Thought: Mana Regen Itemization

Mana regen itemization is the most worthless in the game. Aside from the barest minimum required to lane or jungle effectively, mana regen is the worst stat on which to spend your hard-earned gold. The cost of mana regen is simply too high for what it actually accomplishes.

Because of LoL's mechanics and practical reality it is almost always better to invest in more damage than to invest in mana regen. Killing an opponent outright is more valuable than having the mana to kill them on the second or third try. This is why mana regen is most commonly built on AP carries who aren't burst-oriented, they can't instagib their opponents anyway. Even then, damage is so critical that despite the potential for Chalice to yield a whopping 35.8 mp5 by itself (approximately 2000g worth of stats) it was very rarely purchased even by attrition champions. Only recently has Chalice become popular, and primarily because it is now the component of a damage item. Mana regen is simply too costly for too little benefit.

Furthermore, mana regen itemization is overly-focused on AP champions and supports. AD champions and bruisers are essentially limited to Manamune, Philo/Reverie, Soul Shroud, Tiamat and perhaps Chalice; two support items, a troll item, an item whose upgrade is for AP champions, and one item actually tailored to the needs of an AD. In short, if you're an AD carry or bruiser you have few, if any, meaningful mana regen options.

It's for these reasons that Riot has been moving away from significant mana costs on AD carries and bruisers. Without building any mana regen at all most recent champion releases for these roles only care about mana in the earliest stages of the game. By the mid or late-game they hardly care unless they completely ignore managing their mana. There simply isn't the itemization to support mana-intensive kits for these champions, and this is the easy solution.

It's not, in my opinion, the "right" solution, but I understand why Riot chose this direction. Giving bruisers meaningful mana costs would dramatically unbalance the game. As it stands bruisers have significant issues becoming tanky enough to survive teamfights while still having enough damage to be relevant. Forcing them to invest in mana regen without careful reblancing would essentially eliminate all but the manaless bruisers as competitive options. Thus, fixing mana regen the "right" way is an incredibly complicated, tricky, and perilous operation. Rather than risk collateral damage Riot went with the simple option.

Still, that leaves us with mana regen itemization in its current, dilapidated state. Athene's Unholy Grail gives me hope that Riot will slowly, and carefully, tweak mana regen to be a more meaningful and investment-worthy stat (at least for APs), but until then it will remain an uninteresting, bland aspect of itemization.