@Riot - Can Mid-Lane Please Get Some Health Sustain Options?
Hey Everybody,
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in wondering why AD champions, especially ranged AD Carries, can have the ridiculous amounts of health sustain offered by lifesteal while mages cannot.
We all know that spellvamp isn't allowed to be strong because:
exist.
lost her spellvamp altogether.
still has it but can only really benefit from it with her W and hits to it's damage severely hurt her ability to go mid lane.
desperately needs it but suffers because other champs would apparently abuse it.
Riot has given and defended their stance multiple times on the old forums:
They don't want mages to have huge swings of health due to their nuke spells potentially restoring them from ~20% to full. For this same reason, sustain supports have had their heals nerfed to prevent them from breaking the flow of duels in bot lane and mid game team fights.
Yet with 
an AD Carry can sustain themselves to full off of a creep wave. Later in the game they can heal up to full off of jungle camps.
Simply put, AD champions have ample access to items which allow them to sustain themselves and stay in lane, or help them sustain through a trade. Mages do not have these options. This is even worse due to their heavy need for mana sustain as well.
Is it any wonder that manaless champs, especially AD ones, are pushing mages out of the mid lane? cough
cough
AD Carries bot lane can use lifesteal to stay in lane and recover from poke. Bruisers and Tanks top lane can use lifesteal and/or tank items to stay in lane and recover from poke. AD and Tank junglers can use lifesteal and/or tank items to sustain in the jungle and keep their health high enough to make ganking possible. Even Supports have access to some health regen stats, and tanky Supports get even more options.
Mages mid-lane, squishy utility Supports, and anyone attempting to jungle Mages simply have no real options.
I propose a new item line to enable Mages to itemize some sustain for lanes they are at a disadvantage in.
Not like straight buffing spellvamp either. Mages don't need to bring themselves to full with a single nuke spell. But they do need something they can use for lanes they just cannot win, a way to sacrifice some damage to at least try and not die. The trade-off needs to be that rushing the item(s) would not provide them awesome combat stats.
Something like:
Mage's Bauble Builds from Rejuv Bead + Amp Tome + 200(?) gold - total cost: 815 Gold +20 AP +100% Health Regeneration Unique Passive: Mage Drain - Casting spells restores 5 (.1 AP) Health per target hit (1.5 sec cooldown?)
Archmage's Trinket Builds from Mage's Bauble + Haunting Guise(?) + 500(?) Gold - total cost: 2800 Gold +45 AP +200 Health +100% Health Regeneration Unique Passive: Eye of Pain - 15 Magic Penetration Unique Passive: Mage Drain - Casting spells restores 10 (.1 AP) Health per target hit. Restores an additional 5 (.1 AP) per target killed. (1.5 sec cooldown?)
Dunno, Haunting Guise seemed like it should build into something that isn't 
and hopefully something like this wouldn't be a huge damage amp. Not sure adding MPen is the way to go (probably isn't) but it seems like there should be a "baby" item that builds into a better item later and the completed item seemed like it needed something. The goal of the item itself would be something that you could get when you are being poked down to sacrifice damage to sustain in lane and hopefully get enough gold/exp to stay relevant. It also feels like it should have an internal cooldown like 
to keep people from spamming it too fast. Maybe consider augmenting the next basic attack to restore health, but seems like that would screw over a lot of champs that would need it. The completed item should probably restore enough health where a mage can see some recovery during a team fight and clearing minions ought to be a bit rewarding by mid-late game - seemed like a very slight scaling would keep it noticeable.
Please let me know what you think. Criticism is welcome.
