How about we talk Grevious Wounds?

Okay, so i've been mulling over awhile as to the potential state of Grevious Wounds. Personally, I'm really glad that EC is back, and that AD champions have an option to apply Grevious Wounds, but it got me wondering how having effective GW will affect the state of Regen/Vamp dependent champions a la and to a degree, the affect it will have on healing supports like .

So First off, I kind of want to do some theory-crafting regarding GW application, and how it works in general. Where i think it's healthy, and where i think it has the potential to be overbearing. Now to those out of the know, Executioner's calling was removed at the beginning of this currently ending season, and will be making a return for S6. It still had a lot of its core concepts, being applying GW on hit, but it wasn't very popular, even when regen and vamp tanking were strong. This was primarily due to EC's poor item slot efficiency, which basically forced you to sacrifice a good item for a gimmick. It wasn't that useful, so people largely dismissed it.

Now however, EC will build into a full fledged item, with fairy good stats to boot! This is fantastic for AD champions, but has the potential to negatively affect our health dependent champions quite severely due in part to the way that EC and its ilk apply that affect.

So I had an idea. Now, in regards to countering Vamp and health tanking, despite having , i've always felt that the effect was a little lackluster, since if i'm fighting a or a the item is practically useless until i manage to somehow burst them below the 40% threshold. Ironically enough, i feel that EC and Morellonomicon would actually make more sense if their application standards were different.

You see, most mages tend to use skillshot based attacks. This is nifty since they usually have some sort of AoE affect, but also is nice because most of these spells can be dodged, rendering the damage portion rather useless. If it were to apply GW for a brief period after spell-hit instead of at a threshold, then getting targets into kill range would be much less tedious, especially if you aren't ahead. At the same time however, since most spells are skillshots and can be dodged, the target taking the grievous affliction has time to react, and fight around it, potentially dodging the attack to prevent the application entirely, or holding off their healing skills between skill rotations to keep their health in check.

Conversely, Marksmen Autoattacks, which are on-hit can be applied much easier, and far more often. in a world where EC is a much more viable way to counter healing, the idea of counterplay is rather small. Autoattacks are hitmark based and can't be dodged...for the most part . Giving a threshold still let's marksmen with their consistent damage keep opponents down when they need them, encouraging enemies to play around their hp range rather than just being in proximity to the marksman, but also gives marksmen a good way to gauge when they have the clear to Wound out a healing champion from recovering past their control zone.

Theoretically, swapping application methods gives both forms of GW application more counterplay around them, and types of application that functions better for what the class using them wants:

• Mages want to burst their targets because their damage is Cooldown dependent. Most mages don't have the rotations to keep GW up on a healing target and because of this to make GW efficient, the debuff timer must be longer. Having it on spell effect lets you dodge the application (mostly) and let's them mitigate your healing when they need to, as opposed to burning significant spell-power for the option of mitigating your healing..
• Marksmen, and Physical damage dealers want to finish off opponents as they tend to have little burst. Consistent damage lets them burn through initial health, especially with %Current damage items like which favor healthy opponents to crippled ones damagewise, and tend to have more trouble with targets who won't die as a result of having just enough regen/healing. They apply their damage consistently, and thus can work around the %hp threshold easier. Its better for opponents as they can gauge when they can heal based on their health, rather than the marksmen's aa range.
• All outlying instances of GW are worked around by , which serves as the best of both worlds, being GW, when you NEED it. Letting you choose when to apply, rather than how to apply.

So those are my thoughts on how to make GW more interesting to play with, and hopefully how to reign in regen/heal based champs without killing them off as a species to itemization. Let me know what you think, and what you'd do to counter healing and make GW useful and fair. Have a nice day!