I hate what Riot is doing to burst mages.

The ones with good early/mid-games, that is.

Let's look at the changes.

Cost increases - ok, that tends to make you wanna stall out for longer since it'll be harder to get your items. You can't snowball as easily since the prices of the items got increased but the gold I specifically earn for kills got lowered (don't try to convince me that hitting bounties is more gold. It's less in my pocket and less for me to snowball on when I get ahead). MR items buffed - Defenses are strongest when? THE EARLY GAME. Buffing them radically means I won't be showing tp when they've got a Visage simply because they're far too tanky for me to even think about ganking. AD items like Maw, Death's Dance, new PD - Do I honestly need to explain why this is bad for bursty early/mid-game APs? Lastly, we've got Deathfire Touch. Is it a good keystone? On its own, maybe. In comparison to Fervor or Bloodlust? Hell. No. On top of that it's DoT. Bust mages don't want that DoT ticking on you.

I feel like Riot is trying to pigeonhole mages into these burst DPS roles, since that's all these changes seem to benefit. And sure, I can abuse Vladimir, Twisted Fate (who isn't quite a DPS but is fairly broken with this Lich Bane change), Ziggs, Brand, Viktor, and I can finally learn to play Ryze and Orianna, but I'd not feel like I can't play Ahri because I'm gimping my team by picking her. These changes all benefit these champions because they're DPS. They can make good use of Deathfire Touch. They're not as perturbed by DoTs because they can still dish out damage and send out rotation after rotation even if you block off their initial burst. They're not as worried about the MR items because by the time you're teamfighting against them they'll have Rabadon's and Void and that little extra bit of MR will not be that relevant. But for fuck's sake can we not pigeonhole mages into that role where they are poke/DPS champs. They were and should be a lot more diverse than that, since AP is a far wider spectrum of champs than those they are being changed to function most similarly to; ADCs.