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The Status of AP Mages / AP Champs in General

o Majesty o·1/17/2015, 8:22:21 AM·14 votes·1,538 views

Ok so i'm a mid / support main.. and i only like to play range mana dependent mage / assassin champs.. and i've noticed that on the patch notes lately there is always some type of nerf to AP.. either mana regen or price increase of an AP item stuff like that.. and now on the PBE.. DFG has been removed so i was thinking.. Mana Regen has been nerfed so hard that it already hurts to play champs that uses Mana coz your almost always OOM.. no matter how much you try to manage it your gonna be OOM at some point, sadly even with Blue Buff i encounter moments where im just out of mana and have to wait for a few seconds to get it back.. and now that DFG is being removed i just think that it may cause AP champs in general to be avoided by most players due to the fact that if you choose an AP champ its gonna be like putting yourself at a disadvantage and assuring that you'll lose the game.. it will also sort of push people to just play Champs who dont use mana and / or non AP champs like zed, yasuo, akali for mid.. we may also see more riven, lee, j4 or unorthodox picks for mid.. and this is coz people would think or say that why would they put themselves at a disadvantage and give themselves a hard time to win a game when they can just play champs that dont use mana / AP and give em a better chance at winning a game right? Lately whenever i play as an AP champ that uses mana.. despite having 1 or 2 of these items [morello's / athenes / arch angel staff / rod of ages] completed.. i still end up dropping so many kills just coz of the fact i ran out of mana, another situation would be that during teamfights i feel helpless coz after i spam a few spells i run out of mana and i end up standing there like an idiot trying to out damage an ADC with my "Over Powered" sarcasm auto attacks and wait for the enemy to kill me coz there is no use running since they'll just catch up to me anyways because i got no more mana to save myself from death.. also i've had situations where i could've killed my enemy and made a turn around play from a 1 v 1 that didnt go in my favor but the turn around play never did happen just coz i ran out of mana.. this scenarios happen not only at summoners rift but also at ARAM where all you do is teamfight every 10 seconds.. its soo frustrating to just stand there and auto attack as if I'm an ADC but the only difference is i'm actually an APC.. isnt it that the whole point of playing AP Mages / assassins / AP Champs in general is to use your abilities? but if you got no mana to do so then what good are you as an APC? what good are you as an APC and a member of your team if all your gonna do is end up auto attacking after you've used up all your mana? what good are you if you can no longer clear minion waves to potentially save your tower from going down? especially since the game is focusing more into a push out lanes then siege gameplay.. the game used to be fun for me and raise my adrenalin a bit coz i didnt have to worry much about mana whenever i want to make plays or when i was the reason why our inhib turret / inhib / nexus is still up or safe coz i was able to defend it and my team is able to rely on me to keep on defending it so that we can potentially turn the game around and win a seemingly lost game.. but lately whenever the enemy team groups up to siege i dont even bother defending the turret / inhib cause i dnt know if maybe a teamfight breaks out after the enemy succeeds in taking out our turret / inhib and if i waste all my mana trying to defend a turret thats gonna go down anyways then i'd also be useless during the teamfight coz i can no longer do anything except auto attack as an APC.. this mana regen nerfs also makes me get into arguements with my jungler alot lately coz before i never really ask for blue once i complete my mana regen item as im able to manage mana pretty well.. but now i'd ask for blue buff almost everytime its up since i need it badly to be of any use to the team but most of em just dont understand wont give it up.. coz after all it is their jungle hence its their buff.. and here i am an APC with morello's and 2 dorans ring and yet i still run out of mana..

12 Comments

Ch0c0lateJesus1/17/2015, 8:27:32 AM18 votes

Holy brick of text batman!

Read as much as I could without having a seizure, and I generally agree that the nerfs to mana regen have gone too far. Its the main reason we see so many assassin bans now. Mages just dont have enough mana these days to trade, they can be mana starved even by assassins like Zed who have pushing power and no resource cost.

Halman1/17/2015, 2:00:13 PM10 votes

Mana dependant champions get no benefit for being mana dependant as compared to non-mana champs. What drawback does Yasuo have compared to Talon? In fact his entire skillset is far more powerful. Two CC, a ridiculously powerful utility effect, unlimited mobility dashes. What does Talon have, a very limited stealth (a mechanic that should not exist in a competitive arena game altogether) and extremely limited harassment potential (not like his W range is really larger than Yasuo Q). What benefits do most mages have compared to some energy champ like Kennen? Energy management is a sad joke of Riot, it's nonexistent and takes no skill or anything. Zed can farm from like his fountain 24/7 despite being behind, losing his lane or whatever. Where is the trade-off for constant ability spam due to energy? Nonexistent.

Riot do not consider resource costs in any relevance to the ability effects. Do manaless assasins or bruisers like Riven even get longer cooldowns? Lol nope, she can spam away all day long. Why not reduce all mage cooldowns to 1-2 second and gate spells by mana, then? If they want a depletable resource to bear any meaning, they should give us the option to rapidly deplete it for burst potential, since resourceless champions will inevitably win in the long run once your mana inevitably depletes.

However, once you as much as tune down the numbers by 5% rivers of tears will ensue, as nobody has any mind to how mobility and resourceless creep is destroying the game, but everyone's little ego is butthurt when their elo train op easy champions get as much as looked upon.

Also a situation when you can outlast any mage's mana by just buying a bottle and stacking up on HP regen is ridiculous. Riot justify nerfs and design flaws by their vision of a fast-paced, dynamic game (the same excuse they make to justify mobility creeps and BIG PLAYS). Where is the dynamic of being able to shrug off any degree of harassment you take in lane? If you want to play a kassadin, do everybody a favor and get dominated in lane. That's a meaningful trade-off for being a late game hypercarry.

Do you remember that Yasuo early game was supposed to be kassadin level weak? Yeah, not only is he inherenrly way more powerful in lane, but the nerfs to all mana champions and mana regen intemization make him even more powerful just by virtue of being resourceless. Butterly effect in action - but then again, I'm hardly convinced that predicting this result was all that difficult for Riot design and development team. They just didn't care, because, well, BIG PLAYS.

Abyssphere1/17/2015, 3:53:27 PM3 votes

It really sucks. People are complaining about mages going top lane against their melee bruisers and it's understandable but where are mages supposed to go exactly? It's either support or top; they can't compete with the resourceless assassins of mid lane.

People call ranged champs in this game cancer but if there's one cancerous thing in it, it's resourceless champs.

DrCyanide1/17/2015, 2:06:34 PM3 votes

I was about to say I was making it OK, not great but OK...

... Then I remembered that I have all mana regen seals on my AP pages. I basically have to choose between dying to AD champions faster or having the mana to fight back some.

Stars Shaper1/17/2015, 2:05:54 PM1 votes

AP champions need a reliable anti-tanky item because Liadryn's isn't doing its job and mages expecially can't do nothing against any1 who builds HP

Adolf Ghostler1/17/2015, 6:59:01 PM1 votes

I have never had a problem with mana management. But to be fair I build a mana item and don't rely solely on regen. RoA+Morrelo's

No Name 571/17/2015, 10:58:20 PM1 votes

I'm waiting on getting mana regen runes and checking how much more effective they are with the 100% to regen off morellos before coming to a conclusion.

junglerboy161/17/2015, 11:30:17 PM1 votes

They are nerfing mana regen and removing DFG so that they can better balance ALL of the mages in the game. It looks really ugly now, and it probably will for a while, but the end goal is to make all the mages that were previously nerfed into un-viability healthy again by removing the items that made them toxic and then appropriately buffing them on an individual champ-to-champ basis. Nerfing mana regen means that they can buff up the regen of mages that are too weak without it, while curbing the power of those that were too strong. Removing DFG means that a champion that would take advantage of it to be impossible to counter because of its burst enhancement can now be balanced individually without having to keep in mind that they could get DFG, and therefore must be balanced as if they will always get DFG.

Really, these changes are for the best in the long run, they just need time to come to completion. It is going to be ugly, and it isn't going to be uber fun for most mages, but it is necessary and once completed these changes will make AP champion diversity improve, as well as the flexibility of their build paths.

Ideally, they will then move on from working on mages and focus on Assassins, doing similar things to improve the general viability of some while toning back those that are oppressive. Then move on to fighters (hopefully they will eventually finish "The Fighter Project" too), then tanks, then ADCs, then probably go back and retune mages again, so on and so forth.

And that is the story of how The Circle of Game Balance works.

FantasySniper1/18/2015, 9:59:56 AM1 votes

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