League of Legends: Do Mages Need A Defensive Mythic?

Is a defensive mythic item what mages need?

In Riot’s latest state of gameplay, they discussed their plans for the next season which includes the addition of some new items to the game. Amongst the new items being added, Riot spoke on their intent to give mages a defensive mythic item. But will this new item help or hurt the game?

Mages are notorious for being huge damage dealers with a drawback being that they’re effectively glass cannons. Riot acknowledged this, their goal for this new mythic item will be to provide mages with increased resistance upon initiation that will fall off as an exchange progresses

Providing extra defenses to mages will help them stay up longer, making it possible to have an even bigger impact on mid/late game team fights. This will amplify their threat level tremendously and it’ll be priority number one for teams to focus on taking them down at the start of a fight.

But, since this is already the case what does a defensive mythic really change for mages? It’s highly plausible that giving these champions an item like this could tip the balance and make them extremely overpowered.

The point of the mage role is to perform as one of the main damage dealers of the team. However, mages unlike assassins have the benefit of dealing that damage from a distance. If you give them high damage numbers and couple that with solid defensive stats, it’ll be a nightmare. Imagine having to work your way through a tank line only to still get burs down by a mage who you barely put a scratch into.

An item like this will also forgive players for making mistakes. Positioning is important as a mage or marksman because with such low health it makes them an easy target to enemies. An item with fall-off defensive stats will forgive them for getting caught out It wouldn’t make much of a difference in team situations but securing solo kills on roaming mages will become a problem.

Riot also discussed their intentions of adding a new legendary item to help mages shed through enemy shielding. Thankfully, they’ll have time to work out how they’ll roll these out but it sounds a little like overkill.

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