Making frostqueen's a true support item
TL;DR: By keeping the disable on the tribute passive upon slaying minions, and making frostqueen's mana-regen tied into this (ex. Mana regen is 50% but doubles to 100% base after not killing minions for X seconds [is currently 12 on live, perhaps bumped as long as 20]) Frostqueen's claim is no longer an effective choice for mid-lane carry champs while retaining most of its usefulness to supports. Additionally, with these changes the active could be reverted back to 60 seconds where it was before
Personally, I'm sick of seeing almost every AP mid building frostqueen. Even with the mana regen nerf it's still too good of an item for what it does. It's annoying to have to face, but even moreso it makes for boring games (especially at pro play). People are simply happy to sit back and farm, pushing lane when they don't want their opponent to roam to much, but still not really doing anything other than procing the tribute passive against an enemy champ/tower for what essentially amounts to a bonus cannon minion per wave. Riot tried to fix this with nerfs to the active (up 50% to 90 seconds, and slightly less powerful at short range) but in doing so they nerfed it unnecessarily for supports (other than maybe the slow reduction). So my proposed solution is this:
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Keep the disable on the tribute passive when taking CS. This will cut back significantly on the tribute gold earned from AP mids who require farm without harming the supports.
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Lower the base mana regen to either 25% base or 50% base (I'd argue 50%) and tie it into the tribute passive for it to be at its normal 100% base. For example: Base mana regen is 50%, and the tribute passive (which is disabled upon csing) also reads "Doubles base mana regen given by frostqueen's claim to 100% while active"
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Slightly increase the time it takes for tribute to reactivate after csing. Currently on the frostfang it is 12 seconds. This would help on frostqueen, but I think overall it needs to be somewhere around 20-25, which will make it so there is minimal time between waves which a mid-laner can make use of the tribute passive for both gold and mana regen. Now, this is the only one which will impact supports, but even then it should be fairly minimal. Most of the time a support gets this item they're not trying to CS anyways, and it isn't uncommon to see a Janna have sub 10 CS at 25 minutes. Some supports (like Morgana) will be impacted a bit more, but as they get CS mostly when using their waveclear to push out a wave to recall, it should still not affect them too much. It will still have the biggest impact upon mid-laners, those who need CS to survive, and as such it will allow for some buffs to return to the active (back to 60 seconds for example) since it will be only supports who can pick it up and make full use of it.