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Healing and Sustain Creep is a Neglected Discussion that has Caused Huge Balance Issues

Frosted Tips·4/11/2019, 10:02:50 PM·9 votes·2,837 views

The amount of healing and sustain added to this game over the past few seasons has been insane and has caused many balance issues that have been neglected.

Runes:

So runes are the biggest culprit in the healing and sustain creep over the past few seasons. I will discuss what runes I see as healthy and the ones that I see as damaging to the game.

Precision Tree: (Improved attacks and sustained damage) Healing makes sense to be in this tree.

Fleet Footwork - It is a Keystone rune and should have a lot of power in the rune. I believe it does a good job with the amount of power it allocates to healing and movespeed. I think that it should be kept as is.

Conqueror - So obviously this rune has recieved a bunch of hate and changes, but I will keep it short. Removing the healing since it creates a near drain tank like gameplay which Riot has removed from many champions due to them finding it as an unfun playstyle and give it more adaptive stats per stack.

Triumph - I think it is fine, so keep it as is. It requires a kill so the healing does not effect anything without a kill.

Legend: Bloodline - I actually like this one a lot. It offers nearly no sustain early game yet allows marksmen to build no life steal which opens up a bunch of build paths. So keep this one.

Domination Tree: (Burst damage and target selection) Healing does not make sense in this tree.

Taste of Blood - Like a mini Fleet Footwork, but with any damage. I don't see why this exists. Just an extra healing rune for no reason. Remove it.

Ravenous Hunter - One of the most unhealthy runes in the game. Allows far too much healing for champions that were never designed to have access to sustain. Causes very unhealthy gameplay. Remove it.

Sorcery Tree: (Empowered abilities and resource manipulation) Healing does not make sense in this tree.

No healing exists in the Sorcery Tree which is perfect.

Resolve Tree: (Durability and crowd control) Healing does make sense in this tree.

Grasp of the Undying - Heals for very little and is hard to proc in later aspects of the game. The healing is only a part of the power of this rune and it is not terribly strong, so keep it as is.

Font of Life - Very minimal healing and requires crowd control so I believe it is fine. Keep as is.

Second Wind - I think this rune could be improved on to make it more impactful by increasing the healing, but adding a cooldown to it.

Revitalize - Requires other sources of healing to be used, but seems like a filler rune because Riot did not have enough ideas. I would remove this rune.

Inspiration Tree: (Creative tools and rule bending) Healing can work in this tree

I am very biased against this tree and I personally believe it is a big component in what is destroying the enjoyment of this game.

Kleptomancy - Offers health options and biscuits as possible RNG rewards for hitting an enemy champion. This rune alone is not problematic to sustain and healing.

Biscuit Delivery - Very strong, but I do not believe it is problematic on it's own.

Time Warp Tonic - Extremely strong and far too good with Biscuit Delivery or even just Corrupting Potion. This rune has no place in league and should be removed. It offers so much safety to players that take bad trade in lane. When laning against someone with TWT, BD, and CPot you have to trade them down to 20% health about 4 times before they run out of options. It is insane how much of a safety net this rune is. Remove it.

Just a reminder that old masteries only offered 2% life steal and spellvamp.

Please lower healing and sustain.

18 Comments

Death by Glamour4/11/2019, 10:28:22 PM5 votes

It hasn't really been discussed since ardent was changed even though it has been a major issue. Thornmail as we said when it was added and as you described it earlier today is simply a "bandaid" which never solved the underlying issue and IMO was just a lazy attempt by riot that ended up screwing the game over, bruisers where fucked by item 3076 and several tanks began to dominate toplane then we got conqueror.

Some things you are missing

item 3174 -it heals a lot on the right support, sona for instance.

item 3107 - even as a support main I find this item to be completely OP.

old item 3504 we all know how insanely broken this was even if it took the pros several patches to figure it out.

and rework Soraka , used to be the case her W had an 18second CD if I remember correctly and to lower it you had to hit enemies with Q, she can now simply hide up the back of the lane and self sustain with pots/cookies and throw out the odd Q.

One big change I would love to see is lifesteal being far less effective when gained from minions and small monsters say 10-30%.

Meserion4/12/2019, 1:07:54 AM3 votes

Concerning the Triumph Rune, I think the healing should have a short delay to it that is extended every time the player takes damage, The reason for this is simple, this rune has effectively counteracted Champions that make use of periodic damage to kill other Champions.

Champions screwed over by this rune: Teemo Karthus Cassiopeia Brand Darius Fizz Malzahar Mordekaiser Rumble Talon

I'd remove Legend: Bloodline because its free lifesteal and lifesteal is a very important stat that affects how you build you're character. Making it in-built with runes is a problem. There is already a ton of in-built healing effects, and this rune is too much.

flibitydoo4/11/2019, 10:57:40 PM2 votes

Just a reminder that old masteries only offered 2% life steal and spellvamp.

literally the first mastery choice in resolve (the mastery tree before we had runes reforged) was health regen (or you could pick x% bonus resist) so I don't know about you saying only lifesteal/spellvamp. There was also a feast mastery option in the ferocity tree where last hitting gave a burst of health. A long with dangerous game in the cunning tree which gave health and mana back on takedown. In fact the first 4 choices you made into any of the 3 mastery trees covered sustain in some regard.

The mastery trees before we even had keystones increased potion duration (utility), flat spellvamp (utility), flat lifesteal (utility), health regen (defense), a free starting biscuit (utility), and the feast (offense) mastery which gave health for each minion unit killed instead of being locked to a big burst heal cooldown. Also indirectly, you could also start with extra starting gold (+40) to buy an extra health potion (health potions cost 35 gold back then).

Maybe you have forgotten but there was a lot of sustain options back then. This was, by the way, a time when you could get 5 health per auto attack for buying a doran's blade at level 1. And this insane healing worked on any attack including minions.

Cruciver4/16/2019, 4:26:22 PM2 votes

I believe healing creep is the symptom of the main problems. Healing creep exists to counteract damage creep AND mobility creep, because actual defensive stats stop scaling at a point. Healing had to increase due to the sheer number of high damage threats with multiple dashes and blinks.

Consider Irelia for instance: high burst, high sustained damage with a low CD blink that can be easily used to bounce around a fight, typically builds bruiser but can out burst most assassins, and still maintains high sustain damage. She will get to your backline, no ifs, ands or buts about it, and that means your backline either sustains through it, or pops.

In order to scale back on mobility or damage though, healing has to be cut. In order to reduce healing, both of the other must be lowered.

It's a pretty crappy situation riot has backed itself into.

Saianna4/11/2019, 10:50:51 PM2 votes

Lifesteal should be capped 5% in runes, 10% in items. Together, 15% max and no more. Remove crit-healing effectiveness by 50% aswell.

Insane damage + Insane lifesteal is the reason why AD champions that snowballed cannot be shut down, unless jumped 3v1 (and in some cases even 5v1 is not enough). They simply heal on opponents as if they were nothing more than minions.

Crescent Dusk4/12/2019, 12:16:12 AM2 votes

The problem is that we have an arms race between ADC survivability and the damage assassins and mages need to burn through all the shields and healing some supports offer, not to mention Bloodthirster and PD completely breaking the ADC archetyoe.

ADC's are not supposed to be survivable, ever.

They've been made survivable because assassins and some bruisers like Irelia and Riven have way too much mobility and proceed to blow up the ADC's before they can feel impactful.

I'd rather they buff the survival of melee while shaving their mobility and ADC survival/top end damage to make it so ADC's still remain a threat but not one that deletes people in 3 seconds while healing for a ton late game.

This game can't just be a game of whichever team blows up the ADC first wins the TF.

Tiure4/12/2019, 12:32:10 AM2 votes

Most of these options do not allow you to heal without fighting.

If it gets to be a problem, Riot should probably remove the ability to lifesteal from minions and monsters.

Doge20204/11/2019, 10:40:39 PM1 votes

Another option could be to increase the amount of sources for grevious wounds. I know that a 40% cut on healing is a lot so I think that at the same time Riot should also lower the cut to 25%.

I have two more options on how to do this too, my ideas would be two different items that directly affect two “types” of healing and sustain. The first one would be the more drawn out healing that shows itself over the course of the fight, imagine full life steal Olaf auto attacking you or a WW below half hp with a life steal item. I think this item should start off at a low amount of the healing cut (like 10%) then after a few seconds, or more, the healing cut increases every second (I think 5% increase per second is a good spot) until it reaches a cap. The other item is kinda the reverse of the last item- it targets insane healing that happens from one source in an instant or from a large amount of sources in a very short time. An example of the former is Nunu Q, soraka W/R or the heal summoner spell. An example of the latter is a fed Akali (full build with a gunblade) using her full combo while soraka W, soraka R, runes like Triumph, taste of blood and Ravenous Hunter give Akali insane healing and can most likely instantly heal her to full health. This item would have the healing cut be high at first (like 75%-60%) and after a time period long enough to see that the main burst of healing was dealt/received, then the healing cut would lower at likely the same speed as the first item to the original 40%. DISCLAIMER: I know Akali was kind of a bad example to use because her fighting pattern is way more drawn out than other AP assassins/other Gunblade users. I didn’t really think through which gunblade user could deliver the most burst in a short time, I did think of Katarina at first but decided to go with Akali for some reason.

ZT Xperimentor4/12/2019, 12:10:38 AM1 votes

The new masteries just threw more wood on the fire. Some items have been problems for years because of their synergy with lifesteal. item 3153 item 3812 item 3124 item 3031 item 3074 item 3085 But yes I agree it's a big contributor to the problematic gameplay decision of; instantly-kill, or draintank, if not then you loose to someone doing one of these.

VoraciousX4/11/2019, 10:46:50 PM1 votes

Of they could just remove heal and shield power. I mean it's not like that stat completely negates building for scaling or anything, causing all enchanters(and even some tanks) to build the exact same every game. [slayer-jinx-unamused]