"I am a champion who wants mana as a resource because:"

This list is currently empty. (Piss off, Ryze.)

Someone apparently thought that mages being able to buy one item to neutralize their mana problems was a bad thing. This is ludicrous because of the insane number of champions who don't have to buy an item at all to manage their resource, either because their resource is a joke or they don't have one at all. Imagine if Akali, Zed, or Lee Sin started with 100 energy and needed to spend 800something gold to get 200. The tears would be fully stacked instantly.

As things are, ap mages cannot harass their manaless opponents because they will have to back almost immediately, even after Chalice. They get to harass you all day without issue, and a lot of them get sustain so anything that does land is laughed off. Or you go oom knocking them to half and then by the time you can start scraping minions off your tower they've healed enough of it back to survive a tower dive.

Are mana champions stronger than manaless? No, and not because they're mana champions. If all mages suddenly had no mana to deal with, Zed would still stomp them in lane. There is simply no tradeoff for having mana as a resource anymore; you aren't stronger, you aren't tankier, you don't have more cc. You used to be forced to spend money that manaless champs got to spend on damage items buying one item to mitigate your resource issues, now you have to build two or more full ones just to keep up.

Mages were in a crappy spot BEFORE mana regen got nerfed across the board. Yeah mages get great items eventually, they have to. Who wants to be a mage in this game? Nobody with any sense, that's who.

Random ideas:

1. Make mana do something other than gate. Damage bonus % or damage reduction % the more maximum mana you have. This makes building actual mana desireable on more than just Ryze. Have these kick in only when your ap is higher than your bonus ad so adcs don't fluke into them with tf (they need to be building mage versions for the mage effects).
2. Make mage autos based on ap. I don't know why this already isn't done. Give them a max mana bonus too so they can do something while oom, which is going to be often if nothing is done. No reason for adcs to be able to do this and not apcs, especially since we don't want them casting spells ever. Most mages have modest range anyway so even with strong autos they're going to put themselves at risk doing it.
3. Mana regen aura near towers. Makes taking towers even more of a good idea, while allowing mana gated champs to stay in lane longer against the free harass and waveclear of their opponents.
4. Mana return based on damage done, across the board. Skillshot reliant ap mages should get more, as a reward for proper aiming.
5. Mage autos now double mana regen for a few seconds on champs and towers. (AP > bonus AD for this effect too.)
6. Unnerf mana regen. :p Let us go back to being forced to buy one item just to stay in lane when everybody else gets to have fun right away. That was working fine for everyone (other than people who whine about how good mage items are without understanding why, of course, but these people should not be making decisions).

Or we can just shunt out an entire class of champs for no reason. That works too. ~Uiru