according to Xypherous. However, they're not going to receive a T3 upgrade because Tenacity is the most powerful defensive utility in the game aside from mobility. If it's put on a T3 item, it's instantly a must-have on the level of Infinity Edge (another thing Xypherous plans to fix).

I think it's possible that HG could have a build path change or something in the future, but considering how powerful MPen and ArPen are, it may not need it at all.
Boots are a lot more popular than Doran's items actually. Doran's items have a noticeable tradeoff; you get a nice early game boost, but they're not worth their stats after the laning phase, and you have to sell them for half their value (unlike most items at 75%). What that translates to is that in order for Doran's items to be worth it, you need to kill one champion or an extra 20+ minions per Doran's item that you buy to be on the same level of farm as someone who buys none of them.

If you play defensively and/or have a good CC support, you can shut down Doran's stackers early game, build up your late game items before they have 2 or 3, and just snowball faster than them. Or you can buy Doran's items yourself, have the same advantage as them, and thus make the fight more even.
Please tell me you're joking about this.

...okay, you're not. I can't remember the last time I saw someone playing a viable champion and buying Avarice Blade OR Kage's Pick in 5s besides myself on occasion (in 3s it's different, cause BFT builds from Kage's, but still no love for Avarice). The offensive GP10 items offer such a small boost, and then the defensive ones really only work well on supports, tanks, and certain bruisers.

Plus, if you buy them and don't go with their upgrade paths, you have to hold each GP10 for at least 14 minutes to start making extra gold off of that passive. To be exact, Avarice takes the shortest at 12.5 minutes, and HoG takes the longest at 13.75. So you either have to hold them for their upgrades (again, Youmuu's and Deathfire are hardly ever used, so their GP10s aren't touched) or hold them to the point that they're more worthless than Doran's items just to get back what you spent.
So basically, make all of the GP10 into miniature versions of the items they build into. Never mind that Philo builds only into pure utility items, Avarice having that active would be insane, DFG no longer has MP5 so adding it to Kage's would be counter-intuitive, and HoG would basically become a bad Kindlegem if you did that.
Or, you can just let it stay Dagger, and Xypherous can move some of the MS from Phantom Dancers to Cloak and Dagger. That's seriously one of the leaked ideas of Xypherous for future item changes. Not sure if it's still true, but it's one thing people have been talking about.
I agree that Eleisa's is pretty worthless in its current state. However, making it into the only GP10 would pretty much reverse everything and make it the most popular sustain item; forget putting it on just supports, there are champions of every class who can already use Philo stone early game.
That...would unsurprisingly not change much. Spellblade's advantage is that it's an extremely cheap Tenacity item. Adding AP to it--forget the HP5--would just make it more popular because it'd be more in line with the 80 AP that's normal on most end-game items anyway.



The point that you're missing about the Tenacity items is that they are not supposed to have end-game stats; that's the sacrifice you pay for Tenacity. Their problem almost entirely lies within Mercury Treads, the first Tenacity item. Since everyone is going to have to buy boots, if you want Tenacity, you may as well buy them on your boots so you don't have to use 2 slots for T2 items. One of the few champions I see disregarding that weakness is Singed; Swifts+Spellblade.
I could agree to seeing that, although adding CDR to it is kinda iffy.
Adding more chance mechanics wouldn't exactly be...prudent. Riot has been trying to move away from as many random procs as possible; the only one they can't really escape currently is Critical Chance because it's the only way for a carry to carry the game in the current system (which could be changed in the future).

Allowing ExCa's passive to stack would be fine; just leave the rest of the item alone otherwise.
QSS is supposed to be, again, something you pay dearly for a powerful effect. It has NEVER been cost-efficient for the stats, and has ALWAYS been pure MR, because the ability to clear all debuffs is insanely strong. It actually used to have slightly more MR and double the CD on the active.

Removing all debuffs, again, is very powerful, but it's also situational. THAT'S why it's not always used.
Tiamat's problem is that it costs too much right now. The build path is fine for the most part, but Tiamat is designed as a farming tool; yet it costs over 2k gold to build it. Yeah, the chunk of AD it gives is worth the amount you pay (actually a little less, but not a whole lot), but the problem is that the AoE on the item isn't designed for team fights, it's designed for minion waves and jungle mobs.

A buff to Tiamat would be removing Pickaxe from the build and lowering the costs accordingly. Hell, if you removed Pickaxe and Faerie Charm, it would be cheap enough to almost replace Madred's Razors in jungling.

I appreciate the in-depth look at everything that you gave, it's really appreciated. However if people are going to use other items on champions to add variance in the itemization they need to retool items to compliment specific champions or they need to rekit champions so there's more diversity. Retooling items seems like an easier thing to balance.

There's a lot of debate over HG and ExCa on the forums, so if HG was just buffed up into a better version of itself it would actually be a lot more viable. I haven't seen it a whole lot personally in gamees that I've been in or spectated I don't see it much aside from Vlad and/or Rumble, and I don't even see it too much on those two.

As far as the Tenacity Items goes, I understand that there's a price to pay for Tenacity, but if NOBODY buils it apart from Mercury's Treads,then the clear options become A) Remove them from the game and replace them with other better items or B) Improve them so peopel will actually use them.

Since I've been playing since last September I've seen 2 people use QSS and I personaly never have. I can only imagine just how great it's utility must be, but again if nobody ever uses it, then what's the point. That's basically saying "well, I can lie to myself and say I might use this in the future, in some match, way later, but idk" which doesn't make much sense.

In regards to the GP10 Items, Kage's is just some middle ground between Amp Tome and Blasting Wand anyways, and most mages who'll take it get easy enough farm anyways so it doesn't need the gold effect which can be replaced with some other effect anyways. The same goes for Heart of Gold, it's already a crappy Kindlegem, it builds into the Locket that again, isn't used very often (more than some items though thankfully) and Randuin's which for some reason gives 5% CDR on it's final but has nothing that build CDR in it's base parts. It seems like they just wanted something super small to add to it to make it a touch different. Same with Avarice Blade, it's a lot more uesful to build it into Youmuu's, so there's no reason for it to have the gold effect. Philo stone on the other hand is uesful for EVERYONE that has a mana bar, and in every pvp game I watch at least 4 people end up making one. If it's designed to be a support effect, put it on a support item.

For Doran's Rings and Blades, it's bad, people don't care how many minions you have to kill to make up for the price of it, as in the vast majority of matches that's what people are doing, buying a couple and just farming till they get their endgame items. At least make the health portion unique like the Prospectors items. If Phreak is recommending people to do it because it's so common that people are doing it anyways, that means the majority are already doing it and Riot doesn't see a problem with that, then wonders how they can improve items to make people vary their purchases.;

Based on the current itemization and meta, you can't get people to buy different items unless you buff a lot of them and limit certain ones that aren't designed to be stacked. If Riot doesn't change players needs to itemize and actually consider buying certain items, then the current format will stackd and 90% of the ranged carries will Double Doran's into a bloodthirster and whoever gets their first will most likely win. It's just weird to me that they'd wonder how they can make so many items better when it almost wouldn't matter based on everyone current mindset of item progression.

I'm in a agreement with Exdeadman.

Most of your proposals would actually hurt Tenacity items as is. All tenacity items cost around 1400gp including Merc Treads. By increasing the cost on the basic tenacity items outside of boots, the appeal to get your supposedly better Tenacity items over boots would decline. If I need tenacity, I usually need it sooner rather than later. Even though the stats might be appealing late game, people want Tenacity quick.

Don't you dare talk about getting rid of gp5, it's hard enough to get money as a support, or if your team is losing badly.

Soviet Swain disapproves your "Upgrades"
-Rockjockey

Actually when I play supports I don't really have a hard time getting money really, with Runes and Masteries I already get 7 extra gold every 10 seconds (42/minute), so it's like starting the game with a passive gold item. By mastery spec'ing down into my Defense Tree I get an extra 16 Gold per assist so after a few kills a support should be able to afford a revamped Elysia's Miracle fairly soon given it's there's only a 700 Gold difference between it's current inception and the proposed change to it. If your purchasing a Philosophers Stone and a Heart of gold like most people do just to get the double gold passives then you've already spent 1625 gold, so your only 475 off the amount you'd need for your passvive gold item and it would give you Tenacity as well. If your active enough in your lane helping your carry than you should easily be able to hit the 2k gold mark while buying wards within the 12 minute mark, granting you the revamped Elysia's Miracle, which would still give you an additional 240 gold over the course of the game to the 20 minute mark, 540 by 30 minutes, and 840 if the game goes up to 40.

Once again, the reason to propose these changes to items is A) To make them more appealing so people will ::ACTUALLY USE THEM:: and B) To challenge the current prioritization of items due to the flow of the purchasing process that PVP players both Ranked and unranked follow. If you consolidate (not remove) the passive gold gain from 4 items into an effect on 1 item then yes there's a chance more people....as in players in general might actually purchase the thing. It makes Elysia's a viable purchase option that can actually contend with Shurelya's (Tenacity and gold gain vs. CDR and a move speed buff).

Since Dead also mentioned that most people choose boots as a first choice, there's just another reason that we don't need Doran's items in SR. If you have to kill 20-25 minions to make up for the purchase of an item that doesn't build into anything, let's just get rid of them and go into the item builds we want for our characters, it doesn't make sense to have them in there because you won't buy them in the first place or you purchase 2 and wait until your ready to get your first upgrade. Most people just get them for the bonus HP anyways, so by proposing that the bonus health simply becomes unique just like the prospectors items, then the appeal to get a second one beccomes a no brainer because the item isn't worth the money and extra farm needed to make up for the paltry bonus stats.

If Tenacity items were more appealing I personally believe that a lot less people would feel obligated to get Mercury's Treads just for the Tenacity, and it would allow people to get other boots (like mobility or swiftness) for the Move 3 -5 without sacrificing the prospect of getting Tenacity later in the game. If all falls back to if nobody buts the item, why's the item there. Removing all debuffs from your character is an amazing ability, but the item is so rarely bought because as soon as you purchase it you get heckeled and berated for making the purchase because you "obviously don't know how to spend your money." so almost nobody ever buys a QSS, so what's the point.

Certain items are supposed to be appealing to certain roles, but philo stone is so cheap it's appealing to everyone with a mana bar and if you don't have one just grab a heart of gold bro, it's only 25G more. Riot could take those items away and just increase the rate at which everyone gains gold, but they had a plan to get X amount of gold in X amount of time so the flow of a match last X amount of time. If you didn't have all the passive gold items matches would take a bit longer and supports might actually purchase Elysia's Miracle. I'm not sure how many other players would, some probably yes, but I don't think it'll instantly be exalted into the list of must haves just because you have a mana bar.

At the end of the day if Riot wants to make items they currently have more appealing without making them instantly overpowered, they will to a certain degree have to change some elements of itemization or else the players will not accept most of the changes. You instantly attacked the idea of the loss of passive gold, while the proposal was to consolidate it and make it cost enough that if your not a support you probably won't want to purchase it since it'll probably be innefficient for your build. 700 gold is a noticable difference but it keeps the item in reach of purchase and would cause a lot of players to actually THINK about their builds to a higher degree than "I need to rush a Philo and HoG for the monies"

I do agree with Ex that the proposed revamp to Avarice was excessive and it has been toned down to a 4 second flat AS buff

I'm honestly kinda torn, while I'd hate to see Gold items go away I agree that it's kind of excessive that everyone who's anyone can just get gold by purchasing an appropriate item or two. I don't want to say it'd be great to see it more consolidated and having to wait for 700 more gold just to get gold on a support item might kill some people I don't think a relook at the ease of acess to passive gold gain doesn't warrant Riot taking a look at it.

As far as the rest of the ideas go I'm not really on point with all the numbers but it might be nice to see more ofthe items you mention actually get used once in a while, they really need to be made viable. An item isn't really an item unless someone's actually purchasing it.

Thread necromancy strikes again.
On subject, the heart of gold is being removed in season 3 anyways.

I started to use Haunting Guise and ExCa. Some time ago I tought like you: "useless items", now I love them.

Well I'm not saying they are without use, but they do seem a bit underused and they don't seem to consistantly maintain their effectiveness up into the late game.