Lets Talk: Mage itemization

Hey a Gold IV Mage Main here!(Instantly downvotes thread) I have seen a lot of talk on mage itemization theese days, so i tought im gonna give you my ompinion on that. Firstly lets see all of the Legendary tier items which give ap.(and magic pen, im looking at you sorc's) The amount of this is 29. If we take out the support and jungle items( ) we are left with 21 items. Im going to list them in categories. Only offensive purposes and by that its situational(excluding sorc's) They give you raw dmg and nothing else, but they are only viable if you have other items and/or you are fed, but most of the time its better to choose another item.(Still exlcuding sorc's) The good thing about them is that they are buildable on every ap champion. From Annie to Zyra. Theese days mages fit a utility position rather than a dmg dealer one so they are really not the best items to choose from. Thats why the changes were a big mistake, since you nerfed the utility of mages which they need in this meta. Burst mages built this to be more utilitive and because it was more worth to buy rather than dmg items, since it gave you a lot of dmg and utility. And by nerfing it you nerfed the champions who really needed this item as well. Maybe riot should have done something like what they did when adcs started building assasin items: they buffed the adc items and nerfed the assasin ones just a little bit. With this nerf they had succes on making burst mage itemization more fair, but they nerfed the champions really hard who really relied on thIs item.(Thoose kinda champions really benefitted from all of the 3 stats it gave so riot really managed to nerf them in every way they could.)

So we covered 5 out of 21.Lets continue! Theese 3 are only built ona few champions. They are kinda like the raw dmg ones, but they all provide you with something more than dmg. But in return they are really situational. They are mostly built by ap assasins. Is a great burst/poke option, but since dmg is really underrated in this meta its not built that often, but for some champions its a core item( ). are really only viable on a few champions, mostly who has ap scalings and have somekind of auto attack buff. They are either core( ) or just an okay item to have on your build, but there will be better options for sure.() In this onhit category i need to mention which do give ap, but they were not made for mages and they are not built my them at all( ). Theres no situation where it would be worth to build them for any mage.(Not counting as a mage.)

Minus 5 items again...so its 11. Lets cover the 2 hextech ones. They give you some nice defensive and offensive stats as well, and they both have a good active. In my ompinion is always better to choose since the slow it give much more utility. With its easy to overbuild the cdr cap and also it does not give you mana so it cant be a core mana item, but by this its a great item on manaless mages( ) Its often build when you have a and you dont wanna mess with the unique passives.

9 left... Lets cover the mana ones. This is a great mana option if u are playing a champion who spams abilites. If you build a with it you are going to have a lot of ap from its passive, but theres not a lot of champions who can actually stack it up. one of the best mage items and the moment: ap,hp,mana and a sustain effect. This is propably the best possible mage item. Its built by everyone who has mana. Gives you a lot of ap, cdr, mana, and 2 nice passives. One of which is grievous wounds, and reducing the amount of heals is required in every game.

Wait! What are theese? I've never seen them! . Twsited treeline items. Since nobody plays that map, i wont going to talk about theese.(I could talk a lot about ) For sure they are really great options in this map. Its important that TT doesnt have because of which doesnt give you cdr, so on TT you have less cdr options, and thats really bad.

The last 3 are the following(it should be 4 but i couldnt find the fourth one, i propably miss counted, sorry): They are defensive/utility options. in my ompinion its the second best mage item after . The stats it gives are really great, and the active is the best active effect from all items in the game. Its the only Armor option for mages. is built by a lot of ap assasins. Since preseason its not that strong, altough the stats it gives are good. Its the only MR option for mages, which gives ap.( + =gg) is a really underrated item. It was made to shread tanks. Mostly built on tanky or dmg over time mages( )

Huh. Now that we've got trough all items, lets make a build for a mage. Our exmaple is going to be: i think she has the biggest options to choose from. We are going to need some mana ap and health. Perfect for a also we are going to go with since they are really strong, exspecially on Liss. Also lets go for since we will have a lot of mobility. Maybe we could go for but than we cant build and . Boots are going to be . Thats 5 items. We already have some mana and hp, we have 40/45% cdr, we have a lots of ap. We have some armor as well. The thing we does not have is MR. But we cant build since we are going to over build cdr. We could replace with ti but they are really a core item in her kit. Maybe we will go for cuz its propably late game. The other ap options are just meh to build in this situation, and there are not so many. Most mages build the items which i listed for Liss, maybe with one core item like or .

So the conclusion is that most items are weak, and the ones that are good are beeing built every game. So we end up with not that much options in our builds. In my ompinion every item should have like a counter part which would result in more flexiable bulid paths. The other solution is to rework the weaker items in a way of not nerfing the champions who needs them.