User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Fixing Mana/@comment-25235491-20151207160349/@comment-1330314-20151207164621

You're right that I wanted to make mana look a lot like energy, even though the two systems are fundamentally different in their gating. If you think about it, the only difference between the two is costs relative to the resource pool and regen: if you gave a mana champion super-high mana regen and high costs, you'd have an energy champion. I still want mana champions to have really slow regen and lower ability costs, but normalizing everything down to common mana and regen values would make comparisons better, among many other things.

As for the items you mentioned, I did talk about them (briefly) in Details -> The Rest: I think might be worth removing, as it's a number stick that occupies a stat niche similar to  (i.e. AP + health), except with mana instead of CC. Perhaps there should be another AP + health item to replace it, but it would occupy a fundamentally different function. As for, I proposed a change to in a separate blog post that would remove the mana from its stat list. Seeing how I put that in a post about AP/AD hybrid items, when Spellblade items are no longer hybrid, I should probably move the section here. On the topic of support items, the core idea was to give them power the wielder could appreciate, even if it wasn't direct combat power. I think support items could even perhaps focus more on AP, though they're restricted by their low costs, and therefore lower slot efficiency.

Responding to the champion bulletpoints:
 * Yeah, I agree that removing Anivia's ult cost at high levels could be far too much of a buff, one she doesn't really need. I should reevaluate that, since my intention was to make her ult costly early on but not as much late, though perhaps not to that extent.
 * I started this post with the core idea that mana should be fixed at 100 for everyone, and that mana should be excised from itemization. Blitz's passive annoyed me even before that, as it's often disappointing for the reasons you mentioned, and this post gave me the opportunity to suggest a different scaling for it.
 * I haven't gone into too much depth onto mana restores, but you're right, I should. One rule I wanted to enforce here was that abilities shouldn't cost more as you rank them up -- you're ranking them up to improve them, not to reduce their usability, and increasing mana costs would no longer be needed with a static mana pool -- so restores like these would remain relevant for the entire game, and so would likely need to be reevaluated.
 * I mention Ryze in Details -> Mana Champions. I want to get rid of his mana scalings, as they'd no longer make sense in the new system and already offer few options in his current state (he can't dip into without running over the CDR cap, for example). The alternative I'm proposing is to make his abilities scale with 25% of his shield, which would be a bit weird, but would preserve his abilities scaling over time.
 * TF's Blue Card would qualify as a mana restoration effect, and give him back a non-scaling amount of mana, which would be equally relevant at all points in the game (it would basically equate to in the current system or something similar). I agree that the effect itself is not that interesting, though, and I think Twisted Fate in general needs changes to his abilities (Stacked Deck, for one, is a non-ability, and one of the most boring effects in the game).