Why Talisman of Ascension needs to be buffed

Alright, before we go any further, lets start by looking at the stats between Talisman, and its very desired main rival, Frost Queens Claim. Frost Queens Claim +100% base mana regeneration +50 ability power +10% cooldown reduction +2 Gold per 10 seconds Passive UNIQUE – TRIBUTE: Spells and basic attacks against champions or buildings deal 15 additional damage and grant 15 Gold. This can occur up to 3 times every 30 seconds. Active UNIQUE: Summon 2 icy ghosts for 6 seconds that seek out nearby enemy champions. Ghosts reveal enemies on contact and reduce their movement speed by 40% for 2–5 seconds (90 second cooldown.)

Talisman of Ascenscion 100% base mana regeneration +100% base health regeneration +10% cooldown reduction Passive UNIQUE – FAVOR: Being near a minion death without dealing the killing blow grants 6 Gold and 10 Health (1400 range). Active UNIQUE: Grants nearby allies +40% movement speed for 3 seconds (60 second cooldown) (600 range).

To begin with, they are (after nerfs), the same in terms of mana regen, so not much to say there.

Both give 10% cdr, good stuff good stuff.

Now, lets get to the interesting stuff.

Gold generation: Okay, this one is a bit tricky. If you arent playing a support with a lot of poke such as Brand or Vel'koz and are playing something like Janna, Frost Queens Claim can sometimes feel like a bit of dead weight and lackluster in terms of gold generation. However if you've got the poke, Frost Queens is BY far better. However, the gold generation from Talisman is quite good if you are playing the passive afk and keep your adc alive in lane strat (cough soraka). Now you're probably asking, if the staying in lane and never roaming strat is typically more gold, why arent more supports like Janna taking Talisman. The answer is quite simple, Supports arent going to be staying in lane past mid-game. At that point they are basically walking around with their strongest carry, or just roaming by themselves to grant vision with wards and oracles and the like. By not being in lane, Talisman offers literally no gold generation as the +2 gold per 10 secs was removed from the item in the Preseason. Also, Once mid game rolls around, teamfights and skirmishers are almost nonstop, so proccing frost queens is an absolute breeze, making the gold generation rapidly increase even if you are playing something like Janna, who now basically only takes the item.

As if that lengthy wall of text wast enough, lets talk about the most underrated difference between the two items. Frost Queens gives 50 AP, compared to Talisman giving 100% health regen....How is this even comparable? The main users of Talisman i can think of in S5 were Janna, Blitzcrank, and Soraka. Blitz benefits from ap more than health regen, Janna has pretty damn good ap ratios, and Blitzcrank honestly just used it because of his mana issues and the item being good for picks (however you see frost queens on blitz more than talisman these days, which is actually quite a fun build for any interested). Now lets get to the real problem; the active. How can you even compare the two, i mean seriously? The sightstone nerf resulting in the loss of 1 ward charge and the removal of green wards make vision incredibly scarce. How nice would it be if you want to go use your oracles or put down some wards you could click a button and see who the 2 closest people on the enemy team are, and hell, lets slow them while we are at it. Oh wait, thats a thing now. Talisman isnt necessarily bad in the sense that the movement speed buff can be quite useful for teams with lackluster engage or running some people down, however it just simply doesn't compare. Frost Queens also covers the engage/disengage function while beating Talisman in the other 2 main areas, also granting vision which as mentioned before is a valuable commodity at the moment. TLDR, Talisman is just in a bad spot right now and you literally only take on Soraka to let you spam more heals. My solution would be to give Talisman a modest amount of AP and see if that does anything, but at the moment the item is trash tier. Almost as bad as those Eye/combined sight stone items. The cringe i get when i see supports on my team get those is without compare.