Will of the Ancients still wants its aura back

JPlayah··1 votes·425 views

Riot, I honestly don't know why you removed the aura from WotA way back when, but it still bothers me that you made this change because it doesn't make any sense to me. I understand that spell vamp can get too powerful if there's too much of it in play, but there are two reasons why the aura removal still seems wrong after all this time.

  1. The aura was what made the item unique. Now that it's been removed, the item feels pretty bland compared to the other spell vamp item, Hextech Gunblade. With so much more to offer (and almost as much pure AP), the only reason I would take Will of the Ancients over Hextech Gunblade right now would be if I had zero use for AD. Right now, Will of the Ancients is by and large the inferior item because it doesn't have anything special anymore.

  2. Zeke's Herald still has its aura. The AD/lifesteal crowd still has its aura item and they're doing just fine with it. It seems patently unfair to take that kind of thing away from AP champs.

Bottom line: Bring back the aura. I believe you can find a way to make it balanced. I don't care if you have to drop the spell vamp to 15%. I don't care if you have to drop it to 12% (Hextech Revolver's spell vamp value). But please, for the love of the community, AP champs, and supports that want to help their AP carries, put that aura back on Will of the Ancients. It can be made to work. It should be made to work.

1 Comments

JustMyBassCannon1 votes
  1. Actually, the unique selling point of the item is that it's the AP-only Spell Vamp item (as the other option is hybrid AD/AP). Also, WotA has Cooldown Reduction, and HTGB does not. It also costs significantly less gold, 2500 to Hextech's 3400 (counting out Revolver, that's 1300 versus 2200 gold), so it's obviously not going to have astronomically high stats in comparison

  2. If by "doing just fine with it," you mean "it literally has less than half a percent pick rate," then yes, Zeke's Herald is "doing just fine." WotA, meanwhile, is picked up about four times as frequently despite lacking its aura.

The entire reason WotA lost its aura was twofold. First, the aura gave everyone on the team Spell Vamp; this caused problems when champions who normally wouldn't access it (i.e. Riven, Pantheon, Talon) had free sustain on top of their bursty damage. Second, WotA stacking allowed two major AP champs to buddy up and get 40% Spell Vamp; having that much spell vamp on a mage makes for some ridiculous bullshit (if you weren't here during Season 2, you were lucky; that's when Hextech Revolver stacked for 15% Spell Vamp per unit...and Hextech Gunblade was worth over 5000 gold in stats).

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