User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Fixing Mana/@comment-973379-20151210172800/@comment-1330314-20151210232220

But that's not the decision that gets made, especially not with Yorick. Either he has enough mana that he can just keep Muramana toggled on and forget about it while he deals a ton of extra on-hit damage, either he doesn't and doesn't activate it for fear of running OOM way too fast. The fact that Muramana is designed to cater to mana-hungry champions, yet also has a mana-hungry effect means it's never going to be put to best use. The example you bring with Anivia is similarly bad: sure, with 3 mana items she gets to zone for ages, but that just means mana becomes less relevant on her as a gate, and that's something you're going to have to balance around, with the result being an excessively high initial mana cost that only becomes more reasonable once you build mana. By contrast, if you want Anivia to have harsh early gating that eases up over time, you could achieve it with targeted mana changes.

I also think the example of weapons and ammo you brought up proves my point more than it does yours: if you had a really powerful shotgun that could kill enemies in a few shots, for example, you could balance it with a very limited amount of ammo and firing capacity (e.g. two shots before reloading). Now, suppose you had the option to increase the ammo capacity on any weapon: suddenly, you end up with a mega-powerful weapon that's no longer restricted by ammo as much, and inevitably that would have to lead to nerfs to either the weapon's damage (e.g. it could only half-shot enemies) or initial ammo (e.g. one before reloading), leaving it in an unsatisfying state until you expand its capacity. By contrast, what I'm saying is "no matter what happens, you always have this much ammo", which would allow said weapon to have just the right amount of usability it needs at any given point.