Why Riot Gave Up On Spell Vamp - And Why They Should Give It Another Try

I know that this comes a bit late but spell vamp has been on my mind ever since it was removed. It did not change the game in a massive way but I think it is way too interesting of a mechanic to give up it up. Riot had their reasons to remove it - but I think there are ways to combat these problems and implement it again without it either being unused or overpowered.

First, let's look at the official explanation Riot gave us for the removal of Will of The Ancients ( will be shortened to "WotA" from now on ) and the spell vamp on Hextech Revolver in the 6.9 patch notes:

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.

To sum the above up, spell vamp is really hard to balance because damaging abilities are vastly different from one another so that some abilities synergize way too good with it while others don't. Lifesteal on the other hand is ( almost - I'll explain later ) always the same because autohits are the same on every champion.

So to implement spellvamp again we need to look at what exactly makes those damaging abilities different from another and what makes one champion utilize spellvamp better than other champions.

While doing my research I think I found one deciding factor: While autohits are single targeted there are loads of aoe abilities.

Imagine following scenario: Caitlyn with 20% lifesteal fights 2 champions. Since she only can target one champion at once she will only heal off one champion at a time. She may have a Runaan's Hurricane equipped, which can also proc lifesteal. Since the bolts do 1/4 of her AD as damage she will have a total of 25% lifesteal, since she is hitting one extra champion with it. Headshots also apply lifesteal if anyone is wondering. Let's not count in her abilities - her ult and Q will most likely only be used outside of a fight while the E itself does not deal a lot of damage. This way 100% of her damage will be from autos. Another thing to consider is that she will generate more headshots than usual because of Runaan's, dealing more damage because of that and therefore also healing more because of her lifesteal.

Here's scenario B: Azir with 20% Spellvamp is fighting two champions at a time too. But In his case, because he has lots of AOE damage with all of his abilities, he will heal 20% extra for the extra champion he hits instead of only getting extra 5% because of Runaan's bolts, which means he actually has a total of 40% spellvamp instead of the 20% he paid for, which should obviously not be a thing. But note that while he can hit both at once he definitely does not always do that, so sometimes he will have 20% still, so probably around 30%-35%, depending on the situation.

And it wasn't like that when spellvamp existed either - Riot was actually aware of that problem and so had every AOE damage only profit of 1/3 of the spell vamp you have. But that absolutely does not fix the problem at hand. Here's why.

The dueling scenario that Riot described in the 6.9 patch notes wouldn't work for anyone who has mostly AOE abilities, which is pretty much every mage or assassin. So in a duel, you'd only heal for 1/3 of the spell vamp you paid for which obviously makes it trashy in most fighting scenarios. Of course you can hit several champions but rarely will you hit 3 or more at the same time and that constantly. In the example given above Azir would have around 13% spell vamp instead of 40%, and only if you hit both champions at the same time the whole fight.

This also explains why the champions who currently profit the most from Gunblades pseudo-spell vamp / life steal - Jax and Akali - have mostly single target damage.

But it also creates another problem which is that you will still get way too much Spell vamp if you hit more than 3 targets, namely the scenario where you're clearing a minion wave. A minion wave usually consists of 6 minions, with AOE spells hitting all of them and having the 1/3 penalty you'd still have double the spellvamp you are supposed to have.

This is where the problem of old Vlad and his absurd synergy with Will of the Ancients stemmed from and what made him unbalancable pre-6.9. Combined with his already great lane sustain, WotA combined with his E on minion waves would just make him impossible to bully out of lane unless you succesfully all-in him. On top of that, if you did all-in and you both ended up with 25%, vlad would just heal back up to full while you'd be screwed. Vlad also didn't really care as much about the AOE penalty in fights because he was more likely to end up in situations where he'd hit more champions with his abilities than some other aoe spellcasters would because he was tanky enough to get into ability range for everyone.

Riot actually tried to fix the problem of spell vamp being too good against minions and too bad against champions in patch 5.13, where they changed the spellvamp of WotA to 15% from 20% but it would calculate the amount of healing off the damage you'd deal before resistances are applied instead of the actual damage you deal. Since minions don't have a lot of resistances and champions do , it'd heal you less against minions and more against champions, especially in the late game.

That still did not affect Vladimir that much. It did not stop him from healing too much in lane even with the nerf and it atcually made his teamfighting much better.

With all that in mind and with unsuccesfully working on spell vamp for several years, they finally said screw it and both removed spell vamp and reworked Vlad.

And this is where I think they were wrong. I think the solution is really simple actually.

Don't put a 1/3 penalty on AOE spell vamp. Instead, just make spell vamp apply only on the nearest target hit instead of all of them.

This would make it consistent. Not permanently changing and confusing percentages depending on how many champion you hit. Instead, it's always the same because you only heal off one target.

Take the example with Azir I mentioned above. Not 20-40% and always changing but actually always the 20% he paid for, even if he is clearing minion wave.

But then I might hear you aksing, what about Caitlyn. She still actually heals more than she should, she has 25% lifesteal instead of the 20% she should have.

Here I would suggest that the rule above would also apply to Runaan's, Ravenous Hydra etc. and their interaction with life steal to make it fair. If you remember back when Kalista was super overpowered it also stemmed from the fact that she profited too much from the synergy of lifesteal with Runaan's, the combination of BT, Runaan's, Sterak's and Maw practically making her almost unkillable even though she dealt tons of damage.

I think that is also one of the major aspects that holds her back right now and that makes her either overpowered or underpowered, never being able to be balanced. Sounds familiar right cough Vladimir cough.

When it comes to items this should always apply to them. Death's Dance and Hextech Gunblade also have the 1/3 AOE penalty instead of the mechanic I thought of. Imagine all the champions those items could be good on if they changed that.

There also needs to be an item that has spell vamp and AP, a new WotA. I think it should cost around 3k to 3.5k, give 100 AP, 20% spell vamp and a unique passive. Would love to see some ideas on that.

Lastly, let me know what you think about this. Should spell vamp be introduced again with the mechanic mentioned above or is it too risky and would it still be impossible to balance?