Let's talk Grievous Wounds (Again!)

Before I launch into my semi-wordy argument, I do want to make the point of this post clear, and the reason I'd like to start a discussion on this. This is the assertion of this post: Grievous Wounds in its current iteration is an inherently unhealthy make-or-break mechanic and should either be removed from the game or significantly reduced in strength, and all healers/drain-tankers should be rebalanced accordingly.

Let's break down why I feel like this is the case. Riot acknowledges that it has had problems with healer and drain tank archetypes in the past (looking at you Soraka/Aatrox) and, after many many MANY cycles of trial and error, we seem to have them in a fairly 'balanced' state (except Aatrox, who just got minorly reworked, so I cannot comment on that yet).

But the difficulty of healers to balance has never been solely because of the fact that the mechanic allows users to restore missing green bars. There are other mechanics (like shields) that prevent damage to green bars altogether, and still others that reduce damage done (like Poppy's Armor/MR boost at low health, or Warwick's flat damage reduction on his E). The end result of all these sorts of mechanics is damage mitigation. Healing as a mechanic just assumes that you have to live through the burst of damage in the first place to be restored after the fact.

The difficulty of balancing healing has always been an intricate dance of sacrifice: what a champion gives up in order to restore those green bars. Swain gives up mana at an almost alarming rate early, Vlad and Aatrox give up time (Q3 and R on Vlad, third auto on Aatrox's W), and Soraka sacrifices health. Before we arrived at this state, we had problems where champions were either getting to sustain for large chunks between long intervals cheaply (Soraka) or a champion's scaling heal propelled them too much into a dominate/useless position (Aatrox).

Currently, the way to shut down healing is to build an item (or pick a champion) with Grievous Wounds, which reduces healing on an affected target by 40%. Those items Executioner's Calling -> Mortal Reminder for physical damage champions and Morellonomicon for magic damage users. Unfortunately, because Riot has sought to hone the identities of champions into unique niches over time, it means that such items or abilities that cause Grievous Wounds are essentially A HARD COUNTER to the playstyle of those champions. 40% is a lot. It's almost half. It essentially makes Vlad, Swain, or Soraka useless even in situations where they're meant to shine as sustainers.

Let's break down a few points of contention. **First of all, **Morellonomicon has a strict requirement: you have to hit an enemy with magic damage while they are BELOW 35% health. This is in contrast to Executioner's Calling or Mortal Reminder, which apply their effects immediately, EVEN AFTER A SINGLE AUTO ATTACK. I think this is unhealthy for a few reasons. First, it ensures that physical damage autoattackers will always have a reliable, cheap (800g) way of shutting down a healer. Secondly, it REQUIRES that Grievous Wounds have a high payoff in exchange for meeting the strict requirement (having to burst someone for 65% of their health before they start healing it back), which means that inherently, the stat is unbalanceable. Either it gives too high of a payoff and physical damage auto attackers can always negate a healer/drain tank or magic damage dealers have to fulfill this arbitrarily strict requirement to get a heal reduction that doesn't seem worth it.

**Second of all, **the current effectiveness of grievous wounds (40% heal reduction) has brought us to a sort of pre-QSS-change situation: either your enemy buys grievous wounds and you're useless as a healer/drain tank and cannot do your job, or the neglect to purchase such items and you're overpowered in that specific game. This creates a balancing nightmare where Riot has to buff healers/drain tanks to the point where they can still be viable when people buy Grievous Wounds items (Morello is pretty much ubiquitous with most mages) but then they become out of line when people cannot afford to supplement their build with a Grievous Wounds item (similarly to how Zed and Fiora could have their ultimates rendered useless if their opponent was ahead enough to afford regular itemization AND a QSS). Riot has acknowledged that such polarizing itemization has led to balancing problems in the past, so I'm not sure why Grievous Wounds is any different now.

**Third, **there are currently items and masteries that increase healing, but a lot more stacking is involved to hit the point where Grievous Wounds would be meaningfuly negated. Which then brings us to the cycle where Grievous Wounds was implemented to counter healing, but then heal amplification items were introduced to counter Grievous Wounds, etc.

My proposition: Remove Grievous Wounds from the game and balance healers/drain tanks for a world where Grievous Wounds does not exist, or give it a Forbidden Idol/Randuin's Omen treatment. Make the effect more accessible, but lessen its effectiveness. Allow magic damage users to apply it as easily as physical damage champions, and run a balance pass across the board. There's no reason why you can't have an item similar to the moderate heal-boosting effect of Ardent Censer, but in the opposite direction of heal reduction. If QSS has taught us anything it's that having an item that will hard counter the cornerstone of a champion's reason for existence is a bad idea. Similarly, having an all-or-nothing case like Malzahar's passive on release (long immunity) can be frustrating both for players and those they play against. Ideally, we would want to get to a place where Grievous Wounds either doesn't exist, or exists as a tool to aid the drain tank/healer counter of "Burst before they can heal," not just something you buy to completely shut down that particular strength of the champion.