Proposed Equipment Balance Patch
Trim the auto-includes, give the skipped items a reason to exist
A pass across all three build tiers. The most efficient items in each slot — Star-Shattering Hammer's armor shred, Blood-Weeping Blade's lifesteal, Staff of Nothingness's penetration, Ominous Omen's anti-carry slow, and Sage's Sanctuary's revive — get trimmed since they're close to auto-includes in their category. Underpicked items with a real niche — Echo Staff, Golden Excalibur, Eternal Night's Guard, Arcane Boots, Fleetfoot Boots, and cheap early components like Boxing Gloves and Red Cornelian — get buffed to make them worth building. Items whose numbers already sit in a healthy range relative to their cost are held as-is.
Primary Equipment · 3 changes
Weakest early crit option compared to Blood Sickle's lifesteal value. Critical Chance 8% → 10%.
Held — a clean lifesteal starter, no adjustment needed.
Weakest early defensive component relative to price. Max Health 300 → 360.
Middle Equipment · 5 changes
A pure stat-stick outclassed by hybrid options at the same price. Physical Attack 75 → 85.
The attack-speed/move-speed combo is too efficient for a middle-tier slot. Attack Speed 15% → 12%.
Underused relative to Boots of Resistance for mage laners. Magic Penetration 60–120 → 70–130.
Fleetfoot's movement burst rarely triggers during active lane trading. Bonus Movement Speed 35–70 → 45–80.
The roaming line's baseline sees little play once its evolved forms become affordable. Guardian Aura defense 36–72 → 45–85.
High-Level Equipment · 16 changes
Highest-value armor-shred core for physical bruisers. Armor Break 30% → 25% Armor Penetration.
Default lifesteal core for nearly every physical damage dealer. Overflow cap 400–800 → 350–700 bonus HP.
Crit Damage scaling compounds too fast on crit-stacked marksmen. Base Crit Damage 20% → 15% (per-2%-crit scaling unchanged).
Formless · Hunt's movement burst lets assassins reset fights too cleanly. Movement Speed burst 45% → 35%.
Auto-include on nearly every mage build. Magic Penetration 45% → 40%.
Underpicked relative to its damage ceiling. Precision bonus damage 60 → 75 to make stacking toward it worth building.
Underpicked next to Staff of Nothingness and Scholar's Wrath. Echo damage 140–280 → 160–320.
Held — a clean, appropriately-costed damage amplifier with no other levers to pull.
Cold Iron's slow makes it an efficient counter-pick against every carry archetype. Attacker Attack Speed slow 20–40% → 15–35%.
Revive HP and its short cooldown make trades too forgiving in solo queue. Revive HP 2000–3000 → 1800–2600; cooldown 150s → 170s.
Held — Bloodline's healing-amplification curve is already fair relative to its price.
Held — Maim and Divine Might's damage numbers are in line with the item's cost.
Empowered Strike's slow rewards poor positioning too generously. Slow 15–30% → 12–25% (0.5s duration unchanged).
Held — Icy Heart's proc damage and slow are appropriately punishing for a reactive item.
Rarely built outside dive comps. Guard heal 10% max HP → 13% max HP over the same window.
Held — burn damage and Grievous Wounds uptime are balanced against its cost.
Note: This is a hypothetical design proposal, not a live patch. All 24 items are addressed. Balance changes are limited to item stats, passive/active effect numbers, and gold cost, since hero skill numbers are covered by the separate hero balance patch.