Tweaks to Mages Post-Rylais

I'm very new to League, and I finished Silver 3 in my first season, this past season. After moving around several times and trying different champions, Viktor became my main champion.

I realize how much Rylais matters to him as a champion, and I remember the nerfs Riot rolled out for his Chaos Storm, Gravity Field, and Aftershock. Given the fact that Rylais was broken, these made sense.

Even though Viktor's opening build was quite expensive with the old Rylais, a 600 gold decrease still doesn't help matters, because the new Rylais just doesn't scale well. It also fails to include the same reliability that the old Rylais had. I've been watching the viktormains subreddit for the opinions of more experienced Viktor players, and many say similar things: Viktor is not "bad" right now, but he is struggling in the reliability department since the Rylais nerfs. He effectively becomes matchup-dependent or team-dependent, a burst only champ with little of the control he once had.

_Pan this out a bit to a big discussion of other Mages. _Many of them are hurting from the Rylais nerf, and Viktor didn't even get the shortest end of the stick, not by a long shot. Mordekaiser, Vladimir, and Taliyah have all predictably fallen (even further) off the meta since the Rylais nerf.

Let's be honest with ourselves: This was a huge nerf not only to Rylais, but to almost all of its wielders in the current Summoner's Rift environment who saw changes last season. Flat Armor Pen nerfs and other changes brought tanks surging back into the meta, a problem only compounded by the fact that several broken carries and hypercarries are mandatory bans now (Ryze/Vayne/Twitch/Kha'Zix/LeBlanc) (meaning we can't afford to ban tanks, most of the time). In this environment, immobile control mages will naturally require tools to maintain relevance.

I'll phrase it simply: How does Riot plan to keep control mages who previously relied on Rylais relevant in the current meta? Mostly, mages with built-in utility (Orianna and Lux, for instance) are excelling right now, and for the patently obvious reason that they have built-in utility. Many other mages were nerfed last year to balance them against the certainly overpowered Season 6 Rylais. Now, what is stopping Riot from reverse-engineering and applying some quality-of-life changes to their kits?

I'm ready to get back into ranked, but it is often difficult to excel with my favorite class of champions - with my main.