Ancient Coin feels massively superior to Spellthief's Edge. A petition for changes
Summary: Even during the early game the Ancient Coin which is a non skill non risk item feels superior to the Spellthief's Edge which is a skill dependent higher risk item. Later in the game coin is almost always superior in terms of gold generation. The solution to this problem is simple. The coin item should give less rewards specifically less mana and gold in lane and less gold once laning phase ends.
Here are the details.
When I go Spellthief's Edge I usually buy the item with the intent of harassing the enemy.
But there are clear downsides
-I can't harass and punish both enemy bot laners. I either harass the adc or the support or I quickly run out of mana or out of damage if I use the spellthief's stacks. Since the adc is a higher priority I cannot punish the support and deny them taking the coins.
-Even If I am successful and chunk the enemy adc to 150hp somewhere around level 3 or level 4 I lack the mana to solo finish them off and I am forced to take ignite for this purpose. Needless to say later in the game the ignite is not always that useful on support.
-even If I am super successful and actually harass the enemy a lot when I check the gold generated I often find out that the enemy support that built coin is not that far behind on gold generation. Maybe 50 gold at most.
-later in the game after level 5 when hitting enemies with spells and auto attacks becomes increasingly harder for the squishy support the coin becomes a visibly superior item. The coin user goes to a lane and picks up the guaranteed free gold while I have to actively search for fights and hit my skills shots or get in the 550 range and auto attack and risk taking a lot of damage.
On the other hand Ancient coin has no downsides at all -you are not taking any risks at all, and get almost the same gold as a high skill item high risk item. Even better, you have guaranteed gold generation past level 5 or past 10 minutes when going in 550 range as support is super risky. -If you have a scaling adc coin wins you the game. You don't need to do anything other than shield him with a point and click shield and pick up the free gold. And you have infinite mana in lane to to that. -the coins in lane fall close to you so you don't need any skill to pick them and you are rarely punished for it.
-It feels like the coin actually gives more mana than spellthief's. This puts the spellthief's user at a disadvantage somewhere arond level 3 or 4. The coin user almost always has the mana so shield his adc while the spellthief's user actually needs to carefully manage mana or even take ignite to actually be successful.
The solution to this problem. The coin item should give less rewards The coin should give a lot less mana in lane. This will allow for effective harass by the spellthief's user and prevent excessive shielding. The coin should give less gold in lane The coins should fall closer to the enemy so the coin user actually gets in the 500 range to the enemy to pick up the coins. The coin should give even lesser amounts of gold once laning phase ends.
Alternatively we can give the spellthief's item some more early game damage or mana and even more rewards later.