Grievous Wounds Encourages Binary Interaction

Troy242621·Mar 12, 2017·3 votes·893 views

TL;DR: Grievous Wounds makes balancing drain tank designs nearly impossible.

Much like invisibility versus pink wards, Grievous Wounds is an antiquated mechanic. Either people buy it and champions like become considerably less effective or they don't and they run roughshod over the enemy team because it's balanced around being cut down by 40%.

It would be better for everyone if it were removed, and life stealing mechanics were re-balanced accordingly. I would expound on this argument further, but considering the premise is already in line with Riot's professed design philosophy, I don't feel an overwhelming need; I feel as though it's fairly intuitive anyhow.

5 Comments

Warlord ScrapMar 12, 20172 votes

if there balanced around them being hit by grievous wounds doesnt that mean there balanced when hit by grievous wounds?

Troy242621Mar 12, 20171 votes

{quoted}

if there balanced around them being hit by grievous wounds doesnt that mean there balanced when hit by grievous wounds?

If it made them perfectly balanced whenever GW was applied, it means they were overbearing beforehand; of course that's not the case, it's not as clear cut as that. In any event, it doesn't feel good to have your champion's core mechanic have its efficiency slashed by 40% because someone right clicked you.

That also brings up the issue of, where's my counterplay to being right clicked and losing 40% of my healing, which my champion is designed to rely on?

KilanostMar 12, 20171 votes

I have been saying something very similar to this for over a year now. My issue is with champs like trying, yasuo, and fiora that are lifestealing faster than two or 3 people can deal them damage. Or the soraka makes it impossible to kill anyone before killing her despite the fact that she's burrier behind a line of cc spewing tanks and mages and all of their combined dps.

My biggest frustration lies in the grevious wounds items. There are two and they only make sense on a handful of champions and one of them doesn't even kick in until the enemy is below 35% health. Even then, try asking your ADC I to spend 800 gold on an executions calling even when the enemy team consists of a Swain, Warwick, yasuo, draven, and soraka. They won't at low elos. Then they build a lord Dom's instead of a mortal reminder because all they care about is big damage (because winning games is stupid?) Additionally, having at best 1.35 grevious wounds items on a 5 man team does nothing for the other lanes who are trying to itemize for their role on the team. The guy who plays a tank top lane bc no one else would play a tank is going to get pooped on by a fiora as soon as she builds a vamp scepter because she will flat out out-sustain and out trade at all points from that moment forward. Given that cleaver is the go to damage item for many tanks and bruisers given the cdr and health, building a mortal reminder on top of that doesn't make sense as it provides non of the stats tanks need and the benefit from it's pen is greatly reduced by having a cleaver already (cleaver reduction is applied before LW item bonus armor pen). AP tanks don't even have that option.

Off the bat grevious wounds from morellos should not be limited to targets below 35% health.

Executioner's calling should have multiple build paths to allow for GW items that make sense on any AD champion class/role.

Tanks need a dedicated tank GW item as none of the above would make sense for them. This is the most important one especially give riot's goal of giving tanks more utility and less damage. Give them the utility of broadly applying GW.

Or just bring back boot enchantments and make a GW enchantment...This last one would save a lot of development and balancing effort. 500 gold and your shit applies GW. Done.

Imperial PandaaMar 12, 20171 votes

My issue with the Grievous Wounds is the difference in item cost and effect.

item 3123 : 800 gold - AA add Grievous Wounds on hit. I get it doesn't offer much more in terms of stats, but it is a cheap way to deal with the before mentioned champs or even Soraka Bot.

item 3165 : 2900 Gold - Dealing magic damage to an enemy champion below 35% health inflicts Grievous Wounds icon Grievous Wounds to them for 8 seconds. So not only do you have to pay 2100 more to get the magical equivalent, you have to meet a criteria before the effects take place. I think this could be fixed but modifying the ingredients, but overloading item 3802 would cause too many problems. (I chose it because like Exe Calling, it only builds into one item.)

You're a Goofy Goober, yay!

AvienalMar 12, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Imperial Pandaa,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ud1VAdlV,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2017-03-12T03:18:29.420+0000)

My issue with the Grievous Wounds is the difference in item cost and effect.

: 800 gold - AA add Grievous Wounds on hit. I get it doesn't offer much more in terms of stats, but it is a cheap way to deal with the before mentioned champs or even Soraka Bot.

: 2900 Gold - Dealing magic damage to an enemy champion below 35% health inflicts Grievous Wounds icon Grievous Wounds to them for 8 seconds. So not only do you have to pay 2100 more to get the magical equivalent, you have to meet a criteria before the effects take place. I think this could be fixed but modifying the ingredients, but overloading would cause too many problems. (I chose it because like Exe Calling, it only builds into one item.)

You're a Goofy Goober, yay!

I would really like it if they tweak things around for more effective mid-game Grievous wound items, especially to counter hyper lifesteal builds, some major culprits to these kind of setups are:

Top lane: Tryndamere , Aatrox (even if he was kind of semi'bland, he was still scary when he had a lifesteal hyper healing build going) and other champions who may not be incredibly broken, but definitely bring annoyances in the form of DrMundo and Vladimir and even 'health whore champs' like Nautilus and Sion .

Jungle: Jax and XinZhao being just as ridiculous culprits at being able to recover easily over half their health in a trade against plenty of 'enemy champions that are 'normally' picked' and they still got enough of a innate kit to just utterly solo push thru towers, solo take dragons super early and not run into much issues on jungling too.

Bot: Pretty much any ADC in general because Draven , MissFortune love that scum lifesteal lethality building, with one of the few champions i only see atm who only has lifesteal hyper heal building to work for her is Tristana and the over'reliance on her Q's attack speed roid with no mana cost to let her bulldoze thru opponents and use a item 3072 shield to nullify her squishie'ness and some issues her kit can bring outside of being a wreckless initiator once she has enough of her kit to effectively devastate any opponent in a 1vs1. Outside of that, even with 40% CDR her abilities have pretty long cooldowns even compared to plenty of other ADCs from what i recall seeing.

Seriously: 20~~16 on Q 22~~14 on W 16~~14 on E With only R being at 100~~70 feeling like the only one that is somewhat low but even then it does not serve much purpose.

Lets not even count how MF has 12 on W but since its a passive that lets her also gain a huge move speed of +25 flat after 5 seconds and +60~~100 more move after 10 second mark, plus the active grants her 40~~100% attack speed for 4 seconds AND her passive can reduce the CD on strut.

So basically MF can proc a 40%~100% attack speed roid for 4 seconds every 12 seconds. While Tristana can proc a 30%~~110% attack speed roid every 20~~16 seconds, even if they gave the duration a bump to 7 seconds...

Does anyone seriously see the problematic logic here?

[slayer-jinx-unamused]