Ok, go ahead and remove ap from the ap item pool...
But for gods sake, PLEASE remove this shield meta that we have ended up in.
Many other mage mains may disagree with me on this one, but allow me to explain why shields are causing a much bigger problem than ap reductions.
With the introduction of courage of the colossus, locket of the iron solari, the % amp on the new redemption item, and just most of the support items in general, it seems like there is at least 3 shields for each team. That wouldn't be much of a problem if the shields were not for such ridiculous amounts. A one item riven/Vi should not get a consistent 700 shield, regardless of the shields already in their kits.
I understand that Courage of the colossus got a pretty reasonable nerf this upcoming patch, but I'm not sure its substantial enough to solve the main problem with shields at the moment.
The big problem with shields is that they completely throw burst champions out the window in favor of adc's, spam mages and other DPS champions. A Twitch can easily nuke a shield down in a couple of autos, which he usually has at about 1.5 aa's per second. A burst mage may be thrown out of a fight for 4-7 seconds if they are unfortunate enough to be against a shield comp. Sure, a burst mage should be doing crazy amounts of damage with their combo, but in this current meta, most adc's are doing more damage with their autos than most mages can do with their most damaging ability, along with attack speed, these adc's are just more effective at dealing damage than most mages. Exceptions like cassio who can keep up with adc's, can manage reasonably well against these hypershields. Even Syndra and Viktor can manage to keep up through aoe abilities, or massive single target burst (Syndra being one of few burst mages who can actually manage to kill someone through a shield). However, save for the few exceptions, this shield meta really hurts the majority of mages the most.
As someone already pointed out on the boards, Ohmwrecker should be reworked to disable shields, or at least reduce them. The only other thing I can think of doing is nerfing the % shield and hp increase on redemption, nerfing windspeakers blessing, or reducing courage of the colossus again, but I'm not sure how substantial the nerf this patch will be.
Alright, I honestly think that a Rylais nerf was needed, but I really think that the HP should have been nerfed instead of the AP. As someone who has 300+ games on zyra with a ~63% winrate, I'm telling you guys right now, Riot dun goofed. This change is going to buff zyra and brand support HARD. Expect those 2 to have the highest support winrates for the next few patches.
