Item Preview – Tons of Mana, just one Tear

Xypherous strikes again with more previews from the upcoming itemization update!
Continue reading for a lengthy post detailing the changes to Tear of the Goddess, Archangel's Staff, and a new item, Seraph's Embrace, as well as several relevant red posts.

Here is Xypherous's initial post.

"Hey there Summoners. After my first post about the upcoming preseason itemization changes, which you can find here, I’d like to talk about an item path that both demonstrates some of the updates we’re making to item tooltips and previews an upcoming item.

One of our primary goals in League of Legends is to facilitate “clarity of design,” ensuring that things work exactly how you expect them to work – and then some. With the preseason update, we’ve gone back and retuned a lot of our existing items to fit under this new paradigm and to basically re-tool some of our lesser used items into items that can fit into a wider variety of player builds. Let’s go into today’s preview item and its upgrades:

Quote:

Tear of the Goddess +250 Mana +7 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive – Mana Charge: Each time you spend Mana, your maximum Mana increases by 4 (3 second cooldown). Bonus Mana: 0/750

It’s pretty much the Tear of the Goddess you’ve all known and loved for quite some time. You cast spells, you gain maximum mana. It does give a bit less total mana than it did before, but it’s also cheaper at a new cost of 700 Gold.

The passive is mostly the same, with one key difference: Tear of the Goddess used to trigger on spellcasts; now it triggers when you spend Mana, including through the use of channeled effects. While these two effects are one and the same for most characters, any character that has a channeled effect that costs mana will now be able to use Tears to greater effect. Characters like Anivia and Karthus who were already excellent with Tear of the Goddess now have additional ways to trigger it, while some characters like Singed and Ashe will have a newfound ability to trigger Tear of the Goddess from their toggled abilities, opening up new item paths for those characters.

You may have noticed the new words ‘Mana Charge’ – this is part of our new item tooltip terminology. Unique Passives that are shared across items now have a unique name and indicator to call them out. Unique Passives with the same name don’t stack. This mechanic is something you’re already familiar with on existing items; we’ve merely called it out explicitly with new terminology in an effort to clarify our item tooltips.

Quote:

Archangel’s Staff +250 Mana +60 Ability Power +10 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive – Insight: +(3% of Maximum Mana) Ability Power UNIQUE Passive – Mana Charge: Each time you spend Mana, you gain 5 maximum Mana (3 second cooldown). Bonus Mana: 0/750 Transforms into Seraph’s Embrace at 750 Bonus Mana

Archangel’s staff has been similarly changed in line with the new wording and functionality, and has undergone similar cost / mana and trigger recalculations so it will fit better into our new item pricing paradigm.

Archangel’s staff also has the Mana Charge passive to indicate that this passive doesn’t stack if you build a new Tear of the Goddess. However, with the Staff you gain Five mana whenever you spend mana, rather than Four mana. Upgrading to Archangel’s staff will thus increase your rate of gain on the Mana Charge.

You may also have noticed that there’s one curious line at the end of the tooltip.

If you think about it there’s no real reason why gold has to be the only way to upgrade an item. In the case of Archangel’s Staff we wanted to create an upgrade that flowed naturally from the usage and theme of the item. But if you already have 1000 Mana and 10 Mana Regen per 5, what possible upgrade could you want from Archangel’s Staff? Just what are you going to do with all that mana anyway when you’ve charged this item for 25 minutes of the game?

Quote:

Seraph’s Embrace (Upgraded from Archangel’s Staff when fully charged) +1000 Mana +60 Ability Power +10 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive – Insight: +(3% of Maximum Mana) Ability Power UNIQUE Active: Drains 25% of your current mana to shield yourself for an equal amount for 2.5 seconds - 120 second cooldown.

-Xypherous"

Here are some of the more interesting points that came up in the post comments. All of the answers are from Xypherous.

[ Can I fill up multiple tears for massive mana boost? ]: "You'll be able to fill up another Tears of the Goddess after AAA transforms - but since the AAA passive is now Unique, stacking them won't be as good.

Theoretically, you could do an really inefficient late game build with AAA / Manamune and a Tears and be able to fully charge tears 3 times - but at a certain point, buying Rod of Ages or Frozen Heart might be better for this case."

[ What is the point of Rod of Ages now that we have this fancy new item? ]: "Rod of Ages has a very clear purpose: It builds out of Catalyst and is best when rushed early as it gives you a huge mid-game boost and solid survivability statistics. The other part of this is that Seraph's embrace potentially gives you a 600 to 1k health shield for 2.5 seconds. Rod of Ages just gives you 600 health all the time.

They accomplish similar things but Seraph's allows you to go far more glass - and the two items also have a pretty decent synergy with each *other* as Catalyst -> Tears -> RoA -> AAA will create a very strong durable tank mage. So one is Mana + Spike Survivability and one is Mana + Passive Survivability and when combined together they give you a decent mix of passive survivability, spiked survivability and raw ability power that makes you a fairly well-rounded mage."

 He also gave us a small peek at what Manamune has in store for us over on the EU forums, saying:

"Just going to leave this here... and let you wonder where it might go...

Unique Toggle: Your basic attacks and single target spells drain an additional X% of your current mana and deal twice that amount in bonus magic damage over 2 seconds.

Edit: Also, don't worry about Nidalee. Just an oversight on the preview. Tears will still proc off everything it has ever proc'ed before (including Pounce) but in addition, it will now proc off things channeled/toggled effects that drain Mana."

As with yesterday's post, I'll be sure to keep you updated by editing in any additional posts relative to the S3 item update!

Miss out on some of Xypherous' earlier posts about the S3 updates to itemization? Check 'em out:

• 11/7 - Overview and Brutilzer + Black Cleaver.
• 11/8 - Eleisa's Miracle