Life Steal From Instant Healing To Heal-Over-Time

One o the problems with Life Steal is that it doesn't feel like anything unique. Life Steal on anything works the exact same way as drain-type abilities (Vlad's Q, Aatrox W, Udyr W, etc) which might end up being part of the problem with this stat.

So I've been thinking, why not have Life Steal heal you over a duration instead of an instant heal? There have been way to many times where you almost kill someone, then they kill 1 minion wave and are back to full HP again. Despite them having almost no HP after you died to them, they end up not getting punished for being so low on HP after the fight and sticking around.

Think of this scenario and I apologize if it's weird to read. A team fight just ended, the enemy ADC is low HP and barely got away from the fight. They see a good sized minion wave in bot lane and head directly down to it instead of going to base. You notice the low HP ADC heading down there and by their HP you can tell that you can easily kill them so you follow them down without them knowing you're there. The ADC in this moment is being extremely greedy, is alone, and completely unprotected so they should be an easy kill right? Well this is where Life Steal comes into play.

The ADC gets to the wave, lets say gets 200 HP back per-auto against minions and gets 5 off, healing for 1000 HP on top of lets say the 250 HP they had without Life Steal for a total of 1250. Your full burst combo that you can pull off in that moment is around 900 against that ADC. Because of how Life Steal currently works, you are unable to punish them for being greedy and way out of position.

Same scenario, but with heal over time instead. ADC gets 5 autos off, healing UP TO 200 over time per auto, allowing them to heal up to 1000 HP as a total instead of all at once. In this moment, you reach them and they've only healed around 450 or so out of the 1000, giving them 700 HP instead of the 1250 they would have had. This allows you to jump in and kill them with your 900 burst combo, punishing them for being greedy and way out of position.

A way this could balance out better for team fights is having the Life Steal regenerate faster when attacking an enemy champion and large/epic monsters. Either way though, it forces the ADC to re-think about how they play when they decide to go the health regeneration route instead of critical damage route. This adds diversity between ADCs and players themselves in 1 simple mechanic change. It also removes Life Steal from the instant-heal drain type ability space, making it feel more unique in that sense.