User blog comment:Herzog de Puce/Baeny, the Mana Engineer/@comment-973379-20140624162041

Low base stats for melee(+70 hp/lvl? are you sure?), no CC, no mobility, almost no defensive steroid(weak shield and high CD heal).

Passive - 2 mana per unit? Ok, Veigar get around 21gold of stats(1 ap), Sion get 8(3*2.67) and this "gain" is just passive effect of already-great AD steroid, Baeny.. well, 4 gold per unit and this take away his passive slot. Other skill are weak too.

Q - 200 bonus damage at max(4000 mana), while every "on next attack skill" like this have 120-150 BASE damage, not counting scaling. Also does Q reset AA timer?

W - 80 AD is good steroid, but not the best - mediocre and boring skill. AD from mana should be passive with some different active(some form of speed boost, dash and/or CC)

E - heal with mediocre scaling(heal for 400-450 is good anough).. and horrible manacost. Even at half mana(2000) that 500 mana. Impossibly high.

R - weak shield(for ultimate ability, remember) with weak scaling(around 400-450 shield late game with full build that will eat all remaining mana in 2-3 sec? Another joke).

Conclusion - too weak(hey, even Urgot is godlike in comparison), simply unplayable. Doesn't even have sinergy with Muramana(his core item!) cause will run OOM in 2 second, so bonus damage from Muramana will be annotisable after 1-st attack. Essence reaver doesn't fix this - if you Q for, say, 500 dmg and steal 8% of that it's still 40 mana - nothing, compared to his costs.

Also even if you triple his damage and shield values he still be too weak - cause no mobility, no CC and melee is horrible combination. Morde(only other champ with no mobility and no CC) have at least ranged poke, ranged ult, way better shield, a lot more damage(with something like lyandry+sorks+abissal) and his famous godlike "Enemy fed carry is the best player of his team" move.. and is still semi-unviable.

Oh, and he's support by disign. Even better. Support that need expensive items and CS(passive). No, will not work.