Deathcap's combine cost + 3 components + lategame nature feels miserable and needs change.

There is no other item that is even close to as bad as Deathcap in terms of difficulty to complete. It's an item that benefits you most later on, when you're likely to have only 1-2 inventory spaces, and yet you have to sit on 3 items and then collect 1265 gold, or get even more gold at once for the combine cost if you don't have the inventory space for the components. It's an anti-powerspike simply because Deathcap's build order is badly designed and you're forced to sit on 60+ AP worth of gold. It was a problem years ago and it only got worse when the price increased and it became even more essential because other AP items have been nerfed horribly to where mages are starved for AP. It's bad enough that mages already have so many core items that are basically impossible to replace: T2 boots, Zhonya's to not explode, void staff for pen, a mana/cdr item, and deathcap to actually deal damage doesn't leave much freedom for builds.

I would be fine with any change, even if it doesn't make sense thematically or seems thrown together, because right now building a deathcap simply sucks. It could be 2 needlessly large rods, or adding totally new items. AD items such as cleaver and ghostblade were updated to have newer components multiple times, so I don't see why the most expensive item in the game hasn't received this treatment.

Additionally, Deathcap had a totally uncalled for nerf in 5.22, raising the cost from 3,500 to 3,800 for no reason. Now more than ever, this nerf needs to be reverted because more than 100 AP has been removed from most final builds with Luden's, Zhonya's, and Rylai's nerfs. Here's a quickly thrown together concept:

Hateful Hat 1,200g (40 AP + 10% AP)

• 1,200g upgrades into Spooky Sombrero (80 AP + 20% AP)
• 1,200g upgrades into Rabadon's Deathcap (120 AP + 35% AP)

This way it costs 100g more than it did pre-5.22 nerf and it only takes up one inventory space to build.