Now that Mr. Phreak exposed himself as an APC enjoyer, his (team?) balancing decisions makes sense.

Crit feels awful. You get to Infinite Edge and somehow that's not that big of a Spike, you need Armor pen, and sometimes still not enough of a purchase either because HP stackers run you down anyway. - Buy BORK!, said the hardstuck midlaner who doesn't know math.

Now, looking back to season 14... Mages kinda got everything in their plate. Shadowflame became a solid purchase, they got back a pseudo-liandry with blackfire torch, and most importantly: Their stat distribution did not get gutted with the split 3 gold re-balancing. Unlike us.

It's easy to say, and assume, that someone has been taking advantage of said changes to play APC, like him admitting it on the lol sports most recent video.

People excusing pickrate of mages because they're "rare" just makes it perfect. It's like brainwashing people by saying "look, their winrate is borderline ridiculous but since people only play it in high elo and they are rare*, we won't do anything about it, deal with it".

Depending on elo, some mages just maintain 54/55% winrate constantly. But hey, it's fine since you are guaranteed to lose to them every blue moon, "because they're rare"...

Not to mention, Mel was literally made for midlane and some people already say she works best in a 2v2 lane based on how her spells need setup... And seeing how important EARLY objectives have become, Adc scaling kinda doesn't matter anymore.

Early game skirmishing is more important than ever, something we are weak... but mages? All they need is a lost chapter item, that is cheaper than our half-assed one item that WILL lack either AD, AS or Crit. Because we cannot have a good first item, no...

I cannot stand yet another phrk-season. I can’t.