Grievous Grievances

There is already a rather recent post that raises some very good points on this topic, but I thought that I would bring my two cents to the table, especially as there is an upcoming rework regarding defensive champions and/or stats.

Let me start out by saying that I actually believe that Grievous Wounds does actually have a valuable place in the game: to deal with how overbearing some champions' sustain can be.

A few of the main offenders that come to mind when a team curses their mid-laner for not taking ignite.

+ + Yet we also forget. Grievous Wounds also has its uses against people with remarkable sustain from outside sources.

For years, I have seen time and again, an attitude along the lines of "it doesn't feel good to have all that effort you put into bursting down someone's healthbar, negated". Yet, in most circumstances it is incredibly telegraphed and to be expected, from the pick alone, in a vacuum, without items. Never mind with items. In most instances, huge amounts of sustain is built into a champion's kit, and a lot of the time, champions with heavy sustain are picked, in part, for their innate, heavy sustain.

You're not too surprised when Vladimir heals for a heck of a lot because he wasn't burst down before he got off his Crimson Rush-empowered Transfusion, or his Hemoplague expired. You're not too surprised when Dr. Mundo careens away on low HP with Sadism active, only to come back a few seconds later well above half health. You're a little surprised that Draven is healing so goddamned much, but then you realise he's 21/3 and is skewing your data.

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A point I see rarely raised when Grievous Wounds is discussed, is: it's unpleasant when you pick someone who is meant to have survivability mainly through sustain, only for that to fold in on itself once you were afflicted with Grievous Wounds. Yes, it's very, very possible to feel absolutely helpless when you just can't seem to make any damage stick, which in the past was solved by a team making a concentrated effort to fully burst down someone with massive sustain. You can't afford to let all that damage go to waste.

This led to an expression of skill, from the player playing the sustain champion. They had to be able to soak up enough damage that they could safely heal off without dying, and be able to get out, to heal up, and come back in for round two. Or three. Teamfights used to actually last a measurable length of time.

That can't happen anywhere near as much as it used to, now. (And not entirely just because of high damage.)

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Before, Grievous Wounds really only was obtainable from two viable choices, of three:

Morellonomicon: Gated, to be a reward, almost, for managing to overcome sustain enough to finish the job comparatively easily. Ignite: Instant, but gated by a (comparatively) long, long downtime. Executioner's Calling: Easily applied, just an auto-attack. But, let's be real. Nobody really remembered, or bothered, to buy this. So much so, it was gone for almost a full year.

That changed. With the introduction of a new item (and the re-introduction of one removed).

The re-introduction of the Executioner's Calling. The creation of the Mortal Reminder.

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There was also a subtle change. But a very, very noteworthy one. Grievous Wounds now is applied on physical damage from these items. Not from an auto-attack hitting. The Grievous Wounds received from someone wielding the Executioner's Calling duration was also doubled from 1.5 seconds to 3 seconds. The Mortal Reminder inflicted it for five.

Yes, the healing was reduced by less, and initially only affected self-healing, but that changed to affect all healing.

Thanks, Obana(na).

It was now very, very easy, to have a one-hundred percent uptime on Grievous Wounds. Not at the cost of a summoner spell, or investing enough resources to put them on a worrying amount of HP. You just needed to be hit, once, by the right person. This is very easily achieved, especially when you consider who the item is mainly targeting. Marksmen. Ranged auto-attackers.

You can probably understand my confusion when this happened. Four of them. Four Mortal Reminders. And a Morellonomicon. On the enemy team. In one game.

Despite having become pretty ridiculous, the enemy team didn't have to invest much time or effort into quite heavily crippling my efficacy. (This is in part due to them ignoring 162 points of armour, approximately 3.2k gold. I, admittedly, should have invested more in raw HP. But that is not the point I wish to discuss.)

If our Aatrox, or I, fought with any of them, even the support, our ability to sustain would have been crippled, and it would have been far more risky to fight anyone in case a second person, or more, showed up. Almost any damage from four of their members would have inflicted, or refreshed, the five-second debuff. Two of our team were almost always on the back foot because of it.

While it was only a single match, it made me realise just how potent the Mortal Reminder's passive was.

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800g for a pretty guaranteed, constant, 40% healing reduction is a steal. For the low, low price of harassing every couple of seconds. This window gets two-thirds longer after you build it into an item that's pretty decent in its own right. It's not unreasonable to hit someone once every five seconds in a fight.

A problem that Riot have stated before, is that they hate binary gameplay.

We've seen quite a few champions who have been lambasted for their all-or-nothing gameplay before.

And that's what's wrong with Grievous Wounds. You're screwed by it, or you're not. There used to be a ramp-up time (getting them to 35% HP for Morellonomicon to kick in), or a window where it wasn't available to them (Ignite was on cooldown).

One of a few things can be done with Grievous Wounds (aimed mostly, but not entirely, towards the Executioner's Calling/Mortal Reminder):

• Reduce the up-time on Grievous Wounds from the Executioner's Calling/Mortal Reminder.
• Make Grievous Wounds only apply as an on-hit effect from the Executioner's Calling/Mortal Reminder.
• Reduce the efficiency of the flat healing reduction.

Or, preferably:

• Change the mechanic to apply stacking levels of healing reduction, instead of a flat percentage. (It's Grievous Wounds, after all. Not Grievous Wound.)

After thinking on it for a little time, I have put together a little spreadsheet with some example numbers and paradigms.

I believe that the final method would be arguably more fair towards the sustain champion, while not eclipsing its usability for the player who purchased it. (Let's face it. You forgot that Varus applies it using Hail of Arrows, and that Katarina's Death Lotus also applies it.) Because of its ramp-up time, it would eventually reach almost the same, if not better, reduction in healing. This would reward consistent aggression from the players wielding it, yet at the same time rewarding the sustain champions with renewed healing abilities if they are able to play around it enough to allow it to expire. (Think of it as another minigame. We don't have enough of those yet.)

With Riot taking a look at defensive ability, along with the upcoming Tank Class update, I hope that they realise that there's more to "tankiness" than raw resistances, or mitigation. Oftentimes, sustain is immediately more visible and appreciable than resistances.

It's hard to see just how much a champion's resistances affect your incoming damage from moment to moment. But it's very easy to see that they're going to be a bit more difficult to take down than you may have thought, if their health bar keeps ticking up.

I really don't want them to leave that by the wayside.