Anti-shield items are in the works for League

You can build one of many Grievous Wounds items in League of Legends to counter the onslaught of heals from the likes of Soraka and Sona. But what about shields? Janna, Lulu, and Karma have been stealing the support spotlight for a while now, thanks to their beefy shields, and there simply isn’t a real counter to them.

Until now.

Riot’s design team is hard at work to develop new anti-shield items that will make their debut either during the preseason or shortly afterward, according to the company’s recent announcement on the official game forums.

These new items will have some sort of mechanic that allows them to pop the annoying bubbles that Janna and co. can form around their lucky allies. Riot dove into further detail in its latest edition of Ask Riot, a series of articles written to answer players’ most pressing concerns.

With the arrival of the new runes system on the horizon, many players believed that shield counters would pop up as new runes. Riot opted to go the route of items instead, because it fits into the company’s goals for buying items to begin with—reacting to circumstances in-game to gain an advantage on your opponent. It makes sense, especially considering that the counter to healing, Grievous Wounds, is also mostly provided by items.

The anti-shield items won’t have any effects that completely negate shields or instantly remove them. The current idea is that the item will cause its wielder to deal double damage to shields. It’s also possible that this effect could be added into items in the game already. But, just as Gargoyle Stoneplate and Adaptive Helm were added in the Midseason Update, it’s more likely we’ll see some new items for this big update as well.