I've thought about this for awhile. LoL has champs that drain life, and sometimes armor/magic resistance, but I've never seen one that takes mana from the enemy and either 1) absorbs it into their own pool or 2) makes it disappear altogether.
Would it be doable to bring a champion who has this ability into the League? Or better, rework an existing champ to have this unique niche? 
I don't quite want to vote, seeing the options... LoL doesn't have that right now because it is already a very tactical game trying to balance using your own mana and not running out. To clarify, those things you said about stealing stats are link very specifically: Lifesteal is technically a self heal based on the damage you deal, same with spell vamp. Armor and MR stealing is a combined buff/debuff. Mana stealing makes no real sense tbh, since dealing damage lowers health, and mana is, and should remain, independent of anything other than your champ's own usage. There are already abilities that restore mana (not stealing) like Kassadin's W and introducing something like mana stealing would be broken, and in most cases worse than something like a silence, since anyone who uses mana would become almost useless against said champion once they get low on mana. this would ultimately make mana a nearly useless resource in most situations when the mana stealer champ isn't banned, meaning that said champ will become perm pick/ban OR only non mana champs will still work in the game.
- I'm actually the opposite lol, I wreck too many Ahri's mid lane as Ziggs. They're really easy to predict. That aside, you raise valid points. But, this kinda goes back to a point of mine, that THAT scenario is fine. Not all ganks work out, and yeah, it may be a bad gank if you have only enough mana to cast 1 or 2 spells. Still, that's the point of the drainer, to pressure the opponent to play smart and defensively, otherwise they'll have to back too frequently.
Sure. You see that.
I don't. I do not have that experience. I tend to play Ahri and I tend to play her drat well. Well, I mean, before I had to quit for a few days. By then I had lost my rhythm, but I digress.
The problem with the drainer's idea is that early-game, champions don't have enough mana sustain in order to be able to continually cast to begin with. Thus you're pinching pennies on somebody that's already pinching pennies. That means that it needs to be a weak drain, so that it's actually a tactical thing and not a 20-30 second silence.
- Exactly, it *should * effect champs differently. This would and will always happen, even with champs with silences, lifestealing, piercing, snares, etc. It will effect different champs differently, you can't make a set standard for the whole game, it wouldn't work. Some champs will get wreck by the drainer, others won't. Simple logic. Except it shouldn't. Because depending on the strength of the drain, certain champions will be completely unaffected (note: my examples were picked because I'm familiar with how mana-constrained they are, not because they would tend to be against this theoretical champion).
Like Nasus. Pretty much regardless of how much mana you drain, he doesn't care because his Q (the only relevant ability in early-ish laning, I suppose besides his W to prevent fights) only costs 20. >_>"
Ashe, on the other hand, has a pretty small mana pool and can burn through it really fast. So against her, a mana drain is VERY powerful, because it locks her out of her Q or W.
- The fact that 20 mana-less champs exist doesn't make the mana drainer useless. It can still do damage, and still effect other members of the opponents team (not all 5 will be manaless). But it creates situations in which they are weakened. It creates a situation in which they actually can't utilize their niche abilities. And that feels wrong.
And I've had plenty of games with 3-4 manaless champions. The most annoying of which was Zed mid, Lucian-Janna bot, Yasuo top, and Gnar jungle. But Lucian is not very constrained by his mana, and Janna was basically made of paper anyway (so if in theory you could get to her to drain mana, which as you said this ability would probably be on a shortish ranged strike, you could have just killed her instead).
- & 5) As to these, that's the tricky part I'm thinking through. The drainer can't have too good of mobility, otherwise it would be too op, even for champions with ranged autos and abilities; it could simply close the gap too well. I think melee is the best type for a mana drainer, as this way it forces the drainer to play safely as well. It would have to have some form of ranged move that deals damage in order to compensate though. Also, it wouldn't be dumb if you lost half your mana and some health, if anything it's on you for not dodging or being in range of the drainers attacks! Also, that half mana drain would be done over time, not from within a 2 second clash. That's what I think people are missing, the draining will take time. It'll be useful, but you'll have to work for it. ... >_>" You missed my point because I abused hyperbole. My apologies.
IF THE MANA DRAIN IS LARGE, then the skill would be weak against non-mana users because the mana drain is the key part of the skill. Thus, it will not be.
THE MANA DRAIN IS LOWMEDIUM-STRENGTH, then anybodycasters can basically ignore it, because they'll still have enough mana for sufficient rotations to force your team to back / win the fight / get out all their spells before dying. So it's not effective.
1/3, limits too tiny.
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THE MANA DRAIN IS MEDIUM-STRENGTH, therefore. But as you said, it also has to be kinda close-up. But in order to use a close-up-ish attack; you have to go in. If the mana drain is only medium (possibly then-some), however, the enemies will still be able to get out all the spells that they need to before dying. Thus the mana drain has actually accomplished nothing besides making the opponent feel bad and like they can't manage their mana too well.
I can't see your first part :c stupid forum thingy. Chronological view master race, man. :3
- I'm not necessarily punishing the mana user, I just believe the mana user has it way too easy. Stacking mana items and getting blue buff are two great ways to counter a mana drainer, so it's not like it would end the world if one entered the League.
Er. Um. .." That's punishing the mana user. The mana user already has it much harder than the manaless champions. You don't need to make it even harder. >>
- Pretty much everyone and their mom's have some form of cc in this game. Stuns, roots, suppression, slows, knockbacks, pull backs, pulls, hooks, and knockups. All of these WITHOUT a silence.
Sure, but you can still perform some damaging action except during the stuns, knockabouts, and suppressions. Which are usually very short in duration (though there are some pretty-ridiculous exceptions, suppressions also require channeling from the user so I'd say that it's fine), or no longer than a second. Silences let you walk. No skills. >;
- Just because someone can't use their unique niche all the time doesn't make them pointless. A person with a snare can't hit everyone in a teamfight (usually lol), but my point is this; someone can just as easily heal that snare, or the person snared can heal themselves with the right means. Does that make that champs snare pointless? No, it doesn't, it just means you have to find other means of securing that snare.
Um. Bad example. Because once the snare hits, it will have at least some effect (the root itself, plus any damage that your team can follow up with due to that snare), or force QSS/Mik's/Cleanse. But if you miss it, you just missed.
Mana drain only affects champions with mana. The reason you picked the mana-drain champion is so that you'd pressure your opponent's mana directly. But what's the point of picking them if the enemy team just rotates about such that your mana-drain champion isn't laning against a mana-user? Then a large amount of the mana-drainer's powers are completely nullified (large in the sense that 'the reason I used this champion' has been rendered mostly moot).
- That's exactly the point. There's going to be varying degrees of mana drainage, as there is such a wide number of different levels of mana. The mana drainer will be more effective against some people, only moderately against others, and even useless with some. Even then, the mana drainer would actually never really BE useless, just their mana draining niche. They would still DO damage and what not, just not siphon mana from their opponents.
But if the mana drainer is useless against some people with mana, why did I pick it? Some portion of their power has been dedicated to hitting enemy mana, so the other champions that do not hit mana are going to probably have more cc / more damage output / lower cooldowns. They'll be stronger in some way because they don't have the strength of reducing enemy mana. But death is the strongest CC anyway, and it fully recovers your target's mana when it ends.
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- Mana drain doesn't really do the same thing as a silence. Silence is more deadly, as it stops more than abilities. Mana drain takes precise, repeated focus and unrelenting effort to make sure the opponent loses as much mana as possible. Even more important is that it takes time. Silence simply prohibits the mana from being used at all.
Yes it does. If your opponent doesn't have enough mana to cast, it is a silence because they can't cast.
If the mana drain takes too long to actually prohibit casting, then it may be unnoticible. Nobody will really feel it-- in which case you've wasted a slot for a niche that doesn't even fulfill that niche.
- Honestly, the game is too simple. There is not a lot of complexity to it, things are really straight forward in this game. I think adding a mana drainer would help it to become even more complex, for the better.
Agree to disagree. The game is simple on purpose and I feel that it benefits a LOT from that design principle. You want something not straight-forward? Go play Aeon of Storms or Defense of the Ancients or DotA 2.
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- You listed a perfect example of someone who would shrug off the drain (although Nasus would feel it more early game than late game) and someone who would be hurt badly by it. And that's good, it should affect different champions differently.
But Ashe is already heavily constrained by her mana. That balance lever is already set somewhere-- by introducing a mana drain mechanic, you screw with the balance of the already-constrained mana-cost champions the most. E.g. the ones that already run oom just by using their kit. They don't need some outside force lowering their mana to run out of it.
But Nasus, who already didn't feel TOO much mana pressure (you can basically use Q forever, but doing so means you'll never regain the mana you need for W/E casts), gets... into the same situation he tends to get when he overestimates his strength, blowing almost all his mana to attack and fail to get a kill. He has a stable farm pattern to return to, but it also is very beneficial for him to just sit and farm. He's very hard to push out of lane, even when his mana is basically 0 he frequently will stay to farm more.
- In regards to the Janna, you might not always be able to just "kill" her. Sometimes it can make all the difference in forcing her to B for recovery.
How do you get to a fast (double-fast, because Zephyr's passive) champion that has a great kite (run into jungle and Q) with a team that can appear from nowhere (Yasuo, following a Janna Q; the rest of the team has dashes over walls; even if this is suboptimal for Zed it's still a pretty strong attack)?
Answer: You don't.
How do you make her return to base? By getting on her. If we had gotten on her, she would have died because that is how squishy she was. We simply could not get on her at all. Hypothetically, if her mana pool was more constrained, sure, we MAY have been able to force her to base. But in order to get your hypothetical mana-drain to her... you have to get close. And that wouldn't happen to this Janna. Or any really good Janna, honestly.
- If they are able to get away. We mustn't assume that they will always have a means of escape, although in this game that's a darn good chance. That aside, even if you don't get the kill, you can still cause some of the opponents you've affected to change their plans and either not gank a lane, back earlier than wanted, or denied from farm. There's a lot of uses to taking mana that lay outside of the end goal, which is the kill.
Not exactly sure what you're responding to because no quotes
But I assume the paragraph that begins "Sure, but you can still perform some damaging action except during the stuns, knockabouts, and suppressions."
In which case you killed them. Hurray. You killed them. See above-- they'll still have had enough mana to actually get out their full rotation even after your drains, so you did exactly what any other champion would have done-- killed them-- but you also rended some mana. Whoop-de-doo, they'll get it all back when they respawn anyway.
So IF they get away, your champion is actually getting to use the fact that they have a mana rend. If the enemies DON'T get away, then the mana rend effect is pointless. Do you understand that? >_<"
- Comparing mana based champs to mana less is a wrong call in my book. You can't compare them to each other, of course the mana based champs will feel it harder. That's an advantage to the drainer, whereas it could be a disadvantage to them if they faced a mana-less champ. And honestly, at some point you will run out of mana, and as you've stated it is already a moderate challenge to manage your mana. That being said, Clarity, mana pots, regen, and blue buff are more than efficient to help balance it out.
... What the hell are you even responding to? I don't know because you didn't quote. Clarity is a summoner, you can't seriously... *sigh*
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I didn't compare manaless to mana. I'm not stupid. I said that the mana-drain champion will have less CC, less damage on their abilities-- as some of that CC and damage allotment, that 'power budget', has been given to allow the mana burn effect.
But if they go up against a manaless champion, they're granted immunity to that mana burn. And the enemy champion still is going to have less damage available to them due to that mana burn mechanic; so they'll have an easier time fighting them. Which isn't bad intrinsically...
But manaless champions already have a set of advantages that come from not using mana. Casting from health, at no cost, using Fury/Fury of the Dragonborn/Rage/Tantrum to empower themselves, using Energy which means that sustained casting is never an issue... Those are already perks of not using mana. The perks of using mana tends to be slightly more powerful abilities, or slightly lower cooldowns, to compensate for the fact that they have an easier time running out of it. They do also have the perk of being able to itemize to increase their mana sustain, but the others have built-in resource sustain to a degree, thus won't run out too quickly anyway.
- Yes, that is totally a possibility. Counter picks are a substantial part of League. If that's the case, then yeah you'll have a much harder time playing. The flipside is also true though, if YOU counter pick someone.
Yes. But this is a counterpick that can't be overcome with skill. Which is something, if I do recall correctly, that Riot said they did not want to have in the game. A game won at champion selection is no game at all.
And you are right about the snare still doing damage and that moment of CC lock. Still, I have to stress that you not overlook the damaging abilities that the mana drainer would definitely have. That and auto attacks :)
All champions have damaging abilities and autoattacks. Your argument is irrelevant because any champion should be able to contribute in that way.
- Death may be the strongest, but backing is also as strong form of CC ;) Honestly, you picked the mana drainer to take your opponents mana. You have the possibility of being counter picked, sure, but you have the same chance of counter picking someone with it. Happens all the time.
-> Elphrihaim only plays Blind Picks. So the idea of a counterpick doesn't exist to me. <3 (in that I never consider it. Okay? >> leave me alone.)
A good but kinda moot point here. Just because the enemy has a lack of mana to cast something doesn't mean it may as well be a silence. Also don't forget, Silence affects all user input from items, abilities, and spells. Much more potent than a mana only effect.
How is it, and what is, moot? I don't even know what point you're responding to.
But... I've seen plenty of people flash while silenced man. I mean, I know it's a bug, but it still happens. And you can use Cleanse, QSS, or Mikael's Crucible to get rid of a silence. And it lasts for less than 2 seconds, which a mana drain, if it actually makes you run out of mana, will last for much, much longer.
Additionally, toggles don't get disabled while silenced-- you just can't change their state. But if you have no mana for your toggle, it automatically turns off and you can't use it at all. Similarly, the Tear items, which have effects based on your current mana, get gimped as well, something that a silence wouldn't do.
And yeah, agree to disagree :) thanks for your honesty though!
:3 Mana burn is stupid because it makes the user feel kinda-okay, lukewarm at best, but the enemy can feel anywhere between "whatever" and absolutely miserable like their life is a living hell.
Since I need rest because I'm regretfully human, I'd like to stop this with "Mana burn can never be successfully implemented into League of Legends because it has been specifically stated that that shall not be done."
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Are you trying to talk about someone like dota 2's 'anti mage'?
I've thought about this for awhile. LoL has champs that drain life, and sometimes armor/magic resistance, but I've never seen one that takes mana from the enemy and either 1) absorbs it into their own pool or 2) makes it disappear altogether.
Would it be doable to bring a champion who has this ability into the League? Or better, rework an existing champ to have this unique niche?
As long as it's an over time thing, this would be fun. It would add an interesting support mechanic that we don't have yet. I think back to the mana drain in original DOTA, and I never felt it was overpowered.
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Sorry for throwing you off, I thought the reply would immediately follow yours so you could follow it easier. I'll quote ya from now on, Elphrihaim!
CHRONOLOGICAL VIEW MASTER RACE... I don't see messages as replies to other messages unless I check them in the Updates section. So it takes a long time to figure out which post is being said to which.
Reddit sucks. And this reminds me of reddit.
Also, Zileas' anti patterns.
Your phrasing was why I thought you meant that, didn't mean to suggest you were dumb. That aside, the mana drainer could or couldn't have cc, although for what I was thinking, they would probably have a knockup (via their ult). Also, their burn effect wouldn't necessarily lower their damage output. The drainer is a melee user, ad. They can do plenty of damage without landing abilities, however if they do , they drain mana as a perk. It doesn't convert to more damage, it simply drains mana, not even really a form of cc (at least in my mind, the enemy can still move and cast and what not).
I just wanted to be sure ;)
The mana drainer's abilities would deal less damage than if the abilities did not drain mana. That was my entire point.
Because if they're just as strong as everybody else's abilities and drain mana, then the idea of a counterpick (w-which is somet-something you brought up!) is muted because the champion has no portion of their power budget dedicated to the fact that they also drain mana.
Thus some part of them must be weaker than a champion that would be identical minus the mana burn.
Does that make sense? ><
I think that you are giving the mana drainer way to much power in your mind. Like any counter pick, which by the way happens all the time in drafts and ranked, it's a very real possibility. And counters aren't necessarily limited to this, for example a person has a snare, so I'll take morg so I can E that snare. Another possibility is oh, they took fizz mid, I could take a bruiser or energy champ to counter his ability to avoid skillshots, or I could take a safe zoner line Ziggs, Xerath, etc who have great kits for getting away or stopping the fizz. Counter play has a lot of possibility.
Well, no, I'd disagree... I have simulated a rift with all sorts of power on a close-range-ish, pass-through-line-skillshot with no travel time mana drain skill, ranging from Yasuo's Q to Jinx's W, with a % of damage dealt being dealt as mana. It's problematic because I can't imagine the rest of the kit (but the first few times I was thinking about it, I gave them a spellshield that reduces cooldowns and grants some AoE somehow, a line damage dash that is barely enough to clip some walls that slows and has a lowish cd, a normal-length dash into PBAOE knockup that has a silence for ult, and 'steal 50% of enemy HP&MP regen for 5 seconds when hitting with abilities' innate). With knowledge only of what one ability is, it is very difficult to think of how they play.
If it was weak, then it wouldn't really impact things later. If it ramped by skill level, then it would be good at level 9-12 but kinda weak thereafter, or WAY too good at that money range.
If it's a bug, you can't use it as an example lol. [...] In regards to mana draining lasting longer than the 2 second silence, your own statement of "they could just back and heal up" kind of defeats what you just said.
But it's a bug that has existed for five years. It STILL happens, it DID happen, and it WILL CONTINUE to happen. Even in the middle of LCS games. :3
I never once said that they could back? You were the one who brought that up?
In my experience backing is bloody stupid and forfeits map pressure for almost no reward.
Anecdote: I don't back with Ahri when I have 100 mana, I can still land a Charm or run with Spirit Rush. Since I itemize heavily for mana regen, I can just stay around and build enough mana to do both, which will only take a minute.
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Tear items wouldn't be gimped, if anything that's a means of building to counter the mana drainer. They wouldn't steal more mana from you as you get more mana, the stealing could scale as the drainer levels up throughout the match yeah but not by YOUR mana.
The upgraded tear items have effects based on your current mana
The mana drainer reduces your current mana
I rest my case
- and lastly, even if Riot feels (still no link to show me lol) that a mana draining mechanic would be op, I think that it really could work, and honestly you'd have to test it on the PBE to see just how the champ would interact with the rest of the League. Who knows, it could actually be amazing.**
Not that it's OP, that it's anti-fun for the opponent and doesn't make a lot of fun for the user. Like silences.
While that may be the case, the mana drainer isn't a champion who is a Jack of All trades. They can't do every lane, that would be broken. Yeah, technically it could go bot with Ashe, but she'd be poking the ever living hell out of it with her range and poke. That and her support (who probably has a stun) can run interference. No, the mana drainer would be limited to effectively playing Top or Mid only.
Of course not. As I said already, I only used those two (Nasus and Ashe) as examples because I'm intimate with how their mana pools work in an actual game. x3
It's not just the drainer that would have a hard time getting close, pretty much all melees have this problem. That doesn't mean she hard counters them or makes them useless, it's just harder to pull off.
Yes! All melees have that problem. I wasn't arguing about that, but rather what happens because of that-- you said that you wanted the mana drain skill itself to be somewhat short ranged. That means that the mana burner wouldn't be ABLE to get in range to actually burn Janna's mana.
And like I mentioned, the mana drainer shouldn't be bot anyways.
The anecdote was for after laning. Roaming around the map as a team. >_>'
- "Whoop-de-doo, they'll get it all back when they respawn anyway.
So IF they get away, your champion is actually getting to use the fact that they have a mana rend. If the enemies DON'T get away, then the mana rend effect is pointless. Do you understand that?"
By that same style of argument, why bother stealing life from someone if you're vlad, they can just B and restore their life, right?
Uh, I wasn't talking about backing. I was talking about a disengage, where you and the opponents clash for a moment but then back off of one another. In that situation, the mana burn is actually getting to use all the power it has, hampering sieges and making enemies go through a limited pool faster than your team does.
In that situation, Vladimir's Q would deal a bunch of damage to the target, and heal himself. I'm not sure if you want this hypothetical champion to have mana, and restore it with their mana drain skill or if it's just a mana burn or what all else.
In regards to the mana 'rend', it isn't pointless if your enemy DOESN'T get away. Your mana draining could be the reason they didn't get away and you got the kill, that's kinda the opposite of pointless. Even if you didn't get the kill, it is enough that you cause them to B, that's more time for you to farm and get exp or take their towers, and less time for them to do those things.
If your mana rend is the reason your enemy doesn't get away, then what did that do that a more standard CC couldn't? Nothing. You already said that the mana rend should be short ranged, so anybody should be able to capitalize on that proximity (you had to position somehow to get that close) with any kind of CC.
If you didn't get the kill and they're forced to back, having hit their health would have done the same job of forcing a back.
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Also, the reason I brought up Clarity was a means of countering a mana drainer. Clarity, blue buff, mana regen, mana pots are all means of countering that mana rend, as it restores all the mana drainers hard work against your mana. Clarity is ACTUALLY useful in this game, but people never take it because why bother, I can just B or get blue buff. A mana drainer would make that spell even more important in the game mechanic.**
Yes, but... *sigh*
Countering somebody via summoner spell is very annoying for both sides. Clarity, if used smartly enough, would be capable of completely negating the fact that this champion has mana burn, for the entire team. Which means that 1 summoner spell makes them weaker against the entire team, since as a champion, a portion of his strength's been allotted to having that mana burn.
Mana draining is NOT a silence, as the opponents abilities still can be used if they have the mana to cast them. Silence stops ALL use of ability, summoner spells, and items from being used, and far more frequently as those silence abilities are able to be cast numerous times a minute. That's more op than simply stealing mana from either an auto attack or an on hit ability. You can 1) Not be in auto attack range and 2) dodge the siphoning abilities. You just have to move...
Mana drain that is strong is a silence, just one that doesn't affect summoner spells. ?_? It's not that different.
And most skillshots don't get dodged, usually the shooter failed their prediction of enemy pathing.
As to your third point, you're mentality of the gameplay seems too limiting. This game is supposed to be a challenge, and as such someone stealing your mana from auto attacks on you or hitting you with abilities is YOUR fault, you need to back and and dodge.
Stealing mana on AA is dumb unless it's a fixed known value because you may know how much mana you need in order to be able to cast your things, so you go in when you have a buffer. But the mana steal actually goes over your buffer because you misrecalled how fast they can burn through mana.
And then you die because of some numbers that you couldn't have possibly known. :/
That aside, there are plenty of methods to restore mana, such as ; blue buff, mana pots, mana regen, and Clarity. There are plenty of ways to counter mana drain.
Blue buff? There's only two on the map. That's not a very good answer, seeing as they should be distributed one per team... and the jungler will be the one to get the first few, at which point the problem of the mana drain has already occured-- somebody is actually OUT of mana, or can't cast everything despite having managed their mana well.
As to your 'mark' scenario, the mana drainer would not get benefits from marks. They would have to hit the enemy with their auto attacks and abilities to steal their mana, and there is no extending the mana 'burn' to last ridiculous amounts of time. Even poisons and magic burns don't last that long or that cheaply.
It was an EXAMPLE. OF THINGS. THAT ARE STUPID.
Still, there are plenty of ways to effectively create a mana drainer in League, as there are plenty of means of 1) Dealing with one in lane, be it a mana based champion or a mana less champion, 2) Items and builds that heal or give you mana to compensate the drainage, 3) Blue buff to massively regen your mana, and 4) the summoner spell Clarity that restores 40% of your maximum mana.
ok
sure, but adcs gets screwed by that because they want to NOT itemize for anything that doesn't give a bucket of AD/AS/Crit
there are only two on the map and in an even game they will be split one per team
summoner spell counters really shouldn't hard counter somebody so well. additionally bringing clarity makes item choices suboptimal because of the regeneration that it offers.
A mana drainer could work in league.
I don't think it can.
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sounds kind of broken. Also sounds useless against vlad, aatrox, garen, riven, rengar, etc.
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That's a point of mine, as it would severly hamper the drainer's output on the enemy team. This is a small advantage to the drainer however, as that means the enemy they are facing doesn't have a heal, barrier, or ignite.
Yes. But it hardcounters the whole point of the champion. One summoner spell. Of 10 per team.
The AA mana stealing would of course be a fixed value, one that probably scales as the champ levels up to 18. Also, I don't quite understand that last part, with the whole buffer bit. Do you mean that the enemy needs to be aware of their mana to cast things or the drainer?
The former, the person against the drainer needs to be aware of the amount of excess mana they have, how much of a BUFFER that they have between "mana that I have" and "mana that I need".
- "Blue buff? There's only two on the map. That's not a very good answer, seeing as they should be distributed one per team... and the jungler will be the one to get the first few, at which point the problem of the mana drain has already occured-- somebody is actually OUT of mana, or can't cast everything despite having managed their mana well."
Even if the jungler takes the first buff, that doesn't mean that a person is already out of mana due to drainage. You can't assume the drainer is always 100% successful. Also, the enemy will have SOME form of mana regen, as most mid laners take Doran's ring from the start. Or, if you're playing Xerath, you can just AA a minion or the drainer to restore your mana.
Sure. That's ONE champion who has ridiculous mana sustain.
Except not, he has ridiculous mana COSTS, too. :\
And what about top laners? Whom have low mana sustain (usually), no access to buffs?
And usually have to be left alone, unganked in lane for a very long time? That mana burn will wear down on their supply slowly but for such a long time they may run out.
Essence Reaver gives 80 dmg.. and ls...and cdr...and restores mana on hit, why wouldn't they build this?
Because there are better items because BT gives 20% Lifesteal and a shield for overheal, ER gives 10% CDR and the mana restore for 10% LS and the overheal. And the mana restore isn't that big anyway. And most ADCs don't really need the CDR.
the timers for those aren't dramatically long. It's managable, and if someone is THAT reliant on the buff then they are wasting too much mana.
No, they aren't-- Xerath easily runs oom because of how expensive his spells are. So does Veigar. Many champions run out of mana REALLY fast, some do not-- but it is the ones that do not that get played a lot, so it creates a bias.
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