We need to have a talk about Grievious Wounds

Cheesybox·11/24/2014, 6:33:03 AM·2 votes·827 views

I think the removal of Executioners Calling reminded everyone of certain champs. Namely Swain and Vlad. I'm seeing at least one of them picked every other game and while they don't always win, they're incredibly difficult to deal with. MR continues to be a joke of a stat, especially in the case of sustained magic damage like swains ult and vlads insanely low cooldowns, and because they heal off damage dealt, they can build somewhat off-tanky (vlads passive+zhonyas/swains RoA+zhonyas, which fun fact, his ult isn't channeled, so he gets to heal a massive amount of health while he zhonyas) while focusing on damage for the heals. This leads to the problem of 1. having to have at least one ignite up to fight a team with vlad or swain, or 2. having to outdamage their heals without getting blown up yourself (which with zhonyas makes this incredibly difficult). While GW wasn't really a "hard-counter" to them (they still had their damage while not being super squishy) it kept them at least under control (it only halved the heal, it didn't negate it completely). Morellonomicon is now the only answer to it besides picking specific champions purely for GW (trist, fizz, kat, MF, and varus are the only ones who can inflict GW), and even then only against under-40% HP which is really really hard to do against these 2 champs. Now I'm not saying EC needs to return, cause it was ass, but something needs to replace it so GW can actually be something useful.

6 Comments

Talamare11/24/2014, 6:33:48 AM2 votes

Give them some time in the sun, they seriously need it

Cheesybox11/24/2014, 6:38:03 AM1 votes

I'm all for that, but there needs to be counter play. This is turning into the Morg season 2 100% pick/ban rate right now for one simple reason: flash into enemy team, ult, zhonyas. While a good swain will wait so he can heal off the zhonyas or vlad using it when W is on CD or something, it's proving to be a hassle. Again, the amount of sustained damage they don requires stacking insane amount of MR to not get shredded, which means AD will tear you apart/you have no damage to fight back

TheFallenShaw11/24/2014, 6:44:14 AM1 votes

Vlad isnt even a top pick bud chill, i don't think swain is either. Just play a champ that inflict grievious wounds to counter forgot who they are though.

Sightless6611/24/2014, 2:00:15 PM1 votes

but something needs to replace it so GW can actually be something useful.

Or, grievous wounds needs to be removed completely, and then healing rebalanced around that. It's a silly mechanic. It pretty much reads "If this mechanic is in this game, you heal less when fighting". That's not counterplay, it's just an extremely hard counter that the healing champs have to be balanced around. It means that the healers have to be strong enough to heal through Grievous Wounds, making them OP if it doesn't exist, or they have to be balanced when Grevious Wounds is absent, making them useless when it exists.

A mechanic that just says "mechanic x is weaker" is terrible design. Better to just cut it completely.

Also, I don't think the removal of Executioner's Calling did anything at all. Swain was already seeing a rise in play before this patch, and I don't think anything has changed for Vlad. Removing the arguably worst item in the game didn't affect anything. I'm not even certain that most players realize it is gone.

Cheesybox11/26/2014, 7:04:16 PM1 votes

That would work too, but I don't know when Riot would ever get around to toning down those numbers, especially on champs as old as Swain.

Renaille11/26/2014, 7:19:42 PM1 votes

Take ignite.