Looks like I'm putting my main on hold again. Hopefully Riot won't make me wait 2 years again...

I've been trying to play around with runes, masteries, and items, and there just isn't any other way to say it. Mage Itemization is bad. So bad that mages have been picking up Frost-queen's to head out to mid lane. Terrible times these be, especially because there is still a huge power gap that isn't addressed in your 6.2 patch notes.

You see, there is one stat that basically every true mage needs to maximize quickly, and that is CDR. Without it, mages hurt bad, especially immobile mages. I'm not saying that it is impossible to max, but the raw investment is so high that there is no feasible way to do it without wasting stats or just not living up to the potential of the investment.

For example, lets take the obvious route: Unholy grail + Morello's. Congrats, now you have invested heavily into mana regen. Hope you have mana issues like Anivi- what's that? Mana costs got adjusted across the board? No one is truly mana starved after a single regen item? Looks like we invested a bit too much into that stat, but that's OK, right? Now, what else am I sacrificing to make this work? My AP is Low? Well good thing I didn't spend too much gold getting her- oh wait.

Maybe that's intentional though. Maybe we are supposed to scrape it off of other places, and only pick one of these items up. How about getting 1 of the above, depending on if we need morello's passive for Mundo, and instead focus on CDR from other places like Ionian boots. I sure hope I didn't need any other boots for my champ or to counter the enemy team comp. Well, now it's a bit more reasonable, now I just need 10% more. My options are Banner of Command (super pricey), Frost Queens (Even more useless mana regen, and it's supposed to be a support item.), Ardent Sensor (Ultra niche, and again with the support items), Lich Bane (Ultra niche, Ultra expensive), and Will of the ancients. WotA looks the best overall, until you realize that alot of mages just don't really care too much about Spell vamp. Especially AoE champs like Karthus, who will be effectively losing Spell vamp in order to pick it up. At least it's cheap.

Well, maybe we are suppose to pick up that last 10% in masteries and runes. OK. I can get 7.5% CDR from glyphs, assuming I pick up a set of 9. All I need is 2.5%. So if I use a single CDR Quint, I'll be looking at dropping 5 AP to max my CDR. What about masteries? Well, I could get 5% there, but then I cap out at 45%. This makes the math really weird, as nothing but runes would be able to hit cap without wasting gold on over purchasing CDR. Let's assume though, that we just let it sit at 42.5%, and keep our Quint. What is the harm? Well, now I guess we have to pick up Thunderlords, but with how powerful it is that isn't necessarily a bad thing. What else? Well, you definitely lose out on pen. Not the end of the world for a mage, but that could be important on some champs. What else? Nothing Huge? Is this success?

Take a step back. We have to ask ourselves two very important questions. A) What is our investment? and B) Would we be better off taking that investment and placing it elsewhere? Like, say, another champion? For answer A, we have dedicated roughly 1/4 our runes, and 2/3's of our masteries, though there is a little flexibility there. Also, we have sunk 3600 gold and our boot choice into maxing 1 stat. That's a rather HUGE investment. Now, can we take that investment and use it better? The answer sadly, is yes, especially if you are an immobile mage. Keep in mind, I'm not even looking at the poor manaless mage champions that might want max CDR, they literally waste tons on stats they can't use.

Overall, mages aren't 100% unusable, but competitively speaking they aren't a solid choice. Most don't help too much with the pushing meta, or crumple under the huge flux of assassins. They effectively bring waveclear. So do ADC's and if we are honest some bruisers and assassins. If you can find another source of wave clear that can stand against assassins or even just push harder/secure objectives better, it's almost always better to pick it up over a mage. Even in mid lane. So until Riot decides to actually fix the issue, I guess I'll be waiting with other champs so that I have a chance this ranked season. Urf knows I have much less time between work and school right now.

/rant http://imgur.com/OwdZYE6