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Patch 5.22's Healing Party, and the severe importance of Grievous wounds

Louisoraga·11/8/2015, 11:17:27 PM·1 votes·915 views

The hugest trend coming into the preseason is how much healing there is everywhere you look.

Taking that into account, here's a quick tip that create an absurd combination of events that may make your laning phase much too easy. Perhaps, way too easy. (PBE balancing pending)

Taric, Soraka, Sona and the Windspeaker's Megaphone

I think it has to be said right now, Windspeaker is a very good Keystone mastery. But it's not just because it amplifies heals, but it's also because it increases the target's resistances by 15%. Think about that for a second. The clutch heals that you throw in are that much sweeter, sure. But imagine for a second, a mid game team fight where your favorite tanky top laner TP's into dragon for that big fight. He's already got some beef on him. Imagine healing them during that fight, with any of the above mentioned champions. Taric, if he saves his w, can amplify his already great armor aura, Sona can make her shield harder to break on top of her heal, and Soraka already absurdly heals without the mastery. But here's something that puts it way over the edge: Runic Armor.

Let's look at what it does for a second : At 5 points, it increases all shields and healing on you by 8%. (Including lifesteal and regen)

And what is it that Soraka, Taric, and Sona all have in common with their heals? **They put them on themselves. **

If Taric uses his heal, he either heals himself and his target, using both Windspeaker and Runic armor simultaneously. If he heals himself, his heal increases by a significant amount, making him really hard to take down in lane.

If Sona uses her W, it will create a very tough lane to face at all, since she has both the heal and shield, and she does it on her self as well.

Soraka's Q heals herself, and her W throws hard heals. And then there's her Ult.

Do you see where I'm going with this? It's a good thing Mortal Reminder lasts 5 seconds. But will that be efficient enough to build first? Only time will tell. So far, I have noticed during testing that it is really hard to fight that kind of lane early game.

Am I wrong on this? Comment on this. I really am interested in seeing the discussion. This might get posted on reddit as well. I need to know if this is something that needs to get looked at.

Edit AprilXIIV (On Reddit) Mentions that : * Grievous Wounds is being reduced to 40% healing reduction and it will only apply to self heals. It will do nothing to your friendly Soraka's heals when you've been ignited * Which further cements the point: What in the world is going to happen with this absurdity? Not only that, but Soraka's Ult removes Grievous Wounds.

3 Comments

Sightless6611/9/2015, 4:33:29 AM5 votes

And what is it that Soraka, Taric, and Sona all have in common with their heals?

It should also be noted that Taric, Sona, Nami, and pretty any healer who isn't Soraka also have something in common. Their heals suck. Even if grievous wounds worked against them, then You won't take grievous wounds against them because their heals suck. People won't take runic armor with them because increasing suck by 8% still leaves you with suck. The only important thing those heals are going to do past the laning phase is apply the resistances increase, but grievous wounds won't help you against that, so it doesn't really matter.

So, if you're asking what is going to happen with this absurdity and you're looking at grievous wounds for a solution, then the answer is nothing, because that's exactly what grievous wounds is meant to do to combat this problem.

To actually answer your question, the reason nothing will happen is because every other class is getting keystone masteries just as strong as this one. AP carries and assassins get more burst. AD carries get to choose between massively increased dps or healing and attack speed whenever they crit, tanks can take damage reduction that also soaks damage from allies, etc. Utility supports are getting something nice, but it isn't out of line with what everyone else is getting.

Not only that, but Soraka's Ult removes Grievous Wounds.

As it damn well should. Grievous Wounds is the entire reason has been fucked in this game. It singlehandedly threw them all out of whack by forcing healers and sustain champions to be balanced around the assumption that they might face it if they were doing well (they had to be balanced around that possibility because it cut so much of their power away when they faced it that they couldn't be balanced around the assumption that they wouldn't see it). It's actually really concerning to me that Riot is trying to bring it back into the game at all, but at least they realize that support healers have to be exempt so they can actually have their power put into healing instead of being like Taric or Sona where your heals stop being a meaningful part of your kit past minute 15 because you can't afford to put any more power into it.