Spell Vamp had an easy method to balance it and never needed removed
The undeniable shifting of MANY mages to mid-range sustained DPS like Vlad, Viktor, Cass, Brand, Lissandra, etc. is pretty glaringly obvious by now. What else is obvious is that sustain is an utterly necessary part of the role.
First off, if spell vamp was REALLY that hard to balance, Death's Dance and red elixir wouldn't have it. But since Riot is giving it to the likes of Riven, Zed, Graves, Ezreal and Talon? It appears the justification for removing it holds little water. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
Secondly, spell vamp has an easy solution. Make it something similar to this:
- It's a champion buff that appears when an ability has dealt damage and persists for 4 seconds
- The caster REGENERATES over the course of the buff duration
- ~66% of the regeneration occurs within the first 1.5 seconds and the rate of regeneration rapidly decays after
- Regeneration is based on Ability Power
- Dealing damage with an ability refreshes this passive
- Reduced DOT effectiveness/only procs buff on first tick of damage
Why should it be done this way? It prevents a mage from surviving huge burst damage by just having a ton front-loaded burst themselves (I'm looking at YOU, LeBlanc). The sustain becomes indistinguishable from single-target and AoE. It roughly standardizes the sustain that each mage can acquire by cutting the variable base spell damages from the equation. It's not useless on any mage, but most benefits the sustained DPS mages as they can refresh the buff by repeatedly landing damage.
The game has now hit a point where mid-range mages are basically magic-dealing Marksmen. Except if a marksman gets hit in a fight, they just sustain up with lifesteal. Mages have to leave. It's putting two classes into the same role but leaving one with all the advantages over the other. Magic DPS at mid range is a great thing but if mages don't get sustain, the only options become stupid-broken mechanics like Malzahar and his passive Ban Shield
