"We want to keep the game fair because of champions like vlad" Oh it's not ok that vlad has one ability that can heal himself with, but it's ok for a Caitlyn with an I.E. And a blood thirster to heal for 500 hp off one headshot. For Christ sake. Nasus already starts with 10% life steal. Add masteries and a Dorans blade and you go into lane starting with 15% lifesteal.
"Fuck Mage sustainability."
-Riot.
i miss spell vamp in bot games... but that's about it
Itemization - Life steal/Spell Vamp & Hybrid
In the PBE boards thread discussing the upcoming and experimental preseason changes that will be hitting the PBE soon, Xypherous kicked up a few discussions on itemization in general rather than things planned to change during preseason.
Xypherous also explained the difference between life steal and spellvamp as a mechanic and why it can be difficult to itemize:
Sure. Let's think about lifesteal and how it is applied:
You attack with your basic attack.
You don't have to worry about it being AoE. You know it's always affected by armor. It's single target. It's continuous and not in a burst. It's applied from very controlled ranges. Perhaps most importantly, it's free and doesn't cost Mana.
Now let's think about spell vamp and how it is applied:
There are hundreds of different spells in the game, with different damage profiles - costs and cooldowns. Some of these have secondary effects. Some of these doesn't.
If you find a Spell Vamp that is good and decent for most of the spells - the edge cases - the spells that are low cooldown, cost, sustained, etc. will always cause Spell Vamp x these spells to be overpowered.
The problem with Spell Vamp is that it really isn't a basic statistic that can really bridge all these cases.
Spell Vamp items actually need to be tuned around the type of pattern that the magic damage is wrapped around - Are you making a Spell Vamp item for a burst character? Then the Spell Vamp needs to be strong, limited and have a cooldown. Are you making a spell vamp item for a sustained character? Small % with no cooldowns.
Making a Spell Vamp item for Veigar might be tricky. Do you tune around his Q? his W? His burst combo? Which pattern do you want to support? Because a >basic statistic that makes all of these equally feel good immediately means that Karthus becomes an unstoppable monster because of his massive sustained >damage pattern.
This is one of those cases where something broad enough to be good on Veigar - actually would nerf Veigar's viability if it was released because one of the characters he would be most susceptible to benefits more.
Xypherous continued, digging deeper into spell vamp and the problems with sustain for mages:
"The answer to "why not" is always Akali. Less facetiously, burst damage + Spell vamp is a fairly non-intuitive pattern. Throwing an active on top of this makes it worse as most players can't use actives - nor would we want that much thought space on something that doesn't have huge gains. Essentially, burst to gain health rewards people who get bursted, rather than people who take initiative - so that's weird but forgiveable. Layering it behind an active adds the fact that most players won't be able to use this effect, so it'll most likely feel weak to the average player. Bad - but also forgiveable. Granting 40% Spell Vamp, knowing that most burst mages are AoE and some burst mages are ST is completely off - as Annie will get 1/3rd of the benfit as Leblanc for no good reason - even though their burst patterns are ideally the same. Ideally, you'd just want to get rid of the concept of spell vamp entirely. Simply make your burst sustain item 'You heal 50% of all magic damage you deal, up to 1000.' Avoid the term Spell Vamp and all the useless rules associated with it and just create sustain patterns for certain mage patterns that you feel like. However, when you scrub the dust and reveal that layer 'Sustain for Mages' - you realize that the goal itself is fairly suspect for a lot of mages. What should burst mages give up to gain sustain, as many of these characters are balanced to be fragile but able to unload a massive payout fairly quickly. If they give up too much, they're no longer burst mages and this item will be horrible on them. If they don't give up anything at all, you'll get chain killers - in effect, you'll convert some subset of the mage population into Akalis. That said, I agree that Spell Vamp is in a terrible spot and something should be done - even if that something is to destroy it entirely so that we don't make false promises to players about what kind power they can acquire in game because it'll be suboptimal for almost every character."
When asked what role lifesteal fills that spell vamp doesn't fill for the current game, Xypherous noted:
"A brief summary of why lifesteal on ADC fits our current design needs: We don't want random damage to take your ADC out of a fight for very long - thus, a source of mega-sustain on ADCs that also involves farming is good. When this isn't true, poke becomes excessively powerful at stopping an attempt at team fighting. It means that clutch saves often don't have to be as overbearing as most classes have some way to amplify the effect of a save. Fighters and Tanks have natural defenses. Other supports have peels of their own. ADCs, given time, can self-heal. This means that the power of a clutch save spell doesn't swing wildly between classes and thus you don't have to do something ridiculous to get a save. In Lanes, lifesteal helps gently nudge the triangle of bottom lane (sustain/harass/burst) in favor of harassment and burst strategies by offering low levels of sustain to every character involve. I'm glossing over a lot of major details so there's plenty of stuff to pick on there. Lifesteal isn't perfect - but it's serving a lot of useful goals at the moment."
When asked if Hybrid items will be looked at in the preseason update, Xypherous noted:
"Would like to - but not for this patch. This preseason patch can be thought of as trying to work on the teamwide aspects of our game, rather than at the individual level. We want things that help you play with or play against teams - not optimize your own individual champions micro. Do agree that hybrid items should be purged if not removed - However, I think we'll try to do that early in the season rather than this preseason as this patch is more team focused than individual focused."
He continued, giving an example of an item that benefits the teamwide aspects:
"Hourglass, DFG and Mikael's are all still examples of bolstering your own individual's champions micro abilities. Something more fitting to the team-wide aspect would be something like tripling the health regeneration of Warmog's when you are out of combat. That becomes a roaming / siege or anti-siege tool. It doesn't really have a direct influence in direct combat - but it allows your team to be able to take broader strategies."
Why don't they just get rid of lifesteal?
