Hextech Protobelt is basically S6 Death Fire Grasp
Hear me out for a second, I'm not saying it's nearly as bad as DFG was when it was at its peak, but I am saying it feels like it suffers the exact same problem it did. Riot removed DFG from the game back in 2015 because they felt that it's intended use was being overridden by the fact that it was used to exacerbate the burst of many burst mages. Here's what Riot had to say about DFG and it's problems existing in league;
> "Our initial goal with Deathfire Grasp was to make a "tank-busting" item that could do exactly that: bust down tanks when they're knocking on the front door. After the introduction of Liandry's Torment, however, tank-busting was replaced with tank-burning and, instead, Deathfire Grasp became the item for assassins to stack another nuke spell on top of their already burst-heavy kits. While we like to keep itemization options available for those who want it, the sheer existence of Deathfire Grasp has given us a few headaches in the past and present:
> 1.) Adding Deathfire Grasp to a bursty kit really amps up that "woah what happened to me" moment when someone nukes you from orbit. In the past, when we see mages pick up a DFG to double-down on their burst, we've had to balance around that champion which, in turn, makes them even more reliant on DFG to blow people up (or they get changed so much they find an alternative playstyle). Vicious cycle.
> 2.) Deathfire Grasp also adds a lot more reliability to a mage's assassination attempts, which means they need to commit less for them. If, for example, Ahri only needs to use one charge of Spirit Rush to nuke her target (with DFG + Q + W), she frees herself to use her other two charges to get back to safety. If we accept this will always happen with DFG, Ahri ends up without a lot of extra 'power budget' to do other cool mage-y things like sustained damage or kiting."
These two points I feel are very pertinent - I mean, if you replace them saying DFG with Hextech protobelt, you don't really get much of a difference in their dialogue. HTPB feels like it's supposed to be the mage item to use if you need just that little bit more mobility to reposition or gain the upper footing in a sticky situation, but in reality it's a nuke that simply has too much power loaded onto its damage, making it amiplify mages with already high burst to gain even more. HTPB shouldn't have such a dominant presence among mage items, it should have its power tuned way down in order to make it feasibly balanced against the other Hextech items, which have actual balance and niche picking power.
