In the current 2022 Pre-Season, we can clearly see the dominance of Mages, especially in the Mid lane position. The reason comes from the fact that the new Mage equipment added to the League of Legends store proved to be too strong in the ability to attack as well as protect himself. Even a series of ADC champions who have pure crit items and increased AD like Ezreal, Corki, Kai’Sa also switched to using Mage items.
Corki can blow away his opponent’s health plants with his AP build
This leads to a situation where the ability to deal magic damage in League of Legends is becoming extremely strong and naturally, items that increase magic resistance will be more popular. However, in reality, that is not entirely the case when the equipment that increases magic resistance for Gladiators and Gunners, Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns, is “abandoned” completely. Numbers don’t lie and the fact that this item has only 0.6% purchase rate at the moment clearly shows this.
Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns currently has a very low purchase rate even though it is a counter item for Mage generals
So why is this absurdity happening in League of Legends? The first reason comes from Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns having the same passive with 2 items: Death Crossbow and Sterak’s Claw. Basically, all 3 of these items have a unique passive in the line of Magical Insurance, so gamers can only increase 1 item.
Having the same passive Magic Insurance with Death Crossbow and Sterak’s Claw makes Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns completely “abandoned”
Obviously, when compared, Malmortius’ Mace of Thorns proved to be much weaker than the other two items in terms of versatility as well as defense. With the Deadly Crossbow, this item provides all the necessary stats for the ADC general and the much-needed blood-stealing ability. Meanwhile, Sterak’s Claw is extremely strong on Gladiators when bringing a lot of health and good healing ability. So even when providing a not small amount of magic resistance of 50 points, Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns is still “abandoned”.
For Gladiators, Sterak’s Claw is a much stronger item than Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns
Not stopping there, the ability of the Mace of Thorns Malmortius itself also has a huge problem that makes it not provide enough safety for the champion to use. If you don’t know, Malmortius’s shield against magic damage will increase with the health of the champion. However, this item itself does not increase health, the Gladiator, Assassin, and Gunner generals on this item also do not have too much health. Therefore, the amount of shield this item provides is extremely low and has no meaning.
The fact that the magic shield of Malmortius’s Mace of Thorns interacts with the health stats makes this item’s defense extremely bad on Assassin, Gunner or Physical Gladiator champions
In short, with the unique passive Magic Insurance, Riot has turned the Malmortius Mace of Thorns into a “super waste” item in the eyes of gamers when it cannot compete with the Death Crossbow or Sterak’s Claw. Moreover, the unreasonableness of the shield creation of this item makes Assassin, Gladiator or Gunner players ignore it. Perhaps Riot needs to rework this item’s formula or give it a different unique passive so that Malmortius’s Mace is no longer estranged.
