League Analysis: Health Regen and AP Item (for Manaless Champions)

In all my League Analysis articles, I've only offered critical reviews on existing implementations. By this, I mean I offer suggestions to improve or alter items or champions already released. However, particularly for items, there's some major itemization holes. While I believe that some itemization holes may be deliberate (for instance an item with huge amounts of AD and Health in equal amounts could cause a meta imbalance), adding items to fill other itemization holes should have a net positive impact as opposed to a negative one.

Given the recent patch that limits how many Health and Mana potions a player can have at any given time, the opportunity to patch an itemization hole has opened up. The aforementioned itemization hole is an item that gives Health Regen and Ability Power.

The Reasons (Why Add An Item With These Stats?)

Here I will go over the reasoning that led me to think that an item with Health Regen and Ability Power should be added.

• With the Health Potion limitation, starting items for champions like Rumble, Kennen, Akali, etc. are also incredibly limited. I am largely referring to resourceless AP champions because there are viable options for other champions (like Garen, Riven, Kassadin, etc.) that also suffered due to this change. For instance, the latter group of champions can build small items like Rejuvenation Bead and Faerie Charm and still have plenty of money for 5 Health Potions and a Sight Ward or two.
• However, the former group of champions do NOT have this option, so adding a Health Regen and Ability Power item will allow them to get an early Rejuvenation Bead.
• Ability Power champions in general seem to lack a Health Regen option. While they can build Warmog's Armor, the health-scaling options for AD champions far surpasses that of AP champions (i.e. Atma's Impaler, champion abilities, etc). In addition, champions like Singed rely more on building a balanced combination of offense and defense in order to remain relevant throughout the game.
• Also worth noting here is there's not exactly a lot of Health Regen item options in general.

Example Item(s)

Now that the reasons have been given, the question is what the items will be like. I believe adding two items and altering some existing build paths is all that is needed. An example of this is shown below:

Manual of Life (Advanced Item)
Cost: 850 Gold (615 Item Cost, 235 Build Cost)
Builds From: Rejuvenation Bead, Amplifying Tome
Stats: +25 Ability Power, 8 Health Regen per 5 seconds

Ohmwrecker (Legendary Item)
Cost: 2835 (2460 Item Cost, 375 Build Cost)
Builds From: Manual of Life, Philosopher's Stone, Amplifying Tome, Ruby Crystal
(Otherwise unchanged)

Hextech Energy Core (Legendary Item)

Cost: 2900 Gold (2135 Item Cost, 765 Build Cost)

Builds From: Manual of Life, Manual of Life, Amplifying Tome

Stats: +80 Ability Power, 20 Health Regen per 5 seconds

Passive - Energy Charge: The Hextech Energy Core charges over time, accumulating 2 charges per second plus an additional amount equal to the champion's health regeneration per second that isn't used to regenerate health. The maximum number of charges that can be accumulated is equal to 100 + (.30 * Ability Power)

Active - Energy Shield: Uses all accumulated energy to create a shield that absorbs damage equal to the amount of charges for 3 seconds. Unused shield reverts back into an amount of charges equal to half the shield strength. 15 second cooldown. Shares a cooldown with Mana Shield.

Hopefully something similar to this will be implemented. The general idea is to give some early game options with viable late game usage of the itemization (since regeneration may not be as useful late game for most champions that would benefit from the early start due to Spell Vamp).