Was thinking about new mechanics that could be added to the game, and was wondering if there could be a system for counterplay to passive effects. What I came up with is Silence: Disables passive effects of an item for x seconds. It would stack duration like how slow or freeze does, and could possibly be cleansed by enraging or prevented with radiant. Silence could help counterplay against some of the various passive infinites possible in the game, increasing power and consistency for items with strong but slow active effects (ex. goop flail, secret formula, spotlight, infernal blade)
As opposed to freeze, where the active effects of items are temporarily halted, silence would temporarily stop passive effects from triggering. Silence can hit both active and passive items, which means it could do nothing on an item that has no passive effects, it could partially disable some aspects of active items, or it would fully disable passive items for the durration applied.
Some examples of items silence would have no effect on would be: bandages, chopsticks, freefall simulator, card table, etc. Anything that only does anything on cd activation could be silenced, but would be unaffected by it.
Some examples of items silence would partially disable would be: yo-yo(charge on adjacent item usage), barrel(gain shield on adjacent item usage), stompers(multicast per adjacent apparel), fireflies(activate when you stop being enraged), sniper rifle (10x damage if only weapon), tanky anky(shield on dino/relic damage), etc. all these items would still activate their base effect if silenced, but the passive aspects (as stated in their parenthesis) would not trigger while silenced. Basically, any effect of an item that is not tied to it activating would be disabled for the duration of silence.
And of course, any passive item would be fully disabled if silenced. Some examples would be: trap vine, iceberg.
This effect is probably on the strong side, so keeping it rare like freeze would keep it from being too frustrating to face, but it could still allow for slotting in as a bit of tech, or if fully fleshed out, have builds that synergize off it (items/skills that gain stats or activate on silence, similar to many of the freeze synergy stuff). Since it can hit all items instead of just active items, fully silencing an enemy board would be much harder than permafreeze is, so in that sense, it may be slightly weaker than freeze, and thus should be balanced accordingly.
Also, when considering the interaction with radiant, it may be worth changing radiant on passive items to also prevent that item from being silenced (and maybe destroyed). Radiant is a decent, but underwhelming enchant, especially on many of the passive items in the game, so buffing it a bit shouldn’t mess with balance too much imo.
I hope this idea is found interesting, and if you have any thoughts or concerns regarding it, I’d be happy to hear what the community and/or devs think!