Preseason Concerns for Items and Masteries
Below are some concerns about items and masteries for (pre-)Season 4 based on Season 3.
Tenacity: There were 4 tenacity items, and tenacity items stacked with the mastery for up to 40.25% reduced duration of crowd control effects. Tenacity was highly inaccessible. Moonfire Spellblade was the only tenacity item for AP champs, and it's not available on summoner's rift. Mercury's treads? Am I supposed to forgo the 15 magic pen from sorcerer's boots? Because that's the only remaining option for AP champs. Even for AD champs, you're not going to get Zephyr too early in the game, and that leaves just merc's treads and spirit of the elder golem as options.
Quicksilver: Another item effect to help deal with crowd control which can be very useful on champs that absolutely despise crowd control (Riven for example), but look at what the only items that have this effect build from: Negatron Cloak. If I'm an AD top-laner vs. a CC-heavy AD top-laner, what am I getting out of Negatron as a stepping stone to Mercurial Sash? Mercurial Scimitar is also a useful and it even gives attack damage, except now AP champions lose out on half of that item's value because they won't be using the AD boost. Arguably supports could benefit from this very well with the benefit from 3 Intelligence slots making the active cooldown 79.2 seconds.
Speaking of supports, Mikael's Crucible: So we have an item that can be used by supports and AP champions to have the pseudo-cleanse effect that Mercurials have, but even with the price marked down in Season 4, this thing still has a 180 second cooldown, does not build into any offensive item like mercurial scimitar, and is ultimately a defense/support item. This thing also gives mana font, which would be cool if chalice/athene's weren't already on a lot of AP builds. My suggestions would be thus: -Make a Mercurial Sash equivalent that builds from Chain Vest -Make a Quicksilver item for tanky champions that builds from Negatron + Chain Vest + Pickaxe -Make a Mercurial Sash equivalent for AP champions that combines with Needlessly Large Rod to form an AP Mercurial Scimitar equivalent -Create new tenacity items or add effects like a tenacity aura to items like Shurelya's Reverie, Locket of the Iron Solari, and add self tenacity to things like Athene's Unholy Grail, Trinity Force, Lich Bane
Jungler final items for season 4: Cool, so my Elder Lizard champs get bonus gold for doing their job ganking, same for Spectral Wraith. What's with the debuff to Elder Golem? Lopped off 150 +hp from it and it gets 40 gold max for getting the buff monsters/dragon/baron? Are they aware that the Blue Buff is awarded to the person that kills the golem, so, obviously, when mid lane needs the blue buff, the jungler can't take advantage of this conservation passive since buff is awarded to the person that kills the monster. By the time I'd have Elder Golem, I'd probably already be at the point where I'm handing buffs to laners, so this passive is pretty worthless. The only alternative for a defensive jungler item is wriggle's lantern, which still seems to be significantly less gp10 than Elder Lizard and Spectral Wraith. Back to Spectral Wraith real quick, with the 20% CDR to smite and the Expanded Mind perk, Spectral Wraith was 2.07 gp10. Spectral Wraith also had spell vamp, which is otherwise fairly hard to come by relative to lifesteal. With this update we now have a jungler that gets gold for being in lanes and ganking, but needs to be farming jungler to make use of pseudo-spellvamp? Not to mention this dropped from 20% spell vamp to 8%, but wowee it restores mana, too, oh boy. That said, I can do this to a lesser degree on any champ that has feast mastery point if I just kill wolves/wraiths/etc for quick heal up or I clear a wave of minions while a laner is gone and/or the enemy minions are in turret or something. Also, ganking can now restore 5% of missing health and mana for anyone with that mastery point.
Vampirism: Why is this still a mastery and why does it still have 3 slots? Why does it give 1% of each instead of somehow being able to choose for 2% of life steal or 2% of spell vamp at the least? Why is this still at the same level as Runic Affinity, which is significantly more useful to junglers? Why has this not simply been completely removed and replaced with something better? This mastery is kind of embarrassing. It'd be useful for junglers if it wasn't a decision between 1% lifesteal/spell vamp or 20% longer duration jungle buffs. Riot pls.
Bladed Armor: Pretty neat for dragon or baron since it's % health, but it seems rather slow for early game. I'm hoping this puts on the actual graphical bleed effect so I can laugh when the golems are bleeding. I can sort of see why the recoil damage effect was taken off vs. minions, but still, I kind of liked that. Kind of lackluster?
Banner of Command: I like the changes here, but now that we have Tribute passive and Favor passive, why can't we have those be given to the upgraded siege minion? Banner has a gp10 effect (sort of), so why not make it more effective in that aspect, since minions don't last hit?
Ohmwrecker: Okay. Most of the time my split pusher is AD, so why is the turret-killer item still a +AP item/why isn't there an AD equivalent? What will this build out of? Previously, it built out of philosopher's stone, which kind of didn't make a lot of sense. The price and effects of upgraded phil stone are gone from this thing, so I assume it's just blasting wand and ruby crystal now?
Will of the Ancients: Why this? What about Zeke's Herald? Now there's no AP equivalent to Zeke's Herald due to issues with Kage's Lucky Pick? I prefer the aura.
Legendary Guardian: Is this still stacked multiplicatively with tenacity? Really hope so.
