Proposal: remove portion of health from Frozen Mallet and replace it with some other stat
I'm pretty unsatisfied with mallet changes - because they don't really changed anything. Anytime I feel like rushing mallet, I will still do so without seconds though, and the only thing that bothers me is lack of pickaxe in recipe, which I really liked for lasthitting purposes.
Big part of Frozen Mallet counterplay is proper wave control: you need to either be near your tower, so you can't be chain auto-attacked to death, or have enough minions to fend of prolonged basic attack aggresion - mallet user can't kill you quickly, giving your minions all the time they need to help you.
However, since mallet grants so much health, that counterplay is often not pronounced enough, because mallet user will be good at tanking minions or tower shots. Putting some other stat on it would grant more options for players against whom mallet is rushed.
Armor obviously is a wrong choice - minions, towers and most toplaners deal physical damage, it would change nothing. Similar logic applies to HP5. MR would be an option, but the game already has more than enough hybrid MR items, we don't want Talons and Zeds jumping on mages an permaslowing them while also being able to tank them.
My proposal would be putting some AS on it. This way proper wave control provides counterplay, as mallet user isn't tanky enough to just mindlessly rush on you in your minions, and also is easier to all-in, but also mallet doesn't completely suck for champions that would like to build it - if we look here, we'll see all primary users do enjoy AS(except for Yorick, but he was just reworked and best builds probably aren't established yet).
Giving it AS would also make it possible to change some AD into on-hit damage, reducing it power in heavily scaling crit-builds. Putting level scaling on on-hit damage would simultaneously ensure isn't too powerful early rush item, forcing mallet user to rely on it's slow instead of sheer amount of combat stats, like they do now.
TL;DR My proposal:
Frozen Mallet: Jaurim's Fist + Recurve Bow + 900g
15 AD, 15+(champion level) on-hit damage, 400 health, 30 AS slow intact
This should be slightly above 100% gold efficient at level 18, and much less earlier (current mallet is 94 all the time).
I would still find a place in my build for this version of mallet, but I wouldn't be able to laugh at Irelias and Jaxes desperately trying to all in me, like I do now.
Thougths (if anyone cared to read this)?