League of Legends: More Item Icon Changes Inbound

The most recent batch of icon changes have kickstarted a conversation about item icons in League of Legends, and whether many of the older ones should be updated for clarity purposes. It's no secret that many of the game's icons aren't terribly intuitive, especially when it comes to some of the game's more unique items. It's easy enough to intuit what a Death's Dance or a Youmuu's Ghostblade is supposed to do from their icons -- drawing the parallel between "sword" and "damage" isn't a particularly vast intellectual leap -- but figuring out just what the hell an Ohmwrecker is supposed to be from its icon is another question entirely.

What really kicked off this conversation in earnest was the most recent batch of item reworks. Some items saw their role change dramatically with the Mid-Season Update, most notably Guardian Angel and Abyssal Scepter. The former went from being the de facto most valuable tank item in the game to a damage item instead, while the latter went in the opposite direction and became a tank item. The problem was that Guardian Angel's original icon, a suit of armor, didn't exactly look like something that would be giving +40 AD, and thus it was changed to what it is now.

Players have now started clamoring for changes to some of the older icons in the game, especially since many of them are either unintuitive or uninspired. It might be obvious what Infinity Edge does from its icon, but that doesn't make it attractive by any stretch of the imagination.

"One question that cropped up a bit after previous discussion on icon updates was whether we'd also be updating older item icons as well," Meddler said, regarding the proposed changes. "Wanted to touch on that here. We do plan on gradually updating item icons, that's somewhere we need to be a bit more careful than with champion icons though. Being able to quickly identify items on the Tab screen's pretty important and whenever we've changed too many at once we've seen some very understandable frustration and confusion as a result. We gradually update item icons as a result, often though not always paired with some change in functionality (e.g. the recent Abyssal and GA changes). Wouldn't want to do a mass item icon change all at once."

Thus, it looks like we might soon be getting new icons for some oldies but not so goodies. The only shame will be that this classic comic may one day lose meaning for newer palyers!