Speaking from a pure balance perspective, why does a lane bully have so much sustain or even sustain at all? Sustain is supposed to be a strategy that you use against a lane bully in the hopes that you can wither them down or just survive. I don't even play anymore so this isn't a salty thread about losing to darius but i still watch a few streamers and it is disgusting watching darius' hp sustain in lane and late game team fights.
Speaking from a pure balance perspective, why does a lane bully have so much sustain or even sustain at all?
Because that's pretty critical to be a lane bully. Especially a melee one.
Mobility, Range, and CC quickly recover between trades (only being reliant on cooldowns). Defense does not. If you're relying on defense to survive long enough to do your job, getting chunked to half-health essentially puts your total defense at 50% strength: and it recovers to maybe 55% of it's potential for another trade.
Base stats between different champions are also "mostly" identical. A tanky DPS champion like Darius is only ~10% bulkier than a squishy glass-cannon like Miss Fortune, so it's not like Darius even starts with defense where his opposition often have all the range, mobility, or CC they need at level 1.
Enter HP sustain. It lets tanky champions actually feel pretty tanky by allowing them to recover between trades early-game until they can get items to actually be tanky: be that raw defense on the fighter/tank side or life steal on the fighter/assassin side.
It's also on pretty much every fighter or respectable top-lane pick:
So it's not like it's a Darius only thing. He was more an oddball prior to his rework by not having it.
Both huge lane bullies with great sustain. Healing is in their kits to allow them to bully
I don't see the issue
if anything you should be happy that it's probably the most conditional heal in the game
