Mana and mana regen are about to be overhauled in League

Riot wants to heavily change both mana and mana regeneration in League of Legends in upcoming patches, according to the latest PBE update.

If you’ve been on the PBE within the past day or so, you’ve probably noticed a very long list of very meaningful changes. The majority of those changes involve mana, and looking at them all at once can be a little overwhelming. Some mages are gaining as much as 100 mana to their total mana pools, others are getting spiked mana regeneration, and even more are receiving widespread nerfs to mana gained per level.

For the most part, though, champions are receiving all three of those big changes, and we’re here to tell you not to worry, because it’s simpler than it seems.

When mage mana items were overhauled in Patch 8.4, the meta was flipped on its head. Champions that couldn’t be played due to mana issues were suddenly viable again, assassins were run out of town by newly-empowered control mages, and over the course of a couple months, players figured out which items were truly broken. One such item was the new Seraph’s Embrace, but most of the items as a whole were a little too strong.

The changes pushed onto the PBE yesterday are simply an answer to those issues. With high mana pools, champions that suffer from high mana costs can survive in the early game, but with less mana per level, those that don’t have mana issues will no longer get away with building raw AP if they want to spam. The changes are also designed to help balance the Doran’s Ring, which has been sort of the problem child of starter items for over a year now.

Doran’s is being nerfed to line up more evenly with other starting items, but the changes to starting mana and mana regeneration across the board should keep champions that relied on the item in the fold, while also enabling them to rely on it less. This is good primarily for mages, and less for the sort of tanks that needed the item as well, such as Nautilus and Maokai, depending on the meta.

These rather drastic mana changes are being targeted for Patch 8.9, but due to the sheer size and impact of them, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them pushed back by one more patch cycle.