User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Fixing Mana/@comment-5588011-20151211174029/@comment-1330314-20151212214115

The problem, imo, with emphasizing the purchase of mana to delay power spikes is that mana and regen as a stat both inherently fall off come late-game, where mana gates are naturally at their weakest. One of the reasons the old never took off was because it offered its mana restoration far too late, and the only reason casters dip into mana or regen now is usually because it's tied to other necessary stats (e.g. cooldown reduction for mages) or because their stats are forced down so much that they need it to function early on. Adding new items in the live system could potentially make purchasing mana feel less bad, but wouldn't fix the issues with current itemization, nor would they make mana an interesting stat in itself (items like Muramana and Seraph's Embrace use mana scalings, but could function without mana).

As for supports, I agree that removing mana itemization and preserving their current costs would be a nerf, since they're deliberately balanced around sky-high mana regen values, but I think that would be an opportunity to buff their spell usage to a degree that would allow them sufficient casting freedom, though perhaps not to a degree that they become pseudo-manaless. I also disagree that giving caster supports more AP would homogenize them, as their utility ratios are designed to shunt the personal power they purchase into team bonuses. Perhaps there is more room for AP-less caster support items, though I think they would inevitably have to make supports feel powerful in some way, instead of just turning them into bonus inventory space for their allies. I don't really see why caster supports need to be discouraged from building AP, and I think the current focus on mana regen in its stead is one of the reasons why many supports don't feel like their items are that amazing or slot-efficient.

In general, I think the concept of "mana issues" only stems from the current state of mana, which forces certain champions to have overly strict gating simply because those issues would be solved with one or more mana items. We don't talk about "energy issues" or "fury issues", because those champions have their resource generation balanced completely around their kits, without the need to dip into itemization to "solve" their gating, and I think the same should apply to mana champions with the removal of mana itemization. You're right that mana needs to be fleshed out to differ more from energy or other resource systems, but I don't think that's achievable in the current system, which allows you to approach energy generation via mana regen.