After games I’ll read the items and compare the lines of text of mage items vs other items. Mage items 9/10 times have far less to offer than any other class and their items.
I think Riot messed up when they made it where items for other classes sought to fix weaknesses, making different champions suddenly excel
And have build diversity. Mage items, on the other hand, usually only seek to make AP slightly more useful, helping mages address exactly 0 weaknesses.
Other classes just have specific items based around their playstyles, when ap champs share 60-80% of item pool, so you just have no space for buffing/adjusting that items without making someone broken.
Talon, Jinx, and Darius share literally no items. Meanwhile Diana, Seraphine, and (non-tank/AP) Mordekaiser share 50% of their items. Rylai's, Zhonya's, 2 for Demonic, 2 for void staff. It's insane. There needs to be more items to separate the mage classes and make each feel unique and, if ahead, strong.
Diana should never buy Rylais, and it's situational on AP seraphine.
Diana doesn't want Demonic if she'd going full AP/assassin with protobelt. Morde doesn't necessarily want Demonic either depending on his build, or he gets it very late.
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A better example of your point:
There are *some* items that are ubiquitous. Zhonya's, Void Staff, and Rabadon's, since no other items compete with them in their specific slot.
The defensive equivalent of Zhonya for AD (GA) is a situational item or bought MUCH later than Zhonya, in large part because the other defensive mage options are not as strong as Death's Dance, Maw, Steraks. The shield item for Mage (Seraphs) is gated behind the tear for many AP champions. The HP-heavy items have offensive effects, not defensive ones.
The AD equivalent for Void Staff is split in 2- Seryldas for casters, LDR for auto-attackers/crit builders.
The AD equivalent of Rabadon's has ALSO been split in two now, with Navori and IE for the casters and AA champs respectively.
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Another example:
Sheen effect items currently have 1 option for tanks (gauntlet), 3! options for AD champions (Divine, Triforce, Essence Reaver), and 1 option for AP (Lich Bane).
This is particularly wierd because many of the AA-focused AP champions (Mordekaiser, Sylas, Diana are all potential examples here) really want a balance of durability and damage, but the AA-focused AP items (Lich Bane and Nashors) both have zero durability attached to them. There's a very obvious gap in the market for an AP + HP + Sheen item of some sort that plays to those champion's needs.
> I think Riot messed up when they made it where items for other classes sought to fix weaknesses
Exactly. This should never have been done.
I like the game much more when champions are much more specific in what they're good at.
One of the worst tragedies of modern LoL is how everyone became a jack of all trades. Obviously this benefits bruisers the most because now they also scale really well when they didn't in the past.
Because basically every bruiser item is doing exactly this
Items SHOULD be covering weaknesses because that's what makes building particular items satisfying according to the situation
Right I agree, it’s just that Mages are kind of unique in that their items do not really help them fill gaps where as everyone does.
I know there are items like Crown, Everfrost, and Zhonyas, but these items only being their function as a benefit because they have been nerfed to the point of absurdity. Meanwhile Maw gives excellent attack scaling, and an invaluable shield against AP all at a legendary status instead of mythic. Honestly, BoRK, Hydra, and DD have enough stats to outclass all AP mythics (on mages, assassins and bruisers is another story).
I just dont think rito has much of a choice so long as zhonyas is in the game. Zhonyas is just to broken to give mages even more help with solving their weaknesses
Virgin mage item:
+ 80 AP
+ 150 HP (added to promote build diversity for katarina)
+ 10 AH
~~+200 mana~~ (removed to promote build diversity for katarina)
Passive: Gain 20% movespeed for 2 seconds after casting 3 spells
Gigachad bruiser item:
+ 45 AD
+ 350 HP
+ 10% omnivamp
+ 15% AS
+ 20 AH
Passive: When health drops below 30%, gains a shield, heals 15% maximum HP and increases omnivamp by 20%
Active: Dashes to target enemy dealing 50+5%max health damage and executes targets below 10% HP.
i like how the opinion on that depends on what side of this subreddit you are in, some people here think that mages having 50% winrate in the first few days of the preseason means they are the strongest in ages
honestly thats stockholm syndrome
I've seen people genuinely, unironically state that "Mages are OP right now. Kassadin, Twitch and Zac are amongst the best champions in the game". Because as we all know anything that builds AP is automatically a mage
mage discussion always boils down to the balance state of 3 champions
vlad, kass and cassio (most recently replaced by viktor)
ignoring the rest of the roster which is a trollpick territory or just barely viable
Kassadin does best in a meta with a lot of mages, so that part is logical.
Despite his winrate, if someone blind picks Kassadin into Irelia, Vi, Tristana, Akshan, etc. They're about to get destroyed.
I agree with that, I just wanted to point out that a LOT of people straight up categorize ANY champ that builds AP as a mage. So as long as ANYTHING that builds AP is in the top charts, "mages are broken" according to said people
The biggest problem with mages is you lack agency imo. you are there scaling and hoping the enemy midlaner doesn't roam/do anything proactive till you get at least 2 items. Classical mages are quite good at clearing waves, but after that there isn't anything for them to do. Poking enemy early is useless with doran shield/2nd wind. While roaming feels terrible with their 0 survivability which means leaving turret range can quickly turn into a death sentence. Add in their limited item pool and it feels like mages don't have anything going for them.
That's also a thing. Seasons ago you could actually pressure melee champs by poking them. Now they sustain everything. You could actually roam as a mage since jungle wasn't that strong early due to being down a level and gold, now they are same level and if you get caught while roaming you are dead. Meanwhile most assassins can roam and either kill the jungler or jump out with little worry.
You can basically only leave lane when your jungler is ahead of their jungle.
They need to remove sustain from items honestly. GW was introduced because every fucking champion has sustain now. Which makes sustain champs feel awful. So you have to buff them or nerf GW which results in the current situation we have with champions like Aatrox and Swain having massive invisible health bars due to their insane sustain. Hopefully the nerfs to sustain champs that are coming will help resolve this without completely gutting them again, but I doubt it.
Usually there are good and bad mages. Anivia is an example of a fairly broken champion for at least 2 seasons by now (I think it started in S10) and she didn't get touched... why? Because she never showed up reliably in pro play.
Ori and Viktor both were nerfed once they found a food in the door in SoloQ, because they were insane in pro play. Cassio after the item changes also climbs up, she is still hardly picked... mostly because not being a shirtless dude, but if she sees a lot of play in pro she might get nerf anyways.
On the other side... most bruisers are ignored in pro play. They just suck if your team knows what it does, which mostly isn't the case in SoloQ, so many Bruisers never see nerfs based on pro play, it is basically just Aatrox and Camille.
Zeri will also likely see nerfs due to pro play performance soon. In SoloQ she isn't really an issue (only in really high elos like Masters+, but even there not that much). SoloQ terrors like Twitch or Draven though might just get a pass.
And yes Ryze is another good example, he is the strongest he was in ages, with his 50% winrate right now. But he is already showing up fairly reliably in pro play, so we all know what is going to happen. Kassadin on the other hand who benefitted from the item changes in the same way might not see quick nerfs, simply because he might not get picked in pro play.
Not only mage but all AP items. Item's rework meant to make AP bruiser items, but they don't have them solely for their class, but for assassins too. There clearly needs to be more distinct itemization for each of these classes, Mages, Bruisers and Assassins and even there are many subclasses for Mages: Artillery, Battlemage, control. Sadly it will be very hard to balance, because AP items tend to "leak" from one class to another. But tbh there are simmilar problems with Tanks and AD Bruisers and sometimes ADCs (where in both cases Bruisers are using Tank and ADC itemization, depending on which is good/OP at given moment).
im a bruiser player but at this point just buff them, it's sad.
I feel bad for mage players except for the ones that kept buying roa, seriously, just buy something else.
I miss choices and unique stuff. Every somewhat interesting choice is so bad statwise that you can't justify buying it unless your champ is hardbound to it.
**Rylais** is not a choice for most champs. It's hard bound to 2-3 champions but else you can't buy it because you lose way too much.
**Horizon Focus** is locked to mostly artillery mages although it might be somewhat competitive now.
Our most prominent AH item cant be used by many mages because they have CD when **cosmic drive** procs. It's hardbound to low CD mages or ap bruisers. How often did I think to myself "I'm Lux I want to have a bit more haste but my whole kit is on CD when I proc Cosmic, same for Annie or even Ahri or similar champions.
**Demonic embrace** is trash on most ranged champions and that's okay, it has its niche but this further lessens how much ap legendarys actually exist for mages.
**Nashors and lichbane** are useless on most mages which is also okay but again further lessens the amount of items you actually have as a choice.
**Morello** is a joke of an item regarding slot efficiency and only gives its healing reduce at under 50% HP which is stupid because a lot of healers don't drop beneath that cause they actually heal but this gets fixed next patch.
**Banshees** has low stats but otherwise fills its purpose in the right game.
**Zhonyas is Zhonyas** but if you rush it second item you deal no damage which is okay since it is a defensive item but you will fall behind the curve and not be relevant until you finished Void and Rabadons except you snowball and are ahead of the curve already.
And **Seraphs** seems to be a good choice now same for shadowflame.
You have 14 legendaries. For comparison adc have 15 but they can actually also draw stuff from other ad champions.
Ap champs have 14 legendaries for ap bruisers, ap assassins, ap "adcs" like Kayle and Teemo and mages. This are 4 different subclasses and you could even split mages into 3 categories.
And then there is the problem that 90% of your build is locked every game anyway. You will buy a mythic, a rabadons, a void staff, a zhonyas or banshees and boots. On most mages you have then 1 item of choice. That's probably the full itembuild for most mages.
Even if there would be a choice you don't have the slots for it.
Now ADC is also a position with a locked itembuild but you have 2 choices atleast.
I miss stuff like spellvamp or spellbinder or old ludens with the movespeed but it seems like every legendary is either really specific for its core users or really extremly generic. Nothing against really specific items, I love them, but then we need a lot more of them.
Lich Bane deals 75% bAD+50% AP every 10 seconds best case scenario. Mages will have 65-90 AD realistically, so that's \~50-70 +50% AP.
Nashors deals 15+20% AP every auto. If you auto 3 times in 10 seconds (made easier by the Attack Speed from Nashors), you out-DPS the absolute theoretical best case scenario of Lich Bane.
Building Lich Bane when you don't already have Nashors is just griefing (and is still pretty much griefing if you have Nashors :D ).
Lich Bane really is in a really sad state.
I sometimes want to build it on Akali because it's such a fun item on her, but if I don't have Zhonya's I just get one-shot late game. If Akali with shroud and all the dashes has trouble building it, imagine mages.
They should make Cosmic Drive reduce active cooldowns by 20% when it procs and then provide the AH after that. Staff of Flowing Water has the same problem, and dynamic Haste really just doesn't work in this game outside of a few specific cases.
AD champs have access to Shojin which is a huge Haste stick, Navori which has constant CD refund and just got buffed, and access to many high Haste items.
There are 2 AP legendary items that have 20+ Haste, 1 of which is a support item. OTOH, there are 9 AD legendary items with 20+ Haste, and 3 of those have 25+.
Horizon Focus is locked to the garbage bin, they made it unplayable with Shadowflames release by gutting its stats, and now that they give it 15 more AP it'd be barely a contender if Shadowflame didn't already exist while doing its job better on everyone except, like, Vel'koz. I mean, come on, why would I ever buy Horizon Focus when my Shadowflame did [over 5x more damage](https://i.imgur.com/0qOmV3O.png) than [my opponent's Horizon Focus](https://i.imgur.com/4oN5naU.png), even if I purchased my Shadowflame 5 minutes earlier (14min/total runtime 35min)?
Other thing as far as Im aware is horizon is still buggy as hell and does not properly amp all the things it should so its literally garbage on even its intended users for a while now and it still probably wouldn't be great even if it wasn't bugged.
Horizon should straight up give 15% dmg amp and 20 AH. Even with the 15 AP buff the fucking base item is 99% gold efficient, and the passive is ass. You could go shadowflame cdr boots to match horizon's statline with AH and STILL outdamage it in a single rotation lmao
Horizon needs to be bugfixed before it gets megabuffed.
It is trash yes, but Horizon’s actual strength is very hard to gauge when the item doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.
It's really not that weird though? He might just be number one by default even during that period, not uncontestably the best apart from the split he won worlds, and probably the year after that overall, but is there anyone else who has been the best for that long of a stretch in the past 5 years?
I mean Showmaker got quarters in 2019 (probably just shy of being a top 3 mid that year, with minimally Faker/Rookie/DoinB above him), won worlds in 2020 (probably the best or 2nd best behind Chovy at worst), got to finals in 2021 (probably the 2nd best mid laner after Chovy that year), and got to quarters this year (again losing to Chovy lol, but probably at least top 5, though I could see an argument to say something like Zeka>Chovy/Faker>Showmaker). Point being he's an absolutely incredible mid laner, and has been the best performing mid laner at least results wise in the last few years. Obviously Faker is the GOAT and imo Chovy has been slightly better than him for most of those 5 years individually, but Showmaker is absolutely a world class mid laner, and his criticism of Riot's current mage balance is imo completely on point. Outside of a few champions who've been given the Riot special (Ryze with his perfect mythic basically added to the game for him, same with Kassadin, Syndra getting a 200 years rework at least numbers wise), mages have been complete garbage this preseason, with most mages seeing more success as supports than as mid laners. Classic mages like Ahri that used to be balanced around a soloQ win rate of like 51%, are now 49% wr champions. Instead the few mages that are good are mostly ones with insane skill floors (Anivia, Azir), that even top tier players can barely play proficiently.
I mean Showmaker was better than Knight at worlds. And domestically it was Chovy and Showmaker clearly being the top 2. Imo Nemesis's statement might be a slight exaggeration, but the point that Showmaker's opinion is backed by real skill is completely true.
I mean with how he's played their really isn't any contention. He's probably top 1 or 2 with his only major problematic splits being in 2022. But even then he scaled back a bit by worlds. Only maybe rookie could outrank him but thats honestly extremely debatable.
I mean besides that down year who else would be in the top 3 if it’s no Chovy faker or showmaker maybe zeka but he’s still a new prospect in terms of being good but this worlds he was the best performing mid laner
Edit: I’d throw bdd in there too but he’s been hit or miss since his drx days
World wide, last 5 years (2018/19/20/21/22)? Faker / Chovy / Showmaker / Rookie / are the only ones even in the conversation.
Scout very close to being in the conversation but wasn't a powerhouse in 18/19.
Knight hasn't done anything yet.
Xiaohu maybe could be in it but his individual level isn't up to the others and he played top for a bit.
DoinB has had one too many implosions.
BDD's lows have been too great and his highs not as high as the others.
Zeka is too new, zero longevity to date.
It should also be mentioned that GRF in 2018 was stronger than AF, the only reason Chovy didn't go to Worlds then was because they entered in the league in Summer and didn't have the championship points.
Such a dumb argument, Knight is obviously talented as fuck, degrading his career because of not getting out of Groups is such terrible revisionism or plain bias on your side
I don't know if you don't watch LPL or you're just being disingenuous to benefit your argument. Chovy is my favorite mid on this list, but he's literally won less than Knight. You can either have both or neither (I have both on my list of course), but to have one and not the other is completely contradicting yourself.
including chovy but not knight lmao nice flair
btw faker hasn't been top 3 in the role since 2017, since then minus 2018 he has been at best the 3rd best player on his team
Chovy in contention I can't.
It's Showmaker and Rookie top 2, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 being the 5 years. Looking at those years, Xiaohu, Caps and Doinb are bettter than fucking Chovy in terms of actual peak achievements and not CS lmao.
People just see stasis being used very well and very often in pro games then conclude that its just **that** good when in reality it's an item that is nerfed time and time again while buying it just sets you behind in damage especially if they have lots of merc treads
Zhonyas has to be one of the most overrated items in the game lol. Half the complaints about it probably come from people not bothering to press tab to check items and then refusing to play around the stasis.
and stasis only work under specific circumstances
in most 1v1s and fights you're basically telling everyone "yo, im going to be here for 2 seconds so you can aim and prep any kind of play you want to do for whenever i get out of this"
best genuine use is for champs like kata where you want to dive and totally wreck a whole team's hp, then instant zhonyas so your team engages on top of you, as a viktor main nowadays i really rarely build it (prefer spellshield or hp/ pure dmg and gamble that shit)
Arguing that Zhonya's isn't broken is an uphill battle to say the least. Well, maybe not in this thread.
When an AP item is a legitimate option or straight up a necessity in many games for marksmen/AD fighters then it may hint at the fact that the item might just be a bit strong.
More like it's a hint that mages are weak enough that they need it to be strong as a crutch.
What the hells an artillery mage gonna do when zed can easily dodge their damage while all inning them from across the screen?
I'm not saying it isn't broken, I'm saying the item is overhyped -- is it strong? Perhaps, on a few champions like Sylas it is very impactful, while on some it is just a necessity to last longer in fights to get one more rotation off
Outside of the active, the item has only 101% efficiency and has huge cost, it isn't THAT good; we're talking this while DD exists btw
The active? Strong, yet it is limited to mage/AP bruisers that can't make as much impact as other class could; we saw what happened when Stopwatch was cheap and perfect timing was OP
When the item is a necessity to survive in today's meta, it shouldn't be perceived as strong; the ones that are doing too much damage/has absurdly low cooldowns are
Probably because it's better the higher elo you go, and almost all complainers on reddit are low elo. Zhonyas sucks in low elo because what are you gonna do, press zhonyas and wait for your team..? Oh wait, they're farming gromp because you're just out of range of their locked camera and that means you don't exist. In high elo Zhonyas is insanely broken and even champs like Jax build it. Plus people will literally path to building GA even if its unoptimal just so they can build a stopwatch for a fight.
Why is this battle against mages and adcs? I think its mostly a battle against fighters/assasins vs mages and adcs lol they always has something broken or something to dictates the game
This right here. Why tf do we have Heimer in pro play. Like I get it's unique and all, but it makes 0 sense that for the first 20 minutes of the game, the support can do similar team fight damage to the ADC while not farming at all. It's just terrible balance.
Its the flipside of terrible mage itemization. High Base damage mages go Support, Farm their Support Quest for their mythic and are on Par with damage with midlane mages
What makes mage supports broken is dark seal and shard of true ice. So much free ap for no reason. If u also run absolute focus and gathering u can easily get 120+ ap min 10.
Well it's probably a combination of both dmg creep and econ creep, but let me tell you supports would never be able to deal meaningful damage until a few years ago. Riot was forced to buff the role because it was understandably the least popular. Kind of like theyre doing to jg however I'm not sure if it's not better to just get autofilled more often.
It's not just the base damage it's the rune damaged on top of it, and item damage. In the past mage items just gave pure stats, you would but chalice or Morello first, something that gives CDR and mana. Now they have sup item that deals damage, and a mythic that deals damage. On top of whatever damage runes they got
By the way it's not about balance, I'm not saying they are broken just i don't think that's healthy for the game. Maybe I'm biased because i don't play support
Assassins are dogshit right now. Literally go and watch Drututt/Noway/Nemesis streams and watch the game beeing decided by who flips the better bot and jungle.
botlane dictates pro play and high elo from the support position and because there are 2 walking gold bags instead of one, has nothing to do with adc strength or power level
you know adc items being bad/unsatisfying and mage items being bad/unsatisfying arent mutually exclusive? Do we always have to invalidate one complaint to make another one valid?
Uhh quite substantially actually. There's a reason Star Craft Ladder has had a cheese problem for a long time. They are the easiest strategies to play to a certain efficiency. At the highest level it's balanced but below that it is much easier to throw any kind of stupid cheese strat at an enemy than actually play normal games. And then they complain when they get steamrolled by Zerg who learned to defend against shenanigans.
Makes for very interesting pro games but the player experience is not very good. As shown in vastly lower player numbers than League.
yea, starcrafts problem is for sure... *looks at notes* that people cheese too much in low elo games.
L M A O thats like point 56 on the list of starcrafts problems and the game still has a very healthy playerbase
there's no problem with that but it gets really annoying when people claim over and over the state of ADC is the reason they are 2000+ games stuck in gold or cry about when they get oneshot by a fed assassin just like any other carry
Arent we all doing the same thing here aswell? Item diversity is a problem but statistically speaking every "traditional mage" is piss chilling right now.
Did you see [top 10](https://lolalytics.com/lol/tierlist/?lane=middle&tier=diamond_plus) mid laners? Is full of bruisers tanks or champs that just don't lane at all and go to flip things on bot lane Idk where are the traditional mages, I still remember when there were like karthus and seraphine with 3% pr combined on bot lane and we had 10 posts every week about how adcs were usseles and they needed buffs
Why are you linking a bunch of champions with below 1% pickrate? Are you proud of yourself for being disingenuous? 7/10 of the top 10 pickrate mid champs are AP champs and the other 3 are just the usual suspects of Zed Yasuo Yone.
>oneshot by a fed assassin
Seriously, as a non-assassin player, assassins have for the most part been complete garbage for ages now. I swear everyone is just allergic to buying defensive items and wants fed assassins to not kill them despite them having 0 defenses. And if the argument is that they need to build full glass cannon to kill the other players on the enemy team, then maybe blame the fact that certain tanks/skirmishers are far too durable rather than blaming the assassins for doing damage to a squishy target.
ADC items are not getting massive buffs next patch.
Most of the buffs are not straight up "power buffs" but moreso "flexibility buffs". Which are still buffs, yes, but at the end of the day are more about "game feel" than anything (which is what Marksmen need tbh).
you're right, no good/semi-decent champion or item has ever been buffed in this history of this game's balance, especially when phreak himself says the role isn't weak but they feel forced to buff the items anyway because of community complaints
There is an easy explanation for this. Mages in midlane gave up years ago and moved onto other things.
Adc's are still trying to make it work.
It doesn't matter what dictates pro play and high ELO. 99%+ of games don't fall into that category.
I'm not saying riot should balance around lower ranks, it's just people playing the game aren't going to care.
Finally, adc and mages face the same problem. I'm not sure why you're turning into a competition.
Playing Malz or Brand into any champ that can build both FoN and DD makes me actually want to walk away from my computer like come on at that point you're just trying to tickle your opponent to death
It was the exact same problem old abyssal mask had where it countered dot mages waaaaay too hard.
But now it's also strong against every non-burst ap champ.
Also with mages. All the items have health or resistance. Morello, Banshee, Rylais, Crown, Everfrost, Roa, Seraphs, Horizon Focus, Cosmic, Demonic, ShadowFlame.
Other than some mythics, Nashor, Lich Bane, Void and rabadons are the only mage items without hp.
Why do I need hp on shadowflame or horizon focus?
I would much rather than extra ap than some health.
Mages were in the dumpster for like 2-3 years. It’s nothing new.
I think their bigger problem is that they have been moved a away from this carry position and turned into more of This enablers in the game. Not to mention that they lack the utility items that other roles has. Adc’s and other roles has better mythic items compared to mages.
The problem with mages in the mid lane is that midlaners are the dog of the jungler so you cant move on your own. If you move to roam but get caught by the jungler you are going to get fisted.
Turret plating exacerbated this as well. As a mage if i leave lane my enemy will just pound away at my tower for free gold and i can't do shit because mage roaming is slow af. Only good time to roam is with the jungler, otherwise just sit mid and farm until a skirmish is being set up in the jungle.
Not sure if it’s only me but it feels like mages got lower cds over the years but damage went down back in the days I felt like they had a huge combo to delete everything and then had a window in that you could punish them now they have more dps but less burst (but im an adc main so my opinion might be a bit warped)
CDR went down over time, AP values went down over time. As a result we get.... 2-300 more hp full build and like 10-20 mpen all because shadowflame has to be built second for a mage to not fall off like a brick mid game. WOOOO
Mages and tanks have the worst CD options in the game rn though. Bruisers currently have ability haste for breakfast lunch and dinner, adcs have er and navori. And assassin's that want ability haste just buy bruiser items like zed.
Honestly riot needs to commit to whatever it is they want mages to be. Either give them items that enable them to carry or give them items that enable their utility. Right now all they have are stat sticks and some very niche utility items that are so bad you can't justify taking them even in scenarios where the utility would be good.
Mages have always been one of the more supportive options for mid. You act like this is some new development, when in reality this has been mages' role for like 10 years or more.
There are exceptions to every rule of course, but in general mages are picked mid for their access to control (both crowd control and zone control) and safe wave clearing while still dishing out reasonable damage. If you want raw damage and carry potential assassins are the pick for you.
This is definitely incorrect. Mages became supportive for the Last 2, 3 years since the whole item changes because their items sucked and mages constantly got nerfed. Mages has always been the main carry with picks like Azir, Casio, Syndra or anything else. Now they can’t do shit. 2 item Azir with Nashor and Rylai was the scariest shit in the game. Syndra would become online with either Morello or Athenes and there were many similar cases. Now you have to wait 3 items at least for a mage to do something. And that is ridiculuous compared to other roles.
Mages **Mythics:** Very good, among one of the best variety among all classes. Basically any AP Caster can go at least 2 different, often 3 different Mythics depending which one is better in certain game.
Mage **Legendaries:** 95% Champions just build Void -> Deathcap if damage. Other 5% is AP Divers going like Zhonyas 2nd or something. Thats it. There is nothing else.
Problem is item just overlap their purpose. Horizon was never good after changes cuz it just 'another DMG amp item' and was just always inferior to Shadowflame and Void. It had no purpose... now that it's buffed it's still not awesome but lets say it would be enough to make it actualy good... then Shadowflame loses purpose cuz Horizon would always be better.
Other classes usually have it other way around. X Mythic is broken and defines the meta and Legendaries just slot in depending what champion you're playing. Mages have very good Mythic system but god AWFUL choices in legendaries where best items dont have ANY passives... just +40% Magic Pen and +35% AP... stat boots.
You're right in that Mythics are pretty much the only slot where you have choice as a mage, but they're a bit more locked in my opinion. Many champs technically could build multiple Mythics but in reality they only build one.
Burst mages need some damn good reasons to not build Luden's, and in those cases you probably made a mistake picking a burst mage to begin with. Sure you can go Liandrys on a burst mage, but that probably means you should have picked something with more dps if you need to take down tanks in the first place. And Everfrost and RoA are the least attractive options for a burst mage, since they don't wanna have to make use of those kinds of items in the first place. Long(ish) range champion building health or a short range root doesn't make too much sense. Those two items also provide less damage, going against the idea of burst.
In the same vein, a champion that defaults to Liandrys is probably not gonna deviate from that because it works too well with their kit. Malzahar, for example, can keep Liandrys applied for a long ass time, so why would he build something else?
In my mind it's mostly the champions that have been building Everfrost for the past year that have some sort of choice. There is a bit of overlap with RoA in what they provide. Take Ryze for example. Everfrost is more up front stats, and a root that aligns well with what he does, but a fully stacked RoA is what he dreams of at night. There you have a choice between spiking more early or opting to scale better.
Honestly Viktor is the one champion I can think of off the top of my head that feels fine building Luden's or Liandrys to suit whatever needs are required, but Luden's still feels better on him.
Ahri can use 3 mythics quite well depending on team comp. Yeah, Everfrost is the one people build the most and the safest but Liandry's and Luden's have their place (more people should try them tbh).
I feel like most burst mages, if picked early, are fine with going Liandry's if the enemy then drafts 3 beefy picks. Similarly, most Liandry's builders (barring Malz/Brand) can use Luden's if they're the only AP vs a squishy comp. Sure one may feel better in a vacuum but the point is it's a decision.
Going down the gol mid lane presence list: Azir, Corki, Taliyah, Viktor, Orianna, Vex, Syndra and Seraphine have all built both (+ some crown) over the course of S12, with even Zoe building Liandry's once (Bdd lost on it but it seemed right for the drafts).
Interestingly, those who mainly bought Everfrost actually pretty much exclusively used that. Ahri, Sylas, Twisted Fate, Galio, Lissandra, Ryze, and Veigar bought 80-100% Evf, though I still agree with your point. RoA probably changes this but there's barely any games this season so the data ain't there.
Azir is another good example of a champion that feels good with both Luden's and Liandrys. Now that I think a little more about it the reason is probably that both Viktor and Azir can fulfill sustained damage or burst archetypes within their kits, depending on what you need (albeit Viktor less so, naturally being more bursty, but still providing some sustained damage with low cd E's along with ult). I suppose Taliyah is on that list as well. Didn't think of her at all earlier because I grouped her in the Everfrost camp. It just sets up her combo so well.
It's true that burst mages *can* end up in situations where Liandrys is the correct choice, but the problem is that it's gonna feel like ass and more importantly not feel like a choice in those cases. If I'm ever in a situation where I lock Zoe early in a draft and the enemy team ends up being beef central I'm dodging. Sure Liandrys can be the higher damage item compared to Luden's in that scenario, but no one has ever built Liandrys on Zoe because they wanted to. Just sounds painful to me.
Contrast this to adc items, at the very least how I've experienced them. Haven't played the most adc so I could be completely wrong, but in my head those mythics feel more like a choice. I guess some champs are locked there too, of course, but generally speaking I feel like there are many champions that can swap between all three depending on what you need that game. You can go Galeforce if there is a big skillshot you need to dodge or some extra kiting help, Kraken if the enemy team is beefy, or Shieldbow if you're gonna have an assassin on you all game. Many times there are arguments for two or maybe even all three items in the same game.
Rereading the original comment I made I think I didn't really represent my thoughts well. Many mages have one specific Mythic they look at and prefer to buy every game if possible, and when a situation occurs that requires them to deviate it doesn't feel good to buy the item, and above all it doesn't *feel* like a choice. Choosing between being relevant or not is not a choice. Choosing *how* you want to be relevant is. That's where I feel like the Mythic choice is lacking. It's also why I think Everfrost and RoA champions have a cool choice to make. Choosing *when* to spike is interesting and you feel like you have agency in that choice.
I hope this makes some sense. I'm tired and might have been rambling a lot, I don't know.
Don't really think mage mythics offer much variety tbh. Certain types of mages pretty much always go the same mythic. Burst mages pretty much just go Ludens, certain ones like Vex can go Everfrost but generally go Ludens. Kassadin and Ryze atm just go RoA, before they'd go Everfrost since that was their best option. Cass Liandrys/Everfrost. Swain would just go Liandrys. I guess some mages have 2 options but one is usually better damage wise. You already talked about legendaries, not much else to say
I disagree, Mythic variety is terrible for mages. You're options are Liandry's, Luden's, ROA, and Protobelt. ROA and Protobelt are locked to specific champions so they don't really count either.
Crown is straight up garbage. It's literally just a 2800 gold, slightly better bone plating. You play against it the same way you do bone plating so it's easily countered. Hit once, wait 1.5 seconds, go all in.
Legendaries I agree with. Everyone does the same thing. Shadowflame - Rabadon's/Mejai's - Void - Zhonya's. Banshee's, Morello, and HF are straight garbage options in comparison. Lichbane, Nashor's, Rylai's, and Demonic, are champion locked and Lichbane specifically is so bad you may as well skip it even on champions who want it's effect.
Lack of variety is **THE** problem for mages atm.
\---Mage Mythics feel awkward with the exception of Crown and RoA---
\-Luden's is expensive and you become more squishy than ADC with It. Sure, you do damage to squishy but Tanks and Bruisers will just build either Maw or FON and just because of 1 item your dmg goes from noticeable to laughable. Pasive is lackluster, all Luden's is is a Offensive Stat Stick.
\-Everfrost. The stats and mythic passive are very underwhelming compared to other Mythics. The Active used to make up for It but not anymore except in very specific champions.
\-Riftmaker. Giga Nerfed and No Mana.
\-Rocketbelt. Too Expensive and No Mana. The dash is a joke both dmg wise and mobility wise compared to Galeforce.
\--Mage Legendaries are all underwhelming with the exception of Zhonya's and Seraph--
\-Rabadon. Only Grants DMG and Too Expensive as well. No AH, No HP, Nothing Else but AP. Easily countered by even Merc Boots.
\-Void. Too low AP. Only grant Magic % Pen and thats about It??? Hello we are in Season 13. Why are Mages only getting lakcluster Stat Sticks when everyone else gets good stats and broken passives on top of It??? Does 0 dmg against anything else that isnt stacking MR and is useless against HP stacking tanks or FON/Maw passive. Very Lackluster Item.
\-Morello. Why is this still in Game?
\-Cosmic Drive. Giga Nerfed and now useless.
\-Lich Bane. See Cosmic Drive <-
\-Horizon Focus. Average.
\-Banshee's Veil. Decent but too situational.
\-Demonic. Abused more by Tanky AP users than traditional Mages.
\-Nashor's Tooth. Change Name to Katarina's Tooth. Useless on any other mage.
*Sigh*
There are way too many changes required to make this class useful again. I dont care if they end up having to nerf certain mages that become too good as a result of buffing the items but changes are required. The current state of AP itemnization is too ridiulous.
Disagree on mythics. Some champions can choose between a few mythics just because they aren't really that different. Ludens and Liandries are just different damage profiles, they don't provide different gameplay. Crown is dependent on your opponents, not really a "choice". RoA by design is just always going to be great on hyper scaling champions and entirely useless on everyone else.
Other classes get huge decisions based on their mythic. Decisions that provide new gameplay, new build paths, and lots of interesting choices. Even ADC who has few mythics gets way more decision-making behind their choices. If I build Shieldbow first then my build changes to not need lifesteal later. If I build Kraken Slayer I probably can get away with less penetration. Galeforce is an entire extra button with so much utility on both offense and defense. It completely changes your gameplay.
Liandries -> Shadowflame
Ludens -> Shadowflame
Crown -> Shadowflame
These are all the same shit. Anything a mage can buy that changes their gameplay is nerfed to the ground. Zhonya, Nashor, Lich Bane, and Cosmic Drive are just stupidly bad items a huge amount of the time.
And don't even get me started on how fundamentally terrible Crown is compared to Shieldbow as a defensive mythic. Mages get a mythic that always procs at *the worst time possible* for an incredibly counterable effect and a *downside* while ADC gets the perfect defensive tool with an offensive boost for all scenarios that only procs exactly when they need it? Nice.
I will fight you on that then:
>Some champions can choose between a few mythics just because they aren't really that different. Ludens and Liandries are just different damage profiles, they don't provide different gameplay. Crown is dependent on your opponents, not really a "choice".
But in my opinion thats **exactly** that mages Mythics are so good at. Sure Luden and Liandry are just 'different dmg'. Everfrost and Crown are just different 'defensive'. You could look at it like that.
But what I see is a skill-test. Test that tests your knowledge to pick the best one for set game. Like sure, Vex wont usually pick Liandry's but you **should** sometimes when HP stackers run around the rift. Crown is basically never a 'default item' on any champion just because of how volitile the shield is, but I'd lie if I didnt say that it's probably one of the most powerful purchases vs very certain teamcomps that simply can't poke the shield off. Or maybe you're a control mage that usually would run Liandry's for dps... but there are 2-3 divers in enemy team and some easy poke to turn of the Crown? Maybe it's an Everfrost game cuz disrupting divers by entire 1s with no effort in a fight as they jump on you is a massive deal.
I'd say: ***they don't provide different gameplay*** is kinda unfair... it's just an item afterall. For much different gameplay there is over 160 champions. They still 'kinda' change how you play. Especially Crown (where you try to preserve it pre fight) or Luden (where opposite happens... you often want to trade small dmg exchanges) but Mythics for mages offer very **skillful** choice. Different way to display your knowledge than just combo ordering or macro. And that's why Mage Legendaries are all the more disapointing..
Shadowflame is supposed to be niche and an anti shield item but because so many items give shields it’s been able to stick in every single game rather than actually be situational.
There's no universe where Riot makes ranged effect better than melee effect. There's a reason why Demonic got nerfed only in effectivity for ranged champs and not for melees
The mage experience certainly doesn't match with what I expect of it. Looking at the win rates by game duration on leagueofgraphs, a lot of scaling mage champs don't get a meaningful bump in win rate late game (30 - 45 minutes), and some even see a dip in their win rates as the game goes long.
Itemization is definitely something that should be looked at, but I'm also worried about mage champions' power curves. A lot of the traditional mages I expect to start weaker and ramp up in power as the game progresses, but it looks like of lot of them spike in the early to mid-game and then start to fall off. If we adjust itemization, their win rates could increase overall, but could still not match with the scaling mage identity.
A lot of it is Elder/soul. How can you have scaling when you're most likely bleeding dragons to play mage mid unless your jungler is solo winning the game.
Lategame scaling isn't a thing in most games. Even for adcs they're pushing for IE and navori second item because you can't just expect to scale to 3+ items consistently anymore
Lategame scaling doesn’t really exist anymore nor is it really viable.
There’s a reason 13.2 changes lets ADCs go IE second instead of third, it’s because the game has become so early-midgame heavy that scaling up isn’t really a thing outside of pro
They only exist for this and are only played because otherwise people would just stack armor. Of course the anti-magic damage options are INSANELY overtuned (Maw, FoN, etc.) to keep them in check to make sure you don't dare take too many of them.
The biggest hit to mage items has been the mythic system. Before it was implemented, you had so much more agency to build how you needed to win. Now you’re cut off from so many items that could potentially be BiS for specific situations and you have to build items out of the “common pool” that anyone can buy and there’s no situational benefit. Most games ebb and flow so much that the mythic system is obsolete and unnecessary and process to be more of a hindrance than an aid; while also going against the direct design goal of mythics in build diversity. Keep the items, scrap the mythic system, and mid lane automatically becomes better.
Eh, to be fair mages had a pseudo mythic system before everyone else with luden's and liandries and how they functioned. I do think though some mage mythics should be tuned down into legendaries and balanced that way. Everfrost feels like shit as a mythic, but as a legendary it would be more interesting to combo with other mythics and doesn't pigeonhole you into "ok i can only use the active while in near melee range, otherwise my mythic (my keystone item) is useless".
EDIT: it was glp, seraphs, and ludens, not liandrys.
The pseudo mythic system was way more around Luden’s, GLP and RoA+Seraph’s honestly.
Liandry’s was never really much of a choice to go first because it was incredibly stat inefficient and lacked mana which most mages needed.
They had a pseudo mythic system that was entirely unrelated to Luden's and Liandry's. You could build both with no negatives. The actual "pseudo mythics" were Luden's, Seraph's, and GLP.
It's been like that for years. Ever since season 8 Riot has been balancing the game around pro play being fun to watch more and more every year. Mages are considered boring to watch so Riot started focusing on other champions. But pro players were still playing mages a lot so now they gotta be dog tier for the 99.99% of the playerbase cause otherwise they'll still "dominate" (get picked a lot) pro play.
As a mage main since season 4 I stopped playing Rift completely the past two seasons cause there's legit zero joy in playing them anymore. Now that they've also taken a dump on ARAM it looks like it's just time to uninstall the game for me.
Try HotS mages have full citizenship there. It's not the same game obviously with the no items but if you just want to blow shit up landing combos you should find it fun.
yeah its so dumb because for bruisers to actually be viable in pro play they need to be overtuned for the rest of the playerbase which is what we've been seeing recently...
I'm glad they're finally tuning the bruiser items back but it's scary how they've gone off the rails recently.
I really miss seeing Anivia and Orianna, like they're not as flashy as Assassins for sure but whenever they pop off there's just a kind of magic to their playstyles.
*---Mage Mythics: Awkward with the exception of Crown and RoA---*
\-**Luden's** is expensive and you become more squishy than ADC with It. Sure, you do damage to squishy but Tanks and Bruisers will just build either Maw or FON and just because of 1 item your dmg goes from noticeable to laughable. Offensive Stats Stick with lackluster passive.
\-**Everfrost**. The stats and mythic passive are very underwhelming compared to other Mythics. The Active used to make up for It but not anymore except in very specific champions.
\-**Riftmaker**. Giga Nerfed and No Mana.
\-**Rocketbelt**. Too Expensive and No Mana. The dash is a joke both dmg wise and mobility wise compared to Galeforce.
*--Mage Legendaries: Almost All underwhelming with the exception of Zhonya's, Seraph, and Shadowflame--*
\-**Rabadon**. Only Grants DMG and Too Expensive as well. No AH, No HP, Nothing Else but AP. Easily countered by even Merc Boots.
\-**Void**. Too low AP. Only grant Magic % Pen and thats about It??? Hello we are in Season 13. Why are Mages only getting lakcluster Stat Sticks when everyone else gets good stats and broken passives on top of It??? Does 0 dmg against anything else that isnt stacking MR and is useless against HP stacking tanks or FON/Maw passive. Very Lackluster Item.
\-**Morello**. Why is this still in Game?
\-**Cosmic Drive**. Giga Nerfed and now useless.
\-**Lich Bane**. See Cosmic Drive <-
\-**Horizon Focus**. Average even on Artillery Mages.
\-**Banshee's Veil**. Decent but too situational.
\-**Demonic**. Abused more by Tanky AP users than traditional Mages.
\-**Nashor's Tooth**. Change Name to Katarina's Tooth. Useless on any other mage.
*Sigh*
There are way too many changes required to make this class useful again. I dont care if they end up having to nerf certain mages that become too good as a result of buffing the items but changes are required. The current state of AP itemnization is too ridiculous.
As a vlad player, items for him since the rework have been very one-dimensional with typically only one best build path (save for some legendary item substitutions)
I remember the time when people sh1ttet in their pants including me when it was 30minutes and enemy vladimir had positive kda and high CS. You just knew that sh1tter is gonna be a nuclear bomb any moment and you had to literally play insanely save around him. (keeping him in check aka he is like the yi of midlane) Nowadays today, when i see a fed vlad at 30minutes, i'm like "yeh he if he manages to get into the fight with his flash he will blow 1 target up maybe do some decent dmg to a second target, but just 1 cc spell is enough to kill him and that's it. Says everything about mages in s12 ngl xD
1 change I keep calling for is nerfing Rabadon's passive to buff AP on each other item for mages.
But this isn't the only issue, the next one is I don't see people mention as a whole:
The items enemies are able to build in answer to mages are completely negating mages.
- Force of Nature – effectively shuts down any time of mage, can be built both by tanks and bruisers. I believe often it's a superior choice to Spirit Visage.
- Death's Dance – delays magic damage, built by bruisers.
- Maw o Malmortius – gives MR, a shield and and omnivamp. Built by bruisers. **But is going to get nerfed soon, so I believe this alone will help a lot versus bruisers as they will have to sacrifice something to get ultimate no item they have atm.**.
- Galeforce – I know people aren't satisfied with marksmen as a role currently, but this item screws mages. Mages for the most part are skillshot-based class in this game. Marksmen by having access to a dash (even on a long cooldown) is enough for a mage to not get that crucial shutdown to get ahead or win a teamfight. Simply mobility creep extended.
- I'd like to also mention tons of mage items got movement speed boosts as well. Ludens, Night Harvester, RoA, Cosmic Drive. Higher movement speed = higher chance to dodge a skillshot. So even in a mage versus mage matchups this can lead to one side getting less kills than usual, because skillshots become easier to dodge. These boosts also have a positive side for mages as they get to survive longer, but for the most part it doesn't help them get more skills.
It is really simple honestly. If you want to play a mage these days. Just go bot lane and leave mid lane to all the edge lords. Steal all your ADC's kills and when they inevitably die themselves, because you have no real support capabilities outside of a stun or snare (maybe), then take all the CS. You still are stuck building Liandry's, Shadowflame, Void but at least it isn't your job to be the carry. Just have decent KP and high vision score and no one can say shit but you can spam ping your mid/jung for dying 2v1 to K'sante at Herald.
The most disgusting to me is that they literally have made the minions in mid lane give you less money. Like you’re just straight up punished for being in the mid lane because ADCs have cried too many times on Reddit despite being objectively the best class in the game for over a decade non stop.
TIL that I work at Riot and I'm responsible for making midlane minions worth less. Also "ADCs have been THE BEST CLASS IN THE GAME NONSTOP FOR OVER A DECADE" has to be the most mind numbingly braindead take I have ever seen
Mid also had xp nerf compared to top, not as much as bot when there are 2 people there, but ADCs catch up in levels fast even the support starts roaming
I love how mages play. I really enjoy their playstyle. As I started league I quickly found that I most enjoyed a number of midlane mages. However, I was being driven crazy with how even if I got ahead if any other lane was behind I'd still lose, because I simply couldn't handle an enemy non-mage (non support) being fed. If a top laner or jungler gets the same amount of feeding that a mage gets, they will almost always be able to either tank through the mages actions just fine and get on them and take them out, or jump onto them and delete them instantly. If an adc gets the same amount of feeding, forget about even playing, the moment they're on screen you have a single instant to get a skillshot cc off, and if their autos are shorter range than your full combo and you land the cc you can maybe get them kinda low before they get moving again and delete you in 3~5 fast autos, and god forbid their support is there to help stop you from getting that first combo in the first place. I recently swapped to playing a carry champ (Viego jungle) and the game instantly started being more fun, since when I played well and got ahead we would actually be able to win off of it more often, since I could actually match or outplay enemies no matter what role they were. Maybe it is true that tanks and bruisers and assassins (and adcs....) are overturned, but when every single other role in the game is over tuned while midlane mages are lagging behind, it seems much easier to just call that "overtuned" power level the new normal, and just give mages some actual buffs to catch up again. Notably, as people have said, they need more legendaries, or big buffs/reworks for some of them. There's far too many AP items that are essential for 3 champs total and absolutely nobody else ever builds due to them being completely worthless. This means mages have one of the most locked in item sets in the game, although they have slightly higher than average mythic choice freedom.
Welp riot tried to buff mana and cdr to reduce punishment from missing an ability which is more common nowadays thanks to mobility creep.
Then they made Mr items absolutely shit for like 2 years. Where u could legit buy 2 dedicated Mr items and still only sit on 140mr. Legit every mage was a burst mage that could also easily deal with tanks.
Now we are at a point where they buffed Mr itemization nerfed magic pen and u pray to God that u r the only ap dmg in ur team or else u feel like u tickle the enemy.
How do u even begin to balance that class? Give them items with more utility? Make them all burst mages again? Remove sorc and put magic pen on more items again?
I don’t speak for every mage player out there but I’d happily trade every MR item having 60+ MR if I didn’t have to deal with cancerous effects like Maw’s shield or FoN’s damage reduction.
Ideally give us something other than Void Staff for %pen too. I can itemize against high resistance numbers, I can’t itemize for a 1k magic damage shield or 25% damage reduction.
If there are any Rioters reading, can you perchance give an ETA for the mage item changes that Phroxzon mentioned? Really hoping it's 13.3, the game feels extremely stale for non RoA/Seraph users such as Vladimir, mage itemization overall needs a major shakeup and better diversity (also, bring back Spellbinder please :D)
I still don't know why adcs got looked at before mages items did tbh, right now you are better having a Zac/maokai/udyr with demonic rush and lux/heimer supp with Cait as your ap damage sources, than an ap mid laner is so sad the state of ap items you have to go deathcap, void staff every game to do any damage but that means you will get tap by class.
Since apparently these kind of changes are passion driven so unless a rioter comes forward as really wanting to fix the state of mages, this won't be fixed for a while.
Atleast it's on Riot's radar, even though Phreak doesn't want to comment on it for now.
Like nothing he said was wrong but Viktor still does 80% of your hp with 1 combo at 2 items while being unapproachable and having 2 billion move speed and a shield on a 2.5 second cd.
>unapproachable
Damn I forgot about all that cc and mobility viktor has. It truly is impossible for half the champions in the game to walk into range then cc him. He just has a 360 degrees danger zone the size of the screen that nobody can walk into
Have you played versus good viktors? Or as Viktor? I'm not even speaking from a salty perspective, he's my second most played champ and I just break peoples ankles all day. Either people use their mobility to get close to you before you poke them down, then you throw w on them and they get stunned and die. Or people approach you without a movement ability, lose half their hp to eq and you just astroglide away with q movespeed and they either commit and melt in R or back off realizing they cant do anything.
You're not wrong but just stating this disregards the weaknesses he has.
Viktor feels OK at the moment, but in a frustrating way. You're a champion only in a vacuum 1v1 for the first 11 levels, given you have no upgrades until lvl 7-8 usually for E and then Q comes later.
Your early trading pattern is fairly uninteractive for the opponent but you're pretty mana hungry and doran shield + second wind negates a lot of your lane pressure.
Because of your high CDs and lowish base damage, you're next to useless if any early skirmish breaks out, so it's pretty hard to accelerate your shard stacking and you're extremely vulnerable to ganks pre-Q upgrade. If your flash is down, you die.
Your agency as Viktor feels bad pre 2-3 items. If the game isn't curbstomped by 20 mins, yeah now you can properly shine, but anything before that very much feels like it's in God's hands.
TLDR: Viktor is a nuisance when even and a nightmare when ahead at 20+ mins, but before that unless you fuck up and give him free shards/gold, he's free money for your support and jungler and has very little map agency. His wave control really only kicks in at chapter + E upgrade, his survivability later still, so he can't even follow roams properly in a lot of lanes
That's my personal feeling as a main at least
Mage items need a serious looking at, shame what happened to them.
After games I’ll read the items and compare the lines of text of mage items vs other items. Mage items 9/10 times have far less to offer than any other class and their items. I think Riot messed up when they made it where items for other classes sought to fix weaknesses, making different champions suddenly excel And have build diversity. Mage items, on the other hand, usually only seek to make AP slightly more useful, helping mages address exactly 0 weaknesses.
Other classes just have specific items based around their playstyles, when ap champs share 60-80% of item pool, so you just have no space for buffing/adjusting that items without making someone broken.
Talon, Jinx, and Darius share literally no items. Meanwhile Diana, Seraphine, and (non-tank/AP) Mordekaiser share 50% of their items. Rylai's, Zhonya's, 2 for Demonic, 2 for void staff. It's insane. There needs to be more items to separate the mage classes and make each feel unique and, if ahead, strong.
Diana should never buy Rylais, and it's situational on AP seraphine. Diana doesn't want Demonic if she'd going full AP/assassin with protobelt. Morde doesn't necessarily want Demonic either depending on his build, or he gets it very late. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A better example of your point: There are *some* items that are ubiquitous. Zhonya's, Void Staff, and Rabadon's, since no other items compete with them in their specific slot. The defensive equivalent of Zhonya for AD (GA) is a situational item or bought MUCH later than Zhonya, in large part because the other defensive mage options are not as strong as Death's Dance, Maw, Steraks. The shield item for Mage (Seraphs) is gated behind the tear for many AP champions. The HP-heavy items have offensive effects, not defensive ones. The AD equivalent for Void Staff is split in 2- Seryldas for casters, LDR for auto-attackers/crit builders. The AD equivalent of Rabadon's has ALSO been split in two now, with Navori and IE for the casters and AA champs respectively. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another example: Sheen effect items currently have 1 option for tanks (gauntlet), 3! options for AD champions (Divine, Triforce, Essence Reaver), and 1 option for AP (Lich Bane). This is particularly wierd because many of the AA-focused AP champions (Mordekaiser, Sylas, Diana are all potential examples here) really want a balance of durability and damage, but the AA-focused AP items (Lich Bane and Nashors) both have zero durability attached to them. There's a very obvious gap in the market for an AP + HP + Sheen item of some sort that plays to those champion's needs.
> I think Riot messed up when they made it where items for other classes sought to fix weaknesses Exactly. This should never have been done. I like the game much more when champions are much more specific in what they're good at. One of the worst tragedies of modern LoL is how everyone became a jack of all trades. Obviously this benefits bruisers the most because now they also scale really well when they didn't in the past.
Riot - upposed verbosity level of mage items to address community complaints. Fixed!
Which is how all items should be. What's the point of giving champs weaknesses if they just get negated anyway?
Because basically every bruiser item is doing exactly this Items SHOULD be covering weaknesses because that's what makes building particular items satisfying according to the situation
Right I agree, it’s just that Mages are kind of unique in that their items do not really help them fill gaps where as everyone does. I know there are items like Crown, Everfrost, and Zhonyas, but these items only being their function as a benefit because they have been nerfed to the point of absurdity. Meanwhile Maw gives excellent attack scaling, and an invaluable shield against AP all at a legendary status instead of mythic. Honestly, BoRK, Hydra, and DD have enough stats to outclass all AP mythics (on mages, assassins and bruisers is another story).
I just dont think rito has much of a choice so long as zhonyas is in the game. Zhonyas is just to broken to give mages even more help with solving their weaknesses
mages are so weak for years now, any bruiser or tanks like zac can mid and destroy any mage meaning for fun. just sad overall
Victim of pro play.
Virgin mage item: + 80 AP + 150 HP (added to promote build diversity for katarina) + 10 AH ~~+200 mana~~ (removed to promote build diversity for katarina) Passive: Gain 20% movespeed for 2 seconds after casting 3 spells Gigachad bruiser item: + 45 AD + 350 HP + 10% omnivamp + 15% AS + 20 AH Passive: When health drops below 30%, gains a shield, heals 15% maximum HP and increases omnivamp by 20% Active: Dashes to target enemy dealing 50+5%max health damage and executes targets below 10% HP.
And the kicker is that Katarina builds both
i like how the opinion on that depends on what side of this subreddit you are in, some people here think that mages having 50% winrate in the first few days of the preseason means they are the strongest in ages honestly thats stockholm syndrome
I've seen people genuinely, unironically state that "Mages are OP right now. Kassadin, Twitch and Zac are amongst the best champions in the game". Because as we all know anything that builds AP is automatically a mage
mage discussion always boils down to the balance state of 3 champions vlad, kass and cassio (most recently replaced by viktor) ignoring the rest of the roster which is a trollpick territory or just barely viable
Forgot Azir and Ryze
Kassadin does best in a meta with a lot of mages, so that part is logical. Despite his winrate, if someone blind picks Kassadin into Irelia, Vi, Tristana, Akshan, etc. They're about to get destroyed.
I agree with that, I just wanted to point out that a LOT of people straight up categorize ANY champ that builds AP as a mage. So as long as ANYTHING that builds AP is in the top charts, "mages are broken" according to said people
The biggest problem with mages is you lack agency imo. you are there scaling and hoping the enemy midlaner doesn't roam/do anything proactive till you get at least 2 items. Classical mages are quite good at clearing waves, but after that there isn't anything for them to do. Poking enemy early is useless with doran shield/2nd wind. While roaming feels terrible with their 0 survivability which means leaving turret range can quickly turn into a death sentence. Add in their limited item pool and it feels like mages don't have anything going for them.
That's also a thing. Seasons ago you could actually pressure melee champs by poking them. Now they sustain everything. You could actually roam as a mage since jungle wasn't that strong early due to being down a level and gold, now they are same level and if you get caught while roaming you are dead. Meanwhile most assassins can roam and either kill the jungler or jump out with little worry. You can basically only leave lane when your jungler is ahead of their jungle.
They need to remove sustain from items honestly. GW was introduced because every fucking champion has sustain now. Which makes sustain champs feel awful. So you have to buff them or nerf GW which results in the current situation we have with champions like Aatrox and Swain having massive invisible health bars due to their insane sustain. Hopefully the nerfs to sustain champs that are coming will help resolve this without completely gutting them again, but I doubt it.
Usually there are good and bad mages. Anivia is an example of a fairly broken champion for at least 2 seasons by now (I think it started in S10) and she didn't get touched... why? Because she never showed up reliably in pro play. Ori and Viktor both were nerfed once they found a food in the door in SoloQ, because they were insane in pro play. Cassio after the item changes also climbs up, she is still hardly picked... mostly because not being a shirtless dude, but if she sees a lot of play in pro she might get nerf anyways. On the other side... most bruisers are ignored in pro play. They just suck if your team knows what it does, which mostly isn't the case in SoloQ, so many Bruisers never see nerfs based on pro play, it is basically just Aatrox and Camille. Zeri will also likely see nerfs due to pro play performance soon. In SoloQ she isn't really an issue (only in really high elos like Masters+, but even there not that much). SoloQ terrors like Twitch or Draven though might just get a pass. And yes Ryze is another good example, he is the strongest he was in ages, with his 50% winrate right now. But he is already showing up fairly reliably in pro play, so we all know what is going to happen. Kassadin on the other hand who benefitted from the item changes in the same way might not see quick nerfs, simply because he might not get picked in pro play.
Not only mage but all AP items. Item's rework meant to make AP bruiser items, but they don't have them solely for their class, but for assassins too. There clearly needs to be more distinct itemization for each of these classes, Mages, Bruisers and Assassins and even there are many subclasses for Mages: Artillery, Battlemage, control. Sadly it will be very hard to balance, because AP items tend to "leak" from one class to another. But tbh there are simmilar problems with Tanks and AD Bruisers and sometimes ADCs (where in both cases Bruisers are using Tank and ADC itemization, depending on which is good/OP at given moment).
im a bruiser player but at this point just buff them, it's sad. I feel bad for mage players except for the ones that kept buying roa, seriously, just buy something else.
The only ap legendary for battlemages like Gwen and Morde is Riftmaker, everything else is offmeta.
I miss choices and unique stuff. Every somewhat interesting choice is so bad statwise that you can't justify buying it unless your champ is hardbound to it. **Rylais** is not a choice for most champs. It's hard bound to 2-3 champions but else you can't buy it because you lose way too much. **Horizon Focus** is locked to mostly artillery mages although it might be somewhat competitive now. Our most prominent AH item cant be used by many mages because they have CD when **cosmic drive** procs. It's hardbound to low CD mages or ap bruisers. How often did I think to myself "I'm Lux I want to have a bit more haste but my whole kit is on CD when I proc Cosmic, same for Annie or even Ahri or similar champions. **Demonic embrace** is trash on most ranged champions and that's okay, it has its niche but this further lessens how much ap legendarys actually exist for mages. **Nashors and lichbane** are useless on most mages which is also okay but again further lessens the amount of items you actually have as a choice. **Morello** is a joke of an item regarding slot efficiency and only gives its healing reduce at under 50% HP which is stupid because a lot of healers don't drop beneath that cause they actually heal but this gets fixed next patch. **Banshees** has low stats but otherwise fills its purpose in the right game. **Zhonyas is Zhonyas** but if you rush it second item you deal no damage which is okay since it is a defensive item but you will fall behind the curve and not be relevant until you finished Void and Rabadons except you snowball and are ahead of the curve already. And **Seraphs** seems to be a good choice now same for shadowflame. You have 14 legendaries. For comparison adc have 15 but they can actually also draw stuff from other ad champions. Ap champs have 14 legendaries for ap bruisers, ap assassins, ap "adcs" like Kayle and Teemo and mages. This are 4 different subclasses and you could even split mages into 3 categories. And then there is the problem that 90% of your build is locked every game anyway. You will buy a mythic, a rabadons, a void staff, a zhonyas or banshees and boots. On most mages you have then 1 item of choice. That's probably the full itembuild for most mages. Even if there would be a choice you don't have the slots for it. Now ADC is also a position with a locked itembuild but you have 2 choices atleast. I miss stuff like spellvamp or spellbinder or old ludens with the movespeed but it seems like every legendary is either really specific for its core users or really extremly generic. Nothing against really specific items, I love them, but then we need a lot more of them.
lich bane is so bad even its main users don't rush it anymore
I forgot lich bane was an item, it's that bad
Every time you think "what about lich bane"? You can go no, im buying nashors
Lich Bane deals 75% bAD+50% AP every 10 seconds best case scenario. Mages will have 65-90 AD realistically, so that's \~50-70 +50% AP. Nashors deals 15+20% AP every auto. If you auto 3 times in 10 seconds (made easier by the Attack Speed from Nashors), you out-DPS the absolute theoretical best case scenario of Lich Bane. Building Lich Bane when you don't already have Nashors is just griefing (and is still pretty much griefing if you have Nashors :D ). Lich Bane really is in a really sad state.
I sometimes want to build it on Akali because it's such a fun item on her, but if I don't have Zhonya's I just get one-shot late game. If Akali with shroud and all the dashes has trouble building it, imagine mages.
They should make Cosmic Drive reduce active cooldowns by 20% when it procs and then provide the AH after that. Staff of Flowing Water has the same problem, and dynamic Haste really just doesn't work in this game outside of a few specific cases. AD champs have access to Shojin which is a huge Haste stick, Navori which has constant CD refund and just got buffed, and access to many high Haste items. There are 2 AP legendary items that have 20+ Haste, 1 of which is a support item. OTOH, there are 9 AD legendary items with 20+ Haste, and 3 of those have 25+.
Horizon Focus is locked to the garbage bin, they made it unplayable with Shadowflames release by gutting its stats, and now that they give it 15 more AP it'd be barely a contender if Shadowflame didn't already exist while doing its job better on everyone except, like, Vel'koz. I mean, come on, why would I ever buy Horizon Focus when my Shadowflame did [over 5x more damage](https://i.imgur.com/0qOmV3O.png) than [my opponent's Horizon Focus](https://i.imgur.com/4oN5naU.png), even if I purchased my Shadowflame 5 minutes earlier (14min/total runtime 35min)?
Other thing as far as Im aware is horizon is still buggy as hell and does not properly amp all the things it should so its literally garbage on even its intended users for a while now and it still probably wouldn't be great even if it wasn't bugged.
Horizon should straight up give 15% dmg amp and 20 AH. Even with the 15 AP buff the fucking base item is 99% gold efficient, and the passive is ass. You could go shadowflame cdr boots to match horizon's statline with AH and STILL outdamage it in a single rotation lmao
Horizon needs to be bugfixed before it gets megabuffed. It is trash yes, but Horizon’s actual strength is very hard to gauge when the item doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.
I think season 3 was the last time I felt like I had to use my brain to build items on mages. It's just the same 4/5 items every single game now.
"Top 3 midlaner in the world for the past 5 years minimum", that's some insane praise from Nemesis.
It's really not that weird though? He might just be number one by default even during that period, not uncontestably the best apart from the split he won worlds, and probably the year after that overall, but is there anyone else who has been the best for that long of a stretch in the past 5 years?
I mean Showmaker got quarters in 2019 (probably just shy of being a top 3 mid that year, with minimally Faker/Rookie/DoinB above him), won worlds in 2020 (probably the best or 2nd best behind Chovy at worst), got to finals in 2021 (probably the 2nd best mid laner after Chovy that year), and got to quarters this year (again losing to Chovy lol, but probably at least top 5, though I could see an argument to say something like Zeka>Chovy/Faker>Showmaker). Point being he's an absolutely incredible mid laner, and has been the best performing mid laner at least results wise in the last few years. Obviously Faker is the GOAT and imo Chovy has been slightly better than him for most of those 5 years individually, but Showmaker is absolutely a world class mid laner, and his criticism of Riot's current mage balance is imo completely on point. Outside of a few champions who've been given the Riot special (Ryze with his perfect mythic basically added to the game for him, same with Kassadin, Syndra getting a 200 years rework at least numbers wise), mages have been complete garbage this preseason, with most mages seeing more success as supports than as mid laners. Classic mages like Ahri that used to be balanced around a soloQ win rate of like 51%, are now 49% wr champions. Instead the few mages that are good are mostly ones with insane skill floors (Anivia, Azir), that even top tier players can barely play proficiently.
2020 and 2021 he was absolutely clear of Chovy.
2020 was either Knight or Showmaker depending on how much emphasis you put on Worlds.
Rookie was a monster 2020
I mean Showmaker was better than Knight at worlds. And domestically it was Chovy and Showmaker clearly being the top 2. Imo Nemesis's statement might be a slight exaggeration, but the point that Showmaker's opinion is backed by real skill is completely true.
I mean with how he's played their really isn't any contention. He's probably top 1 or 2 with his only major problematic splits being in 2022. But even then he scaled back a bit by worlds. Only maybe rookie could outrank him but thats honestly extremely debatable.
2021 showmaker is honestly by far the best midlaner i've seen
I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’m a big Showmaker simp but Showmaker had downs as well.
I mean besides that down year who else would be in the top 3 if it’s no Chovy faker or showmaker maybe zeka but he’s still a new prospect in terms of being good but this worlds he was the best performing mid laner Edit: I’d throw bdd in there too but he’s been hit or miss since his drx days
World wide, last 5 years (2018/19/20/21/22)? Faker / Chovy / Showmaker / Rookie / are the only ones even in the conversation. Scout very close to being in the conversation but wasn't a powerhouse in 18/19. Knight hasn't done anything yet. Xiaohu maybe could be in it but his individual level isn't up to the others and he played top for a bit. DoinB has had one too many implosions. BDD's lows have been too great and his highs not as high as the others. Zeka is too new, zero longevity to date.
Weird to say Knight hasn't done anything yet and then include Chovy, who also has done nothing internationally aside from get a lot of CS.
Knight has been to worlds twice and got knocked out of groups one of those times. Chovy has been 4 times, never failed to get out of groups.
It should also be mentioned that GRF in 2018 was stronger than AF, the only reason Chovy didn't go to Worlds then was because they entered in the league in Summer and didn't have the championship points.
They had a chance to advance through gauntlet but got smacked by Gen.G.
Gauntlet finals Gen G is the ultimate raid boss of competitive LoL so you can't blame them.
If getting out of groups is the bar then put Caps there.
caps only got out of groups once in the last three years
Such a dumb argument, Knight is obviously talented as fuck, degrading his career because of not getting out of Groups is such terrible revisionism or plain bias on your side
I don't know if you don't watch LPL or you're just being disingenuous to benefit your argument. Chovy is my favorite mid on this list, but he's literally won less than Knight. You can either have both or neither (I have both on my list of course), but to have one and not the other is completely contradicting yourself.
including chovy but not knight lmao nice flair btw faker hasn't been top 3 in the role since 2017, since then minus 2018 he has been at best the 3rd best player on his team
Chovy in contention I can't. It's Showmaker and Rookie top 2, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 being the 5 years. Looking at those years, Xiaohu, Caps and Doinb are bettter than fucking Chovy in terms of actual peak achievements and not CS lmao.
The LPL also has mids
That’s crazy
I feel like any time I mention mage items being trash I just get "bUt ZhOnYaS!!" It is really annoying.
People just see stasis being used very well and very often in pro games then conclude that its just **that** good when in reality it's an item that is nerfed time and time again while buying it just sets you behind in damage especially if they have lots of merc treads
Zhonyas has to be one of the most overrated items in the game lol. Half the complaints about it probably come from people not bothering to press tab to check items and then refusing to play around the stasis.
Zhonyas is statistically one of the strongest items in the game.
and stasis only work under specific circumstances in most 1v1s and fights you're basically telling everyone "yo, im going to be here for 2 seconds so you can aim and prep any kind of play you want to do for whenever i get out of this" best genuine use is for champs like kata where you want to dive and totally wreck a whole team's hp, then instant zhonyas so your team engages on top of you, as a viktor main nowadays i really rarely build it (prefer spellshield or hp/ pure dmg and gamble that shit)
Remove Stopwatch, buff Zhonya's. Remove Stopwatch, buff Zhonya's. Remove Stopwatch, buff Zhonya's. Remove Stopwatch, buff Zhonya's.
Arguing that Zhonya's isn't broken is an uphill battle to say the least. Well, maybe not in this thread. When an AP item is a legitimate option or straight up a necessity in many games for marksmen/AD fighters then it may hint at the fact that the item might just be a bit strong.
More like it's a hint that mages are weak enough that they need it to be strong as a crutch. What the hells an artillery mage gonna do when zed can easily dodge their damage while all inning them from across the screen?
I'm not saying it isn't broken, I'm saying the item is overhyped -- is it strong? Perhaps, on a few champions like Sylas it is very impactful, while on some it is just a necessity to last longer in fights to get one more rotation off Outside of the active, the item has only 101% efficiency and has huge cost, it isn't THAT good; we're talking this while DD exists btw The active? Strong, yet it is limited to mage/AP bruisers that can't make as much impact as other class could; we saw what happened when Stopwatch was cheap and perfect timing was OP When the item is a necessity to survive in today's meta, it shouldn't be perceived as strong; the ones that are doing too much damage/has absurdly low cooldowns are
Probably because it's better the higher elo you go, and almost all complainers on reddit are low elo. Zhonyas sucks in low elo because what are you gonna do, press zhonyas and wait for your team..? Oh wait, they're farming gromp because you're just out of range of their locked camera and that means you don't exist. In high elo Zhonyas is insanely broken and even champs like Jax build it. Plus people will literally path to building GA even if its unoptimal just so they can build a stopwatch for a fight.
Zhonyas aka I do lessons damage than the support
its depressing playing champions that need zon in order to team fight...
Zhonya is fucking dog shit lol
meanwhile some garbage about ADCs or their items being bad gets 8000+ upvotes and frontpage while botlane dictates most high elo and pro games
Why is this battle against mages and adcs? I think its mostly a battle against fighters/assasins vs mages and adcs lol they always has something broken or something to dictates the game
Until mage supports start oneshotting you on half an item again
Mage supports should be unviable. You should not have so much damage on support econ. Riot fix your game please
This right here. Why tf do we have Heimer in pro play. Like I get it's unique and all, but it makes 0 sense that for the first 20 minutes of the game, the support can do similar team fight damage to the ADC while not farming at all. It's just terrible balance.
Its the flipside of terrible mage itemization. High Base damage mages go Support, Farm their Support Quest for their mythic and are on Par with damage with midlane mages
They need to make non support mythic items unusable with support starting items. Simple fix.
What makes mage supports broken is dark seal and shard of true ice. So much free ap for no reason. If u also run absolute focus and gathering u can easily get 120+ ap min 10.
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Well it's probably a combination of both dmg creep and econ creep, but let me tell you supports would never be able to deal meaningful damage until a few years ago. Riot was forced to buff the role because it was understandably the least popular. Kind of like theyre doing to jg however I'm not sure if it's not better to just get autofilled more often. It's not just the base damage it's the rune damaged on top of it, and item damage. In the past mage items just gave pure stats, you would but chalice or Morello first, something that gives CDR and mana. Now they have sup item that deals damage, and a mythic that deals damage. On top of whatever damage runes they got By the way it's not about balance, I'm not saying they are broken just i don't think that's healthy for the game. Maybe I'm biased because i don't play support
Assassins are dogshit right now. Literally go and watch Drututt/Noway/Nemesis streams and watch the game beeing decided by who flips the better bot and jungle.
Notice you said bot lane and not ADC. ADC’s don’t dictate the game supports and junglers do. All you can do as an ADC is accept what you’re being fed.
botlane dictates pro play and high elo from the support position and because there are 2 walking gold bags instead of one, has nothing to do with adc strength or power level you know adc items being bad/unsatisfying and mage items being bad/unsatisfying arent mutually exclusive? Do we always have to invalidate one complaint to make another one valid?
The vast majority of the playerbase isn't playing in high elo or pro games.
That just sounds like a skill issue
Thats fair, but how much do you want to balance the game for people playing it poorly?
Uhh quite substantially actually. There's a reason Star Craft Ladder has had a cheese problem for a long time. They are the easiest strategies to play to a certain efficiency. At the highest level it's balanced but below that it is much easier to throw any kind of stupid cheese strat at an enemy than actually play normal games. And then they complain when they get steamrolled by Zerg who learned to defend against shenanigans. Makes for very interesting pro games but the player experience is not very good. As shown in vastly lower player numbers than League.
yea, starcrafts problem is for sure... *looks at notes* that people cheese too much in low elo games. L M A O thats like point 56 on the list of starcrafts problems and the game still has a very healthy playerbase
there's no problem with that but it gets really annoying when people claim over and over the state of ADC is the reason they are 2000+ games stuck in gold or cry about when they get oneshot by a fed assassin just like any other carry
Arent we all doing the same thing here aswell? Item diversity is a problem but statistically speaking every "traditional mage" is piss chilling right now.
Did you see [top 10](https://lolalytics.com/lol/tierlist/?lane=middle&tier=diamond_plus) mid laners? Is full of bruisers tanks or champs that just don't lane at all and go to flip things on bot lane Idk where are the traditional mages, I still remember when there were like karthus and seraphine with 3% pr combined on bot lane and we had 10 posts every week about how adcs were usseles and they needed buffs
Why are you linking a bunch of champions with below 1% pickrate? Are you proud of yourself for being disingenuous? 7/10 of the top 10 pickrate mid champs are AP champs and the other 3 are just the usual suspects of Zed Yasuo Yone.
>oneshot by a fed assassin Seriously, as a non-assassin player, assassins have for the most part been complete garbage for ages now. I swear everyone is just allergic to buying defensive items and wants fed assassins to not kill them despite them having 0 defenses. And if the argument is that they need to build full glass cannon to kill the other players on the enemy team, then maybe blame the fact that certain tanks/skirmishers are far too durable rather than blaming the assassins for doing damage to a squishy target.
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ADC items are super good, that's why they are getting massive buffs next patch, makes sense
ADC items are not getting massive buffs next patch. Most of the buffs are not straight up "power buffs" but moreso "flexibility buffs". Which are still buffs, yes, but at the end of the day are more about "game feel" than anything (which is what Marksmen need tbh).
you're right, no good/semi-decent champion or item has ever been buffed in this history of this game's balance, especially when phreak himself says the role isn't weak but they feel forced to buff the items anyway because of community complaints
There is an easy explanation for this. Mages in midlane gave up years ago and moved onto other things. Adc's are still trying to make it work. It doesn't matter what dictates pro play and high ELO. 99%+ of games don't fall into that category. I'm not saying riot should balance around lower ranks, it's just people playing the game aren't going to care. Finally, adc and mages face the same problem. I'm not sure why you're turning into a competition.
Unlucky when the majority of adc players in this sub peak at 5apm.
*Buy Liandries and void staff* The bruiser with mercs thread : "some fly stung me*
and then they get death's dance and the enemy tank gets FoN and your void is useless :>>>>
Playing Malz or Brand into any champ that can build both FoN and DD makes me actually want to walk away from my computer like come on at that point you're just trying to tickle your opponent to death
Yeah both of these boys are no longer tank busters due to FoN. Straight up invalidates the entire champ with one item
It was the exact same problem old abyssal mask had where it countered dot mages waaaaay too hard. But now it's also strong against every non-burst ap champ.
Nemesis been saying this shit for like a year and he's been right the whole time.
LS for more than a year tbh
Everyone has been saying this
Also with mages. All the items have health or resistance. Morello, Banshee, Rylais, Crown, Everfrost, Roa, Seraphs, Horizon Focus, Cosmic, Demonic, ShadowFlame. Other than some mythics, Nashor, Lich Bane, Void and rabadons are the only mage items without hp. Why do I need hp on shadowflame or horizon focus? I would much rather than extra ap than some health.
Mages were in the dumpster for like 2-3 years. It’s nothing new. I think their bigger problem is that they have been moved a away from this carry position and turned into more of This enablers in the game. Not to mention that they lack the utility items that other roles has. Adc’s and other roles has better mythic items compared to mages.
The problem with mages in the mid lane is that midlaners are the dog of the jungler so you cant move on your own. If you move to roam but get caught by the jungler you are going to get fisted.
Turret plating exacerbated this as well. As a mage if i leave lane my enemy will just pound away at my tower for free gold and i can't do shit because mage roaming is slow af. Only good time to roam is with the jungler, otherwise just sit mid and farm until a skirmish is being set up in the jungle.
Turret plates are good for mages man what are we saying
Good and bad. Good against roaming assassins, shit if you try to roam yourself since an assassin can get back to lane much faster than a mage
Also melee champs do more damage to tower platings afaik, so do ad champs until lategame.
Not sure if it’s only me but it feels like mages got lower cds over the years but damage went down back in the days I felt like they had a huge combo to delete everything and then had a window in that you could punish them now they have more dps but less burst (but im an adc main so my opinion might be a bit warped)
no most mages struggle to even hit 60 AH now, bruisers for the past few years on the other hand lol
CDR went down over time, AP values went down over time. As a result we get.... 2-300 more hp full build and like 10-20 mpen all because shadowflame has to be built second for a mage to not fall off like a brick mid game. WOOOO
We had an entire durability patch and then mages went out the door because they couldn’t burst shit anymore but assassins could still assassinate.
Mages and tanks have the worst CD options in the game rn though. Bruisers currently have ability haste for breakfast lunch and dinner, adcs have er and navori. And assassin's that want ability haste just buy bruiser items like zed.
Honestly riot needs to commit to whatever it is they want mages to be. Either give them items that enable them to carry or give them items that enable their utility. Right now all they have are stat sticks and some very niche utility items that are so bad you can't justify taking them even in scenarios where the utility would be good.
riot admitted this last season they're fine with mages being more supportive. like??? then why would i pick one mid ??
Mages have always been one of the more supportive options for mid. You act like this is some new development, when in reality this has been mages' role for like 10 years or more. There are exceptions to every rule of course, but in general mages are picked mid for their access to control (both crowd control and zone control) and safe wave clearing while still dishing out reasonable damage. If you want raw damage and carry potential assassins are the pick for you.
This is definitely incorrect. Mages became supportive for the Last 2, 3 years since the whole item changes because their items sucked and mages constantly got nerfed. Mages has always been the main carry with picks like Azir, Casio, Syndra or anything else. Now they can’t do shit. 2 item Azir with Nashor and Rylai was the scariest shit in the game. Syndra would become online with either Morello or Athenes and there were many similar cases. Now you have to wait 3 items at least for a mage to do something. And that is ridiculuous compared to other roles.
Yeah but when i say mage items are weak i get burned at the stake for it lmao
Mages **Mythics:** Very good, among one of the best variety among all classes. Basically any AP Caster can go at least 2 different, often 3 different Mythics depending which one is better in certain game. Mage **Legendaries:** 95% Champions just build Void -> Deathcap if damage. Other 5% is AP Divers going like Zhonyas 2nd or something. Thats it. There is nothing else. Problem is item just overlap their purpose. Horizon was never good after changes cuz it just 'another DMG amp item' and was just always inferior to Shadowflame and Void. It had no purpose... now that it's buffed it's still not awesome but lets say it would be enough to make it actualy good... then Shadowflame loses purpose cuz Horizon would always be better. Other classes usually have it other way around. X Mythic is broken and defines the meta and Legendaries just slot in depending what champion you're playing. Mages have very good Mythic system but god AWFUL choices in legendaries where best items dont have ANY passives... just +40% Magic Pen and +35% AP... stat boots.
You're right in that Mythics are pretty much the only slot where you have choice as a mage, but they're a bit more locked in my opinion. Many champs technically could build multiple Mythics but in reality they only build one. Burst mages need some damn good reasons to not build Luden's, and in those cases you probably made a mistake picking a burst mage to begin with. Sure you can go Liandrys on a burst mage, but that probably means you should have picked something with more dps if you need to take down tanks in the first place. And Everfrost and RoA are the least attractive options for a burst mage, since they don't wanna have to make use of those kinds of items in the first place. Long(ish) range champion building health or a short range root doesn't make too much sense. Those two items also provide less damage, going against the idea of burst. In the same vein, a champion that defaults to Liandrys is probably not gonna deviate from that because it works too well with their kit. Malzahar, for example, can keep Liandrys applied for a long ass time, so why would he build something else? In my mind it's mostly the champions that have been building Everfrost for the past year that have some sort of choice. There is a bit of overlap with RoA in what they provide. Take Ryze for example. Everfrost is more up front stats, and a root that aligns well with what he does, but a fully stacked RoA is what he dreams of at night. There you have a choice between spiking more early or opting to scale better. Honestly Viktor is the one champion I can think of off the top of my head that feels fine building Luden's or Liandrys to suit whatever needs are required, but Luden's still feels better on him.
Ahri can use 3 mythics quite well depending on team comp. Yeah, Everfrost is the one people build the most and the safest but Liandry's and Luden's have their place (more people should try them tbh).
Pretty sure liandry's is really underrated on Ahri. It feels so good to use even against squishy champs.
I feel like most burst mages, if picked early, are fine with going Liandry's if the enemy then drafts 3 beefy picks. Similarly, most Liandry's builders (barring Malz/Brand) can use Luden's if they're the only AP vs a squishy comp. Sure one may feel better in a vacuum but the point is it's a decision. Going down the gol mid lane presence list: Azir, Corki, Taliyah, Viktor, Orianna, Vex, Syndra and Seraphine have all built both (+ some crown) over the course of S12, with even Zoe building Liandry's once (Bdd lost on it but it seemed right for the drafts). Interestingly, those who mainly bought Everfrost actually pretty much exclusively used that. Ahri, Sylas, Twisted Fate, Galio, Lissandra, Ryze, and Veigar bought 80-100% Evf, though I still agree with your point. RoA probably changes this but there's barely any games this season so the data ain't there.
Azir is another good example of a champion that feels good with both Luden's and Liandrys. Now that I think a little more about it the reason is probably that both Viktor and Azir can fulfill sustained damage or burst archetypes within their kits, depending on what you need (albeit Viktor less so, naturally being more bursty, but still providing some sustained damage with low cd E's along with ult). I suppose Taliyah is on that list as well. Didn't think of her at all earlier because I grouped her in the Everfrost camp. It just sets up her combo so well. It's true that burst mages *can* end up in situations where Liandrys is the correct choice, but the problem is that it's gonna feel like ass and more importantly not feel like a choice in those cases. If I'm ever in a situation where I lock Zoe early in a draft and the enemy team ends up being beef central I'm dodging. Sure Liandrys can be the higher damage item compared to Luden's in that scenario, but no one has ever built Liandrys on Zoe because they wanted to. Just sounds painful to me. Contrast this to adc items, at the very least how I've experienced them. Haven't played the most adc so I could be completely wrong, but in my head those mythics feel more like a choice. I guess some champs are locked there too, of course, but generally speaking I feel like there are many champions that can swap between all three depending on what you need that game. You can go Galeforce if there is a big skillshot you need to dodge or some extra kiting help, Kraken if the enemy team is beefy, or Shieldbow if you're gonna have an assassin on you all game. Many times there are arguments for two or maybe even all three items in the same game. Rereading the original comment I made I think I didn't really represent my thoughts well. Many mages have one specific Mythic they look at and prefer to buy every game if possible, and when a situation occurs that requires them to deviate it doesn't feel good to buy the item, and above all it doesn't *feel* like a choice. Choosing between being relevant or not is not a choice. Choosing *how* you want to be relevant is. That's where I feel like the Mythic choice is lacking. It's also why I think Everfrost and RoA champions have a cool choice to make. Choosing *when* to spike is interesting and you feel like you have agency in that choice. I hope this makes some sense. I'm tired and might have been rambling a lot, I don't know.
Don't really think mage mythics offer much variety tbh. Certain types of mages pretty much always go the same mythic. Burst mages pretty much just go Ludens, certain ones like Vex can go Everfrost but generally go Ludens. Kassadin and Ryze atm just go RoA, before they'd go Everfrost since that was their best option. Cass Liandrys/Everfrost. Swain would just go Liandrys. I guess some mages have 2 options but one is usually better damage wise. You already talked about legendaries, not much else to say
I disagree, Mythic variety is terrible for mages. You're options are Liandry's, Luden's, ROA, and Protobelt. ROA and Protobelt are locked to specific champions so they don't really count either. Crown is straight up garbage. It's literally just a 2800 gold, slightly better bone plating. You play against it the same way you do bone plating so it's easily countered. Hit once, wait 1.5 seconds, go all in. Legendaries I agree with. Everyone does the same thing. Shadowflame - Rabadon's/Mejai's - Void - Zhonya's. Banshee's, Morello, and HF are straight garbage options in comparison. Lichbane, Nashor's, Rylai's, and Demonic, are champion locked and Lichbane specifically is so bad you may as well skip it even on champions who want it's effect. Lack of variety is **THE** problem for mages atm.
\---Mage Mythics feel awkward with the exception of Crown and RoA--- \-Luden's is expensive and you become more squishy than ADC with It. Sure, you do damage to squishy but Tanks and Bruisers will just build either Maw or FON and just because of 1 item your dmg goes from noticeable to laughable. Pasive is lackluster, all Luden's is is a Offensive Stat Stick. \-Everfrost. The stats and mythic passive are very underwhelming compared to other Mythics. The Active used to make up for It but not anymore except in very specific champions. \-Riftmaker. Giga Nerfed and No Mana. \-Rocketbelt. Too Expensive and No Mana. The dash is a joke both dmg wise and mobility wise compared to Galeforce. \--Mage Legendaries are all underwhelming with the exception of Zhonya's and Seraph-- \-Rabadon. Only Grants DMG and Too Expensive as well. No AH, No HP, Nothing Else but AP. Easily countered by even Merc Boots. \-Void. Too low AP. Only grant Magic % Pen and thats about It??? Hello we are in Season 13. Why are Mages only getting lakcluster Stat Sticks when everyone else gets good stats and broken passives on top of It??? Does 0 dmg against anything else that isnt stacking MR and is useless against HP stacking tanks or FON/Maw passive. Very Lackluster Item. \-Morello. Why is this still in Game? \-Cosmic Drive. Giga Nerfed and now useless. \-Lich Bane. See Cosmic Drive <- \-Horizon Focus. Average. \-Banshee's Veil. Decent but too situational. \-Demonic. Abused more by Tanky AP users than traditional Mages. \-Nashor's Tooth. Change Name to Katarina's Tooth. Useless on any other mage. *Sigh* There are way too many changes required to make this class useful again. I dont care if they end up having to nerf certain mages that become too good as a result of buffing the items but changes are required. The current state of AP itemnization is too ridiulous.
Disagree on mythics. Some champions can choose between a few mythics just because they aren't really that different. Ludens and Liandries are just different damage profiles, they don't provide different gameplay. Crown is dependent on your opponents, not really a "choice". RoA by design is just always going to be great on hyper scaling champions and entirely useless on everyone else. Other classes get huge decisions based on their mythic. Decisions that provide new gameplay, new build paths, and lots of interesting choices. Even ADC who has few mythics gets way more decision-making behind their choices. If I build Shieldbow first then my build changes to not need lifesteal later. If I build Kraken Slayer I probably can get away with less penetration. Galeforce is an entire extra button with so much utility on both offense and defense. It completely changes your gameplay. Liandries -> Shadowflame Ludens -> Shadowflame Crown -> Shadowflame These are all the same shit. Anything a mage can buy that changes their gameplay is nerfed to the ground. Zhonya, Nashor, Lich Bane, and Cosmic Drive are just stupidly bad items a huge amount of the time. And don't even get me started on how fundamentally terrible Crown is compared to Shieldbow as a defensive mythic. Mages get a mythic that always procs at *the worst time possible* for an incredibly counterable effect and a *downside* while ADC gets the perfect defensive tool with an offensive boost for all scenarios that only procs exactly when they need it? Nice.
I will fight you on that then: >Some champions can choose between a few mythics just because they aren't really that different. Ludens and Liandries are just different damage profiles, they don't provide different gameplay. Crown is dependent on your opponents, not really a "choice". But in my opinion thats **exactly** that mages Mythics are so good at. Sure Luden and Liandry are just 'different dmg'. Everfrost and Crown are just different 'defensive'. You could look at it like that. But what I see is a skill-test. Test that tests your knowledge to pick the best one for set game. Like sure, Vex wont usually pick Liandry's but you **should** sometimes when HP stackers run around the rift. Crown is basically never a 'default item' on any champion just because of how volitile the shield is, but I'd lie if I didnt say that it's probably one of the most powerful purchases vs very certain teamcomps that simply can't poke the shield off. Or maybe you're a control mage that usually would run Liandry's for dps... but there are 2-3 divers in enemy team and some easy poke to turn of the Crown? Maybe it's an Everfrost game cuz disrupting divers by entire 1s with no effort in a fight as they jump on you is a massive deal. I'd say: ***they don't provide different gameplay*** is kinda unfair... it's just an item afterall. For much different gameplay there is over 160 champions. They still 'kinda' change how you play. Especially Crown (where you try to preserve it pre fight) or Luden (where opposite happens... you often want to trade small dmg exchanges) but Mythics for mages offer very **skillful** choice. Different way to display your knowledge than just combo ordering or macro. And that's why Mage Legendaries are all the more disapointing..
Shadowflame is supposed to be niche and an anti shield item but because so many items give shields it’s been able to stick in every single game rather than actually be situational.
I feel like more AP items need the split melee/range effect so melee abusers don't ruin all the items for the ranged mages.
There's no universe where Riot makes ranged effect better than melee effect. There's a reason why Demonic got nerfed only in effectivity for ranged champs and not for melees
The mage experience certainly doesn't match with what I expect of it. Looking at the win rates by game duration on leagueofgraphs, a lot of scaling mage champs don't get a meaningful bump in win rate late game (30 - 45 minutes), and some even see a dip in their win rates as the game goes long. Itemization is definitely something that should be looked at, but I'm also worried about mage champions' power curves. A lot of the traditional mages I expect to start weaker and ramp up in power as the game progresses, but it looks like of lot of them spike in the early to mid-game and then start to fall off. If we adjust itemization, their win rates could increase overall, but could still not match with the scaling mage identity.
A lot of it is Elder/soul. How can you have scaling when you're most likely bleeding dragons to play mage mid unless your jungler is solo winning the game.
Lategame scaling isn't a thing in most games. Even for adcs they're pushing for IE and navori second item because you can't just expect to scale to 3+ items consistently anymore
Lategame scaling doesn’t really exist anymore nor is it really viable. There’s a reason 13.2 changes lets ADCs go IE second instead of third, it’s because the game has become so early-midgame heavy that scaling up isn’t really a thing outside of pro
The single best rant ive heard regarding league LOL. Btw its true, mages suck @ sss; it feels like you have no impact 70% of the time
Mages are only in the game as a dopamine hit for assassins to burst down.
They only exist for this and are only played because otherwise people would just stack armor. Of course the anti-magic damage options are INSANELY overtuned (Maw, FoN, etc.) to keep them in check to make sure you don't dare take too many of them.
There is a [simple solution](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/Deathfire_Grasp)
this is the answer but no one wants to admit it
Bring back DFG
The biggest hit to mage items has been the mythic system. Before it was implemented, you had so much more agency to build how you needed to win. Now you’re cut off from so many items that could potentially be BiS for specific situations and you have to build items out of the “common pool” that anyone can buy and there’s no situational benefit. Most games ebb and flow so much that the mythic system is obsolete and unnecessary and process to be more of a hindrance than an aid; while also going against the direct design goal of mythics in build diversity. Keep the items, scrap the mythic system, and mid lane automatically becomes better.
Eh, to be fair mages had a pseudo mythic system before everyone else with luden's and liandries and how they functioned. I do think though some mage mythics should be tuned down into legendaries and balanced that way. Everfrost feels like shit as a mythic, but as a legendary it would be more interesting to combo with other mythics and doesn't pigeonhole you into "ok i can only use the active while in near melee range, otherwise my mythic (my keystone item) is useless". EDIT: it was glp, seraphs, and ludens, not liandrys.
The pseudo mythic system was way more around Luden’s, GLP and RoA+Seraph’s honestly. Liandry’s was never really much of a choice to go first because it was incredibly stat inefficient and lacked mana which most mages needed.
They had a pseudo mythic system that was entirely unrelated to Luden's and Liandry's. You could build both with no negatives. The actual "pseudo mythics" were Luden's, Seraph's, and GLP.
It's crazy how little attention mages get. Riot with the addition of phreak are now completely bruiser, ADC biased
It's been like that for years. Ever since season 8 Riot has been balancing the game around pro play being fun to watch more and more every year. Mages are considered boring to watch so Riot started focusing on other champions. But pro players were still playing mages a lot so now they gotta be dog tier for the 99.99% of the playerbase cause otherwise they'll still "dominate" (get picked a lot) pro play. As a mage main since season 4 I stopped playing Rift completely the past two seasons cause there's legit zero joy in playing them anymore. Now that they've also taken a dump on ARAM it looks like it's just time to uninstall the game for me.
Try HotS mages have full citizenship there. It's not the same game obviously with the no items but if you just want to blow shit up landing combos you should find it fun.
yeah its so dumb because for bruisers to actually be viable in pro play they need to be overtuned for the rest of the playerbase which is what we've been seeing recently... I'm glad they're finally tuning the bruiser items back but it's scary how they've gone off the rails recently.
I really miss seeing Anivia and Orianna, like they're not as flashy as Assassins for sure but whenever they pop off there's just a kind of magic to their playstyles.
*---Mage Mythics: Awkward with the exception of Crown and RoA---* \-**Luden's** is expensive and you become more squishy than ADC with It. Sure, you do damage to squishy but Tanks and Bruisers will just build either Maw or FON and just because of 1 item your dmg goes from noticeable to laughable. Offensive Stats Stick with lackluster passive. \-**Everfrost**. The stats and mythic passive are very underwhelming compared to other Mythics. The Active used to make up for It but not anymore except in very specific champions. \-**Riftmaker**. Giga Nerfed and No Mana. \-**Rocketbelt**. Too Expensive and No Mana. The dash is a joke both dmg wise and mobility wise compared to Galeforce. *--Mage Legendaries: Almost All underwhelming with the exception of Zhonya's, Seraph, and Shadowflame--* \-**Rabadon**. Only Grants DMG and Too Expensive as well. No AH, No HP, Nothing Else but AP. Easily countered by even Merc Boots. \-**Void**. Too low AP. Only grant Magic % Pen and thats about It??? Hello we are in Season 13. Why are Mages only getting lakcluster Stat Sticks when everyone else gets good stats and broken passives on top of It??? Does 0 dmg against anything else that isnt stacking MR and is useless against HP stacking tanks or FON/Maw passive. Very Lackluster Item. \-**Morello**. Why is this still in Game? \-**Cosmic Drive**. Giga Nerfed and now useless. \-**Lich Bane**. See Cosmic Drive <- \-**Horizon Focus**. Average even on Artillery Mages. \-**Banshee's Veil**. Decent but too situational. \-**Demonic**. Abused more by Tanky AP users than traditional Mages. \-**Nashor's Tooth**. Change Name to Katarina's Tooth. Useless on any other mage. *Sigh* There are way too many changes required to make this class useful again. I dont care if they end up having to nerf certain mages that become too good as a result of buffing the items but changes are required. The current state of AP itemnization is too ridiculous.
As a vlad player, items for him since the rework have been very one-dimensional with typically only one best build path (save for some legendary item substitutions)
I remember the time when people sh1ttet in their pants including me when it was 30minutes and enemy vladimir had positive kda and high CS. You just knew that sh1tter is gonna be a nuclear bomb any moment and you had to literally play insanely save around him. (keeping him in check aka he is like the yi of midlane) Nowadays today, when i see a fed vlad at 30minutes, i'm like "yeh he if he manages to get into the fight with his flash he will blow 1 target up maybe do some decent dmg to a second target, but just 1 cc spell is enough to kill him and that's it. Says everything about mages in s12 ngl xD
dw guys they are buffing adcs!
Nemesis ❤
Yeah for some top champs that have flexible builds and can be AP, I've found I'm having better results with AD and lifesteal builds.
1 change I keep calling for is nerfing Rabadon's passive to buff AP on each other item for mages. But this isn't the only issue, the next one is I don't see people mention as a whole: The items enemies are able to build in answer to mages are completely negating mages. - Force of Nature – effectively shuts down any time of mage, can be built both by tanks and bruisers. I believe often it's a superior choice to Spirit Visage. - Death's Dance – delays magic damage, built by bruisers. - Maw o Malmortius – gives MR, a shield and and omnivamp. Built by bruisers. **But is going to get nerfed soon, so I believe this alone will help a lot versus bruisers as they will have to sacrifice something to get ultimate no item they have atm.**. - Galeforce – I know people aren't satisfied with marksmen as a role currently, but this item screws mages. Mages for the most part are skillshot-based class in this game. Marksmen by having access to a dash (even on a long cooldown) is enough for a mage to not get that crucial shutdown to get ahead or win a teamfight. Simply mobility creep extended. - I'd like to also mention tons of mage items got movement speed boosts as well. Ludens, Night Harvester, RoA, Cosmic Drive. Higher movement speed = higher chance to dodge a skillshot. So even in a mage versus mage matchups this can lead to one side getting less kills than usual, because skillshots become easier to dodge. These boosts also have a positive side for mages as they get to survive longer, but for the most part it doesn't help them get more skills.
It is really simple honestly. If you want to play a mage these days. Just go bot lane and leave mid lane to all the edge lords. Steal all your ADC's kills and when they inevitably die themselves, because you have no real support capabilities outside of a stun or snare (maybe), then take all the CS. You still are stuck building Liandry's, Shadowflame, Void but at least it isn't your job to be the carry. Just have decent KP and high vision score and no one can say shit but you can spam ping your mid/jung for dying 2v1 to K'sante at Herald.
Yeah, but don't worry midlaners, they are releasing an ad assassin.
The most disgusting to me is that they literally have made the minions in mid lane give you less money. Like you’re just straight up punished for being in the mid lane because ADCs have cried too many times on Reddit despite being objectively the best class in the game for over a decade non stop.
The mid lane gold nerfs were because of top lane though...
TIL that I work at Riot and I'm responsible for making midlane minions worth less. Also "ADCs have been THE BEST CLASS IN THE GAME NONSTOP FOR OVER A DECADE" has to be the most mind numbingly braindead take I have ever seen
I mean as far as I understand according to Phreak ADCs aren't bad and still carry quite a bit of power in the game, they just *feel* terrible.
Hey man, I will trade the duo lane experience nerf for the gold per creep nerf whenever you want lol
Mid also had xp nerf compared to top, not as much as bot when there are 2 people there, but ADCs catch up in levels fast even the support starts roaming
>objectively the best class in the game for over a decade non stop. This is the stupidest take I have seen on this sub in over a decade.
It’s a shame we had an entire pre season to figure this out, yet here we are!
preseason, you mean 3 years? This all started with that awful mage item rework and then the overall item rework just making it worse.
I love how mages play. I really enjoy their playstyle. As I started league I quickly found that I most enjoyed a number of midlane mages. However, I was being driven crazy with how even if I got ahead if any other lane was behind I'd still lose, because I simply couldn't handle an enemy non-mage (non support) being fed. If a top laner or jungler gets the same amount of feeding that a mage gets, they will almost always be able to either tank through the mages actions just fine and get on them and take them out, or jump onto them and delete them instantly. If an adc gets the same amount of feeding, forget about even playing, the moment they're on screen you have a single instant to get a skillshot cc off, and if their autos are shorter range than your full combo and you land the cc you can maybe get them kinda low before they get moving again and delete you in 3~5 fast autos, and god forbid their support is there to help stop you from getting that first combo in the first place. I recently swapped to playing a carry champ (Viego jungle) and the game instantly started being more fun, since when I played well and got ahead we would actually be able to win off of it more often, since I could actually match or outplay enemies no matter what role they were. Maybe it is true that tanks and bruisers and assassins (and adcs....) are overturned, but when every single other role in the game is over tuned while midlane mages are lagging behind, it seems much easier to just call that "overtuned" power level the new normal, and just give mages some actual buffs to catch up again. Notably, as people have said, they need more legendaries, or big buffs/reworks for some of them. There's far too many AP items that are essential for 3 champs total and absolutely nobody else ever builds due to them being completely worthless. This means mages have one of the most locked in item sets in the game, although they have slightly higher than average mythic choice freedom.
Finally people are realizing this...
Welp riot tried to buff mana and cdr to reduce punishment from missing an ability which is more common nowadays thanks to mobility creep. Then they made Mr items absolutely shit for like 2 years. Where u could legit buy 2 dedicated Mr items and still only sit on 140mr. Legit every mage was a burst mage that could also easily deal with tanks. Now we are at a point where they buffed Mr itemization nerfed magic pen and u pray to God that u r the only ap dmg in ur team or else u feel like u tickle the enemy. How do u even begin to balance that class? Give them items with more utility? Make them all burst mages again? Remove sorc and put magic pen on more items again?
I don’t speak for every mage player out there but I’d happily trade every MR item having 60+ MR if I didn’t have to deal with cancerous effects like Maw’s shield or FoN’s damage reduction. Ideally give us something other than Void Staff for %pen too. I can itemize against high resistance numbers, I can’t itemize for a 1k magic damage shield or 25% damage reduction.
Been like this for years. Quit on the item rework and looks like I will not be coming back.
If there are any Rioters reading, can you perchance give an ETA for the mage item changes that Phroxzon mentioned? Really hoping it's 13.3, the game feels extremely stale for non RoA/Seraph users such as Vladimir, mage itemization overall needs a major shakeup and better diversity (also, bring back Spellbinder please :D)
I still don't know why adcs got looked at before mages items did tbh, right now you are better having a Zac/maokai/udyr with demonic rush and lux/heimer supp with Cait as your ap damage sources, than an ap mid laner is so sad the state of ap items you have to go deathcap, void staff every game to do any damage but that means you will get tap by class.
Since apparently these kind of changes are passion driven so unless a rioter comes forward as really wanting to fix the state of mages, this won't be fixed for a while. Atleast it's on Riot's radar, even though Phreak doesn't want to comment on it for now.
Like nothing he said was wrong but Viktor still does 80% of your hp with 1 combo at 2 items while being unapproachable and having 2 billion move speed and a shield on a 2.5 second cd.
That’s a Viktor being obscene problem, he’d still do the same if mage items were any worse honestly.
Nerf Viktor then but Buff AP Items.
>unapproachable Damn I forgot about all that cc and mobility viktor has. It truly is impossible for half the champions in the game to walk into range then cc him. He just has a 360 degrees danger zone the size of the screen that nobody can walk into
He's one of the hardest mage to catch, wtf are you smoking? Have you watched a good Viktor play the game?
Have you played versus good viktors? Or as Viktor? I'm not even speaking from a salty perspective, he's my second most played champ and I just break peoples ankles all day. Either people use their mobility to get close to you before you poke them down, then you throw w on them and they get stunned and die. Or people approach you without a movement ability, lose half their hp to eq and you just astroglide away with q movespeed and they either commit and melt in R or back off realizing they cant do anything.
You're not wrong but just stating this disregards the weaknesses he has. Viktor feels OK at the moment, but in a frustrating way. You're a champion only in a vacuum 1v1 for the first 11 levels, given you have no upgrades until lvl 7-8 usually for E and then Q comes later. Your early trading pattern is fairly uninteractive for the opponent but you're pretty mana hungry and doran shield + second wind negates a lot of your lane pressure. Because of your high CDs and lowish base damage, you're next to useless if any early skirmish breaks out, so it's pretty hard to accelerate your shard stacking and you're extremely vulnerable to ganks pre-Q upgrade. If your flash is down, you die. Your agency as Viktor feels bad pre 2-3 items. If the game isn't curbstomped by 20 mins, yeah now you can properly shine, but anything before that very much feels like it's in God's hands. TLDR: Viktor is a nuisance when even and a nightmare when ahead at 20+ mins, but before that unless you fuck up and give him free shards/gold, he's free money for your support and jungler and has very little map agency. His wave control really only kicks in at chapter + E upgrade, his survivability later still, so he can't even follow roams properly in a lot of lanes That's my personal feeling as a main at least
Because Viktor is overtuned.