Improving Orb of Winter
Some players will not know the above item, and that's understandable. It's an ARAM-only item, and even in ARAM it's not built very often. Here's the item details:
Recipe: 
+ 
+ + 990 gold
Stats: 70 MR, +100% base health regen, Mini-Malphite passive shield that blocks a small amount of damage and is regenerated every 9 seconds. Scales with level.
Intention: To help protect immobile melee champions from being poked down.
With the introduction of 
and 
to ARAM, immobile melee champs have it a lot easier than they used to. Then, Warmogs had it's passive changed to only function if you had 3000 health, effectively rendering Mogs unable to protect melee champions from poke early on. This means that this niche is still unfulfilled, since the item intended to fill it, Orb of Winter, is terrible at it's job for several reasons:
A) Look at that build path. Those beads do nothing against two or three enemy champs with decent poke, and a negatron cloak will take up a significant portion of your starting gold. And that combine cost; it's so high that you have to wait quite a while before you can afford it. All the time you're waiting for that 990 gold, your opponents are poking you down. If it's magic damage you've got the cloak to help a bit. If it's physical damage, now you're SOL.
B) Health regen, outside of the amazing amount old and new warmogs gives/gave, usually means little on the Howling Abyss. ARAM is characterized by it's almost constant action, and there's very little time to run away and regen a bit unless you're 
, 
, or a 
that focuses on regen items.
C) There's a reason most MR items give health as well, as both stats are very important to foiling burst. Orb gives no health, so it's not nearly as effective at stopping magic damage as it's friends 
and 
. This applies to poke a bit, but it's mostly to point out that Orb isn't any better in a teamfight than a poking match. It's sucks at all points in the game.
What can be done? There are several options:
-
Make it a starting item. Get rid of the MR and health regen, reduce the item cost, and make the item's passive stronger. This will allow players to start with one, have it do one thing and one thing well, and then be able sell it off later when poke becomes less of a threat.
-
Make the Orb build out of a
, and change to Orb's stats to have less MR, a boost to health, and replace the +100% health regen for a stronger version of the Cowl's unique passive. This will give the item a smoother build path, make the health regen mean something but only trigger when injured, and balances the stats to be a reasonable alternative to Visage and Veil. -
Remove the item completely, and give it's mini-Malph passive to another item.
is an ARAM item that could use a touch up, so why not kill two birds with one stone and combine both items into one, while making that item effective?
