@Meddler: A Support who can give an ally (and self) lifesteal

darkdill·May 15, 2016·2 votes·521 views

This is something I've been thinking about for a bit, but would like to know if it's broken or not.

The name of this skill is a placeholder.

#Order of Cruelty Grants you and target allied Champion bonus attack speed and lifesteal for a limited time.

Think a Nunu Blood Boil, but it gives LS instead of MS. Having this on an "evil Support" would be pretty cool, IMO, but I'd like to know if it'd be impossible to balance.

(This is not a full concept yet; I'm simply asking Meddler or any other Rioter whether or not this lifesteal buff would be fair game.)

8 Comments

Elite4RunnerMay 15, 20161 votes

I personally don't see why this couldn't be done, but life steal is a pretty high value stat that a lot of ADCs end up getting for themselves anyways. Most likely you would see some very low numbers, like 1-5% scaling up to maybe 10% at 5 ranks. Any higher than this and this ability's cooldown would probably need to be made so high it would stop being usable. The reason I say this is because if your ADC no longer needs to spend their own gold on lifesteal then they can focus on other combat stats like attack damage, attack speed, armor penetration, critical strike chance. If the lifesteal % you grant them is too high, or you are able to grant it too often, you would start to break into the 'broken' category.

darkdillMay 15, 20161 votes

High cooldown would definitely be a gate for this. As for the amount of lifesteal given, 10% at level 5 would be too low. 15% at level 5 would be more reasonable. Another way to gate this could be giving it a low duration, so enemies could disengage from you if they see the buff on you, wait until it expires, then re-engage.

Also, remember that lifesteal is useless if you can't attack (i.e. stunned, blinded, etc).

Elite4RunnerMay 15, 20161 votes

This gave me a thought though, what if you had an ability as a support that essentially gave you lifesteal that you shared with or gave directly to your ADC?

This would let you get away with having much higher numbers, lower cooldwon, and longer duration of the buff since you wouldn't have the high combat stats that your ADC would.

DehitayMay 15, 20161 votes

Isn't this what the old Zeke's Herald did?

darkdillMay 15, 20161 votes

That was Zeke's Harbinger, and it was an aura that gave 10% lifesteal to all nearby allied Champions. This effect would only work one-at-a-time.

The issue with Zeke's Harbinger was that Thornmail hard-countered it, and in many scenarios it was sub-optimal because aura items have to be weak by nature.