Frozen mallet meta is getting out of hand

This needs to be addressed before it gets any worse. For those who don't know what I am talking about, congratulations, you have survived the horror this last month somehow. But I am pretty sure you will witness it this year at worlds when Riot will finally understand how big of a problem this is.

I saw recently Riot's changes to the item and Yasuo's ulti. Which makes me afraid a bit, are your people actually know what's the balancing issue here? It's not about Yasuo, or Quinn or any other bruiser who builds FM, it's the item itself. Let's break it down a bit:

Currently the build cost lies at 3100 gold. That's around 200 gold more expensive than the typical tank items, not that much right? Stats wise though is where things change. It grants ad instead of a resistance (armor, mr, health regen), meaning it is meant for bruisers, like Titanic Hydra and Sterak's. First one is meant to help waveclearing, splitting and complementing an hp-based build, the second buffs that hp and grants more damage than the mallet in total. So why is the mallet a god among them? First of all, 700 health for a 3100 item is a great deal. Along with some ad. And then you have the effect that ruins the current meta, slow on auto-attack. That means, every bruiser will build this over any other tank item due to the effect it simply cancels his role's weakness, that being stickiness. You don't have to rely on your gapcloser anymore or burn a flash, the moment you aa an opponent he cannot escape.

Now you're thinking "but in teamfights that's not that strong". Is this really the problem? We're talking about a 3100 gold item, easily affordable that dominates early-mid game and mostly the laning phase. You reached late game? It's still useful. It's a total powerhouse at any point in game. And the true issue with it it's this: it gives way too many positive stuff for such a low investment. Suddenly the tank fizz, yasuo, irelia, jax can towerdive you at level 6, aa you 10 times while taking turret fire and walk away. Why would the champion care? He suddenly has 700 more hp and 40 ad. Compare any other item in game and it simply withers to stand before it and match the early-mid trade potential, nothing can. You can only probably build sunfire cape and hope it's enough to counter that. Which brings our next problem: the item is so strong that it's no longer a bruiser-defining item, it's everyone's powerhouse. Build it on an adc and you have permaslow and tankiness to win any 1v1 or 2v2. Build it on an assassin to be sticky and towerdive your opponent as he hopelessly tries to retaliate, build it on a juggernaut or bruiser and watch the champion melts everything.

There are two solutions to this. The first is the obvious one: nerf the item. Reduce health bonus to 300-400 (yes, lower than any other tank item, it already provides the most powerful tank-item effect in the game and helps any bruiser to become early-game god) OR remove the health bonus and add +armor/mr. This way the enemy can no longer rely on it to just tank any trade and will build it for stickiness only. The second option, whether you like it or not, is to reduce every health scaling on high-damage champions, since if they build the item anyway their health is not crazy high and it's still a great tool for tanks.

Seriously though I am extremely worried as to why Riot decided to buff the health and remove just a bit of ad. Zz and frozen heart have game changin effects as well, but last time I checked, they provide 0 hp to come as a fair trade. Mallet has no downsides, second best hp on an item, good enough early damage to work on an aa focused champion and permaslow as long as you can land an aa. It has always been a champion issue such as fizz and ekko having too reliable kits to justify going tank and that was stopped in a way. Yasuo though is not the problem, the item is and it's already first-buy on many champions I encounter. The other item that needs to be looked at is Phantom Dancer built on tanks, but that's another post another day perhaps. The item needs to be addressed, it's unhealthy at it's current state and that will show during Worlds. But I hope Riot can learn a few things so that we don't have to rely on tournaments proving a balancing issue before they decide to take measures.