Talk:Athene's Unholy Grail/@comment-12727893-20140731134751/@comment-5955640-20140827173412

Spamming spells is only effective in a battle of attrition where the enemy is squishy enough to get peltered by hits and actually take real damage. Which Athene doesn't give you alot of. When people get this item for sustain they don't have real damage and the enemy can take them at any time.

If you get it for late or mid game it's good but if you rush it then you have a rather weak early game espescially against opponents who are building Magic pen and pure damage.

CDR is on a ton of stuff these days so that's not a real thing in it's favor. Everybody can have 40 or 20 CDR if they really wanted too these days.

It was a joke in URF but there was a nugget of truth in it. Riot likes players to feel good and make plays. They want matches to be exciting and they don't want them to last very long.

But even then if you go visit Dota a bit and look at some of the items. Dota being the game that likes to make things difficult and challenging and create giant cripples to balance spectactular strengths you see items with 150% to 200% mana Regen. The percentage of mana you are missing gets you mana back but in dota you can buy static high percentage regen already! And those items are good even if you don't take that into account. They even have an 150% mana regen item for AD champs.

That's just overlooking the fine amount of instant regen items (they have clarity in a pair of boots with a 55 second cooldown.) so I dunno. Dota is the much harder game and even they cut mana users some slack.

You need to understand that it's what a caster does. AD champs are allowed to auto attack limitlessly. How do you combat that as a mage who doesn't build AD damage? Without Athene or CDR some champs just wouldn't be playable and that's just how this game is.

It's only a handicap for early to mid game. If you still have a sustain and CDR only build by late then it's over unless you happen to be support.