We need better itemization with less stat bloat
The meta and role balancing has been way too damage and burst focused since they changed to the 6th item. Balance wise, the game never fully recovered from that change. I think this stems from the itemization.
I see two main issues: 1. Damage is overall too accessible with no drawbacks. This is true for carry, mage and fighter items. Nearly every single item has physical or magical power on it, in addition to the utility/attack speed/extra damage/on hit/crit etc. There’s very little decision making, it’s just choosing your flavor of damage. Carry items are the biggest offenders by far. Nearly every carry naturally becomes a machine gun by end game with any combination of items. No matter what you pick, you’re going to shoot very fast, hit very hard, and likely do tons of crit or on hit effects. Stats need to be assigned more deliberately on items.
- Tanking is still based around doing damage, not actually around tanking. You cannot build to become a wall that’s impossible to take down that does very little damage but gives utility. If you pick steel and build all health armor items, it will take sparrow 8 shots to kill you compared to 7 if you built tank with damage instead. This is a symptom of carries and mages being too strong with too many ignore armor and anti tank tools, with nearly zero drawbacks. You also have no way of counter building as a tank. Warden’s faith is your only option and the difference isn’t enough to matter.
Overall, this game would be much more fun for everyone with less damage across the board and less stat bloat on items. Every single role (even support) is based around doing damage. As is there’s no build variety, there’s no decision making, and games are less fun than they could be.