Mana as a stat, and how it feels to build it

Raw mana, as a stat, is among, if not the, worst stats to build in terms of satisfaction. Never once have I felt glad to have a huge mana pool, unless I played ryze, which I have done maybe twice.

This is largely due to the fact that mana regeneration is far more satisfying of a stat to build, because frankly speaking, once you hit a certain point in mana regeneration, you effectively bought your way into becoming a resource-less champion. When I play Velkoz, I rush either anthenes or morellonomicon depending how my lane is going, and then I stop looking at my mana bar. Now, Velkoz has some really low cost spells for a mage, so he hits this point earlier than a lot of champions, and It's part of why I love him, and as the game goes on my mana regen and base mana naturally increase to the point where lategame I can spam spells with reckless abandon and never once have to even consider slowing down for mana, only in the case of keeping cooldowns up if I think a fight is brewing. Every mana champion in the game, with the exception of toggle-based mages like Anivia, Swain, ect. can reach the event horizon of resources, at which point you cannot feasibly run out of mana unless you're spamming spells at the first opportunity, just by investing in enough mana regen. It's like an investment. You may not appreciate that bonus regen just now, but come lategame when you're spamming spells to siege, without a care in the world, you feel powerful.

With pure mana, you can't do that. Sure you get an extra so many odd rotations of your combos for however so much extra mana you get, but eventually, without fail, you will bottom out, with a few exceptions, all of which have some sort of mana regen mechanic inherent to their kit. This feels awful. You invested a fair amount of gold to get that additional 1000 mana, but in the end, you can still run out, especially on the likes of spammy mages, in comparison to mana regen, what on earth is the point of the investment? It's just so unappealing, like you're forced to fend off the inevitable instead of curing it.

This all becomes infinately more depressing when you factor in recourceless, energy, and alternate resources(really, it's resourcelss with a few bells and whistles attached, except for the case of rumble and his heat, which has actual downsides to it and requires management beyond 'hit your abilities') because there is no significant tradeoff to that huge innate benefit. Their abilities do not suffer in terms of base damage nor scaling, and while some have CDR restrictions, others very pointedly do not (looking at you, Yasuo, and you Resetarina) and it only serves to make mana feel even less appealing as a stat.

So, what should riot do about it?

... I don't know, to be honest. This is mostly just a vent, and an effort to stat a discussion. I can say that mana definitely needs to be a stat one can draw more use out of other than just X additional spell rotations, but I'm not sure how to really do that without some crazy terrifying change like innate mana scaling on all abilities in the game or something ridiculous like that.

TLDR: mana feels unsatifying to build in comparison to mana regen, and rather than relegating mana regen to support items and passively forcing mages away from it, rather we should look at ways to make having a large pool of mana more appealing to mages so that it's downside (you can eventually bottom out at pretty much all stage of the game) can have an upside, and a player has the choice of taking the safer route of mana regen, or the higher risk higher reward route of pure mana.