Mage item changes still look terrible.

Nausicäa ·Apr 19, 2016·89 votes·3,346 views

Why does Riot still insist on saying that Mages have 'infinite mana' and dont go oom in the current state of the game? This is absolute bullshit and 100% false. All mages in the game go oom when spamming spells, there is no such thing as infinite mana, so removing regen and nerfing mage items under this assumption is stupid

Why are mages being balanced around neutral buffs in order to be effective? So Mages 100% require blue buff and Dragon buff to compensate for the mage item nerfs now? Seems legit, mages are the only class that is 100% reliant on neutral buffs to do damage.

74 Comments

The WhamboozlerApr 19, 201630 votes

I wouldn't mind mages having to worry about going oom and carefully manage their resources. It would be a good balancing point for them. Some mages could have low mana costs and some high, based on their power, range and so on.

EXCEPT mid lane (and a lot of the game in general, really) is dominated by resourceless or AD champs. So as a mage I need to be INCREDIBLY careful casting spells... you know, the ONLY THING I'M GOOD AT AND HAVE BEEN PICKED FOR... or I will go oom and be utterly useless and forced to B. Meanwhile Zed is spamming his spells like mad every time they're off cooldown, and likely spamming /laugh as well. And even if he somehow misses everything or eats a silence or something, his auto attacks hurt like a bitch AND probably heal him, since he has access to lifesteal.

It's never been a balanced system. If mana-regen is high then mana isn't much of a concern and it may as well not be in the game. If it's absurdly low, no one takes mana users at all because they suffer long periods of uselessness while they're oom. Mages already have to buy mana regen to remain useful most games and CDR to cut down on said period of uselessness a bit. Why do AD champs get to build to emphasize their strengths but mages often have to build items to try to cut back on their many in-built weaknesses?

If you want to nerf mana-regen, fine. But equal the playing field so mages can compete against the non-mana users that they will often be up against. Mages either needs to have VERY powerful abilities that merit how infrequently they can be used. Mages shouldn't blow up an entire team from full health, but they shouldn't go oom in lane after one and a half rotations of spells either! How about giving mages high base mana regens that scale up at a low amount, so lategame they're occasionally going oom if they're not careful or built a bunch of mana items?

AMYS GRAVEApr 20, 20167 votes

Why do AD champs get to build to emphasize their strengths but mages often have to build items to try to cut back on their many in-built weaknesses?

This is an excellent way of phrasing the problem.

D rokApr 20, 20163 votes

You're right, and I think the solution is to hit the laning phase of resourceless champs. Zed is just.... so awful to lane against.

M0b1usApr 19, 201621 votes

I absolutely HATE the item changes as they stand now. Riot is flat out nerfing every item just to try to justify giving them pathetic passives. How do they think that making unholy grail even more situational and giving RoA a garbage passive are beneficial to mages? On top of that, they REMOVED spell vamp but they left death's dance untouched. Death's dance basically gives AD only spell vamp.

I want to be excited with the changes, but the item changes are just so horrifically bad.

The LovelessApr 19, 20164 votes

Grail is now a support item according to Riot. FYI

Athenes LuluApr 20, 20162 votes

Better get supports involved too by nerfing FQC, often the only mana regen source they'll ever get in a game because we all know how they often invest into defensive options over more mana regen, if anything.

TheSushianApr 19, 201615 votes

Admittedly I wouldn't jump the gun yet to saying the items won't do much. While they're encouraging mages to go mana reliant now, I'm definitely in favor of having some sort of drawback instead of freely spamming spells without much drawback. Makes actually planning and using mana be a lot more demanding and required.

Let's be honest; the moment you bought Morello or Athenes, mages would often no longer care on mana. They had so much free mana regen that it no longer mattered for mana to be a resource; it only turned into a very rare drawback on the off chance you were spamming like mad. I'm glad on what they focused on for mages, and I wouldn't jump the gun yet as the spell-casting aspect is still going to work regardless. Just not on the scale of extreme spell spamming without penalty.

If you're also that desperate for mana regen, just go Chalice. It still retained the passive, and no one is forcing people to stick solely to Athene. You can always sell it later once you get your item build up. Either that or go double dorans, as that tends to suffice enough for mana regen anyway if you cs alongside harass.

L0ve Is BlueApr 19, 201611 votes

Drawback? Mages already are weaker than juggernaut and markmans who have been balanced around a stronger window of power that they had pre-update and all of their items were meant to fix their flaws. For mages what do we get? Nerfs to items that fix our flaws and nerf to the max amount of damage obtainable through item. yay.

TheSushianApr 19, 20168 votes

All the while buffing their utility and letting them be more impactful ina teamfight apart from being the infamous one-trick-pony scenario right now. With the item update, while regen will be hit, cooldown reduction is getting buffed and the tweaks to already good utility items are making them far more impactful then what mana regen is doing. As I've said, don't jump the gun yet, because for all we know, Rod of Ages may be a great item in general to buy because of the passive effect it will be getting, or how getting Zhonyas with its CDR will allow for far more plays than getting an Athenes into a seekers would do. It's still not something I would jump post-haste on without analysing the results.

TheWeatherWaxApr 19, 20165 votes

Someone actually did the numbers ROA will require someone like Karthus to spend 4k mana to get 400 hp etc.. This isn't exactly going to be making people who aren't tanks build it. ROA is basically a tank item now specifically for AP tanks, the same can be said of the hextech item that builds from it. From what I saw of the item information these items will not be encouraging more fighting and they are more useful for utility mages and AP assassins it will not be making the siege or artillery mages anymore useful. It does nothing for burst mages either.

CDR for Zhyonias does nothing to help against the fact that it only offers 45 armor and is easily countered by the first armor pen item bought by anyone who isn't a tank.

M0b1usApr 19, 20164 votes

{quoted}

All the while buffing their utility and letting them be more impactful ina teamfight apart from being the infamous one-trick-pony scenario right now. With the item update, while regen will be hit, cooldown reduction is getting buffed and the tweaks to already good utility items are making them far more impactful then what mana regen is doing. As I've said, don't jump the gun yet, because for all we know, Rod of Ages may be a great item in general to buy because of the passive effect it will be getting, or how getting Zhonyas with its CDR will allow for far more plays than getting an Athenes into a seekers would do. It's still not something I would jump post-haste on without analysing the results.

I am guessing you never looked at the numbers or tried it. RoA changes are terrible. It requires you to spend completely excessive amounts of mana just to heal for the same HP lost and you have to take a large amount of damage for a minor mana gain.

A .5 second slow hardly counts as utility and being silenced after a dash doesn't quite give you that much utility.

Ulquiorra995Apr 20, 20165 votes

Drawbacks would be fine in a game where everyone has them. In DotA I will go OOM by spamming spells. but so will my opponent. In League I have to be very conservative about spells while Zed mindlessly throws a shrunken in my face every 6 seconds. And even if he somehow runs out of energy, his AA's still hurt unlike mages.

Chalice still delays your build. If you are facing Zed or another AD assassin you have to rush Zhonya's (which is getting nerfed) just to survive. Then what? Get chalice just so you can use your spells? Be useless mid-game because you have zero damage unlike that Zed/Talon who just got Maw and is good to go both offensively and defensively? And unrelated, but the new catalyst is downright terrible. You have to take 1000 damage to restore 150 mana, which will give you two spells - meaning you heal for a whooping 30 HP.

AMYS GRAVEApr 20, 20164 votes

Let's be honest; the moment you bought Morello or Athenes, mages would often no longer care on mana. They had so much free mana regen that it no longer mattered for mana to be a resource;

item 3174 2700 gold

item 3165 2400 gold

not exactly free.

alfavhunterApr 19, 20168 votes

The most viable Mage will be AP singed....

HawkefireApr 20, 20163 votes

Gallo ought to do well.

J EevoApr 20, 20162 votes

Why play galio the anti AP champion when AP champions will get worse?

HawkefireApr 20, 20163 votes

He actually tends to do really well against AD comps.

J EevoApr 20, 20164 votes

Depends against which really, Yeah he can delete squishies by comboing them down and flash ult is nice, but he lacks cc on his base abilites, and the damage is frontloaded onto his Q. Oh also if you ult group that has a Braum, his passive cancels the ult in a flash.

runedaraApr 19, 20167 votes

Yah the changes to the items are really meh to me. I don't know why mages have to take a zed Q to the face if we want mana back.

Lady HammerlockApr 20, 20167 votes

Because they fear infinite poke

Me:Are you serious riot Zed .........

The LovelessApr 19, 20165 votes

You haven't even played with the changes yet. I HAVE, and mages who you think rely on mp5 are fine - more than fine in fact.

M0b1usApr 19, 20164 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Loveless,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bTZzETMa,comment-id=0006,timestamp=2016-04-19T23:53:01.155+0000)

You haven't even played with the changes yet. I HAVE, and mages who you think rely on mp5 are fine - more than fine in fact.

The new items and item changes were on the PBE before urf and removed right after urf was on the PBE. So actually some people have played with the new items.

lofi n chillhopApr 20, 20165 votes

mages are fine. they will continue to be fine. their rework looks cool. increased mana pool is actually better than mana regen....

BeMyFriendPleaseApr 20, 20165 votes

According to riot and the community it's YOUR fault for "spamming spells"

Because mana gates that, and stops spell spamming

Especially for mobile bursty champs

Especially those that are too "safe" so they have mana regen removed to make it safer

After all managing resources is a good trade off for skill spam

. . .

Zed kappa

MazariamontiApr 20, 20165 votes

Lol just imagine Tahm with RoA now, Ugh. Loses all his health, shield/health regen up, refills his mana, spams abilities, gets all health back, repeat. As if Tahm wasn't annoying enough already.

McKeifusApr 20, 20161 votes

I am very concerned about HP based supports abusing the passive. I was thinking it would be pretty sick to go RoA as any Tanky Support, and just keep your mana up.

GigglesOApr 20, 20164 votes

{quoted}

Why does Riot still insist on saying that Mages have 'infinite mana' and dont go oom in the current state of the game? This is absolute bullshit and 100% false. All mages in the game go oom when spamming spells, there is no such thing as infinite mana, so removing regen and nerfing mage items under this assumption is stupid

Why are mages being balanced around neutral buffs in order to be effective? So Mages 100% require blue buff and Dragon buff to compensate for the mage item nerfs now? Seems legit, mages are the only class that is 100% reliant on neutral buffs to do damage.

Look terrible, feel great.

I absolutely love the changes on the pbe.

J EevoApr 20, 20162 votes

I gotta ask, on whom exactly?

HammerpriestApr 20, 20161 votes

Annie is a God right now on the pbe because of her Q's free last hitting and proto belt initiates. Tear is the go to mana regeneration item of choice after you pick up your early frost fang because Archangel's is a lot better with all the new +mana items . Cdr is everywhere so easy mode cdr cap. The only real issue is you stop scaling because of the super low amount of a on most items. I guess they really wanted to push mage to mid game power spikes.

TheWeatherWaxApr 20, 20161 votes

I've been watching PBE for hours now.. I haven't seen Annie being "God". I have seen some interesting match-ups (to be fair a lot of the live coverage is Hexakill which isn't exactly the best map to make assumptions on) but the few times they've gone to Summoners, I've yet to see Annie be "god".. The tear has been pretty common to see and so is abyssal.

What really bothers me is how badly Cass seems to be fairing in every match-up. Oh and the AP assassins are scary.. Just absolutely scary. That and tank Viegar (I didn't think that was going to be a thing.. It's a thing)

I thought the goal was "diversity" it looks like every mage is building nearly identically.

HammerpriestApr 21, 20161 votes

It might have been that the time I was playing with the new items on the PBE was during URF so that could be it, but yeah. All mage builds carry Tear now, AP assassin's like Fizz are extra murdering people because of the new powerful actives, Cassiopeia is pretty bad, and Veigar is getting stupid amounts of free AP now. Besides that though, there's a lot more mages being played in general, but I attribute that more to the PBE being the PBE and people trying new toys. Overall, I'm confident that this update can be salvaged with some numbers tweaks and removing the protobelt, but I think it's mostly that certain mage items are just under/overtuned atm. I'd say let's see if they adjust and then come back then.

TheWeatherWaxApr 21, 20162 votes

Lol... I watch the skinspotlights live with PBE testing to get an idea of what is coming to live on a regular basis. They've been live-streaming PBE all day. I saw that the tear was probably the most bought item (and then upgraded all the way up) followed by Abyssal, I'm really really not loving the "weird see through blood red skirt" from Athenes (which covered all of Heimerdinger's face)..

Cass is really not doing well and I was a bit worried about that, I've yet to see her have a positive KDA... As for Veigar after watching him build 1 item and build full tank then wreck people... I do NOT want to see that on live. It's like watching Tank Ekko all over again.

I don't like the idea that there is very little diversity in item builds though because it sort of goes against what Riot was claiming they were after. Also, I've seen quite a LOT of Hextech proto-belts on pretty much every AP champ so far.. (I'm hoping this doesn't become a thing but I suspect it might be).. I was dreading seeing it on Ez and 2 games of watching him build it.. I'm pretty sure it's going to get nerfed. If not as soon as it hits live it will be.

GigglesOApr 20, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=J Eevo,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bTZzETMa,comment-id=000a0000,timestamp=2016-04-20T11:20:37.670+0000)

I gotta ask, on whom exactly?

Feels great on veigar, malz, swain, annie, lux, I haven't tried it with everyone, but I really like the roa tear combo.

J EevoApr 21, 20161 votes

Doesn't that take, ehem 'ages' to have the full effect, especialy when compared to the immediate power of ADs?

Meep ManApr 20, 20164 votes

You would think so, but I actually ran OOM not all that much unless I kind of deserved to by using spells immediately once off cool down during the early stage of the game. Getting a Tear and then a Seraph's basically removes any mana problems unless you plan on playing Ziggs and spamming Q into the fog of war.

Chaotic ReksApr 20, 20164 votes

new mage build: item 1056 item 3020

TheWeatherWaxApr 20, 20163 votes

Unless you're Cass (she no longer gets boots)

Chaotic ReksApr 20, 20162 votes

new cass build: item 3151 item 1056

LlaniteApr 20, 20163 votes

The item rework is meant for mid-ranged mages Annie Teemo Fiddlesticks Swain Galio Malzahar , not the long-ranged.

Long-ranged mages will never escape the mana curse, as they take zero risk in combat. Without mana, they will poke forever and teamfight cannot start. Riot learned their lesson from S3.

TheWeatherWaxApr 20, 20161 votes

Honestly, after watching PBE with the mid-range mages it didn't seem like the items really helped them much in the long run either. To be fair, most of the PBE live has been Hexakill so it's difficult to fully get a good grasp on the strength of the items (that map is just really snowbally).

The itemizations seemed more aimed at AP tanks, AP Assassins and Utility mages (though the utility mages didn't do nearly as well on the Hexakill map, neither did Cass).

Watching the games with Cass, thus far I'm rather nervous because she doesn't seem to be doing well at all. I'm hoping this changes with further testing.

LlaniteApr 20, 20161 votes

Annie Hextech belt then Tibber Fidd R then hextech belt Galio Hextech belt then R And Teemo Hextech everytime you manage to catch him.

Possibility is endless.

Assassins will not buy any of the new items, they are already highly mobile.

TheWeatherWaxApr 20, 20161 votes

I'm watching PBE the silence hasn't really helped with Annie Tibbers, flash is still being used more often. Also the rockets give fair warning that Annie is going to be in range and without the flash initiate it's dodgeable. I do like the new mechanic on Tibbers though which is nice. There's also a new bar that warns everyone when the stun is up (it's very visible)

Fiddle hasn't done well with the items as of yet, thus far he's been in negative KDA as has Cass

I've already seen Kassadin use the Hextech and I saw Leblanc as well. Assassins are buying the items (and so is Ezreal, 2 games thus far). It's not about "high mobility" it's about not having to use their mana on abilities and using actives instead. I'm pretty sure more will happen to pick it up as the day progresses. I've been watching PBE most of the day.

Also, tank Viegar is a thing.

LlaniteApr 20, 20161 votes

There is little reason to pay 2600g for 60 AP just to "not have to spend mana on ability", a 400g mana crystal would fit the bill. My fair guess is their trying new for-fun builds.

Annie only needs the belt to close the gap, then R/Q and start her combo, whether the fireballs hit is irrelevant. Also keep in mind Annie can stay at 2 stacks and REQ to stun, the indicator can't substitute for awareness.

PBE means little, most people who are there aren't theorycrafters who do maths and create builds. I would not take the observation seriously.

TheWeatherWaxApr 20, 20161 votes

It's possible, but it's happening. I'm also seeing quite a bit of the gunblade as well, (I suspect part of the reason is positioning but the other part is it shoots rockets...)

As I said before the silence and the rockets give warning that she's closing the gap, it's not nearly as helpful as you seem to think it is. The indicator has been interesting to see people play around. I am still not convinced it's "helping" very much and they added the silence to prevent Annie from insta-Tibber's. Flash is still the best way.

PBE is interesting and I am watching it because that's where the basic testing is taking place. I would disagree that "theory crafting" isn't taking place on there because quite a few people play it and test there. Watching the builds is entertaining but it is also enlightening.

Serge THE GREATApr 20, 20163 votes

Galio

PDE5 InhibApr 20, 20162 votes

The buffed some mages, like Vel (not sure why this dude was the one they wanted to change?). To compensate, they had to nerf all the AP items. Well that just leaves champs that weren't buffed fucked lol.

UrellesApr 20, 20162 votes

I think Riot is doing this to:

Put mages into a glass cannon role by nerfing HP numbers on mage items.
Giving mages hp and mana regen mechanics over raw HP and Mana pool numbers.
Nerfing the hell out of other classes that scale on AP. Alister is a prime example. 3k HP cow runs in your face and melts half of your HP pool with his 350+ AP build and still tanks well for his team. Now if Ali builds heavily into AP items he won't be tanky at all. this goes for Ekko, Fizz, Amumu and any other character who is supposed to make a distinct choice between tanking and nuking.
Characters who are supposed to tank and nuke will rely more on their own passive traits to do it, like Galio and Vlad.

That's just my speculation though.

MrLlamaWaffleApr 20, 20161 votes

Let's not forget that they are nerfing Fiddlesticks for no damn reason