Boards›Gameplay

I think spell vamp was removed too early and here is why

Hay5eed··5 votes·1,010 views

So as we all know Spell Vamp was recently removed from League of Legends. Now I'm sure a lot of you are asking "so what? Who cares?" and that is exactly why I think it was removed too early.

I haven't been able to track down a straight out reason as to why Riot decided to remove spell vamp but let me ask you a question. What was the purpose of spell vamp in the first place? Also a mystery as I can't track down an exact quote from a rioter, but let me try to reason it out for you.

Mages are known for be able to do lots of damage to both single targets and entire teams. To balance this out, they are, generally speaking, squishy and easy to kill. Sound familar? Don't ADC's fill this same category? Their only differences being how they deliver damage and the type of damage applied.

Because life steal exist in this game to give ADC's some pseudo-tankiness and mages are, structurally, similar to adc's I can only assume that spell vamp was added to give mages some pseudo-tankiness as well, or help them sustain in lane.

But if that is true, then why is spellvamp being removed but lifesteal isn't? I think that it is a matter of popularity. Lifesteal isn't build on everyone but it is a really good stat for those ADC's that do build it, mostly being built on ADC's that get a high attack speed. For these ADC's, there are viable items that grant either a good amount of damage or attack speed plus a good chunk of lifesteal.

QUICK NAME ME TWO LIFESTEAL ITEMS!!

you probably guessed item 3153 and item 3072 Both of these items are pretty good on adc's.

Bloodthirster sports a whopping 20% lifesteal, plus 75 damage (the most AD you can get from a single item) and the shield is really great at negating poke damage in lane or before teamfights.

Bork gives you small damage, 40% attack speed, 10% lifesteal, 6% of the targets health in magic damage on hit, plus an active that can be used to escape OR catch a target out.

QUICK, NAME ME TWO SPELLVAMP ITEMS!!!

you probably named Will of the ancients and hextech gunblade

Will of the ancients gave you a decent amount of AP (80 ap to be exact) and used to give you 20% spell vamp but this was reduced to 15% of all damage dealt would heal you, and also 10% CDR. Do you see the problem with this? Sure it gives AP,CDR, and spellvamp, but since all of our CDR needs are met by item 3165, paying for more cdr feels like a waste. And it's not like we can just replace nomicon with WOTA because finding the extra 10% cdr needed to max our cdr was...really difficult and felt awkward. Considering that there was no usefull active or extremely useful special passive means that this slot is better suited for a Zhonya's or later, a ludens echo. It just wasn't a good item.

and gunblade made you spend a lot of money on AD stats that no one would need unless they were a hybrid build.

And instead of properly tweaking items or providing some actual viable spell vamp items they just said "fuck it" and just took the whole thing out altogether. I feel like Riot didn't give spell vamp a proper chance or even put any effort into expressing this cool stat.

tl;dr Riot never tried to make spellvamp a viable option, and because it wasn't a viable option, they removed it

23 Comments

Akali is SO HOT6 votes

Well the reason they couldn't make it a viable option was because of this guy Vladimir and partially because of this girl Akali

If spellvamp was ever a good stat so every AP champion could buy it those two champions (Vlad especially) would be completely bonkers broken so they had to basically make it useless and the only way they could make it an actual good stat is if they deleted Vlad which they won't do. So it was just easier to remove it from the game because it could never really be balanced at all.

Hay5eed1 votes

Right, cause Riot has never nerfed a champ cause of new items right?

If Riot wanted to be lazy they could just code it in that they don't benefit as well from spell vamp or something stupid like that

SaltyKracka2 votes

THEY DID THAT TOO.

Spell Vamp has been coded to have reduced effectiveness from AOE spells for a very long time.

Face it. The existence of manaless AP characters meant spell vamp could never be allowed to be good.

Hay5eed1 votes

"THEY DID THAT TOO. Spell Vamp has been coded to have reduced effectiveness from AOE spells for a very long time."

So that is saying that Vlad benefits too much from spell vamp, and he does a lot of AOE/DOT damage, so lets punish ALL forms of AOE or DOT damage.

If you are arguing this then I just have to point to Riot's terrible reputation of mis-identifying problems and handing out nerfs accordingly.

also manaless AP champs? How many manaless AP champs are there? Katarina Akali Vladimir ....are there any more? If perhaps manaless AP champs were the problem, then wouldn't it make more sense to do something to those three champions, or (gasp) give those champions mana? (Not vlad ofcourse

SaltyKracka1 votes

Rumble Kennen Mordekaiser

There comes a point at which it is both easier and more efficient to do away with the core problem.

Riot reached that point, and has moved past it.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

Well you could completely gut Vlad's whole kit and he would still be broken if Spellvamp was good.

Twitch Chat3 votes

lifestealing through sustained damage was never a strong point of most mages and the mages where it is have the tools to do it built in their kit so it was mostly a pointless stat.

Hay5eed1 votes

But this is exactly my point. Where as ADC's, who almost NEVER have sustained damage built into their kit, get access to several GOOD lifesteal items, mages do not. Hell even assassins get better lifesteal now with item 3812

The point wasn't that spellvamp was good. The point is that spellvamp was always either worthless or absolutely necessary, depending on your champion. Instead of trying to tweak it to make spell vamp a more valuable stats (by, lets say, having the stat on more then two items, or putting it on items that mages can viably build) they just removed it

Twitch Chat1 votes

{quoted}

ADC's, who almost NEVER have sustained damage built into their kit

????????????????

EcchiOtakuTM2 votes

Spell vamp wasn't removed only WotA was removed.

Hay5eed1 votes

no. Riot activley said that Spell vamp is a stat that is removed, and because of this, Wota got removed. [(http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-69-notes)]

"because of the removal of spell vamp from items, Will of the Ancients will also be removed"

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

Ye that's why spell vamp isn't in revolver, WotA was removed and gunblade was changed to omnivamp. Other sources of spell vamp will still exist that's how it's always played out.

Denims Wrath6662 votes

but yet there is ad spell vamp still. item 3812

Sukishoo2 votes

It was only removed from items, you can still get it if you use the runes.

Hay5eed1 votes

Party Hard.

EMeta2 votes

You have no idea how many hundreds of man-hours Riot put into trying to make spellvamp work. Xyph alone probably put several weeks to it if you add up all the time he spent. Kept making iteration of item after iteration of item. But even after all that work, they just threw away all trials. This does not say to me that they killed it too soon. It says they tried harder than was probably wise, and finally decided to go other directions.

Yes, there is this great end-game fantasy about living forever on a mage that would be super fun (that sometimes Vlad or Swain or Akali players get into if fed hard enough), but the way the numbers work out, it's doesn't have a good middle-ground between broken curb-stomper and underpowered noobtrap. It's possible they could instead have changed Vlad and Akali and Morde to AD damage instead, but ugh. Better to just drop SV and balance those champs on their own.

Hay5eed1 votes

Ok so it is entirely fair for a Vayne to 1v1 someone at 100 health and live through sustained damage while doing nothing but auto attacking but having some form of surviviability on a mage is just broken? I'm sorry but I really don't care how long they spent on it, unless they came to realize that lifesteal is wonky too and give it the bucket then I'm calling bs

EMeta1 votes

And there's the rub--sustained damage. Annie doesn't really care if she's cc'd after she enters combat. It might mean she's killed during it or out of position afterwards, but that's about the worst of it. Her being stunned doesn't substantively change her dps, since she has a half-second of casting followed by several seconds of waiting on cooldowns. Late-game Vayne may be hard to catch, but if you put some cc on her, her dps drops away and you can kill her. These are just fundamentally different modes of engagement, and Riot appropriately treats them differently.

Hullabaloo9072 votes

The problem with spell vamp was that it never really helped the sustain damage champs like teemo, but it made manaless champs have infinite ranged sustain

GaleWinUnleashed2 votes

Spell vamp was largely for lane sustain, while lifesteal scales hard enough to be a viable in-fight survival tool on almost any auto-attacking champion.

Also, spells have way too much variety. Every champion has an auto-attack that functions more or less the same way as everyone else, but spell vamp can't be balanced around all the different spell types.

And Vlad completely screwed anyone else's chance of having strong spell vamp.

71883083DEL11 votes

Agreed

Vexful1 votes

item 3010 Using mana returns 20% of the cost into hp up 15 per spell. This is the pseudo sustain item that replaced WoTA. More people use Catalyst based items (item 3027 item 3030 ) than WotA. Sure, it isn't much. It isn't meant to be! Ryze <--- This guy ulting with a ROA is why it cannot be allowed to be much. But it allows mages to trade back some. Get hit? Get some mana to fight back. Used mana? Get some heal. See the repeat?

item 3028 This works in a similar fashion. Mana and HP regen depending on current values.

They kinda "reworked" spell vamp to where it is better and more accessible.

Hay5eed1 votes

This STILL isn't spellvamp, and the heal on ROTA is really crappy. I find myself spamming spells away from fights just trying to get some health back and still hardly getting anything. Like really? Up to 15 hp per spell? What kind of shit is that? A single auto attack will do 15 damage...from Singed ...that built tank.

Also let my say something else here. ADC's, whose major form of damage come from merely clicking on the enemy, and can have a Attack speed of 2.5/second, get lifesteal items that not only give them damage, but can also give them attack speed, magic damage, and an active that lets them kite.

But mages, whose major form of damage comes from casting spells, who have to spend mana to cast spells, who often have skill shot based abilities , and have a max cooldown of 45% cdr, get two items for spell vamp, both of which are kinda shit.

Riot, for some reason, failed to recognize this, and instead of tweaking the items, removed it entirely.

Like with the new items WOTA would be actually viable. Going against an assassin and getting poked out of lane? Build a WOTA, get 10% cdr. Build a Zhonya's, get another 10% CDR. Congrats, you now have 45% CDR in late game, some armor, decent chunk of AP, sustain from poke damage, and an active to protect you if he all ins you.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Hay5eed

Can't Azir have ONE friend?
Story, Art, & Sound135 comments
135
votes
Sion's unique interaction with Yasou
Gameplay78 comments
107
votes
Players going against Pyke should see their execution marker
Gameplay42 comments
56
votes
Why can't we up the ban amount to 5 per team?
Gameplay49 comments
46
votes
It's never going to happen, but animations on several champions needs to be slowed waaayyyy down.
Gameplay78 comments
31
votes
Orianna buff idea
Gameplay26 comments
21
votes