If you’ve missed the Twitter announcement from the lead gameplay designer for League of Legends, Mark “Scruffy” Yetter, then we’re here to keep you up to date about the latest changes in League of Legends.
As he wrote in the TLDR version of the long post on the League of Legends Forum, the in-game item shop will contain new items, but this also means that the “dead” items nobody uses anymore will either get changed or completely removed.
I’ve played League of Legends for 5 years, and (back in my day), we all mourned for the loss of Heart of Gold. But that’s way back in the past, so let’s get back to the… future and check out some of the things we’ll see later this year in the item shop. If you have a PBE account, you will certainly see them much earlier in the game.
League of Legends Item Shop Cleanup
Here are some of the items that will be removed from the game, as mentioned in the forum post:
“Unhealthy items” – “items too similar to another item” – “very low usage rate items” –
“Items reducing or not adding impactful decisions to the system”
- “massively reduce or remove counterplay against a champion,”
- “give access to an effect (…) that we don’t actually want all champions to have access to.”
- this could be the ones that were nerfed too much and they’re too weak to be used and the team won’t buff it because it would be too strong, or it’s too similar to a better item
- niches items
- think of items like Zeal (“overly similar versions”) or tank items that have almost the same identical stats.
- “Overpowered or “always good” items can squash a lot of other choices in the system – core items like IE can be great for power fantasy but if we have too many of these there is no room to make choices.”
Tweaking, Changing or Removing?
Banner of Command, Zz’Rot Portal, Mikael’s Crucible, Wit’s End, Ohmwrecker, Muramana, and more!
As soon as the dev team makes space for more new items, they will focus on adding getter versions of some niche items that couldn’t be buffed in the past, Yetter adding the following: “we’d like to make a healthy “tower pushing” focused item that doesn’t have the problems of Banner of Command or Zz’Rot Portal.”
They’re also working on adding more choices to different build paths, focusing on AD assassin players:
“Lethality items are a space that currently lack enough choices for AD assassin players to have meaningful build differences game to game.”
When will we see these changes in the game? According to Yetter, the items that will be removed will be replaced by other items or will be reworked: “our approach is to combo future item removals with item reworks or new items that often replace them in spirit and overall make for a more deep and satisfying item system in League of Legends.”
Check out the entire thread about the Item Shop Cleanup here, where Yetter also mentioned the fate of other items like Mikael’s Crucible, Wit’s End and Ohmwrecker. Also, Muramana could be reworked to be used by more champions, not just Ezreal.
Sonia Theo has been writing for more than 15 years, first starting with fantasy stories. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and German, and one in Arts and Design. In the past years, her interests in gaming and tech news grew, so she started writing articles, guides and reviews for players. In her spare time, you’ll see Sonia playing WoW, crafting decorations and jewelry, or walking her dog. For Digital Overload, Sonia Theo will cover all things tech and gaming, delivering fresh updates on your favorite games.
