It’s a well-known fact that Riot Games loves playing favorites in League of Legends, with “drain-tank” champions like Udyr, Hecarim, and Olaf virtually being the main characters of Summoner’s Rift. As a result, mages and AD carries are often left in the dirt to fend off for themselves. As two masters of mid lane, Nemesis and Showmaker recently took it upon themselves to define mages’ most striking issues in the game.
On Jan. 15, one of Nemesis’ fans asked him for his opinion on the mid lane in general. As his “secret weapon,” Nemesis pulled out a video of Showmaker losing a match on Xerath and venting about the state of mages in the game for a while now.
In the video, Showmaker is visibly frustrated with the poor treatment mages have gotten over the years in League, making the list of greatest problems mid lane mages currently have. Thanks to machine translation, we have a rough idea of how that list looks:
- Minus one gold for minions
- -10 gold for siege minions
- Lack of damage to Jan’Sho abusers unless you buy Void Staff
- Need to buy Sorcerer’s Boots and can’t build survival items
- Need to have Teleport
- Have no innate Tenacity
- Buying Mercury Treads means no damage
- Liandry’s Anguish can’t kill carries
- Luden’s Tempest can’t tanks
- Safeguard (passive from Crown of the Shattered Queen) is easily broken
- Everfrost is too weak and rooting got nerfed
- Champions like Lee Sin have a lot of Tenacity and Mercury Treads
- Seraph’s Embrace is really weak
- Zhonya’s Hourglass is overnerfed and gives too little AP
- Rabadon’s Deathcap is too expensive
- Banshee’s Veil is an okay item, but too weak right now
- Rylai’s Crystal Scepter and Rod of Ages are extremely bad items
- Mid champions can’t buy Night Harvester, Lich Bane or Nashor’s Tooth
After watching the video, Nemesis goes on by explaining that Seraph’s Embrace and Rod of Ages only made Sylas and Kassadin viable in mid lane, but essentially, mid lane has stayed the same.
“If you ban like Ryze or Kassadin, mid lane is just the same old shithole that it used to be,” Nemesis said.
Despite the reality looking all too gloomy for mages, Nemesis then explained that Tenacity nerfs in Patch 13.1 helped mid lane mages a little. Still, mages have a long way ahead of them before they can happily march back to mid lane and carry the games with little to no setbacks.
