With the Season 11 item overhaul in League of Legends, many classes have gotten stronger or weaker depending on the changes to their respective items. This article will go over why there has been a decline of mages in competitive play in Season 11 compared to past seasons.
Mages typically serve as a team's primary source of magic damage and serve sub roles past mages. There are burst mages, control mages, and utility mages. Burst mages have high damage that can come out quickly and take enemies down quickly. They typically are only bringing damage and very little crowd control or utility. Examples of burst mages are LeBlanc, Fizz and Ahri. Control mages are mages that have spells that deal massive damage in a large area. They can control areas of a fight or the map with their high damage spells or utility. Some examples of control mages are Viktor, Orianna, and Veigar. Finally, there are utility mages, which are mages that bring a lot of crowd control or utility for their team, but not a lot of damage. Lissandra, Neeko, and Twisted Fate are examples of utility mages.
In past seasons mages have typically been seen in the mid lane, but in more recent seasons they are able to be played in almost every role. Kennen top, Diana jungle, Ziggs bot, and Zyra support are all examples of mages being able to be played in roles other than mid. Even though mages were able to be flexed to other roles, mid lane was home for mages for various reasons such as the shorter lane for escaping, access to blue buff, and access to other lanes for roams. Across the five major regions the top five champions for mid lane from Season 4 to Season 11 are: LeBlanc, Ryze, Azir, Syndra, and Orianna. All five of them hover around a 50%-win rate and all of them being picked over 1500 times. These picks can be seen as staples of the mid lane due how consistent they are in strength and being able to play in different team compositions.
These stats were taken from Game of Legends
From the item overhaul in Season 11, every role had major changes on how they were played and how strong they were compared to past seasons. The top five champions for mid lane in Season 11 are Orianna, Lucian, Akali, Twisted Fate, and Azir. While this does contain two of staples of mid lane, the other three champions are different from the other staples. Akali is close to LeBlanc, serving as a burst mage assassin. However, Lucian and Twisted Fate are not very similar to Ryze and Syndra. Ryze and Syndra are high burst magic damage champions while Lucian is a marksman that was built like a caster in Season 11 and Twisted Fate is a utility mage that is primarily used for roaming and pick potential.
However, the top five of Season 11 does not tell the whole story of how mid lane has changed in Season 11. Bruisers have been seeing small stints in mid lane until Riot has nerfed them, so they are not able to be played in mid lane anymore. Examples of these champions are Lee Sin, Nocturne, and Viego. While these three champions were strong in both solo lanes, they were still power picks in mid lane at their peak strength and Riot was quick in making sure they did not stick around mid lane for a long time. This then raises a question of how these champions were able to find a home in the mid lane as a dominant pick.
This section will be looking at the differences of builds from Season 10 to Season 11 for Mages. The example stats are based on a level 18 Orianna with Liandry’s, Zhonya’s Hourglass, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Void Staff, Seraph’s Embrace, and Sorcerer’s Shoes. The image below shows which stats are different between the two seasons.
Looking at this image we can see that while Season 10 has less Ability Power than Season 11, Season 10 has better survivability and damage due to the old Liandry’s passive and health, and the old Seraph’s Embrace active. Another key difference in the builds is the order you are buying items. In Season 10, you were able to build straight into a Seraph’s Embrace then go into big damage items like Liandry’s Torment or Rabadon’s Deathcap. This would give you some protection with Seraph’s Embrace and high damage from your second item. In Season 11, mages are more gated by their mythic since it is the way you sustain mana in lane from the Lost Chapter. Also, most mages buy a Tear of the Goddess early in lane to also help with their lane sustaining. Even if it does not seem like a big deal, the Tear is holding up an item slot till at least your second item, whereas in Season 10 the item slot would be freed up. This means in Season 11 mages are not getting a big ability power jump until their third item. Overall, all the mages item spikes are delayed by one item due to the need of a mythic mana and the need to complete Tear in most cases.
This then leads to the next part of mid lane which is, why play bruisers over mages? The bruiser class got a major buff from the item overhaul with the introductions of Stridebreaker and Goredrinker, as well as buffs to Sterak’s Gage and Wit’s End. The more popular bruisers such as Irelia, Renekton, and Viego have large amounts of healing built into their kits which adds onto the healing from Goredrinker and Sterak’s Gage. This makes it easy for them to sustain through a mage's damage since bruisers have too much health to be burst down and can out sustain the constant damage from utility and control mages. Bruisers also spike on less items and less gold compared to mages since bruisers have a strong two item spike on mythic and Sterak’s Gage. Compared to mages who need their mythic, Seraph’s Embrace, and another big damage item. This allows resources to be put into other members of the team such as a carry jungler or the bot laner.
Another factor that can contribute to mages being less popular in mid lane is the rise of magic damage in the jungle. During MSI, Morgana and Rumble were seen as power picks in the jungle and could hold their own as the team’s sole source of magic damage. This allowed more flexibility in drafts and allowed physical damage champions to be played in mid lane. Then moving onto summer when Morgana and Rumble left the meta, Diana replaced the role of magic damage in the jungle. However, since there was only one popular magic damage jungler during the summer teams started to play magic damage in the bot lane through Ziggs and sometimes Syndra. It felt as if teams were trying to avoid playing magic damage in the jungle due the strength of other picks for mid lane such as Lucian and Viego. However, by the summer playoffs, teams started to shift back to playing mages in the mid lane since a lot of the physical damage power picks were nerfed for mid lane. Riot did slowly buff mages through direct changes to champions, as well as slowly buffing mage itemization throughout the season. This would hopefully mean Riot wants mages to be back in the meta by the time Worlds starts.
From being a staple of mid lane to becoming pushed aside to other roles, mages have had a difficult time through Season 11. Riot has been trying to bring them back in line with other classes, but it will still need time until they rule mid lane like they did in the past seasons. I hope this article was able to give you a better understanding of how mages have changed through Season 11 and gives context to some of the meta shifts that have occurred.
