Hi guys. Coballz here for Team Dignitas, with part one of a series titled "What Might We Make of the Mid-Year Mage Update".

In case you didn't know, somewhere in the middle of the year, traditional mages will get an overhaul. The mages mentioned as the Big 6 for this overhaul are Brand, Cassiopeia, Malzahar, Vel'Koz, Vladimir and Zyra. To read up on it, you can click here. Now to get into things quickly, I want to highlight a post made by Meddler, saying that there would be: "Some item changes, almost certainly won't be as large as the marksman ones though."

Now this raises a few questions, since the Marksman update got four of their items removed, eleven new ones, and changes to about a dozen high-end items. Depending on what you call "nearly as large", the following changes fit that category. In this first part, I'm going to discuss the removal of AP items, as some are so strong (or bad), that they should - in my opinion - be removed from the game in their current iteration.

Items to be removed

1: Abyssal Scepter

The first item up for removal is the Abyssal Scepter. Abyssal Scepter is a middle-of-the-pack AP item that provides 70AP, 50MR, and an aura that reduces the MR of enemies by 20 in a 700 radius, and currently... it's being picked up by a whole heap of champions. But let's think about what the item was intended to do. Looking at the base stats, it's 70AP - which is above Athene's but under Morello - and 50MR, which is higher than the MR on any AP item, making it the pinnacle of anti-mage itemization. You'd think, at least.

The 20MR reduction aura is what gets people going. Marksmen have anywhere between 30 and 42MR when mages finish this item about 9 levels into the game, and they typically don't get any MR until their third item. Meaning that this item effectively has the ability to take two thirds of that magic resistance away. Now you have to get into relatively close range for it to happen, but 700 range is even outside Caitlyn's basic attack range. That's still pretty far; hence the reason mages pick it up. At 2350g, it's one of the cheapest AP items aside from Frost Queen's Claim, and it provides an insane increase in damage. But it's harshly conflicting as-is, for the following reasons.

The MR reduction aura incentivizes you to get up close and personal to make the best of your damage output. Champions like Diana and Fizz are perfectly suited for this item because it's in their nature to get into melee range to get their damage off, thus putting the MR reduction aura to good use. But as an all-in oriented item - getting into melee range to get a large % damage increase - it also comes with a safe haven in 50MR, the highest amount of MR found on an AP item. That's absurd. The base stats tell you "hey, this guy's fed, let's build something against them!", and on the same token, incentivizes you to get up close and personal with her so as to put the aura to good use. To clarify: as an all-in item, it shouldn't come with 50MR, and as a defensive item, it shouldn't have such a powerful offensive aura. I mean I like the aura as an idea, but the current iteration of Abyssal Scepter is super conflicting, and as such is the first item to go.

2: Zhonya's Hourglass

Secondly is Zhonya's Hourglass, which in part suffers from the same problems as the Abyssal Scepter does. It provides 100AP and 50Armor, which is the single highest amount of Armor on an AP item. Additionally, it provides the Stasis active, which it is so well-known for. However, this is also the biggest problem Zhonya's has. The Stasis active, while exceptionally effective against assassins, doesn't prevent hard CC from being effective. It thoroughly counters champions like Zed, since you have a 0,75s window in which you can activate it to 100% nullify his ultimate, and against him, the Armor is effective, but only to a certain point. On the other hand, it also hard counters champions like Fizz and Karthus by being invulnerable during their ultimates - but when the item is not up, the resistances don't help a single bit. The stats do not align with what the item is supposed to do: against mages, the stats don't do anything, and against physical damage assassins, the stasis neglects the Armor as you're briefly not in the game - thus rendering you unable to put the Armor to good use. Seeing as how that is in fact conflicting, and with Stasis being the single most overpowered active on an item - and this coming from a mid main - Zhonya's Hourglass has to bite the dust.

3: Rabadon's Deathcap

Lastly - and I'm aware that this is perhaps the strangest of items on this list - is Rabadon's Deathcap. The Deathcap is the single highest AP item mages can get. It provides 162AP on its own, and any other item you get becomes 35% more potent in its AP stat. A FQC gets more AP than an Athenes, Athene's outdoes a Morello, and Morello outdoes a Luden's. It stacks really fast, and getting it first means you'll be stronger than ever; getting it later means you'll have a massive powerspike that squishies can not react to properly. It's an item that gives raw power without any means for the opponent to play around it, which makes no sense. Even IE has better counterplay, in that its damage is gated by the Critical Strikes it does - or does not - deliver. Cue black screen, Rabadon's Deathcap is gone.

However, if these items are to be removed, there need to be items to fill the voids created by their absence. The removal of Zhonya's and Abyssal creates a void in terms of an AP/Armor and AP/MR item, and removing Deathcap means the high-end AP item is gone. Now we could just compensate for the loss of the Deathcap by introducing a new 120AP item, but mages would still lose 35% of their ability power.

Compensation

The cheapest AD item, the Long Sword, provides 10AD for 350g, hence its gold value of 35g per stat point. My idea is to make the current Amplifying Tome, which gives 20AP, cost the same amount of gold, making its gold value 17,5 gold per statpoint. I did this because AD is dually offensively useful, whereas AP isn't. To illustrate this statement, I've prepared an example. We'll compare Diana and Talon: two assassins that wave some basic attacks into their assassination rotation.

A quick look at champion.gg's builds gives Talon a hypothetical build of Youmuu, Maw, Duskblade, Cleaver and Ravenous. This gives him a grand total of 325 bonus AD, paired with his base AD at level 18 of 108, gives him 433AD.

Diana's champion.gg build provides her with Lich Bane, Abyssal, Zhonya's, Void Staff, and Rabadon's Deathcap. Yes, I am aware I removed Deathcap in my previous part, but this is to prove a point: the Deathcap's existence is irrelevant in this scenario. Diana's build gives her a grand total of 608AP (which is slightly under twice as high as Talon's Bonus AD), in addition to her 104 Base AD.

Talon's potential assassination skill rotation could be E-AA-Q-Hydra+W-R-R. This has a 400% bonus AD ratio, totaling an additional 1240 damage from his items. Weaving in these three "auto attacks" - one of which is in fact a Hydra activation, but it could be replaced with an auto attack between ultimate activations - he is given an additional 324 base damage, an an additional 300% bonus AD, totaling 975 physical damage.

Diana's spell rotation could be Q-W-R-AA-E-AA-R-AA, totaling an AP ratio of 330%, which comes down to 2006 damage: far higher than Talon's. However, Diana's basic attacks will only deal 104 damage: a difference over over 300 per autoattack when compared to Talon's. It's plain to see that while Diana's abilities benefit more from her getting AP, Talon benefits twice from his AD purchase, both through his abilities and through his auto attacks. It is this duality in effectiveness that makes the AP stat higher than AD - and my reason to make AP have half the gold efficiency per statpoint, and thus lowering Amplifying Tome's gold cost.

Extrapolating this event to the other AP items, we maintain the Blasting Wand's gold cost of 850, but up the AP value to 50, giving it a gold efficiency of 102,9%. To make things fair, I propose we lower the gold cost of the Pickaxe on the same token, to 850g, so as to make that item have a better gold efficiency as well, which was the idea with high-tier basic items: making your money worth more. Lastly, we increase the cost of the Needlessly Large Rod to 1350g, and bump it to 80AP, reverting its last nerf, and giving it a gold efficiency of 103,7%.

This also means that we have to increase the amount of AP on all other items, so as to compensate for the loss of the Deathcap's 35% increase in AP. Taking the 60/80/100AP benchmarks up to 80/110/140, increases of 33/37,5/40% respectively, and upping their gold costs along with it, means we can get to the same amount of AP as we can now, but spending a bit more money in the process as it becomes a smoother ride altogether.

Item reworks

In addition to that, I've chosen to tackle a few issues with the current low-tier AP itemization. Currently, AD champions invest 900g in a sustain stat that works on every auto attack; mages are required to invest 1200g in an item that gives dimished returns when used on large amounts of minions. AD champions invest 1100g in items that give either CDR or flat Penetration, whereas mages invest 800g and 1600g in items of those stats, respectively. To align AP with AD - because we're trying to compare apples to apples as much as possible - a few other changes I propose are as follows:

Changing the Hextech Revolver so it costs 200g less, but also gives 2% Spellvamp less, and requires one less Amplifying Tome. Sounds like a pretty bad trade, but an additional change is to have Spellvamp be 50% effective on multi-target abilities, up from 33%. This to allow mages to itemize into sustain if they so desire, without being gimped because Riot doesn't like mages sustaining.

- Hextech Revolver (1000g) - Amplifying Tome (350g) + 650g - 30AP and 10%SV

Changing the Fiendish Codex to build from two Amp Tomes, cost 1200g up from 800, and give 50AP up from 30 - to solidify a Codex purchase as an offensive purchase that requires a bit more dedication, as well as to put it on par with the AD counterpart in Caulfield's Warhammer.

- Fiendish Codex (1200g) - Amplifying Tome ×2 (700g) + 500g - 50AP 10%CRDR

Changing the Haunting Guise to a 1200g purchase - building from 2 Amp Tomes like the Codex before it - and have it give 50AP and 10MPen. It loses the 200HP - to once again, solidify it as an offensive purchase - and it loses 5MPen from its current iteration so that it may build into more things, similar to the Serrated Dirk: it may allow mages to get more flat MPen to itemize into.

- Haunting Guise (1200g) - Amplifying Tome ×2 (700g) + 500g - 50AP 10MPen

Seeker's Armguard is last on my list, because it requires a bit more rigorous rework than the other three items do. The recipe is fine - albeit the stats change a bit: 40 Armor up from 30, and 30AP up from 20. It loses the stacking passive, however, and solidifies itself as an item mages can get against physical damage assassins: on activation, you gain immunity from physical damage for one second, plus an additional second for each bonus armor you have. This not only makes for a great AP version of the Hexdrinker - which triggers on its own, thus not rendering you able to decide when to block what damage - but it also allows you to decide what physical damage you want to block: people with fast fingers can block a Jhin crit, or decide to negate Zed's Death Mark pop - but not his spell rotation, as a tradeoff. This change would make Seeker's a great middle ground item.

- Seeker's Armguard (1200g) - Amplifying Tome (350g) + Cloth Armor ×2 (600g) + 250g - 30AP 40Armor
UNIQUE Active: Grants immunity from physical damage for 1 (+1 per 100 bonus Armor) seconds. 60s cooldown

So that's the four low-tier items I've chosen to rework, in varying degrees of severity. During the Marksman Update, with the removal of The Brutalizer, there was a rework of 5 lower tier AD-related items (Zeal, Phage, Hexdrinker, Tiamat and Last Whisper) that aren't component items. Currently, my rework entails the rework of 4 items. Next up, I will go a bit more rigorous and introduce some items to League that serve to fill the gaps that we've been living with for quite some time. So long. Take care.