Does anyone else think Thornmail should just be reworked? It's only good on Rammus.

Thornmail is running into an issue similar to Will of the Ancients and old Vladimir: It's only good on Rammus (and occasionally Malphite), while it's a trap item on everybody else. Rushing it? No, Deadman's Plate, Frozen Heart, or any other armor item will do better for you. Countering lifesteal? WRONG! Lifesteal always outpaces Thornmail, especially if the enemy also has magic resistance.

Thornmail requires too many stats to actually be strong: armor, health, and MPen. Armor improves the thorns damage, health lets you live long enough to use it, and MPen is needed so that MR doesn't massively reduce the thorns damage. MPen is the problem, as tanks normally cannot allocate that stat effectively. This leads to Thornmail simply taking up space in your item slots and being largely useless in the long run.

For instance, I once had a game as jungle Malphite where I got to around 500 armor with a Thornmail, but the enemy Vayne didn't even feel that thorns damage because she had , which is the absolute bane of Thornmail's existence at this point. I was not expecting to SURVIVE the DPS, but the fact that Vayne wasn't blowing herself up was infuriating.

Only Rammus is able to use the item effectively due to his DBC, but even then it's not super-strong on him. Your enemy could just use abilities to avoid hitting the thorns if he doesn't taunt them. That and Rammus is eventually getting a VGU, so we can't count on him being a Thorns user forever.

I think it might be best if we just tear down the current Thornmail and replace it. Maybe give us an item like this:

Blademail (placeholder name) +100 armor UNIQUE PASSIVE: Enemy lifesteal is reduced to X% effectiveness against you.

The primary purpose of Thornmail is to reduce the effectiveness of lifesteal against you, but it can't even do that well because it has to be weak against opponents that don't have lifesteal (otherwise the item is OPPRESSIVE). With it instead simply reducing the effectiveness of enemy lifesteal, it's now doing its function properly, but without punishing opponents that don't have a .

Yes, this would weaken Rammus, but he's getting a VGU eventually, so perhaps they could compensate him then. IMO, Thorns really should be a Rammus-specific gimmick, not an item gimmick.