Spell Vamp Is In the Wrong Place
With the advent of 
and reworks on champs like 
and 
, it's pretty clear Riot wants to take many mages into sustained DPS.
But with that being said, the over abundance of Armor-reducing abilities relative to MR-reducing ones, recent reductions in armor, buffs to MR and other factors are getting in the way. One of which is the weakness of spell vamp. Since mages lack sustain by-and-large, it forces Riot to dial their numbers up way too high so that they can get their damage in.
It would be nice to attack the myriad inferiorities of spell vamp relative to lifesteal. These could be:
-
Lower the reductions for AoE and DoT. Single-target dps mages barely exist. Considering
is a thing, mages should be allowed to play the burst sustain game too -
Consider making spellvamp return mana. A big problem with Vamp is that it only exists on terrible items. A caster can sacrifice one slot to a weak AP item, but not two. And sustained DPS mages need to have man regen and CDR. But CDR only exists in high quantities on the two mana regen items and...see the cycle?
-
More item choices. We have two spell vamp items, only about 3 champs that can utilize either of them and it's been like that for about 3 years.
-
Bring lifesteal into line. I've always thought nerfing lifesteal item % was a mistake that missed the real issue. Spellvamp is only abilities. Lifesteal is all physical damage. While this option is extreme, it fixes loads of underlying problems like top lane viability being dictated by the whether or not manaless champs are strong on this patch. This includes their ability to just get
and now their opponent can't get enough mana to ever compete with them in lane.
Any of these would be a start.
