Thornmail: Functional but Toxic

Thornmail is such a bad item for League to have these days. When you're the ADC and your enemy gets it, there's no such thing as having fun playing against it. You just end up with an "ugh, the jackass got a Thornmail..." moment. Meanwhile, when you're the one who gets it, you usually are left thinking "wow, why aren't they killing themselves on me?" when your enemy has enough lifesteal and MR to counter it.

Even if it has some moments where it functions well (i.e. on Rammus, when your enemy has a lot of AA-ing Champions, etc.), that does not make it a good item for the game to have. It has a habit of creating "zero outplay" moments, where you simply can't outplay the Thornmail. It just passively punishes you for attacking the user, with no way for you to create "windows of downtime". Your only counter? Get into an arms race against the Thorns user and counter it with lifesteal and magic resistance. Isn't that the kind of gameplay Riot wants to avoid?

Plus, if you're buying Thornmail strictly as an armor item, you're shooting yourself in the foot. There are several better choices to let you survive physical damage, including . Getting Thornmail early also tends to backfire, as getting armor without first getting HP is a trap (unless you're Rammus).

In its present state, I find Thornmail to be poisonous to gameplay. Thorns itself is rather bad for the game to have due to its poor interactivity, invisible impact, and due to Thornmail requiring 3 different stats to work at its fullest: bonus armor, HP, and MPen. Bonus armor increases the raw Thorns damage, HP lets you live long enough to utilize it, and MPen is needed for the Thorns not to bounce off MR. That's a straight-up "Spell Vamp problem" there, in that no one can allocate all those stats effectively, because they're not meant to all be used together in that way (if they were, that'd be imbalanced).

Now, back in DotA All-Stars, you had the Blademail, which had a similar mechanic, but required timing on behalf of the user to reflect damage back at your attacker. Granted, it could reflect damage from spells AND attacks, but at least your enemies could bait the cooldown. Thornmail, on the other hand, can't be "baited".

Bottom line, Thornmail needs to be investigated by Riot. Is it the next "Atma's Impaler"?