They do anyway, since the gold advantage currently means they'll have a thousand or so more HP and more armor/mana because of nimoths/unbreakable boots. Activatables aren't going to change the slippery slope of the game.
I don't see how you can say that introducing new offensive items wouldn't change the pacing of the game.
Yes you can blow through 7k HP with 3 players all focusing on a single target, but is that really what you want? Running around the map in a big gank squad being the only way to get kills?
That's not how it functions at all though, I picked 7k because that number exceeds the HP of any reasonable character until extremely late level 15+ games. You hardly need three people to kill someone quickly with how the game is right now unless they can self-heal. I think your perception and my perception of DPS don't jibe.
I don't agree it disadvantages Regulus players, it advantages them since it gives them good offensive options to compliment the usual speed stacking. So instead of buying crap +attack and +dmg items he can have access to an additional snare or something else that can really make the difference in smaller fights.
I don't see this at all. What I see is a character who already gets bullied by melee and who the vast majority of the time will not get the first kill. As exhibit A I present the pantheon and light's inevitable defeat every single time (except the first when people didn't know how to play). If that melee character gets the first kill or two then the snare item is going to go to the melee first. Regulus survives by not getting hit, or at the very least getting hit less than other DGs.
In a group encounter with multiple snare items being able to snare one opponent yourself is not going to enable a new style of defensive play, it's going to guarantee you're snared and the enemy reaches you. I wouldn't bet my first born on it, but I'm pretty certain adding more snares wouldn't benefit regulus overall and it wouldn't be too kind to TB either.
I think we just like different games
I concur, I enjoy Demigod and you would prefer to see it made into something else.
Seriously though I don't see why adding in item diversity needs to equal shortening DGs' lifespans. You could do tons of things to broaden item usage, you could easily put more regen/armor/health/mana on the gloves to get them into play. If it's more activated effects you want then you can add activated defenses, hell you could even have drawbacks to make it really interesting, like reducing damage taken and received for a few moments, or you could have short-duration damage shields which require you to take damage to work. I mean afterall they're still pieces of armor it's not like there's any thematic reason why gauntlets can't improve your durability a bit, it is what they were made to do in real life and plenty of gauntlets currently give regen or minion health, so clearly it doesn't clash with the concept behind those items.
You seem to be using two disparate, argument-proof lines of reasoning to get the game changed to what you want it to be. By argument proof I mean they're along the lines of "support the troops," "country first," that sort of thing. You take these two common themes that everyone seems to agree on, the first being that there should be more variety in equipment usage, and the second being that proc items should be made more interesting. Seriously, who doesn't like interesting stuff, how can anyone argue against either of those?
But the problem is that the proc items, aka wyrmskin handguards and journeyman treads do actually get quite a bit of usage while still being a departure from the standard set of item choices. I would even say that groffling isn't a standard pick due to its price, it's used only by the most extreme defense stackers while many other people would gladly spend a bit more on a mageslayer or snag narmoth's ring.
There's no real evaluation of what makes those proc items picked, just the argument that they should be made into on-use items to improve the game, and no extrapolation beyond my rough guess of what those items would look like if they were converted and no guarantee that they wouldn't become part of the new cookie cutter item setup.
Also there's a major issue of DG homogenization when the tricks that dictate success or defeat shift more to item usage than ability usage. Now don't get me wrong, an unartful DG like UB would benefit from requiring more complexity to succeed and I f'ing love the orb of defiance, but adding in more snares, stuns, and other effects push obtaining victory towards reducing control over the opposing player's character and that really just doesn't appeal to me. That, to me, is World of Warcraft, and I'm done with that game.
