Possible rework to Zhonya's/Armguard to be better balanced idea
I was thinking about it, and currently Zhonyas is facing rather large nerfs on the PBE to it's gold efficiency and raw stats, because while a very powerful offensive item, it provides one of the strongest defensive actives in the game as well.
What if we re-tuned Zhonyas into two different items, while changing how Seeker's Armguard works? Effectively, Seeker's Armguard will get a very short duration form of Zhonya's Stasis active, like .5 seconds, while also adjusting/removing it's scaling mechanics, rather than the current 2.5 stasis Zhonyas has. Second, we re-tune Zhonyas into a mostly offensively focused item, with high AP, but very low armor, and only a 1 second stasis (good for blocking a single high threat attack, but not just turning invunerable during a teamfight for a few seconds while some other ability takes it's time to do its thing).
Finally, we make a new upgrade to Seeker's Armguard, where we get back the super-stasis of 2.5 (or even longer if we want) where the primary thing it does is be a defensive item, focused more on protecting the person using it than killing the enemy. It would have light AP (30-50 range), moderate armor (40-50 range), and some other defensive stat, either HP, or MR, depending on what felt more balanced (I'd prob say HP. Perhaps build out of Crystal Bracer? Wouldn't want it to be a GB item, as that would be too bulky, but don't want CDR on it either from Kindle).
How do you guys feel about this idea? Gives us a way to finally tune Hourglass without making it ridiculously gold inefficient for it's powerful active, but does let us have a way to keep a powerful defensive choice to mages wanting to deal with AD assassins in lane (And even helps earlier against them, with the introduction of a mid-build stasis rather than fully locking it after the 3.2k purchase).
Is definitely under-powered at the moment and severely handicaps any mage forced to build into it.
The passive is
and
for just a measly 10 Armor upfront. This then becomes 25 armor and 15 AP.
The result is almost identical to buying
(+40 Armor) and
. Then I just upgrade to
from there (which costs 1740g, including selling the extra cloth armor).
; or,
; and it can then have QSS's active and Seeker's (former) passive perhaps tuned with more max stacks, i.e:
, which emphasizes the utility early on for tough match-ups without giving you too much strength, and allowing an opponent counter-play in denying you cs to make the item reach legendary tier, but without denying you the utility and upfront survivabilty you need from the components.