The mage update... buffs Zed (and other AD mids)?

Alright. I am not one to QQ about Zed; he annoys the heck out of me but I can usually deal with him (and with his recent round of nerfs, he seems fairly balanced; though I still think dusk blade is a little OP on him). That or I ban him if I don't feel like dealing with him.

That being said, one of the biggest arguments for Zed's balanced state is that mages can rush to counter him. Most mage players argue that hurts mages considerably because it delays their power spike, allowing Zed to get ahead early. The counter argument is that hourglass is pretty good, gives a good amount of AP, and has an amazing active with a reasonable cooldown.

I tend to dislike hourglass, but I can see both sides of this.

RIOT: "Now... to help mages get CDR we will nerf the heck out of hourglass..."

One of the most prevalent concerns we've had in the Mage space is that they are having a great deal of trouble finding sufficient >itemization to push them to maximum CDR. This has a wide range of negative effects on the Mage space - from either restricting >their pre-game rune setup - to barring sustained damage and kite patterns from working.

Zhonya's Hourglass

Recipe Change: Seeker's Armguard + Fiendish Codex + 900 Gold = 3000 Total Gold Total Cost: 3500 --> 3000 Ability Power: 100 --> 70 Armor: Unchanged Cooldown Reduction: 0 --> 10% Active Stasis Cooldown: 90 --> 120 We're moving Zhonya's Hourglass out of the major AP item slot. The combine cost and total cost to which Zhonya's Hourglass would have been balanced at while keeping both the roles of 'Heavy AP' and 'Utility Active' were kind of untenable for most mages. We're shifting Zhonya's to a more utility centric item which is more in line with the spirit of the item.

This should help with a couple of things: Zhonya's Dominance as the most popular AP item, enabling characters who truly need Zhonya's to have access to it quicker as well as rounding our your defenses and cooldown reduction.

Let's take a step back here. The reason this is a prevalent item is that it is a mages only option against the prevalence of AD mid/jungle/top (and you need to rush it against Zed or he presses R and you die). It is also heralded as the mage equivalent of both / and .

So, to give mages more CDR, they are going to severely reduce the AP of this item (so rushing it into Zed is an even worse strategy) as well as increase the cool down (why bother rushing at all, it won't be up when you need it).

At least they left the armor value where it was. Still, if you are a mage against AD and you build this, you have to accept you just won't hit as hard.

You might argue that a mage can hit more often due to the increased availability of CDR, which will compensate for the loss of raw power. I would agree, until you realize that mana-regen has been nerfed/eliminated across the board. So basically mages have traded raw power in hourglass for 10% more "run out of mana."

I seriously hope that most of these changes are super tentative and reverted (especially the Athene's changes) before the mage update goes live.