NOTE: Sorry guys. It's 2 a.m. I'm exhausted and I'm going to pass out. Likely no replies to this thread until I wake up again. Thanks for all the questions / feedback! I'll definitely try to read everything when I get another spare chunk of time! For now - signing off.

6.9 Core Mana, Regen, AP and MR Pass

We're likely going to be pushing within 1 or 2 days onto PBE a set of major item changes intended to be part of the Midseason patch that is primarily focused around Mages.

As always - I want to give you guys a full list of details with a bit of context before these items hit the PBE and get data mined.

There are a couple of major points here that I want to hit upon - and we're being pretty aggressive about the item space we're exploring here.

Note: None of the numbers are final here and functionality and specific details will change as we iterate and get closer to shipping the patch note. We're still in a change of heavy numbers iteration of most of these items.

Mana, Mages, MP/5, Supports

First off, I'm changing a vast majority of the Mana components in the game in purpose and function. Overall, our mana items that have been tailored towards mages have been mostly about providing Mana - rather than being a Mana item with some kind of useful statline.

, for instance, is a Mana item which provides a useful passive.

Our current Mana + Spellcaster mana components just provide Mana and don't really solve anything else - making any mage that needs to buy a Mana item simply lacking in some early functionality or stat pattern.

We also want to do some work here to ensure that offensive mage items tend to have maximum Mana on them - while supportive items tend to have mana regeneration on them - this is both from a game health concern (Infinite Poke) as well as a push to have mages be comfortable burning through tons of mana on powerful spells rather than rely on a steady drip of attrition.

Catalyst the Protector of Aeons

• Valor's Reward passive removed
• New Passive - Eternity: 15% of damage taken from champion is gained as Mana. 15% of Mana spent is gained as Health.
• (Healing limited to 25 per spell cast or 25 per second for toggled spells.)*

Catalyst loses quite a bit of free early lane pressure here - however, it enables a very powerful engine - turning mana to health and health to mana while brawling with other champions.

Tear of the Goddess

• Mana Regeneration: 25% --> 0%
• Additional Passive - Awe: Refunds 25% of Mana spent

Tear of the Goddess has always been the go to spot for a ludicrous mana pool. However, paradoxically - it also favors very low cost spells in order to stack it up. This iteration swaps out the minor regeneration for a very powerful effective mana cost reduction for truly painful spells.

The Awe passive is kept on every Tear of the Goddess upgrade. Because the mana is refunded - Catalyst's passive will still act at full power.

Chalice of Harmony

• Passive remade: Increases your Health Regeneration by 100% if your Health % is lower than your Mana %. Increases your Mana Regeneration by 100% if your Mana % is lower than your Health %.

One of the relationships I want to break up with this pass is the attachment of Flat Mana to Mana Regeneration. Additionally, we're going to siphon some of the sustain out of bot lane in 6.9 and thus introducing a fairly powerful option to solve whatever sustain that you need early on.

Lost Chapter (NEW)

• Recipe: Sapphire Crystal + Amplifying Tome + 115 Gold = 900 Total Gold
• 25 Ability Power
• 250 Mana
• Unique Passive: Upon levelling up, restores 20% of your maximum mana over 3 seconds.

Catalyst is a decent item to support brawlers but the old passive had its merits in sustaining an aggression pattern in lane. This additional item is intended to support very aggressive lane patterns by providing some of the old pressure patterns that Catalyst enabled while still fulfilling a mage's primary damage line.

Morellonomnomnomnomicon? Or Athene's? The Cycle Continues

When talking about Mana items - this has been a long running cycle. Morellonomicon and Athene's Unholy Grail have had identity profiles way too close to each other for too long.

We want to aggressively push Mana items to bind to offensive play patterns - and Mana Regeneration effects to bind to more team centric patterns. Athene's Unholy Grail has been remade to convert Mage / Support hybrid play patterns into specializing towards helping their team more.

Morellonomicon

• Recipe Change: Lost Chapter + Fiendish Codex + 500 Gold = 2100 Total Gold
• Mana Regeneration: 100% --> 0%
• Flat Mana: 0 --> 400
• Cooldown Reduction: 20% --> 20%.

Morellonomicon has been changed to build out of Lost Chapter - heavy AP, flat mana, flat CDR. An interesting facet of this change is that Archangel's Staff and Morellonomicon form a very aggressive pairing of Mana, AP and CDR fueling each other.

Athene's Unholy Grail

• Recipe Change: Chalice + Fiendish Codex + 300 Gold = 2100 Total Gold
• Total Cost: 2700 --> 2100
• Ability Power: 60 --> 40
• Mana Regeneration: 100% --> 75%
• Magic Resistance: 25 --> 25 (Unchanged)
• Cooldown Reduction: 20% --> 20% (Unchanged)
• Mana Passive: Mana Passives on Kill or Assist have been removed.
• New Passive: Gain 15% of premitigation damage dealt to champions as Blood charges, up to 100 to 270 (based on level). Healing or shielding another ally consumes Blood Charges to heal that ally.

Athene's Unholy Grail grants shield characters that can inflict damage the ability to heal their allies. Janna, Lulu, Orianna, Morgana, Karma and the like can now spec into an item that grants them additional permanent sustain that is supported by their offensive combat patterns.

Heal based supports will still benefit from the additional healing but in practice - it's a bit of tension between stacking a bunch of flat AP or not. The CDR is a nice boost for them though.

Spell Vamp -

We're killing Spell Vamp from the item system. We've been unable to get this statistic to be purchased on anyone but Vladimir and his tuning has always been lockstep with it. None of the Spell Vamp changes made throughout the years have been able to break this stranglehold.

Hextech Gunblade will keep it's "Omnivamp" passive - as it is seeing good use as being an effective life steal and spell vamp item for hybrid centric playstyles. Runes and Keystone choices will also retain the ability to acquire Spell Vamp.

Note: will have a major update in the same patch and has been tuned around the lack of Spell Vamp in the item system.

Will of the Ancients

• Removed from the game.

"Hextech"

We're introducing / shuffling around a new family of items called 'Hextech.'

These are very powerful active spell effects on a very short cooldown that add a great deal of magic damage and are primarily magic damage aligned.

Hextech Revolver

• Combine Cost: 340 --> 230
• Total Cost: 1200 --> 1100
• Ability Power unchanged
• Spell Vamp removed
• New Passive - Magic Bolt: Your basic attacks deal 75 - 150 magic damage on hit. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items).

Revolver has always been a item that encourages favorable trading in lane. This keeps some of that aspect in a far more aggressive manner that's hopefully a bit more ubiquitously useful than checking to see if you can sustain off a resourceless single target spell.

Hextech Gunblade

• Total Cost: Unchanged
• "Omni-Vamp" passive: Unchanged
• Active Damage: 150 --> 300
• Active AP Damage Ratio: 0.4 --> 0.3
• Active now instantaneously shoots a lightning bolt with zero travel time, immediately slowing the target for 2 seconds.
• Active now shares a cooldown with other Hextech Items.

Gunblade hasn't changed much with this update - simply strengthening the active while giving it a tie to a lightning thematic. Overall, adoption on the omni-vamp gunblade has been pretty successful - as it serves to be a useful drain item for a wide variety of mixed damage type champions.

Hextech Rocket Belt (Temporary Name)

• Recipe: Hextech Revolver + Kindlegem + 800 Gold = 2750 Total Gold
• Health: 300
• Ability Power: 80
• Cooldown Reduction: 10%
• Active - Fire Bolt: Dash 300 units in a direction (at 1200 speed) and then unleash a nova of fireballs that deal 100 - 250 (+25% of your Ability Power) magic damage to enemies hit. Enemies hit by more than one fireball take 15% damage from additional balls. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items).
• This Dash cannot go over walls.

One of the issues that we've struggled with in a lot of mid-range mages is that many of them essentially brute force their way to victory through raw numbers. They also don't have a ton of ways to opt into more flexible or flashy combat patterns with their core itemization.

Hextech Rocket Belt is an extremely dangerous effect that acts as either a range increased for their spells - a burst of initiation power - or simply a quick reposition tool so that these mages can fight in a more clever manner.

Hextech GLP-07A (Temporary Name)

• Recipe: Catalyst of Aeons + Hextech Revolver + 750 Gold = 3000 Total Gold
• Ability Power: 80
• Health: 300
• Mana: 400
• Passive - Shared with Catalyst of Aeons
• Active - Ice Bolts: Throw an arc of five piercing icy bolts that explode to deal 100 - 200 (+20% of your Ability Power) as magic damage. Enemies hit are slowed by 60% decaying over 0.5 seconds. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech Items)

Hextech Frost Cannon shares similar principles here - except targetting more brawler focused or CC focused mid-range mages. It adds light wave clear - can serve to hit confirm spells or aid in kiting opponents. An extremely flexible tool to enable mages to better plan out how they want an encounter to go.

Rod of Ages vs. Hextech GLP-07A

Rod of Ages has kind of lost it's identity ever since the 5.13 Core AP itemization pass. It's kind of a generic super stat-stick right now, providing large quantities of whatever you want.

However, with the advent of Hextech GLP-07A and the powerful active effect - we noticed that Rod of Ages lost a lot of its purpose in this new world and thus needed a stronger push in its identity.

Rod of Ages

• Recipe Change: Catalyst of Aeons + Needlessly Large Rod + 50 Gold
• Total Cost: 3000 --> 2500
• Health / Health Scaling: Unchanged
• Ability Power: 80 --> 60
• Ability Power per Stack: 20 --> 20 (Unchanged)
• Mana: 400 --> 300
• Mana per Stack: 40 --> 10

This incarnation of Rod of Ages has far less Mana total - and a bit less AP. However, the item itself is all about stacking the passive and how early you can get the ball rolling. It has almost zero combine cost - and thus is all about how quickly you can assemble it to benefit from a 500 Health, 100 AP item 10 minutes from now.

Tick Tock

Magic Cooldown Reduction

Wait a second, neither of those items have cooldown reduction...?

One of the most prevalent concerns we've had in the Mage space is that they are having a great deal of trouble finding sufficient itemization to push them to maximum CDR. This has a wide range of negative effects on the Mage space - from either restricting their pre-game rune setup - to barring sustained damage and kite patterns from working.

Zhonya's Hourglass

• Recipe Change: Seeker's Armguard + Fiendish Codex + 900 Gold = 3000 Total Gold
• Total Cost: 3500 --> 3000
• Ability Power: 100 --> 70
• Armor: Unchanged
• Cooldown Reduction: 0 --> 10%
• Active Stasis Cooldown: 90 --> 120

We're moving Zhonya's Hourglass out of the major AP item slot. The combine cost and total cost to which Zhonya's Hourglass would have been balanced at while keeping both the roles of 'Heavy AP' and 'Utility Active' were kind of untenable for most mages. We're shifting Zhonya's to a more utility centric item which is more in line with the spirit of the item.

This should help with a couple of things: Zhonya's Dominance as the most popular AP item, enabling characters who truly need Zhonya's to have access to it quicker as well as rounding our your defenses and cooldown reduction.

Abyssal Scepter

• Recipe Change: Fiendish Codex + Negatron Cloak + Amplifying Tome + 695 Gold = 2750 Total Gold
• Ability Power: 70 >>> 60
• Magic Resist: 50 >>> 60
• Cooldown Reduction: 0 >>> 10%
• Aura: No longer affects minions
• Aura: Now scales with level. Reduces Magic Resistance of nearby enemy champions from 10 to 25.

We've been unhappy with Abyssal Scepter's place as rush item to effectively win lane. The item simultaneously helped with wave clear, helped bully out your opponent while also providing a generous chunk of AP.

Re-positioning Abyssal Scepter to be far more about defending yourself against opposing magical threats while pushing its relevance onto the late-game. We're intending for Abyssal to be very attractive to mages that need an additional layer of defense who are going to scrap in team fight range.

AP/Defense/CDR Cycle

Hextech Rocket Belt, Zhonya's Hourglass and Abyssal Scepter are intended to form a cycle of items that grant magic damage, defense, cooldown reduction and a powerful effect that encourages mages to make dangerous plays in the middle of a team fight.

These also very pointedly don't have Mana on them - so they can fill out your remaining item slots - or support resourceless mages like some sort of crazed suicidal Kennen rush... or likely probably a more thoughtful Amumu.

Magic Resist Alterations

With the addition of Maw - the bolstering of MR on Abyssal Scepter - it's also time to look at the two 'heavy' MR items that are intended to form the core of serious magic resistance setups.

We want to further push the identities of these items apart from each other.

Spectre's Cowl

• Total Cost: 1100 >> 1200
• Health: 200 >> 250
• MR: 35 >> 30

Some slight stat adjustments to support further changes later on down the line.

Banshee's Veil

• Recipe Changed: Spectre's Cowl + Negatron Cloak + 530 Gold
• Total Cost: 2900 >> 2450
• Health: 500 >> 300
• MR: 70 >> 70 (Unchanged)

This pushes Veil to be the definitive reactionary purchase against Magic damage teams. A build path that includes both a Negatron Cloak and a Spectre's Cowl is a powerful response to facing a magic damage team.

However, the final item isn't incredibly slot efficient and so while the option is there in case you need it - it makes for a relatively poor 'capstone' item to make you immune from magic damage after stacking a bunch of Health.

Spirit Visage

• Combine Cost: 900 >> 800
• Total Cost unchanged
• MR: 70 >> 55
• HP Regen: 150% >> 200%
• Passive Healing: 20% >> 25%

Spirit Visage is always going to be core on some of our drain tanks. Since we're interesting in enhancing many of these characters drain personalities - the presence of a ton of Magic Resistance has proven to be a little unwieldy on Spirit Visage.

This pushes Spirit Visage's identity of healing a bit more and also buffs its interactions with Warmog's Armor - in the case that you need to spec into extreme out of combat regeneration.

Note: There will be a scattering of over item tuning changes in the 6.9 patch. The changes here reflect either major directional changes or just the detail work for this pass. There are a scattering of changes that are intended to generally tone down the level of sustain in the early game that is mostly unrelated to this work.

Disclaimer: I will only be responding to this thread regarding gameplay feedback on this change. Please keep the discussion centralized to this topic if possible.