Recently, Riot August candidly admitted on his stream channel: “In fact, Mages are not weak, but playing them is very boring. This is clearly not great at all.”
The reason Riot August provided at that time was that in the mid lane, Mages now face too many melee champions. While Mages can only poke, only a few can actually use their skills to solo kill or completely dominate opponents if the player is highly skilled (like Akali, LeBlanc…), the majority are just playing for lane parity or relying on support from the Jungle. Additionally, melee champions like Marksmen/Assassins or Fighters have more itemization options, and in the long run, Mages are no longer a strong pick in the laning phase.
Recently, on Reddit, a widely upvoted opinion from the community highlighted the current weaknesses of Mage champions. Specifically, one user stated: “The reality is that there aren’t many AP items you can build as your second item besides Zhonya’s Hourglass. Cosmic Drive is becoming increasingly “useless” as a second item while Gunblade has been heavily nerfed. I just hope Riot can add about 4 AP items to the game to diversify the AP item system.”
It can be seen that in almost all matches at high ranks or in the professional League of Legends scene, item builds, especially for mid-lane Mages, are following a repetitive formula day in and day out. In fact, just by looking at a matchup, one can immediately know how that champion will build items. For example, Akali will only build the Rod of Ages and then immediately switch to Zhonya’s Hourglass, while LeBlanc might have a slightly varied build with Luden’s Tempest, Mejai’s Soulstealer, Cosmic Drive, and still Zhonya’s Hourglass. In some more intense matchups, LeBlanc might rush Zhonya’s earlier than usual.
This means that currently, Mage champions in particular and some other champions interacting with AP items in general do not have many options. This, as August himself shared, is one of the reasons why Mages lack choices when facing the growing trend of melee champion usage nowadays.
Of course, bringing in any new items requires a lot of time, calculations, and testing. Nevertheless, this is also a good idea for Riot to consider and thereby improve the strength of Mages or champions that frequently use AP items in League of Legends.