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Give Essence Reaver Mana Burn

Volt Cruelerz·4/8/2015, 7:08:19 AM·4 votes·981 views

Right now, Essence Reaver doesn't typically work the best due to its redundancy with Bloodthirster. As such, I suggest the following changes.

Essence Reaver Recipe: Vampiric Scepter (800) + Hexdrinker (1450) + Forbidden Idol (600) + 350 = 3200 Stats: +65 AD +15% CDR +30 MR UNIQUE Passive: Mana Vamp - 30% of physical damage dealt is also dealt to the target's mana. 10% of physical damage dealt is restored to the user's mana.

This would give the item a solid slot as an item for AD casters and would also help it function as an anti-mage item. In addition, it would make building hexdrinker ambiguous as it could now be turned into either Maw or Essence Reaver, depending on need. Why get this over Maw? If you are dealing with a sustained mage. Why get Maw over this? If you want to survive a burst mage.

Note 1: yes, this was inspired by Nilok's thread, but it's different enough that I figured it ought to be its own thread.

Note 2: yes, I'm aware mana burn is traditionally considered toxic in league due to lack of counterplay. Since this item focuses on being anti-mage, it does little if the attacker is AD, encouraging interdependence between players on a team. Even without team cohesion though, I imagine Lichbane and Athene's could do a pretty good job countering this version of Essence Reaper. Since this item doesn't offer a lot of direct strength, all-in-ing is the proper response should your opponent build this in lane.

16 Comments

67chrome4/8/2015, 7:53:56 AM4 votes

This would give the item a solid slot as an item for AD casters and would also help it function as an anti-mage item.

Mana burn isn't anti-mage.

Mana burn has 2 main functions:

convert the mana of a target into bonus on-hit damage.
silence a target when you don't get the bonus on-hit damage.

As you don't even convert mana to damage, the only useful aspect of mana-burn in this case is appling a 20~~40 second silence. (If an ability can't silence a champion for 20~~40 seconds because that would be broken, an item probably shouldn't.)

Which is easiest if: your target hasn't purchased any items with mana.

It's also worth noting you have to actually repeatedly smack a target to burn their mana, which is 100% pointless if you'll kill said target in 3 hits, or finish them with a single auto-attack after your QWER rotation (like, if you're an AD caster laying the smack-down on a mage).

Furthermore - mages have the most range of any archetype in the game. Lux, Xerath, Ziggs are all in that group. Even when it comes to really short ranged mages like Ryze, you still have a solid 600 on abilities (50 more than the standard 550 ranged auto range).

You won't win a poke fight vs. most mages by default. You can't whittle them down so they're silenced, because trying to play a strategy that would make mana-burn effective vs. a mage is playing to their strengths more often than not.

Now, Teemo vs. Darius .

That's a situation where mana burn is actually extremely usful, as Darius is largely set up so he builds full-tank and gets the damage he needs from abilities. He's also 100% melee range and his weakness is getting poked to death. What better way to poke him to death than reducing his damage output at the same time? :D

Note 2: yes, I'm aware mana burn is traditionally considered toxic in league due to lack of counterplay.

It's not a lack of counterplay. You can (fairly easily) deal with mana burn in a variety of ways.

Mana burn is considered bad due to being an anti-pattern. It feels useless 99% of the time and you won't really value it when it does work, but you will certainly feel it on the receiving end.

Anyways:

Mana burn isn't anti-mage. Mages are stronger vs. mana burn than pretty much any other class. Mana-burn's goal is a 20~~40 second silence. If an ability can't silence a champion for 20~~40 seconds because that would be broken, an item probably shouldn't. Mana-burn favors acting like Teemo.

There's a reason Riot got rid of mana burn.

DragoonRuin4/8/2015, 3:46:14 PM3 votes

Alot of those "anti pattern" things are out dated in current league. Kalista's hop hop hop passive is VERY anti-fun to anyone playing against her. There's just nothing at all fun about trying to hit something with that much mobility.

It is Also EXTREMELY anti-fun for Safe Assassins like Zed and LB to be able to 100-0 someone, under their turret, and get out without ever grabbing turret aggro due to how safe and escapable they are.

THOSE are things with no counterplay.

Slowly burning down someone's mana, isn't something that I would consider to be having No counterplay to. On the contrary if someone's ONLY option to get me out of lane, or out play me, is to burn down my mana, I'd just as likely All In them, and make them suffer for it, by probably killing them, or doing enough damage to force them back out of lane as well. There's plenty of counter play.

JPlayah4/8/2015, 7:16:57 AM2 votes

Mana burn is such a toxic concept. Imagine being on the receiving end of that. Suddenly you lose a bunch of mana and you can't cast the spell you wanted. There's no way to get a reasonable amount of mana back except to go back to base or pick up a blue buff, both of which would require walking away from the fight. There's absolutely no counterplay for something like this. It just screws someone over.

Light deus4/8/2015, 7:57:53 AM1 votes

No, this would hurt more then help

Venowolf4/8/2015, 8:13:00 AM1 votes

Brutalizer have more sense that the Forbidden Idol IMO.

Godhri4/8/2015, 7:12:02 AM1 votes

I prefer the mana it provides from Autos. In fact, I rarely go BT nowadays. The CDR and mana returns from Autos outweigh the meagre shield provided by BT imo.

Sightless664/8/2015, 5:45:37 PM1 votes

Mana burn isn't an anti-mage effect in this game.

You may remember that mana burn actually existed on Wit's End in the past, because Wit's End was supposed to be the big anti-mage item. It gave MR and hit mana, so it should make mages unable to fight you. It sounded great in theory. However, what actually happened was that people never, ever built it to fight mages. Mages had easy access to mana itemization, and could minimize their mana costs with one or two items. You couldn't burn enough of a mage's mana for them to care. It was other classes who really got screwed by it. It was mainly built against tanks and bruisers, and also saw some use screwing over certain supports. It was an anti-mage item that wasn't used to fight mages.

SpongebobIsLife4/8/2015, 7:13:49 AM1 votes

id remove the mana regen, but other than that it is a good idea.

Nilok4/8/2015, 7:42:08 AM1 votes

An interesting idea, though the mana drain idea sounds like it will have some problems if the target doesn't have any mana. I would recommend changing the wording on the passive so it gives you mana based on your damage and burn the mana to prevent such a problem.