Gear Ancient Coin more towards traditional Enchanter supports

Currently, is the (virtually unused) "passive" gold gen item - generally, only champions like Soraka and Janna take it, since the gold gen mechanic is extremely passive and non-interactive. That definitely isn't a good thing, and it contributes to how few champions pick it up. I'm glad that Riot is changing it to be more interactive and require the supports who take it to be more proactive in earning their gold. However, the new Thresh-esque passive it's getting seems a bit odd as well, considering the types of champions who normally purchase .

If Riot intends to change the intended users of , that's fine. Maybe they don't want Enchanters like Soraka and Janna to take it, and instead intend it for other types of champions. However, if that is not the goal of these changes, there are probably better changes that could be made. One possibility is to do something similar to the Murksphere line of items in Black Market Brawlers. Murksphere had an active that placed a shield on an ally - if that shield blocked damage, the support earned gold (1 gold for every 4 damage absorbed).

Now, we don't need to bring Murksphere into the game, and we don't need to turn into Murksphere. But, the gold gen mechanic on the item seems like it has potential. Instead of giving a knock-off of Thresh's passive, why not give it something similar? The passive could be: "Shielding an ally from damage or healing them after taking damage from champions grants you X gold." This could be based on how much damage you negated or healed, or could be a flat amount of gold with an internal cooldown (like ).

This would end up cementing as an Enchanter item, since champions without ally shields and heals couldn't use it, but it would give the more passive playstyle champions a good item for them which still encourages them to be proactive about earning their income. Many of the supports who use currently don't want to be up in the front near the minions, and they would have a difficult time utilizing 's poke-based gold gen mechanic.

Either way, though, pretty much anything is better than it's current mechanic.