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Not particularly happy with mana itemization in the game

Linna Excel·4/22/2014, 5:40:07 AM·1 votes·154 views

I've been thinking about it for awhile, and while I saw the issues URF had first hand when it comes to balance, part of me still thinks that for SR games, there's a little room to grow for mana items. Since not everyone on the team can get blue buff, or it can be stolen, I'm not going to assume you have the buff.

So where do you all think that mana options can be improved or where we can get more meaningful choices?

Non mages - Only a few options here, so I'm clumping them together as a group.

item 3042 - a large battery, but that's about it. Not much AD for the item slot makes it hard to justify. Urgot has the highest base of a non-mage, non-support but no one plays him. After him you are looking at EZ. So the most you'll be getting from this item is ~60 AD. Not bad but you get no other stats beside mana. That's a lot you are giving up.

item 3078 - marginal mana boost, not why you are getting it.

item 3110 - for tanks only, or you are laning against an AD mid and something seriously went wrong.

Mages - A little better but...

item 3040 - not everyone can stack it well so even with the last boost, it's hard to justify. Plus you can't make the archangels or else you lose the passive mana gain. Thus you can't rush it either.

item 3027 - only a few AP champs can justify this. The ones that can generally need a crapton of mana and can't live without it.

item 3100 - not a lot of mana by itself, better for damage and mobility

item 3025 - I never get this, I can't say. A lot of champs who need AP would be hard pressed to justify this even though it gives a lot of mana and a little CDR. Can't buy it if you'd rather get lichbane so it's more for AP tanks I think. It's probably the best mana item in general for an AP mid, some champs are really strong with it and pretty much depend on this item so I'm wondering if it'll get nerfed or not at some point in the future. I'd almost like to say riot would split this up into two items or shift the CDR over to mikeals to make for more itemization decisions, but I doubt that will happen.

item 3222 - cheap but it is for mana hungry supports only pretty much. It probably needs a HP/5 buff.

item 3174 - I really don't know what to say about this. It gives you a little of everything but besides the passive effect, it's not really great at anything for core stats. The passive... it justifies this in an item slot, supports can go mikeals, but others can't.

item 3165 - more AP than athene's and the GW has a use, but the lack of mana regen and MR kind of make this item pale in comparison.

Personal opinion I think the items that give AP and MP/5 seem to be lacking. AA is a good battery and has pretty good AP, but once you run dry you are out of luck. Athene's lacks AP. Morellonomic lacks both; it doesn't have AA's battery or AP and it doesen't have Athene's recharge. WotA doesn't give mana anymore either.

At least mid champs that need batteries only have 2 good options: RoA and AA.

3 Comments

ShadowNinetails4/22/2014, 8:35:58 AM1 votes

While I do often wish for better mana itemization from a player point of view, I think that from a designer point of view it's an untenable prospect to have mana items with heavy AD that would be targeted at champs like Graves KogMaw Lucian without considering what would happen if they were picked up instead by Olaf Irelia Jax . Mana is generally the only thing that holds champs like these back once they get rolling and that kind of leash is very necessary.

On the surface, it seems skills like Noxian Guillotine make it extremely simple for Darius to get PentaDunks all day, but when you look at the mana cost vs. his mana pool, you realize that if a Darius actually does get to use his ult 5 times in a teamfight, it's probably because the team around him did pretty much all of the work because either a) he didn't use his skills at all or b) he bought something like item 3110 or item 3025 which aren't usually in his build path (his armor items of choice being item 3068 or item 3143 ) and therefore had to give up a decent chunk of HP. This presents a very clear choice: Do I perform my role in the best way possible by being really beefy with a side of damage or do I risk getting blown up by that Leblanc for the opportunity to make a youtube-worthy play? Bring in a item 3027 style item with AD instead and this choice falls away and Darius along with several other champs would have to have their base mana and mp/5 values nerfed to compensate which would make them highly dependent on the item.

If mana itemization got marginally better for any one class of champions, I fear it would trigger a huge rise in your standard lane bullies in that class who no longer have the constraints that allowed for counterplay followed by a long series of nerfs to those champions. So while it sucks to not be able to use all your spells all the time URF-style, it sucks more when you have to dodge spells all the time and have little to no reward for successfully avoiding them, so it's a necessary evil.