The AP item changes have missed one of the most important issues facing AP cham: No good armor items

Firstly @RiotRepertoir, thanks for involving yourself in the pretty aggressively negative discussion about the new item changes in several posts, its always great to get red responses on serious discussion threads and you've been taking a beating. I tip my hat to you sir.

But on to the topic at hand: AP champions have no good item choice to counter an AD enemy early.

By now im sure everyone is aware that is an absolutely fantasticly effective and cheap item AD champions can buy to almost completely shut out an enemy AP champ from kill pressure in lane. The item offers fantastic stats, an even more fantastic active, and it all comes with the low price tag of 1300g. This item is so good at doing its job that most of the time its not even necessary to upgrade it to the finished product, allowing AD champs to build into far more beneficial items.

On the other hand, AP champions only have , an item that costs almost as much (1200g) yet doesn't even start at max gold efficiency because it needs to be stacked, requiring 30 kills to reach maximum effectiveness. When you compare these two items side by side, its pretty easy to see why AP users are upset at the imbalance, because a really isn't going to be all that helpful in lane on its own, and youre essentially banking on the "usefulness" of its competed form, , as your savior.

With that said however, while the AP user is trudging along working towards the currently ridiculously expensive finished product for seekers, the AD champion has settled for keeping the hexdrinker as is, and building into far more beneficial items for damage, almost all of which have some form of flat armor reduction which makes the seekers even less effective at doing its job.

AP champions really need alternative options for armor when facing against AD champions, and that's what riot has seemingly missed, at least with this first wave of AP item changes/introductions. Ideally, to me at least, AP champions would either get a new item that is shot for shot on par with to completely replace as an item, or something completely new that fulfills the same role. As long as AD champions can run around with hexdrinker giving them a free shield based on health percentage, AP champions will never be able to compete on equal footing. The matchup will almost always be decided based on the item, and not on the players skill, which to me seems like a heinous design flaw.

TL;DR: AP champions need more armor options than just / , and desperately need an item that is on par with in order to compete with early game AD champions, especially assassins.