Breastplate of Valor - Balanced?

I found myself looking at the popular items section in-game when playing Mages and generally when reading guides AND when I play myself. What I've found is that almost every Mage has in his popular items Breastplate of Valor and almost every guide contains this item, at least in the situational items sections and I myself play with it a lot.
This item grants at tier 3
75 physical protection
550 mana
25% CDR
AND it costs 2300 gold.

Now I'll just compare it to Chronos' Pendant.
50 magical power
25 MP5
25% CDR.
This one costs 2490...

Do you really need that much MP5 outside of Assault maybe? no.
Does 50 magical power even competes with 550 mana + 75 Physical protection? YES! Just kidding, no way in hell. And yes, even with Rod of Tahuti, that 50 magical power becomes 62.5.

And yes, I do think that Chronos' Pendant is underpowered, but Breastplate of Valor is just too good. Especially if you happen to have Book of Thoth, the 550 mana also grants you 16.5 magical power.

I'd suggest reducing the physical power contribution to 50 and the mana to 300.
As for chrono's pendant, I'd suggest increasing the magical power up to 75, reduce the MP5 to 20 and maybe add some movement speed, as it just fits the title of this item.

What do you think?

Yeah, I feel that the protections on the thing are too high for its cost, but I think dropping it to 50 and Pendant to 70 is going too far. Buff Pendant, nerf Breastplate, but not both.

SHHH DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT MY BABY

NO

BREASTPLATE IS BEAUTIFUL.

I LOVE IT.

On another note, we ARE getting items in the next patch. Let us wait and see what that entitles, then we can judge one of the sexiest tank items.

This is one of the more obvious item imbalances. Chronos' Pendant is way too weak 'and' Breastplate of Valor is way too strong. It makes it kind of silly when they go against each other for the CDR spot in a build.

At the moment, Chronos Pendant's only purpose is to let the other nine people in the game you don't know how to build correctly. It's battling it out with Gauntlet of Thebes for the most useless spot. There's no situation (in conquest,) where it's the right thing to buy.

Breastplate on the other hand is an all around item with no drawback. It's battling it out with Qin's Sais for the most pointlessly no-con item. It gives you a ton of survivability and mana on top of the CDR. You have to go out of your way to find a reason to not get it.

For fixes, I think Breastplate needs nerfed and Pendant needs reworked. Make the CDR on Breastplate 15% and lower the protections so it doesn't make a squishy extremely hard to kill until late game. It probably needs to be a couple hundred gold more expensive as well. Just a small numbers tweak and it will go from must-buy to a good item. Mages are always going to lean towards defensive items early when all else is equal, so Breastplate will likely always be a top buy. That's just the meta though, nothing you can do about that.

Pendant just needs a complete rework. That much MP5 screams 'Assault' or 'I still buy Meditation.' If that's a main part of the appeal on the item, it will always be useless above a certain level in conquest. Take away the MP5 and make it like 1800 gold so it's a cheap CDR alternative. Maybe put the CDR on the item and give it a different passive to give it a niche like Winged Wand as well.

It's not that Breastplate is too good, it's that Pendant is too weak. We need a better Magical Power+CDR item, because we're already got other items that give Magical Power+MP5 such as Book of Thoth and Rod of Tahuti. Chronos' Pendant is inferior to both items, save for CDR that can be gotten elsewhere.

Breastplate of Valor isn't exactly THAT good; I would certainly not compare it to Qin's Sais which is an inherently broken item that makes otherwise fine item choices look weak by comparison. The thing is Breastplate only provides armor and CDR: unless you're Ao Kuang, it doesn't actually make you stronger. 75 armor may be a lot, but it's hardly any different from building something like Wall of Absolution, which I feel people should get into the habit of buying at least one protection item anyways on their mages. Think about it; you build a Focused Void Stone, why are you really getting it? If your answer is penetration, you need to rethink your build strategy.

I don't really see a big difference between Breastplate and Sais. Both are items that fit into every build because they do so much and have no drawback. Sais is probably stronger in general whereas Breastplate just has no other items that really compete against it, but both are the kings of their respective unbalanced item sets. Sure Wall of Absolution exists, doesn't mean anyone ever buys it. I'd rather take the stance of nerfing the stuff at the top instead of buffing a lot of other things to give you choices. Everything's too strong already.

I actually don't think Breastplate and Pendant should be compared at all. Breastplate is more of a defense item than a CDR item. For some reason it just gives the most CDR in the game while already being the best defense item for mages. That kind of puts CDR items in an awkward spot.

Maybe buff Pendant to give 30% CDR. It'd be unique.

By your logic, we should be taking the nerf bat to items like Deathbringer, Malice, Rod of Tahuti, and all those types of boots because boy do those show up on every damage-dealer! *sarcasm*

No, there's a difference between items being good and items being broken. Breastplate of Valor is good and in a balanced spot because a mage must sacrifice power to build it. It should be similar to how when you build a Fatalis, you are giving up damage in favor of speed and rapid hits... except Qin's Sais provide almost as much attack speed, and damage+lifesteal at the same time, so why even take a Fatalis except on specific gods?

It's also worth noting that HiRez typically puts a lower price tag on defensive items compared to offensive ones because tanks make less gold and protection stacking becomes less effective as a game progresses (items like The Executioner and Obsidian Shard exist to counter protection stacking). When people are waving around 600+ magic power from a Rod of Tahuti build and critting for 1k due to Deathbringer's passive, combined with all the pentrations, there's a reason why protection items are mostly cheap unless they provide crucial effects i.e. Void Stone aura.

Uh, maybe I'm not expressing my point correctly. I understand that Qin's Sais is broken; it gives the highest DPS while also giving attack speed and lifesteal, making building anything besides it pointless. There's no choice in a build, you build Sais regardless of what you're going for.

Rod of Tahuti or Deathbringer by comparison are high cost damage items that fit into their role just fine. They're still in every DPS build, but it's not like you're getting a ton of other benefits from them. A bruiser building somewhat tanky isn't going to build Deathbringer just because; it's not worth it for him.

I'm arguing that Breastplate of Valor is in the category with Sais. It's the best defense item and the best CDR item (for mages,) at the same time. Why would you ever build another CDR item when you have to build defense first anyway, and can kill two birds in one stone? You don't choose to build defense because you want to, you build it because you have to. You're not sacrificing damage when you build Breastplate because a dead character does no damage. I don't think it's completely broken (my first post talked about just tweaking the numbers a little,) but it does too much right now. It's two items in one.

Every mage needs defense, and every mage can use CDR. Combining those two (and a high stat of those two,) on one item leads to it being in every build.