The Fundamental Design Flaw With Essence Reaver

(Apart from the fact that it's not slot efficient enough to be a damage item on Marksmen, of course.)

For a while now, Riot has been trying to clean up cases where stats appear out of nowhere on completed items. In fact, they introduced new items -- Forbidden Idol and Aether Wisp -- precisely to clean up some of the bigger offenders in that department. IMO, that initiative has been pretty successful in opening up early/mid-game builds for Mages and allowing them to build more flexibly.

And then Essence Reaver comes along, builds out of a Vamp Scepter and Pickaxe, then gains Cooldown Reduction and a Mana Regen passive out of flipping nowhere. This decision is especially odd considering that an item with Mana Regen + CDR exists in the game already.

The problem isn't strictly a philosophical one, either. The obviously goal of Essence Reaver is to be an item that "Caster Marksmen" (or bruisers) can pick up during lane phase to gain an edge over their opponent by casting tons of spells rather than dealing raw damage. But it doesn't live up to this goal, because 2 Doran's Blades + BFSword can be picked up by your opponent before you finish the item, giving them an early lane advantage and a more direct build path to the late game items they really want to be building.

IMO, the item should really be more like this.

• Recipe: Vampiric Specter + Forbidden Idol + Long Sword + Gold
• Stats: 50 AD, 10% Life Steal, 8 Mana Regen, 10% Cooldown Reduction
• Passive: Basic attacks restore 1% to 6% of damage dealt as Mana

The completed item would of course be more expensive, but I think that's a fair tradeoff for a build path that front-loads the Mana Regen and CDR a bit more. (As a side note, it seems to me that Forbidden Idol's Mana Regen is possibly overtuned. I was sorely tempted to cut it back to 5 Mana Regen on the completed Essence Reaver, but it feels too weird for a completed item to have fewer stats than one of its components.)