The biggest item change in the last 3 years turns out to be a bug and Riot knows it

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In 2021, League of Legends introduced a new class of items: “Mythic Items”. But 3 years later it is clear: They were a failure. Players have been complaining about this for years, now Riot Games sees it too.

What are Mythic Items?

  • Mythic Items were featured in a video in 2020 (via YouTube) and came to League of Legends in early 2021. They should be items that have a big effect on playstyle. Some well-known old legendary items have also been upgraded to “Mythic Items”.
  • Players can only purchase and equip one Mythic Item per game.
  • The items then have special effects: They upgrade every other legendary item that the player carries with a special effect, so that a player then has an exceptionally high level of armor penetration or movement speed.

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    What’s the problem with these items? As Dotesports writes, with the numerous meta changes to LoL, many, maybe even all, mythical items have become irrelevant and no longer help players. On the contrary, they are now perceived as an obstacle.

    In January 2023 we wrote on MeinMMO that hardly anyone uses the strongest items.

    In fact, in a June 30th reddit thread, one player asked, “Should Riot ban mythic items altogether?”

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    The player says: The items have been in the game for two and a half years now and it feels like they just don’t do anything, just limit the options because you’re forced to buy them.

    The mythic items would also cause too many balancing issues.

    Each Mythic item somehow defined the meta at a certain time and Riot had to constantly change and revise them.

    Riot also unhappy with Mythic Items

    How does Riot Games see it? The LoL balance boss has already indicated in an interview that mythical items do not work as expected (via youtube):

  • The goal was that players could choose between different Mythic options.
  • This also worked well for some heroes like Viktor, who had a few strong options to choose from – about 40% of the champs did well.
  • However, other champs would only have had the choice between 3 garbage options for mythical items – 60% would have either only had a single item, i.e. no choice – or only bad options. Tanks like Singed were particularly badly off.

    • The balance boss says they wanted mythical items to be the central item in a build, but quickly realized: you just need that, it’s just not possible. For that you would have needed about 30 more mythical items. But since you can only use one mythical item, you should have increased the item selection from 150 to 180. That would have made the game even more complex.

    It is said that internally one is dissatisfied with the current status of items and is considering changes.

    Phroxzon even hints that they’re ready to “walk away” from Mythic items.

    Riot Phroxzon’s balance boss.

    However, there are still no concrete plans as to whether, when and how the problem will be addressed at Riot Games.

    Everything-changing items work better in WoW or Diablo 4 than in LoL

    Phroxzon talks a lot about the difficulty of the items: In PvE games like WoW or Diablo it’s cool to have a strong item that changes the whole game experience: But in a PvP game like LoL it’s not that cool because you the gaming experience of the other players must be taken into account and that they do not feel treated unfairly.

    In any case, LoL with its 5vs5 format is simply incredibly complex.

    Riot Games has constant difficulties getting the balance right in LoL. There are also some false myths circulating:

    LoL Dev Says: A Champion Balance Myth Many Believe Is False

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