I spent a lot of my post on the caster item changes trying not to say anything definitive. This post is different. For this post, I know exactly how I feel and what needs to be said. The Ionian Boots of Lucidity are way too damn good for their cost. Period.

My philosophy on AP used to be pretty simple; build spell penetration before AP. It was a more effective way to increase your damage output and the spell pen items were cheaper, in most cases, than the high-tier AP items. Basically, building a caster was always some sort of tradeoff, just like an AD toon. Instead of attack speed, damage, and armor pen, you want CD reduction, AP, and magic pen. Some people would say that the boots just balance out casters against AD toons, but I really think they’re too strong.

The casters in the game have been balanced around the difficulty of obtaining cooldown reduction for a long time. Most of the CDR items were niche tools, designed to help against certain comps but not so great against others. The bread and butter of a CDR build used to be Frozen Heart, but it was only good against AD-heavy teams. Soul Shroud is a support item and wastes a lot of stat points for most casters, and Deathfire Grasp could typically be bypassed for a better AP item. Most casters I saw sat around 20-30 percent CDR and stacked AP. Now, I can have 30 percent CDR as soon as I make 900 gold, which can be as early as level four or five.

For any champion who relies on a rotation of spells – Annie, Ryze, Zilean, to name a few – the boots are insanely good. If CDR is to AP what attack speed is to AD, then these boots are supposed to be equivalent to Berserker’s Greaves. The difference is that mages are built for a big burst and then a period where they don’t do a whole lot of damage before that big burst comes back up. Physical damage dealers rely on individual attacks for nearly all of their damage. Early in the game when their damage is low, Berserker’s Greaves don’t do so much. The Boots of Lucidity, on the other hand, do a lot.

The changes to high-tier caster items already brought the mages in LoL in line with the AD carries for the most part. There are still a couple AD carries with kiting abilities that a mage can’t quite match, but for the most part, a mage’s damage output is just fine without giving them cheap access to cooldown reduction. I’ve lost one game as Zilean since the new boots released, and even in that loss I was better than 2:1 on my K:D ratio.