Isn't Morellonomicon a little overrated? Or is Morellonomicon that good?

A question that I have:

isn't a bad item, it is actually a very good item, but is Morellonomicon that good on every situation? I see people building this for just about any AP champion that uses mana, many times on situations where or would be a better option.

For example, as I said on another thread; even though doesn' have any options for cooldown reduction, I use Rod of Ages. Why? Because his range is below average. He needs the tankyness that Rod of Ages offers, otherwise he is way more prone to be instakilled during teamfights, even more so than champs such as and due to his lack of a shield. With the runes and the build I do for Malzahar, he usually ends up with 3000 HP, almost as much as a bruiser champion. This doesn't allow him to tank for his team, it just allows him to survive the initial burst.

Not to mention, Malzahar's abilities cost too much mana. His E can recover mana, but it's only reliable for the laning phase. Morellonomicon does not make him recover mana quickly enough during situations where he needs to spam abilities.

Malzahar isn't the only one I do that. and also have a short range and needs the survivability offered by Rod of Ages, on my opinion. I just can't play them without Rod of Ages. Cho'Gath gets tanky with his ultimate, but I still need the flat mana offered by Rod of Ages.

On some champions, such as and , I use Athene's Unholy Grail because they use so much mana that I need a way to be able to more consistently recover mana, and Athene's is better than Morellonomicon in that regard. The only situation where I use Morellonomicon is when the enemy team is full AD.

Is Morellonomicon that good on just about every situation? When Athene's was buffed, I was expecting that people would stop building Morellos and that Athene would outshine it, yet that wasn't what happened.