I believe although aghanim shards have made for some interesting hero interactions, it is heavily contributing towards the current homogenisation of hero design that we have right now. Currently you rarely feel like you are countering another hero so much as countering their itemisations, because hero counters have become a lot less polar and impactful. Part of the reason is aghanim shards and the design choice to make them remove hero weaknesses.

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It is first worth noting that shards are extremely cheap and can be gotten for free. Also since every hero has them, shard ranges from absolutely game breaking to absolute dogshit, so obviously removing them would affect heroes differently. However, I disagree with the current design which removes heroes weaknesses.

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This can be clearly seen in many shards. Brewmaster shard makes it impossible to punish a poor split. Morph shard allows him to morph during stuns, making him no longer weak to things like a blink call from axe. necro shard gives him mobility which he never had. sven shard makes his buff undispellable. wraith king shard removes his weakness to manaburn, Lone druid shard removes his weakness to dispellable slows and silences. Witch doctor shard gives him a way to survive ganks. Dazzle shard makes up for his lack of reliable cc.

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The whole rock paper scissors is a lot less felt when a hero can simply lessen his counters this cheaply. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to track what all shards do for every hero. Imagine playing axe into morph and realising that he has shard at minute 15 and u can never kill him with a call. or buying nullifier for sven before realising it cannot even be dispelled anymore. Most people cannot even name what the shards do for many heroes.

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By removing the shard, these hero only interactions can be limitted to aghs only, which not only requires a significant investment but also makes it easier to remember what changes about the hero. alternatively, these shards that remove a heroes weaknesses should be reworked. it will make some matchups hard to play, but having hero counters instead of just item counters should be more prominent