User blog:Deshiba/Mana Items.

Greetings fellow summoners!

In responce to Sifter66's blog post I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into my take on mana items and what I think should change. This is merely an exercise in theory crafting which I consider to be quite fun. Please do read it as such, enjoy and feel free to leave your own thoughts on the matter in the comments!

Mana Items
Currently there are 2 main stacking items that evolve from, namely for AP and  for AD. They grant AP and AD respectively for each point of mana you have in your pool. They also have items that go along nicely, for defense there's items like and, and for utility there's items like  and.

Even though at first glance it might seem like an airtight combination, there are weak spots to committing to a mana based build. Primarily in the items you can build, which might not fill all of your needs. For instance, there is no Magic Resistance item that provides mana since they changed. In the meentime there are two items that provide Armor, looking at you IG and. As for RoA, it might provide Health but building it as an AD champion is kind of silly.

Change!? Yes we can!
So, my Obama Care Package would consist of equalizing the options that are provided for each role within the mana path. I'll tackle them within 3 parts, Offense, Defense and Utility.

Offense
Now I feel that TotG is quite solid, however something strange happens when you upgrade it to or. Where both TotG and AS charge up with spell cast and mana expenditure, manamune gets the additional charge on attack. that doesn't seem quite fair to me. So I would change this over to:
 * : Grants + /  mana (max +750 mana) for each mana expenditure. (occurs up to 2 times every  /  seconds). Gains +1 mana every  /  seconds.
 * : Grants + /  mana (max +750 mana) for each spell cast and mana expenditure. (occurs up to 2 times every  /  seconds).
 * : Grants + /  mana (max +750 mana) for each basic attack and mana expenditure. (occurs up to 2 times every  /  seconds).

This is a nerf to the active component on TotG for Champions like that cast free abilities such as. So to compensate for that loss I figured that buffing the passive gains across the board would be in order. Manamune gets nerfed in the same way, and although this shouldn't be a problem for either item, it's still a nerf, so more number changes might be in order, pending on tests.

Defense
For these I would focus on the armor items already present and make a magic resistance counterpart, but I would take it just a step further then that. Looking at Iceborn Gauntlet and it's component an easy link to make for a magic resistance version is Lich Bane. However just slapping on MR and calling it a day wouldn't really make it fair, because both IG and LB would give AP, and IG's armor comes from, on top of that IG would still deal AoE magic damage, while LB would not.

No, a more elegant solution that would also encompass changes for a FH counter part would be to change to be built from a  and a. Which would fundamentally change what it does and how every item flowing out from it works. Which is more work then I'm willing to put into it at the time of writing, I might edit this part later on. However I do want to leave a little thing here:

It would mean that you would change either or  to be the counterpart to, even going as far as bring  over to Summoners Rift. So that way you'd have and  as AoE damage and defense items,  and  as defensive and team de-buffing items, while  and  would be utility stealth detect defense items.
 * Again, too much work to actually write out.

Utility
For utility I would like to look at the final Sheen transformation,, for a bit. This is already a pretty decent item for just about anyone, although it heavily favors fighters rather then casters. But what if we'd add +10% Cooldown reduction, make the RAGE passive from trigger on dealing damage rather then Auto Attacks and have the Spellblade passive changed to:
 * After using an ability, your next basic attack deals bonus physical damage or  bonus magical damage. (1.5 second cooldown).

My mind is twisted?
But is it really? It would round out the options you get when building mana, give you more options within that mana build and give everyone that wants it a bit of everything they need. Now I know that I didn't really go into RoA and a possible counterpart for AD, but I thought I'd challenge you guys a bit, because I just know you are smarter then me. So give me your best suggestion and shout at me in the comments!

Peace out.