User blog comment:Prolomac/Gaia, the Archon of Mana/@comment-4080931-20120125035454

This character is too powerful with Golem buff. The passive is rather confusing. A problem with this character is that her skillset doesn't really make sense. The skillset doesn't really synergize with itself. You have a spell that fits a long ranged mage, a spell that fits a support, and two spells that fit a tanky DPS. They also can't really be used in tandem with each other (eg. LeBlanc, Annie, Viktor), but that's a present aspect of many champions available, so I can't really complain about that. I know you're trying to make a champion that fits the AP carry, support and tank role here, but this is too much versatility.

Now her ultimate, hoo boy. It's too complicated. Doesn't sound like a valid argument, I know, but it is a major problem. You should remove the additional passive effect on it, and just keep the CC, damage reduction and mana drain per damage taken. In return, slightly decrease the mana drain per point of damage taken, and you should be fine. Gaia does a lot of things already, but having the additional passive effect on her ultimate as well is too complicated. Really want to have damage return? Make it flat damage return based on your Maximum mana or something. Having it based on Missing mana is a problem because then you'll miss out on some of that effect if you get Golem Buff. And to prevent problems with spell mechanics, make it trigger at most once every second, because some DoTs deal damage every 0.25 seconds.

So the main problems? She's too complicated, her skillset doesn't have much synergy with itself, and Golem Buff is too powerful on her. Mana Vamp is a complicated and pretty strange mechanic. Spend mana to deal damage and restore mana. Doesn't really make sense.

Q is too powerful, and is a mana drain, which will never be allowed in LoL (they're anti-fun, as Zileas says, and I agree with his reasons), and it's range is massive. W varies wildly in usefulness, even moreso than other abilities (like Drain and Meditate). It can either restore a massive amount of mana or health to an ally to the point of godliness, or be completely useless because you have no mana. Golem Buff? Well, now you have a godly mana restore/heal available for 5 seconds of channeling. Sure, it's useless within a battle, but it's too powerful outside of one. The usefulness of it varies too much, which is a big problem.

Her E's maximum duration is too high, that's my only complaint about that.