So I did some thinking about the AP item changes coming up...

And I will admit, I at first was welcoming them because it would make assassins (some of whom are quite weak atm) more viable in the mid lane.

However, after mulling it over, I realized it still doesn't solve some of the major problems assassins have (assuming that Riot's goal is to make assassins more viable in the mid lane). This is really sort of a band-aid fix on problems facing assassins in the mid lane.

First, assassins will still be useless come late game. They won't be as useless as before comparatively to mages since mages won't be able to spam spells, but still useless nonetheless. Of course, assassins will be more effective in the midgame, but it's not like the midgame is the assassin's weakest point in the game. In fact, it's the most effective point. Essentially, Riot is buffing assassins in all the wrong places.

Second, assassins will actually be even more helpless in the early game with the base mana increase on mages. This is troubling, since some assassins already have quite a hard time even staying in lane at mid. Champions such as Talon and Fizz will easily get pushed in and lose most of their just trying to CS. Although they may have a chance to trade back later on, the laning phase is still quite difficult even with the kill pressure later on.

To conclude, the mana changes do little to help assassins, which I assume is the intended goal of Riot. If they really wanted to make assassins compete with mages they should instead look to improve their late game and increase the base magic resistance while decreasing scaling magic resistance to allow them to survive in lane for longer.

I'm not saying buffing them to the point where they are able to 1v2 the ADC and support. That's not the point of assassin champions. However, they need to have an increased capacity for killing the ADC. This isn't to say that they need more damage nessesarily. Rather, they need a larger window of time to kill the ADC before they themselves get killed.