League of Legends has undergone the two most ambitious updates it has received in just six months in recent years. However, neither the massive damage reduction nor the introduction of the 2023 preseason has given Riot Games any rest. While all the devs are currently focused on stabilizing the game before Season 13 starts in January, some team members are already sharing with the community what they think are the game’s unfinished tasks and their next big goals. Among them, there is a very interesting one which concerns a whole category of articles.
The next big item change
Tim Jiang is a League of Legends developer specializing in gaming systems. He is better known as TheTruexy. Increasingly active on social media, the Riot Games employee wanted to answer the question of a member of the community who expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of objects that have effects on impact. These are objects that, in addition to statistics, generate additional passive effects when we hit champions. Good examples of this category of items might be Guinsoo’s Raging Blade, Blade of the Fallen King, or Dead End.
Claiming that Riot Games was unhappy with on-hit effects items, it singled out Guinsoo’s Raging Blade as one of the main issues. The biggest flaw of this item is that it centralizes the builds of many champions due to its main passive. As a reminder, this increases the damage of each hit by two points for every 1% crit the player accumulates. So the best way to take advantage of this item is to buy conventional ADC items (except the Infinity Edge) and much of the variety it should generate is wasted.
This is not the only problem reported by the developer. He also feels that many items in this category only do damage, without adding flashy effects. “On-impact effects mean attacking fast and doing special things. It can’t just be more damage. If there’s going to be damage, the crit will always be better. We’re exploring different options with more support, more utility, more damage and things like that. I think we have to put a lot of effort into understanding what their place is in League of Legends.”explained Mr. Truexy.
League of Legends has quite powerful and even somewhat spectacular hit-based items (the Titanic Hydra, the Kraken Slayer, or the Blade of the Fallen King). However, most of them suffer from the problems mentioned by the developer. They’re just a lot less fun to use than the other alternatives, and with the exception of a few very specific champions, they’re not too effective to be worth it.. A situation which, moreover, is difficult to solve: all the mythical objects of the ADCs are in one way or another related to the critical hit.
Aware of the problems and the difficulty of solving them, Truexy reassured the community. “This is an issue that we will need to address the next time we update items that have effects on impact. I know this is something that will happen, I’m sure. However, I I have no idea when that will happen.”
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