Some of the reasons I believe shields are the buzz of the new meta

#1 Shields as a whole have just been buffed to ludicrous amounts

Look no further than the invention of this guy . His E alone is an affront to this game with how disgustingly useful it is in conjunction with the rest of his utility-overloaded kit. There's also this item which has just been a balance nightmare for the past several months. Even after its mini rework the item still heavily dominates support builds. I think another huge thing is shield amplification. There's windspeakers and now there's also this item .

#2 healing isn't what it used to be thanks to the ease of access of grievous wounds

was generalized into an item that basically gives EVERYTHING a mana mage wants after the MYMU. This item gives mana, mana sustain (including a 900g component item that has incredible mana sustain early game ), 100 AP, and a 20% chunk of cdr, and its build path is incredibly forgiving, allowing it to be a first item rush.

Morellonomicon isn't the death knoll of healing however, because that role has been taken by this new item . For those who aren't aware, there used to be a time where this component item was actually not a component item, it was a final build item. Old executioners was fairly slot inefficient, a sacrifice ADs would make in order to hard counter sustain champs. However, with the introduction of , this was no longer the case. You now have a late-game slot efficient item that completely screws over sustain based champions. Not only that,** but the application of grievous wounds from and is much easier than the application of grievous wounds from because you can apply it with not only AD spells, but also auto attacks, and you don't need to get the enemy below any threshold unlike **

It should be undisputed at this point, the ease of access of grievous wounds for AD champs far outweighs the ease of access for APs. Not only that, but there's no longer a major trade-off for buying because you barely trade off any slot efficiency since it can be upgraded into a late game scale armor pen item . This means that sustain based champs suffer just about EVERY game at ALL stages.

#3 there is no grievous wounds equivalent for shielding

This is pretty self explanatory, nothing in the game reduces shielding except for multiple of the same item (for example, if you and your teammate activate locket at the same time, the second locket user grants only half the shield value to the team).

WHAT I PROPOSE TO RIOT

#1 Shielding ought to take a nerf

Even if healing is weak, that does not mean that shielding is fine. Shielding is objectively too strong right now. There are multiple ways of attacking this. One such way is adding a grievous wounds equivalent for shielding. Another suggestion is removing all forms of shield amplification from the game (redemption passive, windspeakers passive, etc.) so shields get toned down.

#2 healing does not need a buff, but grievous wounds (particularly the AD version) needs to be nerfed

Executioners being made 200g more expensive isn't really going to fix anything. Multiple legitimate suggestions have been made on these boards before. One appealing suggestion is to have a stack application system where you have to stack grievous wounds up through multiple applications of physical damage. This would add a requirement to AD grievous wounds application that currently does not exist. If no requirements are to be added, then the only logical conclusion is to simply make AD grievous wounds inferior to that found in Morellonomicon (perhaps reduce healing by only 25%?).

Another suggestion made is for grievous wounds to go back to its niche roots. Morellonomicon and executioners (mortal reminder did not exist) "back in the day" used to be fairly niche items that you would SPECIFICALLY BUILD TO COUNTER SUSTAIN AT THE COST OF SOMETHING. In the cases of executioners and morellonomicon, the tradeoff was SLOT EFFICIENCY. Before the MYMU, morellonomicon only gave 80 AP (in a time when AP items used to give A LOT of AP, remember 100 AP zhonyas? This 80 AP morellonomicon was seen as fairly little AP for an AP item at the time). Then came executioners calling, an item that gave mediocre amounts of AD and 20% crit strike chance and a lesser grievous wounds passive than what is seen today (physical damage applied GW for only 1.5 seconds). This item was barely bought and so it was actually removed. While I don't think executioners should return to what it was, I do think it and its new dad mortal reminder need to be toned down in terms of slot efficiency so that you actually have to give up a decent amount of slot efficiency to heavily screw over sustain based champs.

TL;DR

We found ourselves in this aggravating meta of "I just shielded the AD carry for his entire HP bar good luck killing him" because of the evisceration of healing (particularly through making grievous wounds way too accessible) and the hilarious buffing of shielding over the past few patches. We need to roll back on some of the changes we made so that we can balance out shielding and healing and make both equally important and viable and less frustrating.