The search bar appears only when you switch to the "all items" tab. This is a bad thing because most of the recommended items are good and it's nice to have easy access to them w/o searching, but it's an unnecessary click when you could instead do a quick search to get what you want.

And search is much faster when you know what you want rather than filtering by all those stats. Yeah, I can just tab over, but the UI should be consistent, rather than hiding a key navigation feature for no reason.

Yup, we're looking at doing that, no timeline for it yet though. Although I would also like to make it so that you don't need to search at all to find a relevant item for your champion.

Awesome.

BTW, it's not that I can't find items without searching, it's that searching is the fastest way to find exactly what I want, given that I can type 70+ WPM and I know the items. Search is probably the best improvement in the new shop, and I would like to say that I find it a big improvement overall.

After thinking about it, I thought of a very simple way to fix the inconsistency and make the shop better: turn 'recommended' into a filter, just like HP, AP, MR, etc. No more tabs and it would make everything just a little simpler.

Also, it would be nice to make the search bar pop out a little more. I keep getting drawn to the heading right below that which I don't care about, while search looks like something hidden in the background rather than the awesome feature it is for zeroing in on an item you want as quickly as possible.

You don't want to be derping around in the shop when the enemy Teemo is going to level move fast and sprint into your jungle with a ward for some crazy whole-team teleport hijinks... (ref: http://www.leaguereplays.com/replays/1104372 )