League of Legends Dev Reveals Why Gargoyle's Stoneplate Was Removed In Season 14
At the start of LoL Season 14, some items were removed from the game. Now, one of the devs is explaining their reasoning behind the removal of one specific tank item.
League of Legends Season 14 removed quite a few items. With the overhaul away from mythic items, Riot had to get rid of some legendaries, and mythics, to keep things interesting and balanced.
One of those removed items was none other than Gargoyle's Stoneplate, which was a late game tank item. Now, Riot Endstep revealed the reasoning behind the removal of the item, giving the player base some clarity and more understanding behind the devs thought process.
League of Legends: This Is Why Gargoyle's Stoneplate Was Removed
Gargoyle's Stoneplate was an item for late game tanks that was especially useful in teamfights thanks to its passive which gave armor and magic resist by 5% based on the enemies in the vicinity. But, it was rarely bought and quite unpopular, so when Riot had to decide which items to boot ahead of Season 14, Stoneplate was one of them.
Riot Endstep explained that "tanks only have space for one capstone item [...] Jak'Sho has a much stronger theme and is much more in line with the tank fantasy." So, the devs decided to kick Stoneplate and keep Jak'Sho in its place, since it feels much better to become more durable the longer the fights goes on than whatever it was that Stoneplate ever did.
He also stated that Stoneplate, with its active, was an anti-burst item, but with the balance team making tanks more tanky, there was less of a need to have anti-burst items in the game, which is another reason why the item was removed.
So, the balance team decided to remove the item from the game, since it didn't fit into the image they had for LoL Season 14. There were some ideas to do something with the item and switch it up a little, but those were quickly thrown out as well.
One thing we considered was making an IE/Quickblades type structure where tanks could buy on of either Stoneplate or Jak'Sho but given that tanks are not a naturally scaling class and are not overly bound to their capstone items, having two items in that slot seemed like a low-value proposition.
Jak'Sho, the item that is basically in Stoneplate's place now, for example is only getting bough in fourth or fifth place by tanks. This means that players most often don't even have the chance to finish building the item anyways.
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