League of Legends Has New Fighter Items Being Tested

League of Legends players who prefer to play as scrappier champions can look forward to some new items in the future, assuming they make it though the testing phase.

The news that new fighter items are being tested internally came from a Riot Games employee's comment on the League boards. In a post that lamented Urgot's poor itemization options, David "Riot Repertoir" Capurro, lead live gameplay designer for League, responded to the post by agreeing that Urgot's item options didn't feel too great at the moment. However, he added that some of these concerns about Urgot's items would possibly be alleviated if the new fighter items work out.

"Yeah. Feels pretty bad. Not getting full effect from Conqueror has a similar feel," Riot Repertoir said in response to the itemization concerns while adding that the new Conqueror rune had similar issues. "On the plus side, we've been testing a few new fighter items that hopefully don't need to have the 'melee only' flag on them, but it's hard to say if they'll make it to Live in that state."

While the post might've been about Urgot, the suggestion that new fighter items may be on the way was one that peaked the interest of several within the boards post. One user pressed Riot Repertoir for more information about the items, but the Rioter declined to comment while saying that the area wasn't one that he was directly working on and that it'd be lame of him to spoil anyone else's announcements.

Though Riot isn't letting on any more information about the items just yet, knowing that the items can be used for Urgot gives an idea of what other champions might want to use the items. Other ranged champions who don't get to benefit from the stats of the melee-only items are obvious contenders, but Urgot is a unique champ in terms of his ranged juggernaut status.

As for the initial point of the whole post regarding what will be done about Urgot and his item limitations, Riot Repertoir said that a change was even briefly considered that would make Urgot be considered as a melee champ just so he could benefit from items like Sterak's Gage. That idea was shot down, but the Rioter did offer his personal thoughts on Urgot.

"My personal preference would be that we have another split similar to how we have range / melee that describes defensive profile rather than range profile. In most cases they line up, but if for example, we had a light / heavy split, that might do good stuff for making champions like Urgot and GP more balanceable within the item system. Biggest immediate problem I can see with that, however, is that there's no immediate gameplay connection to that profile in the same way there is for AA ranges."

No ETA on when those in-testing items would be revealed was provided.