User blog:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Fixing Mana

Let's talk about mana. As a resource system, it's fundamental to the workings of most champions in League of Legends, and is the most common resource in gaming, right after ammunition in shooters. It's a simple, easily recognizable and effective way of gating the use of abilities, and in League it also plays an important part in forcing certain champions to return to base, as they would otherwise be able to stay indefinitely in lane. However, in League specifically, mana isn't really in the best state, for several reasons: many champions feel gated far too strictly by mana, and that's often a deliberate decision to have them integrate into mana itemization, yet mana and mana regen aren't fun or interesting stats to buy. There's much more to this, which you can read in the last tab, but the core issue with mana, in my opinion, is that it's not in good shape specifically because of mana itemization, and without it, mana champions should have a resource system that is self-sufficient.

Core Changes=

Champions
Mana Items= {{#tag:tabber| Glacial Shroud=
 * All mana champions now have 100 mana at all levels.
 * Mana regeneration changed to 1 mana per second (5 mana per 5) at all levels.
 * Mana costs adjusted around 100 mana.
 * Mana costs can decrease with rank or level, but do not increase.
 * Ultimate abilities now cost no mana.
 * The only exceptions to this would be, , , and.
 * All non-mana resource bars adjusted to 100, with costs and generation adjusted accordingly.
 * This should only affect energy champions and.

Changes

 * New recipe: +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana removed.
 * Armor increased to 40 from 30.
 * removed.
 * New recipe: +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Unique passives removed.
 * Now grants 10% cooldown reduction.
 * Active changed to 50% over 3 seconds from 35% over 4 seconds.
 * recipe and stats changed (see here for more details).
 * Active changed to 50% over 3 seconds from 35% over 4 seconds.
 * recipe and stats changed (see here for more details).

Changes

 * Recipe and stats changed (see here for more details)
 * Mana removed.

Changes

 * replaced with Magebloom.
 * Recipe: +  +  (total cost is ).
 * Grants 80 ability power and 10% cooldown reduction.
 * Unique passive - Echo: Moving, attacking and casting builds charges. At 100, your next ability consumes the charges and deals bonus magic damage. Against large monsters, deal them 50(25level) bonus magic damage instead and send out bolts that deal half that damage to the small monsters in their camp.
 * passive is now named Echo, and does not stack with Magebloom's passive.

Changes

 * New recipe: +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana removed.
 * Health increased to 650 from 500.

Changes

 * New recipe: +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Ability power increased to 80 from 40.
 * Bonus movement speed is no longer unique.
 * Unique passive bonus changed to 20 bonus damage on basic attacks and abilities for 3 seconds, from 15% bonus attack speed and 30 bonus on-hit magic damage for 6 seconds.

Changes

 * New recipe: +  +  +.
 * Total cost increased to from.
 * Mana regeneration and Mana Font passive removed.
 * Now grants 60 ability power.
 * Active reworked (see here for more details).

Changes

 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Tribute damage changed to magic damage from the original attack's damage.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item's passive gold generation and Tribute, remove the item's gold generation and increase the bonus magic damage by.
 * New recipe: +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Ability power increased to 40 from 15.
 * Tribute damage changed to magic damage from the original attack's damage.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Tribute, remove the item's gold generation and increase the bonus magic damage by.
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Ability power increased to 80 from 50.
 * Tribute damage changed to magic damage from the original attack's damage.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item's passive gold generation and Tribute, remove the item's gold generation and increase the bonus magic damage by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.
 * New passive: upon collecting from the item and its predecessors' passive gold generation and Spoils of War, remove the item's gold generation and increase the heal by.

Changes

 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Now grants 20 bonus movement speed out of combat.
 * New passive: upon collecting from Favor, remove the item's gold generation and render the bonus movement speed permanent.
 * Now upgrades directly from (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Health regeneration removed.
 * Now grants 50 bonus movement speed out of combat.
 * New passive: upon collecting from Favor, remove the item's gold generation and render the bonus movement speed permanent.
 * New recipe: +  +  +  (total cost unchanged).
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Now grants 80 bonus movement speed out of combat.
 * New passive: upon collecting from Favor, remove the item's gold generation and render the bonus movement speed permanent.
 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Now grants 80 bonus movement speed out of combat.
 * New passive: upon collecting from Favor, remove the item's gold generation and render the bonus movement speed permanent.

Changes

 * Mana regeneration removed.
 * Bonus damage changed to 30 magic damage from 25 true damage.

Champions

 * now costs per second from  per second.
 * now restores on kill. This is intended to be the cost of the ability. Seeing how that would be extremely expensive in the late-game, perhaps it would be worth decreasing that cost somewhat, at least over time (without lowering the mana restore), though it would be good to preserve Annie's dependence on her farming minigame even beyond the laning phase.
 * restoration changed to from . This would incur no real change.
 * Renamed to Emergency Safeguard.
 * Shield changed to from . This would likely be a buff, and so might warrant further changes. There's a lot to Blitz that's awesome and iconic, but he likely needs to change, as he's a bit of a one-trick pony right now. Basing the shield off of current mana isn't really the best idea, since Blitz is, and should be, encouraged to spend big dollops of mana on trying to pull and disable targets.
 * Reworked, and renamed to Treacherous Bite.
 * Mana restoration is, increased to on enemy champion kills. I recommend you check the rework post for a more complete picture, but the core idea here is that I'm removing her E spam mechanic in favor of a more opportunistic nuke/execution skill, designed to provide Cass with better high moments in the middle of combat, while still keeping her unique mana conservation in lane.
 * no longer restores mana. The compensation to this should be that Cho should have much cheaper abilities, but right now the issue with his passive is that it lets him stay in lane indefinitely when dominant, which adds onto the binariness of his ult to make him unnecessarily difficult to shove out of lane even as he plays super-passively and gets a lead without putting himself at risk.
 * now restores from . This is intended to be the ability's cost. Perhaps it might be better to just remove this effect in favor of a more forgiving or even free W, but for the time being this would be the closest translation from one system to another.
 * reworked and no longer gains special mana regeneration. Currently, Eve is meant to run out of mana quickly when ganking early on. My rework intends to give her different power gating, which would also allow her to be less mana-hungry.
 * now restores from . This is intended to resemble the initial mana restore, and should probably be either half of the ability's cost or the entire cost. The ability itself could perhaps reduce in cost over time, which would allow Irelia to eventually restock on mana later in the game through farming. She's in dire need of a rework, but this could add some more luster to her current Q minigame.
 * now restores on-hit from . This would map more or less onto the current curve of mana restored relative to Jayce's mana pool. He might need some tweaks to his kit, and perhaps the removal of this mana restoration passive, but currently it's useful in giving him more incentives to not just stay in cannon mode all the time.
 * now restores on kill from . I'm not a big fan of this effect, and would prefer to ditch it in favor of more organic mana gates elsewhere, but this would do for the transition.
 * reworked, and now costs an initial  per second, doubling each second. This probably makes little sense in a live context, but my intention is to rework Kassadin so that he becomes more focused around being an anti-mage, and his ult lets him completely ignore terrain collision while held, at a significant drain in mana over time. Afterwards, he'd get to restore mana via anti-magey stuff. In the process, I also removed the mana scaling, and the damage, on his ult.
 * now costs times the number of casts.
 * now restores on kill from . As with Karthus and his own E, I dislike this particular mana restoration effect, as it's mainly there to prop up Malz's otherwise excessive mana consumption without adding as much gameplay as it could. Unlike Defile's passive, though, it might be possible to improve this effect, though likely through tweaks to Malzahar's kit.
 * now costs.
 * reworked and no longer scales off of mana. The mana-to-health scaling is meant to make Singed feel good when buying the mana he needs, but the end result is just a boring stats-for-stats passive that often leads to trap choices. I think the better solution should be to instead change Singed's mana gates a little in order to not make him feel terrible when being Singed without bonus mana.
 * now restores from . This would be a nerf to her immediate early game, but a buff to her late game. The advantage to a system like this is that it would allow Sivir to always restore a large amount of mana without having to resort to a special scaling formula on her E, or tuning that would be either too good too early or too crappy later on, or vice versa.
 * now restore an additional per second from . This would incur no real change.
 * now restores on unit and structure kills, quintupled to  versus champions.
 * now costs per second, increasing by  per additional second. Overall, the changes to his restoration would be a slight nerf to his farming, and a small buff when killing champions, whereas the changes to his ult would be a late-game nerf. Swain is a weird champion, but more importantly he needs proper gates to his sustain. These changes wouldn't answer those, but would force a hard limit on his bird mode, one that he wouldn't be able to increase with items. He should likely receive buffs elsewhere as a result, though his small pick rate makes it hard to gauge just how good he is now.
 * now restores from . This would be a buff, one that would increase in significant as the game goes on, so if he gets too hard to dislodge from lane this should probably get nerfed. I dislike Blue Card, as it's not really that rich in gameplay and forces TF's other mana costs to be overly high, and I'd like it to be replaced by a more interesting effect, though that's likely something for another post.
 * now scales with instead of . Let's face it, Urgot's getting overhauled eventually, but within this framework the crippling mana issues used to keep him in check would remain relevant throughout the whole game. He wouldn't scale with mana or mana items anymore, but would make up for it with tanky scalings, which would also fit his playstyle.
 * now restores on cancel from . This is intended to be half the ability's cost.
 * reworked and no longer gains bonus mana regeneration. Veigar's passive never really defined him or provided any real gameplay, and only exists as a crutch to let him farm in lane without running OOM too quickly. I moved his AP-on-kill passive to his innate, and tweaked him from there.
 * now restores, doubled to against enemy champions, from.
 * now restores on cancel from . The passive restoration is intended to mirror the innate scaling, while factoring in bonus mana in the late game, and the refund on Q is intended to be half the ability's cost.
 * reworked and no longer gains bonus mana regeneration. Veigar's passive never really defined him or provided any real gameplay, and only exists as a crutch to let him farm in lane without running OOM too quickly. I moved his AP-on-kill passive to his innate, and tweaked him from there.
 * now restores, doubled to against enemy champions, from.
 * now restores on cancel from . The passive restoration is intended to mirror the innate scaling, while factoring in bonus mana in the late game, and the refund on Q is intended to be half the ability's cost.
 * now restores on cancel from . The passive restoration is intended to mirror the innate scaling, while factoring in bonus mana in the late game, and the refund on Q is intended to be half the ability's cost.

Non-Mana Champions

 * now generates 20 Ferocity per ability and consumes 100 Ferocity on empowered attacks. This isn't really a necessary thing to do, but I'd like to standardize all pool-type resources to 100 in order to maintain consistency and comparability in-between systems, and perhaps facilitate the addition of any effects that do act on resources. Since Rengar's Ferocity isn't really important on a point-by-point basis, it would be easy to just multiply all the values by 20.
 * Cost reduced to from.
 * Energy restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . These are all slight early game buffs. Akali's early game is notoriously terrible, so this should give her a few more options early on as she waits for a retune.
 * restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . These are slight mana consumption nerfs, and a slightly larger buff on Kennen's innate generation, intended to reward him more for shocking multiple enemies. Kennen's costs are a little on the high side, mainly because of his passive, though at least the latter allows him to refill on energy when executing daring initiations.
 * reworked into a manaless champion. This makes no sense out of context, so I urge you to check the post itself before making a judgment here. Basically, I made Lee properly blind but super-OP in every other respect, which would mean he wouldn't need energy to gate the use of his abilities, as he'd be gated by his own lack of vision.
 * restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . Out of all the assassins, Shen's the cleanest to map onto a 100-point system. The only change here is a slight buff to his early E usage, which would likely be fine, considering its huge cost.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * Cost reduced to from.
 * Restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . Overall, this shouldn't change Zed's energy consumption much, though he'd perhaps have an ever-so-slight buff once he fully ranks up his Q.
 * cost reduced to from.
 * Cost reduced to from.
 * Restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . Overall, this shouldn't change Zed's energy consumption much, though he'd perhaps have an ever-so-slight buff once he fully ranks up his Q.
 * Restoration reduced to from.
 * cost reduced to from . Overall, this shouldn't change Zed's energy consumption much, though he'd perhaps have an ever-so-slight buff once he fully ranks up his Q.

Items

 * ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and  removed. I included a few weird choices here, like a Doran's and Prospector's item, but the reasoning is that starting items like those are generally dull and overly safe, and detract from the possibility of selecting clearer items that lead to proper item builds. Doran's Ring, in particular, forces every mana-based mid laner to have their regen bumped down in order to "need" the item.
 * Other items adjusted to no longer provide mana or mana regeneration, but provide other bonuses instead (see other tabs).
 * and its upgrades no longer provide bonus mana regeneration. The idea here is that mana champions shouldn't suffer from mana issues in the jungle in the first place, and if their mana gates are too strict, then there's likely an issue (either they're unfit to jungle, or more likely their abilities are too costly).
 * changed into a manaless basic item (see here for details).
 * turned into a trinket on all non Summoner's Rift maps, and effects changed (see here for more information).
 * no longer restores mana.

Masteries

 * no longer restores mana.
 * no longer restores mana.
 * removed. In spite of the recent mastery overhaul, I think the mastery system is fundamentally flawed, as it doesn't provide all that much meaningful choice. If masteries are to stay, another should take the place of Meditation, but otherwise I'd rather remove them all and buff champions accordingly.

Runes

 * Runes of mana, both flat and scaling, removed.
 * Runes of mana regeneration, both flat and scaling, removed. Worse even than masteries, runes not only provide a lot of power without any real gameplay, strategy or even variation, but do so in a manner that isn't really that appreciable in-game. Whether or not the system stays, these runes should be removed in view of these changes, but I'd rather remove all runes entirely, particularly since they also form an expensive barrier to entry in a game that's already harsh on newcomers.

Jungle

 * reworked: no longer provides its current bonuses, but instead causes the wielder to be shielded for 5 seconds by 60(30level) upon damaging an enemy champion or large monster, incurring no mana or energy costs to their abilities while the shield holds. This effect has a 20-second static cooldown, starting with the shield appearing, before it becomes available again.
 * Healing Sigil now restores.

Maps
Table of Mana Costs= Not entirely sure about this. This is intended to be a space where I can make a table of every mana champion's ability costs, though that may take some time. If you're interested, check back later, and there'll likely be more stuff here, and if not... well, then this tab might just disappear. }} What's Wrong With Mana?= Initially, this wall of text was meant to be in the introductory paragraph, but as it turns out, there's a lot to say about mana. Here are a few of the issues I think are core to the system right now:
 * Mana regeneration doubled to 2 per second (10 per 5) on the Crystal Scar, Twisted Treeline and Murder Bridge.
 * Mana champions feel too restricted: Having mana feels like a burden, not just because many champions out there aren't gated so heavily in lane (e.g. energy and fury champions, though they have, or are supposed to have, innate weaknesses in their own kits), but also because many mana champions just don't have the mana they need: even when played perfectly, many champions end up running out of mana too fast or too often, some because they were deliberately given crippling mana issues to control their unhealthy kits ( or pre-rework, for example), and others because they're expected to dip into mana itemization and thus need to be innately deficient. By contrast, even the most resource-hungry manaless champions, like or , don't feel like they need an item or other effect to cover their issues, as their resource limit, generation and costs are designed to be completely self-sufficient, and as a result their ability gating does not need to be suboptimally strict in order for them to integrate into itemization. In the case of champions who don't have particularly strict mana gating, dipping into mana itemization essentially turns them into manaless champions, which is currently what caster supports inevitably become, due to the heap of mana regen stuck on support items, and so mana loses its significance as a resource.
 * Mana and Mana Regen aren't fun stats: Whereas pretty much any stat has an immediate, tangible effect (e.g. "my abilities deal more damage" or "I take less damage from these champions"), mana and mana regen don't, and consequently feel like wasted stats, including on champions who need to buy them (e.g. ). Additionally, on top of being totally useless for manaless champions, who are forced to spend gold on mana for otherwise very interesting items (e.g., ), both stats do genuinely become wasteful on all but the most mana-hungry champions come late game, which reduces their power at a point where they should have the most late-game freedom (mana is meant to be a serious gate in laning which becomes less strict over time). On a more abstract level, neither stat is ever going to be that healthy in itemization, because they innately devalue mana gates, rendering them less meaningful and, barring mana-related scalings, are pretty much designed to do just that.
 * Champions are distorted around mana items: As a whole, mana is pretty inconsistent, and unnecessarily so. An ability that costs 100 mana might be massively expensive on a champion like, but might be just fine on , and champions like , with cheap spells and terrible mana regeneration, don't look like they match up to champions like , with expensive spells and top-tier mana regen, even though their spell gating ends up being pretty similar in actuality. The current implementation of mana, i.e. as a stat that expands over time, also creates awkward ability costs, which end up increasing as you rank them up: from a high-level perspective, it makes sense, as you'd want to prevent some champions from suddenly ignoring their mana gates, but from a player perspective it feels terrible and counter-intuitive: ranking up an ability should only be beneficial, yet the increased mana cost is a malus, one that can lead to large dips in mana usage in lane (with or , for example). These differences only exist to accomodate for itemization, generally to push tanks towards raw mana and casters towards mana regen, and end up engineering really awkward mana cost curves in the process.

As we've seen in early Preseason 6 with the removal of mana potions, itemizing around mana tends to not only be binary and uninteresting (e.g. "Get mana potions if your champion has mana problems, don't if they don't"), but also unhealthy for champions themselves, who end up needing to purchase mana just because they themselves cannot function properly if they don't. Riot's been looking for ways to make mana more interesting and valuable as a purchasable stat to mana champions, but in the end mana is not a fun stat in itself, so any attempt to add gameplay to it could likely be done without it. I hope I get proven wrong on this, but as it stands now the most efficient solution seems to be the removal of mana itemization.

A warning, the whole post is a bit long, and there's a lot of stuff that needs to be explained in order for this to make sense. What do you think about the state of mana as it is now? What direction would you like to see taken with mana and mana champions? What do you think about mana champions as a group, and how would you improve them if needed?