My takeaways from the AP itemization changes

Hi guys, AP mid player here just wanted to weigh in on the changes being made to AP items and what I think the effects will be.

One of the first things I noticed was that Riot was attempting to change the binary builds that most AP mages have by changing items and creating new ones, but that doesn't address the major problem in the midlane right now which is how APs stack up against AD. They did a lot of cost reductions on certain items which is good but it just ended up with a lower quality item. This intuitively makes sense but AP itemization prices have been jacked up to a point where I feel it should warrant price drops without ending up with a worse item.

A second issue I see with this patch is the increased CD on zhonyas. Zed's ult cooldown is 120/100/80 at ranks 1,2,3 respectively, Talon's Ult cooldown is 100/80/60 respectively (with no CDR remember). With this change these types of AD assassins have the major advantage of having their ult come off cooldown before the zhonyas active is back up. Not only that, but the AP on the item was pretty noticeably decreased.

The third and probably most pressing issue I had with these proposed changes is that saw is the introduction of Hextech Rocket Belt. I understand where they are coming from with this item, wanting to open up more outplay potential for otherwise immobile mages but the fact they KNOW that this item will make hard initiation champions like Annie disgustingly broken makes me think they are going about it all wrong.

It will be interesting to see how these changes pan out and obviously we will not know what happens till these changes are tested on PBE and perhaps go live, but right now I am skeptical.