what happened to spell vamp?

Mage Update

Mage update removed the singular spellvamp (not omivamp) item in the game. shocking, i know.

Spellvamp was deemed "toxic" by Rito, so they removed it from the game. Meanwhile, any ADC can stack life steal and be four times the drain tank Vlad / Morde EVER were with WOTA, and that's totally healthy gameplay.

They reworked Morde and Vlad then removed it from the game

It is totally unfair, because people sometimes love building life-steal on may champions. There are people who love building Spell Vampire on many mages, "it was an option and a fun thing". I really didn't like it when spell vampire items gone.

Short version: It was hard to balance on items, so they kept it on the weak side. Because it was on the weak side nobody bought it (except Vlad). Because no one bought it, they decided to scrap it. It still exists on Runes, Masteries, and individual Champions ( ) though.

Mage Update, Patch 6.9, under the Hextech Revolver section: Patch 6.9 Notes "Let’s start by comparing it to lifesteal. Thematically, lifesteal gives the feeling that you’re fighting back against death, creating tense 1 on 1 duels with uncertain outcomes. Mechanically, lifesteal says ‘I may have a small health bar but you’ve got to focus me down or I’ll regenerate to full.’ Spell vamp, while sounding similar, doesn’t quite hit the same bar. Unlike basic attacks, no two abilities are the same, which makes the stat wildly variable in value.

This means that it’s functionally impossible to make spell vamp work the way you’d expect, and it instead operates on myriad edge-cases to avoid feeling abusive and unintuitive. Cut to today’s world where it’s only used on Vladimir (whose balance is kept lock-step with the stat), it’s easy to see why it had to go."

In Short

"Lol, let's remake people, remove their primary support from the shop, and then start nerfing them to the ground. Because it's our game. Not the community's."