@ Meddler—Talk About Invisible Power...

Hey Meddler, I was just wondering if you could give us some insight on the design choices behind Taric's new heal.

His old heal was a single target ability that healed himself and an ally or himself for extra. No other heal in the game worked like this and it was one of the key distinguishing aspects of his kit outside his armor buff. It was a strong but mana intensive heal that had a clear impact on gameplay and allowed Taric a certain degree of flexibility in his play style (he was just as capable in a solo or the jungle as in a duo lane). Taric has been one of my most played supports since I started League about 2 ½ years ago, and this heal change seems like a major downgrade in more ways than one:

1. Throughout the game it feels like a lot of invisible power. Sure it offers a slightly larger set of VFX, but the actual sustain it gives is now comparable to Alistar rather than one of the strongest burst heals in the game. I would rather have clear gameplay impact and clear VFX than trading the former for the latter.

2. It seems more like a tool to make the "Bastion double cast" gimmick work better and fails as an independent spell. I really think the Bastion ability was a clever way to work around his old invisible power from his aura while still offering strong defense for allies, but the secondary interaction feels forced and the heal shows this especially.

3. The mana cost isn't dynamic. I get that having an AoE heal that after a long enough recharge could heal you and several allies for 180 (+60% AP) (+4.5% HP) should cost a fair bit of mana, but when you only get the Alistar tier heal spam, 140 mana is flat out absurd.

So you can probably tell I'm not the happiest about these changes, but I don't want to just QQ, I want to start a discussion about the changes and I feel it would help a lot if you could explain (or have one of the update designers explain) the goals and thoughts behind how his new Q works.