@Meddler So, are we nerfing Rylai's or not?

6.23/6.24 was supposed to be the patch where Rylai's gets looked at. It's pretty damn strong on variety of champions and creates some quite frustrating cases of permaslow on champions like Brand, Malzahar and Cassiopeia. Two particular abuse cases, Viktor and Syndra, have managed to become top tier competitve picks with the usage of the item to aid in bursting their targets 100-0 (despite Rylai's being rather a DoT teamfight control item).

There's been some ideas around, like stripping off Health from the item in order to create a meaningful weakness to it (you can kite, but if they break through, you're dead). This would actually nerf some abuse cases as Rylai's was the only health item for Viktor (who gets mana from Hex Core) and others (who build Tear or Morello for mana). With lowered AP to 70-80 it could actually become a balanced mage item and an alternative to Morellonomicon.

One major downside of changing Rylai's to AP+Mana would be the case of manaless champions who rely on the item as their only source of CC. Kennen could do very well without it (he already prioritizes Protobelt and Zhonya's over it), Katarina isn't really intended to use it and Rumble is probably fine as well, but Mordekaiser in particular absolutely NEEDS it to function. Seriously, if Rylai's were to become a mana item, Mordekaiser's winrate would plummet to pre-rework Poppy levels. He'd need compensation buffs, dare I say giving him CC on W/E would be required.

Other nerfs to the item are possible as well, such as reducing the AP or the slow. Nerfing Brand's AP scalings could help as well, he's too strong in the midgame with the removal of Aegis and people below plat can't play against him for shit. As for Syndra, people will keep banning her regardless of the changes.

#TL;DR: Can we get an update on Rylai's?

Also we'd appreciate some of your data on the item usage and what you consider abuse cases. Relying on sites like Lolking or LeagueofGraphs doesn't seem to be the most accurate way of determining strength of the item.