@Riot Sotere: What are your thoughts on Thornmail?

Thornmail is a suboptimal item for a lot of reasons.

• Its gimmick of punishing enemies who attack you is borderline toxic gameplay, since there's no way to outplay a Thornmail. Counterplay exists (build MR or lifesteal), but counterplay =/= outplay.

• It always gets outclassed by Deadman's, Randuin's, Frozen Heart, etc., in terms of providing survivability. 100 armor without any health backing it up is quite bad (Frozen Heart gets around this by slowing enemy attack speed and giving CDR).

• It requires too many stats to work properly. It needs bonus armor for raw damage, HP for the user to live long enough for it to be effective, and magic penetration to avoid being significantly reduced by enemy magic resistance. Since tanks are the only ones who normally go for a Thornmail, they generally do not get MPen. This creates a problem similar to Will of the Ancients, in that it requires too much setup.

Even in its niche scenarios, Thornmail tends to get countered easily by enemies who overpower its effect with lifesteal and/or MR. Either that or your enemies use abilities rather than auto-attacks and thus bypass the Thorns effect entirely, rendering it moot point.

Yet sometimes it does work. Sometimes you get it early and it gives your enemy's ADC a lot of grief. But you know what? That's bad gameplay too. Shouldn't that ADC have some way to outplay that effect? Unfortunately he/she doesn't. They just have to get punished because their enemy got an item that they cannot deal with at such a point in the game.

In essence, Thornmail is an item that, in my opinion, does not fit in League anymore. If it were reworked to require some player input and require skill on behalf of the user to utilize/maximize its effect, then perhaps it could be healthy. But as it stands, it ends up being an all-frustration-no-fun item.

My 2 cents. But what are your thoughts on it?