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Athene's Unholy Grail is too good.

Morzas·2/28/2014, 1:12:52 AM·1 votes·633 views

I've noticed something recently: Athene's Unholy Grail is built a lot on mid laners. It was originally designed to be an item that upgraded from Chalice of Harmony and thus made that item worth buying. It succeeded at that, but now it's gotten out of hand. The infinite spell spam it enables and the MR on it enables a safe, boring playing style in mid lane. As it is now, you basically have to play a champion that uses this item (Gragas, Ziggs, Orianna, Lulu and now even some LeBlancs are building it) or a champion that preys upon champions that use this item (AD assassins) or you will suffer severely.

I don't think mid lane should be this way. Instead of just Grail mids and anti-Grail mids, we should have Grail mids, Rod mids (we're seeing a bit of this with the resurgence of Karthus), DFG mids, Deathcap mids, Brutalizer mids -- you know, a variety that all have their different strengths and weaknesses. Not just "dudes who spam spells from a safe distance and can't be bursted because of Grail's MR" and "AD champs who counter them". That gets old really quick.

Going into this a bit further, I think the big problem with Grail is similar to the Trinity Force problem: both Triforce and Grail are a cost-efficient item that give out a pile of stats. Champions that can abuse it best just rise to the top because of how efficient they are. Remember when Trinity Force was buffed at the end of S3 and all the Triforce users just came out of nowhere and became God for a short time? That's what's happening now. Now, you might say, "they nerfed Ori a while back and they just nerfed Gragas and Ziggs, so everything is fine". I don't think that's the case. If Gragas and Ziggs were cancer, then Grail is HIV. Mark my words: other Grail mids like Anivia and Swain will just take their place until the item gets nerfed.

There are several different ways Riot could go about solving this problem:

1: Increase the cost on Grail. This would make it harder for Grail users to get it, so that non-Grail users have a window of time in which they can kill them before they turn into the infinitely safe-farming spell spammers we see right now. I don't like this solution because all it does is delay the problem.

2: Decrease the price of Needlessly Large Rod and (maybe) lower its AP. This is similar to the B.F. Sword change we saw a while back. This would give burst mages an earlier window of time to kill the Grail users. I like this change, but lowering the AP on NLR might just result in a scenario where burst mages get their NLR earlier, but still can't kill people because of the lowered AP! So maybe just lower the price of the item.

3: Give Grail the Olaf Treatment. Lower all of its stats. -10% CDR, 5 less MR, 10 less AP -- **** this item. Leave the unique passive because that's what makes the item cool, but nerf everything else. I personally like this solution, but it's a bit vindictive.

1 Comments

hawkbandit2/28/2014, 5:08:36 AM3 votes

I think the problem is there is way too big of a range of characters that are heavily dependent on mana and those that aren't. You've got mages that have spells that cost less than 50 mana and then those with abilities at 100 or more. I used to play Anivia a lot but then it just got to the point where i couldn't play her without clarity because her mana costs were too high. The tear was a good item but again in Anivia's case, her spells have such a high cost and cd that you can't just throw them out to build stacks because you may need them. Once the grail came out she could at least compete with champs that have a lot of ranged harass like Ziggs and Gragas, but then those champs also got a lot better because of it. I really hate the idea of champions being heavily dependent on a specific item and i think the only reason it got the way it is is because of all the old champs that rely on mana a lot more than the newer ones.