League Analysis: Essence Reaver

It was but a couple of weeks ago and the World Cup was blazing in full fury in Brazil. While I was rooting for a few teams, what I was really looking at was patch 4.10 and the new World Cup skins on League of Legends. There were a few new items making their way into the game and while I already covered Ardent Censer, I didn't cover the other item: Essence Reaver. Given this is an analysis article, it is implied the prognosis for this item is rather grim despite it being a new addition, even if it is a niche item (meaning it's unlikely to be used by a large number of champion).

The Issue(s)

My initial reaction to seeing this item being added was moderate excitement, as there were some AD-scaling champions who needed some help on their mana (that Muramana couldn't already accomplish). However, after some of my friends gave their view and giving the item a few more glances, I realized the item was terrible given the fact that players could go for Muramana (since Tear of the Goddess can help provide the mana sustain they need, along with a large mana buffer). In addition, this item will be built rather late into the laning phase due to its cost, meaning champions that would normally want this item will still suffer from mana issues until then since the items needed to construct Essence Reaver don't help with mana issues directly (and conditionally help indirectly, such as by providing health sustain so certain champions don't have to spend mana as often to heal).

While I did see the item being built a lot alongside Muramana (particularly on Jayce), the item has been complained about a lot as well, citing problems like the ones listed above (though to be fair there are some posts supporting the usage of the item as well). It is also worth mentioning that prior to the slight increase in attack damage with patch 4.11, Essence Reaver without its passive was essentially a weaker version of Bloodthirster (which provides around a net 230 gold of stats compared to Essence Reaver if accounting for attack damage and life steal only) and Ravenous Hydra (which provides a net 250 gold of stats if compared like above). However, since the attack damage of Essence Reaver was increased, it now has a better net efficiency than the aforementioned items, negating this issue, though the others remain. To summarize, Essence Reaver the following issues:

• The build path is not conducive to champions who need the item because it doesn't provide mana sustain until the item is fully built.
• The item is moderately expensive, meaning players that rush the item for the passive effect to help with mana starvation, which is most problematic early on during laning phase will likely get the item at a rather late point in the laning phase.
• It has a competing item that does not have either of these issues (at least to a major degree), though the item's use is more conditional by comparison because it relies on liberal usage of (cheap) spells early on to make the most use of the mana "sustain."

A Possible Solution

There are a few ways to potentially make Essence Reaver accomplish what it is designed for better. As mentioned in this post, adding mana regeneration to the build path would help Essence Reaver users by giving them access to early mana regeneration while building their way up to the larger item. Adding a lesser version of Essence Reaver to replace Pickaxe in Essence Reaver's build requirement that provides a similar mana regeneration passive would also help with early mana regeneration but add an additional item to that game that is extremely narrow in scope and would probably end up only ever upgrading into Essence Reaver itself (much like Phage upgrades to only Trinity Force). With those possibilities exhausted, I thought for a while on more solutions and recently happened upon one thanks to this post.

As mentioned earlier in the article, Muramana and Essence Reaver's synergy is quite strong. While said synergy may not be the only reason this Manamune and Muramana rework is being proposed, I could see it being a reason considering that due to the synergy of the above two items, a player is effectively dealing around 5-6% of their maximum Mana in physical damage on every single target attack (autoattacks in particular), resulting in potentially ludicrous damage output. I also mentioned above that Muramana and its parts are beneficial in terms of mana sustain for champions that might also consider using Essence Reaver. So then I thought: Why not try to merge the two concepts together? While Manamune and Muramana are already quite efficient, the following changes could take place:

• Increase the Mana regeneration of both Manamune and Muramana to 12 mana per 5 seconds. This will help further with mana sustain and when combined with the Mana Charge passive of Manamune the item will provide some solid mana sustain much like Essence Reaver.
• The price of Manamune will probably have to be increased to 2200 gold from 2100 to compensate for the extra mana regeneration. This is still 450 gold cheaper than Essence Reaver and as mentioned above, Tear of the Goddess will help provide early mana regeneration and is a part of the Manamune recipe.
• Add a second passive effect to Muramana that is the same (or similar) to Essence Reaver's current passive effect, but have it deactivate if the Active effect is toggled on. This gives Muramana more of a skill-based min-max mechanic to maximize damage output while relieving an interaction that may end up far too powerful for its own good. 
• It may be worth mentioning the damage output of Muramana's Active effect may need to be balanced around this, though it seems there's already something like that in the works given the post linked above.
• Remove Essence Reaver from the game (or redesign it for another purpose).
• On a related note, Tear of the Goddess could be changed to provide 3 Mana per spell cast (maximum 6 mana every 8/6 seconds) and 3 Mana every 8/6 seconds passively.
• This means the item still grants the same amount of maximum mana if spells are liberally being used but the item provides more mana passively compared to before, giving champions that don't or can't use spells frequently the option to build Tear of the Goddess.
• This applies to upgrades from Tear of the Goddess.

 Final Statements

Ultimately, the point is Essence Reaver needs a change in some form. While I like the idea Riot's trying to put forth, the execution wasn't exactly the best. Also, I really hope the proposed Manamune and Muramana change is reconsidered a bit. It seems rather off considering a good chunk of champions don't benefit from attack speed too well not to mention many have single target abilities that benefit from the current Muramana active effect.

(On a final note: Happy 4th of July. For the fellow United States citizens celebrating: be safe, especially if you're the ones launching fireworks!)