Who the heck reworked and buffed this item?
Clearly the person who did that was an ADC main.
Lifesteal, Attack Damage Vamp, and Damage turned into Bleed is fine? On top of scaling with crits? and Crit Damage?
Joxcab4 votesThe main reason is autoattacks are consistent.
Ability chains aren't. Mages either healed nothing meaningful and it was useless, or they instantly healed practically their entire health bar which was stupid as fuck.
Lifesteal might be a bit too strong for instance, but it's still linear and because of the way crit accumulates, the increase in lategame versus early is also fairly linear.
taleofsonata7 votesThe main reason is autoattacks are consistent.
Ability chains aren't. Mages either healed nothing meaningful and it was useless, or they instantly healed practically their entire health bar which was stupid as fuck.
Lifesteal might be a bit too strong for instance, but it's still linear and because of the way crit accumulates, the increase in lategame versus early is also fairly linear.
They were killable, ADC are not killable with that item + phantom dancer. Look at Morgana, she doesn't seems op healing 300 health per auto or per spells. She has cooldowns, auto attack don't have cooldown.
Joxcab4 votesThat's an entirely separate issue.
I'm reiterating Riot's original reason for removing spellvamp.
It's a lot easier to manage someone healing chunks at a time in a linear fashion while dealing DPS than someone instantly healing their entire health bar while also nuking everyone.
Phantom Dancer and Death's Dance and their synergy are a separate problem.
taleofsonata3 votesNo its not, because at least if you use anything with grievous wounds and hit that champion who heal a huge chunk there is a clear 40% heal reduction, on the other hands Lifesteal scale with crits and crit damage.
Joxcab4 votesAnd even with those crits, each individual heal is smaller. Burst would win up front, DPS would win over time. Grievous still affects both.
It's just since burst is usually tied to the combined cooldowns of an entire rotation, it is effectively hit harder by Grievous.
You heal far less as a DPS individually, and Grievous reduces that even further.
Executioner2 votesDont bother trying to tell these idiots that stuff. They dont understand how little you actually heal off champions in a team fight.
DrCyanide6 votesIf healing off of ability damage is bad because of how much it can vary, why is it only prevented if the ability deals magic damage? Physical Damage Spell Vamp is available from Deaths Dance and an Elixir.
I feel like Spell Vamp on items could have been balanced around letting AP Champions heal outside of combat with champions, similar to how an ADC can attack some jungle camps or a few minions to heal up instead of recalling then walking back to the enemy base to continue attacking. Right now, AP Champions have to hope there was an Ocean Dragon picked up to get any sort of healing while sieging.
Joxcab2 votesBecause spellvamp was a pure stat not limited like Death's Dance is against AoE, where most of the physical damage abilities you would even want to heal off are almost all AoE. IDK about Elixir. 15% effectiveness for spellvamp on AOE would make it complete garbage.
I get lifesteal might feel bad to play against, but they still heal back in segments.
Take the Ryze rework for example with spellvamp ultimate. He'd activate it and murder just about everyone around him while simultaneously healing almost his entire health pool in each mini-rotation of resets because of his burst, but even more so because of the fact he could reset most of his burst and then do it again.
In particular, mage abilities individually all hit far harder than any one ADC autoattack lategame. That's the main problem.
An ADC's lifesteal is split up over their individual autoattacks.
An ADC might heal let's say, around 160-200 health an auto lategame (assuming around 20-20+% lifesteal with 800 damage autos).
Let's take… Annie for example. With ult up lategame and around 800 AP, she can drop 2710 damage near instantly against just one squishy. If her W or R hits more, that number skyrockets even higher. In teamfight settings, her W can easily hit 2-3 people, and her ultimate can hit all 5 without too much difficulty.
Let's say it's 2 tanks, 3 squishies. Fairly standard.
The W would probably hit the two frontline tanks + a squishy. That's another 941 damage to the two tanks to add to the 2710 total. I'm placing tanks at 150 MR, Annie has Void Staff.
The R would also hit the other 2 squishies + 2 tanks. That's another 1840 for the 2 squishies and then around 931 damage to the two tanks.
2710+941+1840+931=6422 magic damage dealt through resists and all.
20% spellvamp of that is almost 1285 health healed. In a split second. On a champion who would probably have no more than around 1900-2000 health maximum lategame, just slightly more than an ADC most likely.
1285/1950 is almost 66% health healed almost instantaneously. 180/1800 is about 9-10% health healed against a squishy target per auto. You're not going to get off more than around 2 autos in the amount of time Annie could nuke a team.
That's the problem. Sure, Annie's healing is pretty much limited to Q and W only afterwards each of which can do around 800+ damage similar to an ADC but with a lot longer cooldown.
But between the AoE burst damage and her massive instantaneous heal without even counting the CC versus healing broken up into segments that can be stopped to stop said healing flow, which seems like the bigger problem to you?
You're going to have a hard time even damaging Annie before she jumps in with her AoE team nuke. Any potential damage you would have done would also be instantly erased afterwards.
Far less time to react to mage dropping entire rotation in a split second versus an ADC who continuously heals up over time in small segments.
Phantom Dancer and DD on ADCs are problems sure.
But that's next to irrelevant to the health gain from damage issue itself. They would be problems regardless with their power.
You can't really stop a mage from just blasting an entire team with everything lategame instantly outside of flanking and gibbing them before they do it, because they'll stay at a safe long range. CCing the mage after is basically pointless.
If you CC the ADC though who has to actively keep attacking over time for their heal, their healing flow which is a lot slower but potentially longer gets cut off right then and there. If it weren't for Death's Dance and PD being stupid broken right now, that'd be the end of it. Bye ADC, understand?
TL;DR - lifesteal exists while spellvamp doesn't because there's more potential counterplay than with spellvamp, and PD/DD are the issues making lifesteal even stronger, not lifesteal in of itself
Hinagiku331 votesSo it's bad for Mages to get a small burst of healing off of spells that have mana costs and cooldowns, but it's perfect for Marksmen to get small bursts of healing every second from no-cost, no-cooldown auto-attacks?
Have you ever played this game before? Every ADC in the game heals their full health bar from just ~4 auto-attacks against minions/jungle camps by mid-game. The amount of healing granted by lifesteal is anything but small and isn't gated by anything like cost or cooldown.
Even without Phantom Dancer and Death's Dance, lifesteal would still be a huge issue. It's been an issue since before DD existed and before PD had it's % damage reduction. Those items are just making things worse than they already were.
If anything, Death's Dance is the best designed lifesteal item in the game since the healing exists to heal off the bleed and would be perfectly manageable on it's own. It's the other lifesteal items that are the problem.
Joxcab1 votesI don't think you get it.
It wasn't individual abilities for small spellvamp bursts being a problem.
It was the mage instantaneously dropping their entire rotation to heal well over 1000 health instantaneously.
The time it takes for a mage to drop their entire rotation can fit within the time it takes to auto once or twice.
Also ADCs don't heal that fast until full build + Bloodthirster in the end game.
Death's Dance gives tankiness and is being abused by a class who is supposed to be a glass cannon type.
It was fine before Riot randomly doubled its passive power on its intended melee users.
PD is just a mass of cancer in general.
You CC the ADC, they stop autoattacking, they stop healing in segments.
You CC the mage, well, too bad. They won't get in the range for you to CC them until they've already dropped their entire rotation, healed for over 1000 health in a single second or less, while also simultaneously nuking your carries. It's too late.
Also don't get me wrong. I still think lategame ADC lifesteal is fucking stupid. That can be toned down separately.
Spellvamp was a problem by itself.
hhaavviikk2 votesThe main reason is autoattacks are consistent.
Ability chains aren't. Mages either healed nothing meaningful and it was useless, or they instantly healed practically their entire health bar which was stupid as fuck.
Lifesteal might be a bit too strong for instance, but it's still linear and because of the way crit accumulates, the increase in lategame versus early is also fairly linear.
isn't that graves though? an ADC with 20% lifesteal may heal for 200, a graves with 20% lifesteal and the same damage may heal for 400
Irelia Bot1 votesThe main reason is autoattacks are consistent.
Ability chains aren't. Mages either healed nothing meaningful and it was useless, or they instantly healed practically their entire health bar which was stupid as fuck.
Lifesteal might be a bit too strong for instance, but it's still linear and because of the way crit accumulates, the increase in lategame versus early is also fairly linear.
Fairly sure that champ abilities are far more consistent in their damage output then crits.
Joxcab1 votesMages either did an ability at a time individually which was about the same as an autoattack or less in damage lategame.
Or, they just instantly dropped their entire kit for several thousand damage in a teamfight distributed across multiple people.
The first case is near negligible because the cooldowns on the abilities would make the heal next to meaningless in a teamfight.
The second case is a massive game changer that can heal said mage for over 1000 health in under a second in a teamfight.
ADCs only do autoattacks, and crit builds up as games drag on meaning as it goes further into lategame, it is more likely each attack will be a crit, still making it more consistent.
In addition, since each autoattack does far less than a mage's entire teamfight nuke rotation for obvious reasons, the fluctuations of crit also matter far less.
#TL;DR Spellvamp went from either a few hundred (useless) or to over 1000 (ridiculously stupid), spiking far harder than something like 160-200 to 300-500ish per auto.
Targon2 votesI kind of wish Will of the Ancients were still in the game. There is a point in the game where it becomes nearly impossible to kill certain ADCs as an AP assassin with all of their life steal and damage mitigation.
Ahristocats2 votesthe reason they removed spellvamp is because only one dude bought it, and was a problem with it thus xypherous said that the game doesn't need it if no one buys a stat, and the only one buying it is a problem (vladimir)
this is no the same with lifesteal
PB4UAME2 votesYou mean, they repeatedly nerfed its itemization, nerfed its interaction with AoE and DoT, removed the item that had it as an aura, nerfed the values some more, buffed lifesteal, added the new mastery system, nerfed spell vamp again, then removed it before then buffing all lifesteal items twice now and introducing new and better ones, introduced omnivamp, and pure physical damage vamp (in two places).
And then RIOT went on to claim that "no body" outside of Vlad used spell vamp. Nevermind the fact that Kennen, Rumble, Cass, Karthus, Ryze and Morde still routinely bought spellvamp or took some from runes and masteries at the time of its removal, and even champions like Eve and Kat used spell vamp and in previous metas would outright rush that shit.
But no, let's buy RIOTs bullshit here and ignore history and context.
Lifesteal is clearly just better than spell vamp guys. Has nothing to do with having way more lifesteal items that are constantly kept powerful meanwhile they had a hard-on for nerfing spellvamp for years until they removed it.
Ahristocats2 votesi don't care about all of that
xypherous decided to do something and explained himself, i'm not here to judge him
i'm only here to say that he removed it cuz only vlad bought it while being a problem, and it isn't the same for lifesteal
PB4UAME1 votesThe whole latter part of what you're saying A, simply isn't true, that was just RIOT's justification for it, despite all evidence availible showing that it was decidedly not the case, and B, a product of the previous changes and alterations RIOT had made and not an actual systemic problem with the stat spellvamp as if it is somehow tangibly any different from pure physical vamp (which yes, also works on fucking abilities in addition to auto attacks so clearly RIOT doesn't have a problem with spells healing, since they released an even more powerful version of it) let alone omnivamp.
GayFluffyUnicorn2 votesNot at the beginning tho. Kennen, ryze, morde, vlad and cass (not tooo sure about her tho) pretty frequently bought wotA. It's just that riots work on those champs pretty much pushed them out of using it decently imo. Until one vlad was left.
DR NEEDLEDlCK2 votesActually, you could get Will of the Ancients on more champs than just Vlad, Kennen could benefit reasonably well (his Q), Malzahar (E's continuous damage allowed for near-perpetual sustain). Then there's Morde who enjoyed the item immensely.
So it's okay for ADCs to heal for 20% of their health with every basic attack at 0.2 second intervals but if a mage heals for 10% of their health with an ability, OH NO!!! THAT'S OP!!! NURF!!!
I think it's stupid to remove an item altogether rather than try to balance it. It's just lazy.
Danjeng3 votesRyze used to have innate spell vamp too, but with the removal of it in his kit along with WotA, now he cannot access it outside of runes/masteries. Most battle mages have a way to restore HP, but it's very hard to itemize sustain for a mage. Catalyst passive does it, but at a slow rate. 500 mana expenditure gets you 100 HP, which is pretty meh.
I just wish there was a way I can actually heal up instead of being a fragile little flower that has to back after a single skirmish.
GayFluffyUnicorn2 votesAnd even then, battlemages are absolutely garbage once they get grievous wounds on them. Try going into zhonyas as swain in 5 enemies with and without grievous and you see the massive difference. Without you pretty much get full health, with you pretty much get nothing. Both sides are pretty unhealthy imo.
Zephyrous X1 votesYou can get 8% from quints and the mastery and if you really want you can just buy gunblade
LordOfTheLeague1 votesYeah I imagine they were too lazy to rework spell vamp into something balanced and now the same problem come with lifesteal.
Vallalan1 votesspell vamp wasn't a problem, its just no one bought it. and because vlad could abuse it harder than anyone.
vlad literally is the reason spell vamp isn't in the game.
the old spell vamp items had to be nerfed so hard to where the champs who would want sustain on their spammable spells like Annie, Cassio, etc. as an option just didn't get meaningful vamp off the items. so why have the items if you can't balance them to where they are worth having on anyone other than the abuse cases?
as for lifesteal, its been fine for years. it really only becomes a major issue on adcs at around 5/6 items in which case ADCs are in god mode. they heal for like 1/5 their health in one auto and deal like 700 damage crits. but thats their late game. that is when they are gods. when they have crits, pen, and lifesteal, and maybe a defensive item if htey aren't double dipping in crit.
but yeah tldr, spell vamp was total shit and no one bought it.
DaNinad1 votesLegit only 4 champs build this often and only one of them is an ADC
IcyPepper1 votesand Damage turned into Bleed is fine?
At least it's not damage mitigation.
PrinceOfStorms1 votesIt might as well be damage mitigation because you can sustain through the bleed with the absurd amount of lifesteal that's on the same item.
IcyPepper1 votesBut it's not damage mitigation, period. You still take the damage one way or another.
PrinceOfStorms1 votesI'm saying that it might as well be mitigation because let's say you have 1000 HP and DD. A LB would combo you for 1200 damage. DD reduces the damage you immediately take by 300, meaning you don't instantly die, at which point you throw out two autos and lifesteal for more than the dot will do.
If Lifesteal stays available for ADCs, Death's Dance might as well give DR because pretty much anyone who builds it will be able to sustain through the dot when dueling a burst champion like a mage or assassin.
ProfDrDeath1 votesThere are a few facets that make pure Spellvamp in an item problematic, compared to Lifesteal, Physical Damage Vamp and Omnivamp.
or 
, due to the combination of high base damages and tankiness to amplify the healing's effectiveness. Riot learned that with the first version of 
.Contrastingly, Spellvamp in champion kits does not feature this problem (their kits are balanced around it individually).
As for Physical Vamp and Omnivamp, they don't suffer from these problematic facets as much.
PrinceOfStorms2 votesWill of the Ancients gave omnivamp yet it was deleted because it was an AP item. Yeah, Riot just doesn't like AP champions having sustain.