Does AOE Mitigation Need to Be Reworked? ( Deathfire Touch, Spellvamp, ... )

Right now most mechanics that interact with AOE abilities have AOE mitigation. The thought behind it actually makes a lot of sense, since they will apply the effect of the mechanic to more than one target and usually have higher range that single-target spells. In some cases it's already successful, in the case of Rylai's for example. But in other cases I think that it's flawed, in cases of the Deathfire Touch mastery and spellvamp for example aswell as some individual abilities of some champions.

Let's take Deathfire Touch for example. I'm going to use the buffed numbers on the PBE instead of the current ones to make this post stay up to date. It deals 1(+3.125% AP)(+7.5% bonus AD) as magical damage every half second. When a singe-target spell triggers it, it will tick for 4 seconds in total, dealing 8(+25% AP)(+60% bonus AD) damage. AOE spells will make it tick for half as long, dealing 4(+12.5% AP)(+30% bonus AD) damage. DOT's will only make it tick for one second, but the DOT will reapply it for every second it itself ticks, which makes the damage variable, depending on how long the DOT itself is. Brand's Passive for example will make it tick for 5 seconds in total. If we look at the total damage dealt, Deathfire touch will be half as effective on AOE spells compared to single-target spells when only hitting one champion, equally as effective when hitting 2 champions and better than on single-target spells when hitting 3 or more champions. Considering that you will probably try to focus down one single champion in most situations and the fact that hitting 2 or more champions is very conditional, Deathfire Touch will generally be worse on AOE champions than on single-target champions.

With spellvamp, it is more or less the same. Spellvamp itself and every effect that is a variation of spellvamp ( WotA, Death's Dance, Hextech Gunblade, ... ) will only heal for 1/3 of the actual value it gives on single-target spells. WotA for example gives 15% spellvamp that will be applied before resistances. AOE abilities will instead only grant you 5% spellvamp. This creates another dilemma because it also includes minions and not only champions like Deathfire Touch soes. Spellvamp is actually better than lifesteal when fighting minions, since you have more range and can heal more easily and you clear waves faster and easier. Even with the 1/3 AOE mitigation, once you hit more than 3 minions, spellvamp will heal you more than it should. Imagine the healing done by Vlad's E hitting a big minion wave, and now imagine it times 3. When it comes to champions though, you have the same problem as with Deathfire touch, because you will have to hit 3 champions with your spells to actually heal enough. Since this is very conditional and you usually want to focus on only one target, this makes it underpowered when fighting against champions and when you mostly have AOE spells. This is also one of the reasons why Death's Dance is kind of lackluster right now, especially on assassins. An assassin wants to focus down one target even more than other champions do. A Zed for example will not heal as much as he would like to, since his Q and his E will only heal for 1/3 of the amount he'd want to heal. The AOE mitigation is still kinda needed though, since a Katarina or a Karthus would heal abstruse amounts of HP in a teamfight without the mitigation. Riot already tried to counteract the way spellvamp is overpowered against minions, underpowered against champions and lackluster on most champions in general. In patch 5.13, they changed the spellvamp value of WotA to 15% from 20% but made it apply before resistances rather than after them. With minions generally having low resistances and champions having high ones, it now heals more against champions and less against minions. If I remember correctly, this was done in an era when Vladimir reigned supreme and his lane sustain caused a lot of problems. While it balanced it a bit more at the time, it is still kinda meh today since the only champions who actually buy spellvamp today are Vladimir because of the way his kit works and all the hybrid champions who buy Hextech Gunblade because they have a lot of single-target damage ( Jax, Xin, Akali, ... ). On top of that the spellvamp items themselves are kinda flawed. Even if the problem above would be fixed, WotA is not really slot efficient while being insanely gold efficient and Death's Dance might stay cost inefficient. If you compare Hextech Revolver to Vampiric Scepter, you can also see that is harder to itemize spellvamp early on than it is with lifesteal.

So how do we fix it? While I'm not entirely sure if this will make spellvamp and Deathfire Touch better on a wider range of champions, I would suggest the following:

Deathfire Touch:

• AOE will trigger it for 4 seconds instead of 2
• If an AOE ability hits more than one champion, it will only apply it to the champion that is nearest to the cursor.

Spellvamp:

• Will apply the full amount of spellvamp instead of 1/3 of the amount on AOE abilities.
• If an AOE ability hits more than one unit, it will only apply spellvamp to the unit that is nearest to the cursor.
• will affect: Spellvamp Runes, Vampirism mastery, WotA, Hextech Gunblade, Death's Dance, Akali's Passive - Twin Disciplines, Lee's W - Iron Will, Morgana's Passive - Soul Siphon, Ryze's Ultimate - Desperate Power

Hextech Revolver:

• new recipe: Amplifying Tome + 465 gold = 900 gold ( from 1200 )
• AP to 30 from 40
• spellvamp to 10% from 12%

WotA:

• new recipe: Hextech Revolver + Fiendish Codex + Blasting Wand + 650 gold = 3200 gold ( from 2300 )
• AP to 100 from 80
• Spellvamp to 20% from 15%, will now apply after resistances

Death's Dance:

• Spellvamp and Damage stored to 15% from 12% ( already on the PBE )

Hextech Gunblade:

• new recipe: Bilgewater Cutlass + Hextech Revolver + Amplifying Tome + 415 gold ( total cost unchanged )

With these changes, Deathfire Touch will tick on AOE's as long as it does on single target spells, but only on the target that is nearest to the cursor - this way it is more of an option on the usual AP midlaners while keeping it from being too OP on AOE monsters like Kat or Karthus.

Same thing with spellvamp. Since you will always heal the same amount of HP by only healing for one target, AOE spellvamp minion waveclearing won't be that broken anymore. In teamfights, AOE teamfight champions like Kat and Karthus will be kept in check by the only-one-target mechanic aswell as improving the quality of spellvamp for those AOE-champions, who mainly want to focus one target in a teamfight, so pretty much every normal mage or assassin as pointed out above.

In general, this way AOE mitigation won't cause the mechanics it is trying to limit to be too conditional to be working out properly.

Lastly the improved item paths will make spellvamp more of an option to consider. Especially since WotA gives 10% CDR, a stat that a lot of casters are lacking right now anyway.

That is all I wanted to talk about, I'd love to see your opinions on that. I aplogize for any spelling or grammar errors, I'm not a native English speaker.