Mana and Mana Regen Rework
There have been a laundry list of things wrong with mana currently and previously. For a long time, mages could buy items that made their mana a non-issue late game, then we had the old 
that basically negated mana problems once you got past laning phase, then we have 
that ironically is a must have and more valuable in lane phase than any of its upgraded counterparts. And now more recently, the changes to the support items with the gold income items losing mana regen, and basically crippling all enchanters and screwing over tanky supports like Taric and Braum. We can finagle with mana numbers, rework and nerf items, but at the end of the day mana is still unsolved.
The main issues I see with mana is as follows:
- During teamfight there are many situations where you will never run out and as a result, no management required.
- Certain runes like presence of mind basically remove any mana or resource management entirely.
- Against resourceless or energy-based champions, you quickly run out of mana early and wind up losing lane presence in the process.
- "Fixes" for mana items can wind up screwing over certain supports that have very expensive abilities.
The solution I propose is meant to make mana management a big deal again but also provide the flexibility to restore mana in laning phases when it is needed most to compete in lane. In the end mana-based champions will have larger pools and more management, but support-based champions that cast frequently will instead utilize rapid mana regeneration as opposed to large mana pool; to this end, items that boost mana regeneration will have less raw power in them, and flat mana items will provide more, to drive the changes forward. These changes are intended for ALL mana users, not just Mages or Tanks, but Assassins, ADCs, Fighters, Bruisers, Juggernauts, and Supports.
The proposed change is simple: **Mana no longer passively regenerates at all times, instead it is disabled while in combat or using abilities. Mana Regeneration will occur only after leaving combat and ceasing to use abilities. ** The rate of regeneration is significantly faster than what you're familiar with; such that using base stats, you can fully restore your mana after only about 30 seconds of waiting (junglers would still recover mana while jungling as like suppports they need it to work). Getting bonus mana will be important based on how resource intensive your champion is; someone like 
would build a lot of mana items whereas someone like 
would build almost none. In this way management will be a thing for all mana-based champions and buying mana won't be foregone conclusion (Ryze might need to be reworked :P). For supports now, Rather than building mana (as mana takes longer to regenerate if you have lots of bonus mana) to recover, they instead will build items that boost the speed of their mana regeneration, so they fully recover their mana in less than 15 seconds in later stages. This push for mana recovery for supports is because they tend to be more spammy than other champions because they have to peel and defend their carry in lane and that gets very expensive resource-wise after awhile. Late game, a support will have such potent regen that they can be ready for back-to-back teamfights.
To reiterate:
- Mana heavy items would provide more power
- regeneration based items for supports would less power as supports need resources more.
Thoughts? Comments?
