Talk:Tryndamere/@comment-4636093-20140818230317/@comment-10428734-20140819155551

Because Riot has absolutely no idea how to deal with mana (exactly like they don't know how to deal with mobility creep). Between all the manaless champions,, Buff of the Manaless Golem, , and , mana is fundamentally flawed. In fact, it's such a bad stat that Riot had to create useless mana scalings on abilities to encourage players to buy it, although they don't even need it in the first place (,, but it's his theme so we'll forgive him, ...).

You can't balance mana when half the roster doesn't even use it: either you give mana to everyone (good) or you remove mana for everyone (bad). Riot has chosen the second option, pretty much, since they made OP items like Chalice to ensure that mana-based champions can faceroll-spam too. Or they made built-in mana restoration passives to entirely nullify the mana costs of the champion's kit (awesome design too, why don't they just reduce the mana costs instead?). Instead of addressing manaless champions, isn't it easier to nullify mana management for mana-based champions?

The most surprising thing is that most manaless champions are manaless for no reasons. Why is Tryndamere manaless while Yi uses mana? Why is Garen manaless while Darius uses mana? Why is Riven manaless while Pantheon uses mana? Why is Gnar manaless while Vayne uses mana? All of these champions have very similar kits in the end.

In fact, so much champions could easily be balanced if they used mana. Akali, Vlad, Renekton, Rengar, Riven, Lee Sin, Kennen, Gnar, Garen, Trynd... They all have free spammable sustain/poke/shield/mobility and can faceroll all day. They don't care, it's free. I don't want them to be Anivia-starved. But they could all use Irelia-tier mana costs at the very least, while keeping their alternative "resource" as a passive if necessary.

If a manaless champion encounters a mana-based champion of same strength, the manaless champion will eventually win when the mana-based champion is OOM. Therefore, to balance the whole thing, you need to ensure that the mana-based champions is superior to the manaless champion when he has mana. Instead of having a balanced battle, you now have 2 opposite imbalanced situations that will hopefully compensate each other.

Imagine a Yorick vs Riven lane. In the end, the match-up might be pretty balanced, but they were never actually on equal footing. At first, Yorick simply wins. Then he has no mana and loses. Imo this is poor design. If you gave Riven mana and increased health regen, the lane would become a lot more even and interesting, for both players. Riven would not QQ about Yorick's OP ranged harass and sustain, Yorick would not QQ about Riven's OP free shield.

All champions having mana would also mean more item diversity and more options to make interesting gameplay around mana (mana drain, damage based on enemy's mana, stuff like that).