User blog comment:DBinitiate/(Champion concept) Althares, the hireling/@comment-5441738-20121009035056/@comment-3542156-20121009040118

I've had the same problem when I revealed this idea to one of my friends... The cost cannot be too high or else people would want to play him like you do. But if it's too low, people can do both the part of getting good items early on AND drop a lot of skills on their opponents...

I do have to calculate this through though, but I'm thinking to remove the gold-on-hit that his Q gets during his ult, as well as the bonus gold on kills from his passive.

This way, he still holds his high income (2 per second at lvl 1, 5.4 per second at lvl 18) while lessening the possibility to get good items too early.

But in any case, he would have to be played very passively at the start of the game, since he would have difficulty to kill opponents.