Mages are currently not in a good spot in the never-ending meta of League of Legends
While many League of Legends champion classes, such as Enchanter and Tank Supports, ADC,… have benefited from the preseason adjustments and metas, one of the game’s most popular classes has suffered greatly at nearly all levels—mages—and Riot Games is searching for answers.
Riot Truexy and Riot Phroxzon, Summoner’s Rift designers, took the chance to ruminate on adjustments made to mages in the previous year, how they’ve stood up to shifting metas, and what efforts the team may take to gradually rectify the class in the future.
While the team is still considering healthier alternatives to repair the class, they want to ensure mages as a whole has a clearly specified area it can excel in League of Legends.
Both designers noted right away that mages’ masteries has very little variation in the current meta, noting that most mages abandon more damage-based items that characterize the class in favor of those that make them tankier.
Many mage items have also been given greater defensive stats at the expense of the AP they bestow, a problem Truexy thinks was exacerbated by last year’s durability update, which turned mages into half tank.
Phroxzon went on to say that the original concept behind the item adjustments last year was to keep the number of mage-like items low “because they needed to suit many diff[erent] champions.” He particularly mentioned Horizon Focus and Cosmic Drive as items that, instead of being solutions to mage role problems, have become balance issues that could make them more effective for other classes.
Riot is trying the first few adjustments aimed at particular mages with League Patch 13.4, which is set to go live on February 23. Truexy observed that this patch will give Veigar longer throw ranges on both his Q and W, which is a beginning move toward increasing mages without just buffing their damage.
For now, there is no clear timetable for further changes affecting League’s different mages, but Riot is completely aware of the problems with the class and its tooltips and will be carefully monitoring them in the future.