The mid season update fallout.

So these are just my opinions (its a wall of text so i put a short tl;dr at the bottom but to understand what im talking about its better to fight through the words) on what has changed with the 6.9 patch, and while i feel like we still need time for the dust to settle here is what i think so far:

The cass and malzahar reworks are crappy. The champions do the exact same thing but they are now easier to play. It feels like a less risk less reward type thing to me and as someone who likes mid lane alot. bleh. Also screw tibbers, as if annie isnt way to strong for how faceroll she is already, you now can get punished for killing her. And the annie player doesn't even have to do anything.

The new items are neat but I have trouble finding good ways to incorporate them into my builds. But that could just be a me thing. I think that should fire the ice like an ashe W, having it function like a sprinkler makes it feel clunky and awkward to use especially from a decent distance away. That being said I love the new Roa change, i just wish they didn't have to suck it down all the way to 60 ap. Im not one of those silly kids who thinks that i need to have 900 ap do roll face and do damage, but I do feel week at times despite being ahead in my current matches power curve. Which bring me to my main beef with the balance right now.

I thought this mage update would spell good things for people like myself who like casters and assassins (not just AD ones), and while it did bring some good things i feel strongly that the problem remains the same. Both Ad and Ap champions have items that will offer a piece of both worlds; some offense some defense. However I feel there is a big disparity between these items, as well as the straight defense items AND the items that sort of counter defense items.

First we have Maw and Zhonyas. I love the zhonyas change and i love how its now more affordable, and given that it is a defense item, i hated need massive amounts of gold for components and combined costs which made it difficult if I was behind. However I don't like how maw not only gives the shield, but also the life line. It allows an AD champion to not only get offense stats, but a shield to survive my burst, combo, or w/e. But then also provides the means to heal back up before my next rotation (will also touch on this with spirit visage). Zhonyas can save you from an opponents burst, buy time to get help from team in a sticky situation, and provide a safe means to dive in and wait for follow up. I understand the play making potential this item possesses but I feel like it pales in comparison and the armor stat it provides is minuscule at best. (abysal also falls into this catagory but isnt rellivant to compare to a theme of AP vs AD desparity becuase its primary function is to negate enemy ap, and function as a sort of team wide magic pene).

Seconed we have Straight defense items. An Ad champion can build Banshees veil and spirit visage. Both of these provide good MR and HP stats with a unique element that really puts them over the edge. An ap champion who relies on combos will really have trouble against a banshees veil for obvious reasons. A champion who relies on burst will have trouble against a champion with spirit visage because they will be able to heal off the burst damage before the ap champion has another burst rotation available (not to mention how the healing increas from SV scales so well with all the readily available life steal items. If your champion can viably build deaths dance and gunblade, you can pick up the red elixer and heal from 45% of all the damage you deal increased even more by spirit visage... yet with ap casters riot says "maybe you can use gunbalde depending on who you are, if not enjoy your small tiny heals from Roa".
If you look at straight armor items we are left with omen, thornmail, and frozen heart. These items dont make me feel very safe at all. Omen and frozen heart are options for reducing damage from physical damage and those who rely on attack speed. Unfortunatly these attackspeed reductions dont seem to help that much, and with the item options these days alot of attack speed champions are applying alot of magic damage on hit, making the stat effectiveness of the defense options very little. The omen is good of course against crit champions but still i dont feel safe and ill explain why in a seconed. Finally we have thornmail, which with its rework makes me feel like I need to purchase extra armor items to make the damage reflect scale into anything meaningful. This makes it a good functional item for tanks, but i mean you usually dont attack the tanks much as it is so why do they need that? Also the damage reflected with thronmail is likely still less than enemies will heal off you with items like bork, blood thirstier, and deaths dance.

Finally we have the items meant to negate these defense items. Void staff , Lord Dominik's Regards and Mortal. Right off the bat its unfair that the componants for void staff give you a small amount of AP, take up 2 items slots AND for about the same cost, AD champions get last whisper. While you build LW you only need one open item slot, and you get that armor penetration sooner, MUCH sooner. Then when you finally finish the items, void staff leaves you with some ap and the magic pene, but for 50 more gold on either ad item, you get some ad (which i think it should be mentioned scales autos AND abilities for ad casters, which is another desparity in itsself) you get 10% MORE armor pene than void staff gives magic pene being 45% and 35% respectively and you also get grevious wounds, or an anti hp passive, which if you wanted those stats on your mage or ap assassin, you would need to build your void staff AND a liandries/nomicon depending on what you want. AND IF THATS NOT ENOUGH AS IT IS NOMICON REQUIRES YOUR TARGET TO BE BELOW A THRESHHOLD OF HP BEFORE IT APPLIES GW BUT MORTAL REMINDER DOES IT EVERY TIME YOU DAMAGE ANYTHING EVER.

tl;dr The mage update doesn't make up for the fact that there is a heavy disparity in power in AD items and AP items both defensive and offensive.