So... Thornmail

I like to consider Thornmail to be the Irelia of Items, The thing is on such a fine knife edge that any changes could very easily throw it into OP territory or Olaf'd Territory, But what I think that we should talk about this item because baring a few occasions Thornmail isn't a widly picked item, So lets look at why it isn't

Costs 2.2k Gold 100 Armour Reflects 30% of AA damage back as Magic damage

Costs 2.6k Gold 100 Armour 20% CDR 400 Mana Attack speed slow Aura

Costs: 3K gold 500 HP 70 Armour Movespeed slow active Attack speed slow on hit passive

So lets go ahead and start with the most obvious one, Thornmail is a Selfish item the Frozen heart and Randuins bring something that can help the entire team, with the Frozen Heeart its the Aura, with Randuins its the Active but the Thornmail its just there only aiding if the person is attacked, Secondly the stats, the most gold efficient item there is the Frozen Heart with the CDR Mana and Armour and even the Randuins, if we go by the whole effective health mindset (1 armour = 1% more effective health on a champion with 1k Health Thornmail gives 2k Effective health where as Randuins gives 2.2k Effective health and the final one is counters, It is incredibly easy to counter Armour, a last whisper alone will counter Thornmail were as to fully counter Randuins you need 2 items (BoTRK for item 2) or can't counter at all (Frozen heart aura, Ardent Censor is too weak to be considered a proper counter to it since the Aura is constant).

This leaves Thornmail in a position where it is a very niche pick and only works on a few champions ( ) and is outshined by the other armour items in everything except costs.

So should Thornmail be buffed? personally speaking I think it should since on paper it is the ultimate shut down for carries but is far too weak to do that job mostly because its a Selfish Item and is too easily countered, so I'm just gonna throw a few ideas I thought of and try to explain them regardless of how OP they are

1. 30% of ALL Physical damage, this includes spells that do Physical damage There are far less AA dependent champions right now then when Thornmail came out, a Zed wouldn't bat an eyelid at Thornmail, Lucian Laughs at Thornmail and Khazix will happily claw at Thornmail without a care, by giving Thornmail this added threat of "if you use your damaging AD spell on me your going to get hurt" it would mean that AD casters would have to take a big risk engadging on a Thornmail user

2. Active: For the next 5 seconds all AA and On hit effect damage causes a small explosion dealing (X + X% of Bonus Armour) around the player Basically what if Randuins had a damaging active for 5 seconds? this would move Thornmail away from being a selfish item into something that would give the enemy some concern, if they attack the Thronmail user then they risk taking damage from the active but if they wait that player has 5 seconds to cause havok in the lines or lock down the team for the follow up and the reason its damage scaled by Armour is just to prevent a none tank building it and becoming an unstoppable menace, the only real problem I see with this is a few champions (Namely Rammus and Leona) could become broken with this item

3. Aura: Reduces Enemy Crit damage by X% Pretty simple, if it only gives 1 stat make it so that it can do something to offset its ease of counter, by reducing crit damage suddenly ADCs can't walk all over champions with their 1k Damage crits, Honestly though these seems the most broken of the suggestions I have

4. Increase the Armour to 120 Simple is as Simple does.

5. Reflects 30% of AA damage back as magic damage And applies Grievous wounds for 5 seconds