Why Riot cannot balance healing/regen/sustain/lifesteal/spellvamp/omni-vamp

Arya Riven·2/8/2017, 7:54:43 PM·172 votes·8,112 views

I would write a long extensive 'healing' balance post. But I doubt I need to. Most the community can see that this is the reason we can never properly balance lifesteal, drain tanks, regeneration abilities and so forth.

Grevious wounds means the abilities have to attempt to balance to be useful with it applied but not OP without it applied. Which is impossible.

EDIT: I do agree that GW could be okay as a short lasting/area affecting addition to some abilities that have counterplay/cooldowns. What I am against is it's permanent status of being up and available on enemies at all times.

177 Comments

Sahn Uzal2/8/2017, 8:04:05 PM67 votes

And so another one tries their luck.

My friend, I salute you. For this post will likely be downvoted into oblivion like every other GW thread.

I completely agree with you, and have upvoted this thread. Let's see where it'll end up.

TotalJerk2/8/2017, 9:48:45 PM15 votes

Ignite's grievous wounds are balanced. My opinion is that Grievous Wounds should either be on actives instead of passives, or be made into a tank or support stat instead of being built on carries.

The main people lifesteal/healing are really shitty for are the low damage members of the team. It effectively turns their net damage into zero. You ever tried finishing a fed Yi at 2% health with as nami? Literally impossible.

Rebonack2/8/2017, 8:51:07 PM10 votes

This is basically the same problem that item-based %Pen/Shred have.

So long as it exists, you have to balance resist values around people early/mid game without %pen (immortal tanks) and people late game with it (tissue-paper tanks). A better solution with binary mechanics like these is to save them for Champion kits. You can balance around a Champion's kit having such a powerful features, but by making it available to everyone things get dicey.

Ralanr2/8/2017, 8:22:33 PM8 votes

I dread the day when there's no grevioud wounds to fight Mundo with.

Malicious Metal2/8/2017, 11:41:25 PM8 votes

The thing is that there aren't really GW items for tanks and manaless AP champions, which makes the entire concept of GW being in the game really biased towards certain classes as well.

Big Lincoln2/8/2017, 8:28:19 PM8 votes

I don't think grievous wounds is a problem on paper, but it's execution is very poor

much like % pen I think that it should not be universally available and instead located to various champion kits. If it's on an item then it needs to require more effort to shut down your sustain than right clicking or hitting you with spells. Either on an active that gives those spells grievous wounds or requires multiple spells, or making the active itself a skillshot that applied GW to the first champion hit.

It's not bad in concept but execution sucks.

Bard R Friday2/8/2017, 9:54:34 PM6 votes

I've been a fan of removing grievous wounds for a while, but to be honest things like Varus E which only applies it while standing in the circle are fine since it immediately stops once you leave. It's clear counter play, rather than just getting it applied for 8 seconds every time you're damaged.

Chaos Milk Tea2/8/2017, 8:25:38 PM6 votes

Vladimir and WOTA is all the proof we need that champions based on healing are largely problematic. The solution to improving vladimir's game health? REMOVE SPELL VAMP. It is clearly much easier to remove such effects than it is to design around them. I'm not saying all healing is toxic, but champions based on dealing damage in order to heal are often problematic and make healing items more problematic.

Papa Andrei2/8/2017, 9:14:30 PM6 votes

I feel like healing of that kind should also be less accesbile and not so easy to get ahold of like it is now.

ModCaptainMårvelous2/8/2017, 9:33:02 PM6 votes

Because trying to balance flat-heal characters doesn't work in these games. Compare DOTA2 and HotS

DOTA2 heroes rarely have the heal being the "main" part of their kit. Omni can heal but he's not the star-player for healing. It's the AOE damage that is good shit. Oracle can heal but there's a massive initial damage attached to it, etc. There is rarely just "flat" healing.

HotS, by comparison, has healers who are quite literally heal bots. There have been times where the meta is decided by who can pump out more heals. Same deal with Overwatch, here AoE healing is king because of charging your ult as well as raw power from being alive longer.

More importantly, healing always has/had an adversarial relationship with shields. Do you remember back when ADCs stopped taking heal and took barrier because it was stronger? Do you notice how Karma, one of the few "traditional" supports remaining in pro play, has a giant shield? How about Ivern? etc. (Not to mention shields literally have no counter outside of "Do about 1.5x the damage you expected to do")

Also, without grievous wounds, healing can feel counterless because they just dump a ton of heals on a character and you can't do anything about it. See: The few patches where grievous wounds only hurt self-healing.

dunder kill2/8/2017, 9:49:01 PM6 votes

I suggested removing GW then rebalancing around the fact that it's gone a few times.

I got downvoted into oblivion every time lol

Spoofghoul2/8/2017, 10:27:53 PM5 votes

For starters it could be moved from ''mandatory items'' like item 3165 & item 3033

devdev4632/9/2017, 4:10:04 AM4 votes

Just give champs that rely on this shit like mundo and swain true healing or something where it isn't effected by healing reduction and then balance it at that.

Leonerdo2/8/2017, 9:50:06 PM4 votes

You have it entirely backwards. Without the counter of Grevious Wounds, healing has to be perfectly balanced to be useful but not strong all the time. With those items/summoner spell, players have their own tuning lever that they can work with dynamically within the game. That is, players control when/if they need to reduce the healing because it's getting too strong. Thus healing can be tuned as "strong" most of the time, but players can counter it when it gets too oppressive. Grevious wounds enables balance. (Except Morellonomicon isn't currently being used as a counter, just as a stat stick, but that is a problem with the item, not GW).

MissingKayo2/8/2017, 8:10:00 PM3 votes

If Grievous had half-effectiveness on innate and full on purchased lifesteal/spellvamp/omnivamp and if purchased lifesteal didn't heal such a ridiculous amount, that'd be nice.

Kubox2/8/2017, 11:50:09 PM3 votes

Let me start this up by saying I agree that GW is, as it stands, terrible game balance.

Anti-healing has a place in the game. In fact, it has to be there in one way or healing as a whole won't have a counter other than "deal more damage". But not in it's current state of fire-and-forget : You buy the item and that's it. Ignite is probably the closest thing to an acceptable healing counter, mostly because the duration is not as long and it boasts a CD (sure, it's cheap and easy, but so is exhaust, so if one gets changed for shutting down a certain thing, the other probably deserves the same thing). But there are other, more creative ways to deal with healing.

Reduce healing by a certain amount for every attack vs a target : Reward players for focusing down the target. Mundo shouldn't lose a big chunk of his sustain simply for having been tagged by a random attack. But he shouldn't also be sustaining too much health in combat while the enemy is doing everything to kill him.
Item with active that can put down a zone of anti-healing. Probably as a support item but not limited to them (maybe multiple versions?). Swain is diving the back-line while being unkillable? Put down the zone and make him choose if he wants to commit or is only zoning. It shouldn't start at full strength however : Players should be rewarded for using it smartly rather than throwing it down randomly in panic whenever Swain gets too close
Play a lot more with GW' duration. As it stands, the duration of the effect often lasts for too much time after a fight (that or you apply it a the start and the other champion is pretty much screwed even if you don't touch him anymore). Making it last only a second or so can make for some more open space to play around. Mundo can disengage for a while to sustain more. Ekko can land his stun, wait off the GW and ult. Sona can ult the enemy and use that time to heal her carry. You would probably need to make it so GW is never instant as otherwise some of those stun into heal clutch might be too random, but overall can be a lot more healthy for the game.

FantasySniper2/9/2017, 12:20:03 AM3 votes

Grievous Wounds is a universal counter to sustain. No matter what you put it on, be it a champion's kit or an item in the store, the uniform effect of 40% healing reduction hits equally hard. Healing reduction itself isn't the problem, it's the fact that it's reduced by so much and so easily because they have to have it bundled into Grievous Wounds, giving very few levers for balance.

In Paladins - where you buy one specific effect out of each category of items - Cauterize is an item that reduces healing. The first unit purchased reduces healing by 30%. Just like in League of Legends, that single unit is enough to almost invalidate healing's effectiveness, and thus viability.

A solution to this without removing it entirely would be to thin out its availability (and effects) among more items instead of it being a concentrated unique passive on just the two.

For example (disregarding conditions and durations, which could also help to balance its effects) Morellonomicon could have 15%, Liandry's 10%, and some other item (possibly even a new one) 15% as well. In order to achieve the previous 40%, you need to get 3 entirely different items instead of the stock AP rush item that half of mage champions always get.

A counter to sustain is still possible, it should just require a realistic investment instead of picking up a single staple item or summoner spell for your role.

Lord Malpercio2/10/2017, 4:36:44 AM2 votes

I'd like to bring up Swain

He's a champion that has healing as part of his kit, and it makes him a unique threat on the battlefield, much more differently than other spellvamp/healing monstrosities ( Aatrox Mordekaiser Vladimir )

He's had some very distinguishable problems in the past - Namely that he was slow, immobile, and short-ranged compared to other mages. Building Magic Resistance also entirely negated his usefulness, as his healing was based on the damage he dealt. Ironically, this also caused him to heal absurd amounts against teams that didn't get MR. Riot responded to this by reducing his overall healing, making his damage more reliable (It used to be RNG on his ult), and making his healing not dependent on his damage dealt, meaning MR stacking no longer gimped him.

Grievous Wounds is a -really- awkward thing in the game. I'll often see a top-laner rush Executioner's Calling to counter me, but this simply puts them behind pre-6, allowing me to roll them over entirely. Lategame however? It's fucking cancerous, as Swain often gets bursted down and needs to heal back up, but can't simply because GW has probably applied at this point, especially with the amount of champions who build Morrelonomicon. It applies even while Zhonya'd, reducing the effectiveness of what is pretty much a mandatory build path on Swain.

Swain needs healing to exist, and is very thematic to him. Grievous Wounds exists to make sure champions like him stay in check, but it does so in a way that is -entirely overbearing-. Especially if you are already behind. Since Swain's healing is in a state that is -honestly- pretty balanced and has a fair amount of counterplay (Namely, don't let him run amok in the middle of your team), Grievous Wounds reduces his healing to a subpar point where he cannot fulfill his role as an off-tank.

XeroKimo2/9/2017, 12:50:49 AM2 votes

I was thinking about grievous wounds for awhile, cause here's the thing, if it was removed, high regen or high healing champs become out of control, if we nerf their healing we'll eventually be at a point where the healing will be identical to what it is now with GW, but getting GW just cucks healing really badly so I thought some changes,

For excutioners calling and Mortal's we could have a new effect called Wounded: This applies 1 stack of Wounded, wounded enemies receive 10%-25% (dunno what would be a good value) reduced healing for 2 seconds, at 5 stacks, the enemy is applied grievous wounds for 5 secs. (The stacks don't increase the value at which the enemies take reduced healing, it's only there to apply grievous wounds), I was thinking it should stack like Grasp, so even if you hit a person 5 times, it takes 5 seconds to reach grievous wounds

This makes it so high regen, or healing reliant champs can keep their super strong healing, but on extend fights, would start losing out.

Morello's seem fine as it is since it has a restriction on when it applies grievous wounds

And ignite should also be kept how it is as you're sacrificing a summoner spell which is pretty significant

Fondling Gems2/9/2017, 6:50:51 AM2 votes

Can I also just mention that these healing effects are the reason that tanks do so much damage? If tanks want to be able to kill a champion with healing (Which they should in theory be able to do. A class should never be stat checked into oblivion.) then they have to be able to do enough damage to negate that healing. Since tanks can't easily build any items that cut healing that means they have to have the damage to kill someone with unmitigated lifesteal or spell camp or inbuilt healing as they aren't expected to have access to grievous wounds. Their damage then has to be balanced around the idea that their opponents could have healing, since there is no way to know.

Grievous wounds causes healing bloat and healing bloat is what makes tanks have to deal more damage to stay relevant and not be a source of lifesteal for the guy they are trying to kill.

sobi9992/9/2017, 9:48:07 AM2 votes

Finally a person who writes a small logical thread on GW. I have been saying the same thing in all my GW posts but got downvoted because i just couldn't put it right. GW needs to have a different iteration because it stacks all the time and as a soraka main i can see her getting hurt more than any other lifesteal/self regen champ only because she has a juicy 10% health sacrifice for her heals compared to lifesteal and health regen. While it may balance things out for some champs, it completely negates others. Ignite also counters healing champs but that is perfectly balanced as it stays for 5 secs and allows room for counter play.

Coitus begon2/8/2017, 8:53:01 PM1 votes

How would you go about balancing champions like Mundo and Vald by removing GW and not making their healing feel completely useless ? If you removed GW they would have to nerf the amount of healing they would do otherwise you'd never be able to kill the them and in turn, the spells would end up being meaningless or you end up having to redesign the entire champion by making them squishy or removing most if not all of their damage and keeping the healing.

One idea they could try if they do remove the items would be by adding GW on certain champion active spells or buffing the excising GW spells like Varuses E.

Raven Redeemed2/9/2017, 2:22:47 AM1 votes

What if they took off GW from items but added it to a consumable like an elixir?

ValyrianBlade2/9/2017, 12:28:57 AM1 votes

IDK I disagree...

Healing should be strong. Grievous wounds should make healing weak. It doesn't need to be balanced with grievous wounds. Does suppression need to be balanced so that it's still useful/strong if the enemy has QSS? No. The simple fact that you force your opponent to build a QSS instead of damage is part of what makes it strong.

Likewise, healing forces grievous wounds. Having to save ignite for Swain/Vlad instead of using it on the enemy ADC is a cost. Having your ADC or top build item 3123 is a cost (10% damage from item 3034 is no joke). I think it's perfectly balance-able and it has been done fairly well so far... It only goes out of control when the guy healing like mad is fed and no one buys grievous wounds.