Super experimental idea I had for a lifesteal/spellvamp overhaul.
Disclaimer: This is the first time I actually sat down and thought about these things for a longer amount of time and came up with something. On top of that, I just came back after a half-year pause from LoL, so please take it all with a grain of salt. If I make any logical mistakes or say something that just doesn't make any sense, please tell me! ( in a civilized manner of course ). Now that we got this out of the way . . .
So basically, the way I see it, there are two broad types of damage healing.
The first is plain out life steal. A percentage of the damage you deal with auto attacks is given back to you as HP, and only auto attacks. Seems simple, right? Well, when it comes to synergies, it becomes really complicated really quick.
How about on-hits that proc on my auto attacks? They generally don't count towards lifesteal no matter what - the permanent ones at least, so for example a Kog'Maw W ( though Draven's axes and BotRK are still an exception to that rule ). Auto-attack resets though that you just get for one auto attack at a time do in fact count towards life steal, but only if they are physical! So that means a Nasus Q for example, but a Jax W doesn't count. Another thing to keep in mind is that life steal is coded as an on-hit effect itself, even though it doesn't apply to a majority of on-hit effects, which means that it applies to abilities and items that specifically state that they apply on-hit effects, such as an Ezreal Q or Runaan's Hurricane bolts. Even weirder, Sheen effects, even though they don't apply on-hit effects, do apply lifesteal though it doesn't state this anywhere! Confused yet?
Well let's get to spellvamp next! They heal for an amount of your ability damage. With there being lots of abilities to begin with, there are also lots of different ways of applying spellvamp. Permanent on-hit abilities and buffs for example don't count, like a Teemo E or Kog'Maw W, even the DoT of the Teemo E, even though the DoT of Fizz' W still counts towards it. Sheen effects also apply spell vamp, even though yet again, it doesn't say this anywhere. Also something to remember is the fact that area of effect abilities cut the spellvamp you get from them into 1/3. There are a lot of examples where this can get confusing for example Malzahar's ult - the wiki says it applies it as single target damage, but does this also apply to the void pool it creates? Also, how do pets interact with spell vamp?
Then, there's also other spell-vamp and lifesteal-like effects, so for example Gunblade and Death's Dance.
Death's Dance is basically spell vamp for anything physical in nature, like described above. When it comes to life steal though, it's slightly better - it also applies onto physical on-hit effects like for example Bloodrazor or any physical on-hit ability.
Gunblade is like Death's Dance, but it applies to everything instead of just physical damage, which at leats makes it a bit more streamlined than the rest. You just have to remember - is it single target? Full damage heal. Is it not? Only 1/3.
So if the textwall above doesn't give you an idea of what the problem with spell vamp, damage heal and life steal is, I'm going to specifically say what it is - all of it is hugely inconsistent, confusing and convoluted.
If we take life steal for example and look at every ADC, it's not the same for everyone. Draven and Twitch for example heal much more from it than a lot of other ADCs like Kog'Maw or any ability-centered ADC. About 90% of Draven's damage and probably more if he builds Death's Dance counts towards life steal, where for Kog'Maw it's pretty much only 50% of his overall damage.
Something that is even more confusing are spell vamp effects, because of their "1/3 on all AOE abilities" - rule. So the first thing you have to look up is if your ability even is an AOE ability or not to begin with, so you have to check the wiki first, and in a lot of cases it doesn't really make sense. For example, Lucian's ultimate can realistically only hit one target at a time which each bullet, they are pretty much like a lot of mini-Urgot Q's. They still count as an AOE ability even though Urgot's Q does not, which makes it super confusing.
I can get where they are coming from, AOE abilities absolutely need something to tone them down towards spellvamp ( imagine Singed's poison trail or Karthus' ult with full spell vamp for example ) but this is a rather lazy way to do it, because it makes things even more confusing.
For example, if you just 1v1 one champion at a time, the spell vamp you gain with an AOE ability is only 1/3 as good as it should be. If you stand in a minion wave of 6 minions though, your spellvamp is double as good as it should be instead ( because 6 times 1/3=6/3 ) which makes it super inconsistent.
To add another layer of hilarity and irony to this, here's what Riot wrote in patch 6.9 when they removed Will of the Ancients and old Hextech Revolver ( which gave spell vamp ) from the game:
Heading into our upgraded Hextech weaponry prompts an important question: why is all the spell vamp gone?
Let’s start by comparing it to lifesteal. Thematically, lifesteal gives the feeling that you’re fighting back against death, creating tense 1 on 1 duels with uncertain outcomes. Mechanically, lifesteal says ‘I may have a small health bar but you’ve got to focus me down or I’ll regenerate to full.’ Spell vamp, while sounding similar, doesn’t quite hit the same bar. Unlike basic attacks, no two abilities are the same, which makes the stat wildly variable in value.
This means that it’s functionally impossible to make spell vamp work the way you’d expect, and it instead operates on myriad edge-cases to avoid feeling abusive and unintuitive. Cut to today’s world where it’s only used on Vladimir (whose balance is kept lock-step with the stat), it’s easy to see why it had to go.
So why buy into Hextech? Revolver (and its upgrades) are all about benefitting the mid-range mages that have to scrap to survive. Like Catalyst for sustain or Tear for becoming a late-game monster, Revolver represents a commitment to securing advantages through combat. While everyone’s waiting to power-up, Hextech provides the power spike you need to get the snowball rolling.
And if we look at today's problems it's pretty much the same. Death's Dance and Gunblade have pretty much the same problem described above, aswell as lifesteal items. To put it in their words - it only operates in myriad edge-cases or it's abusive and unintuitive. They also say that it's functionally impossible to make it work - which fuels my nerd rage greatly, because that means that they just gave up on it and this might mean that they will give up on Death's Dance and Gunblade, maybe even life steal aswell.
The potential Fix:
So here's the idea I had. Instead of having life steal, spell vamp and loads of ability and item effects, it all gets streamlined into one single stat :
Damage Heal: X% of all damage dealt is returned as health ( AOE damage only applies damage heal to the nearest or first target hit ).
No weird synergies or edge cases, no confusing mechanics that you need to look up 5 wiki pages for to fully understand, no balance nightmares because it's different for every single champion - Damage Heal would be dependant on one thing and only one thing alone - how much damage do I deal?
If we take the examples of above again, you can really see how this would be much more streamlined than the systems we have right now. Remember Draven vs. Kog'Maw when it comes to life steal? Not 90% of your damage on one champion and 50% on the other and 65% on yet another champion, it will always be measured from 100% of the damage you dealt to your main target, which will apply to the healing effect.
The AOE rule of damage heal is also much more consistent than the current AOE mitigation systems. Yet again, the example of above: If you 1v1 a champion, you get 100% of the damage heal you paid for, if you stand in a minion wave of 6 and hit them all at the same time, it's still 100% and it will also be 100% of the damage heal you paid for in every single situation imaginable. Not 1/3 to 200% and above which was super inconsistent.
This will also allow mages to finally get their spell vamp back after Will of the Ancients got removed - maybe it could be reintroduced this way with the new Damage Heal.
Also note that every item no matter if it had life steal or spell vamp or its own effect, aswell as every ability that functions in a similar manner would be converted into damage heal to streamline it all and add more consistency. The values also would have to be turned down, for example BT would likely go down from 20% life steal to 12-15% damage heal or less, because damage heal would apply to all damage dealt whereas life steal only does to your autos ( and some other things like pointed out above ).
That's the altogether rather simple idea I had in mind and I just needed to share it. Please let me know what you think of this idea and also share criticisms. I doubt anyone of note will ever see this but at least we can have a discussion about it.
