User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Fixing Mana/@comment-3974211-20151208054314/@comment-1330314-20151209042458

That's obviously a possibility, but I think the core difference there is that other stats -- health, attack speed, etc. -- have meaningful and unique gameplay, whereas mana itemization doesn't. Attack speed is intrinsically rich in gameplay because choosing whether or not to build it provides a slew of interesting tradeoffs (stronger versus faster attack for example). Mana itemization, on the other hand, just props itself up against innate mana without offering anything truly meaningful on its own: sure, your mana could be insufficient without the item, or you could stop caring about mana once you build a mana item, but either case means you're disrupting proper gating for the sake of itemization, which here is inevitably going to make mana gating itself less meaningful. There are other mechanics, in my opinion, like true sight or Grievous Wounds, that similarly exist only to prop themselves up against other mechanics (e.g. stealth or healing) without offering unique gameplay of their own, and I don't think it's worth keeping those effects simply because they exist.