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Soraka and Grievous Wounds

NeroUS·2/20/2014, 2:03:59 AM·2 votes·777 views

I would like to talk about the upcoming soraka rework in this post and also about the different item choices available to champions in the game. There are a number of posts where Morello has said that he is uncomfortable with a dedicated healer champion because healing discourages poking and encourages all-ins.

Why doesn't Riot reintroduce grievous wounds as a central element of gameplay?

Background: Some people might have forgotten what grievous wounds does. It reduces healing from all sources, including lifesteal and spellvamp, by 50%. It is available from several sources.

  • Ignite
  • Morellonomicon
  • Executioner's Calling
  • Varus, Trist, MF, Kat, and Fizz

If Riot boosted the availability of grievous wounds, by buffing executioner's calling, it could make Soraka's job much more difficult and enable players to poke with the on-hit effect of reducing healing. If the duration was sufficiently short (i.e. 1 or 2 seconds), there could be a lot of play around Soraka looking for opportunities to heal with the threat of being blocked by Grievous Wounds.

Note: This could also begin to help Riot open up ADC itemization, if Executioner's calling was given a 3rd tier, which had Crit and Grievous wounds. It could provide an item for hypercarries like Tristana and Kog'Maw, who could use it to outscale the Lucian's of the world.

I think it could help provide a solution to a number of problems.

5 Comments

Knight Devout2/20/2014, 3:08:07 PM3 votes

it was mentioned in several red posts that Riot is unhappy with Grievous Wounds at the moment because it creates binary scenarios where on of the 2 parties feel miserable , but doesn't offer significant interaction and counterplay. If you play with a Swain against a champion with grievous wounds you feel like you are a useless piece of junk on the rift, if you play mundo and no one in the enemy has ignite you are immortal.

Tulare2/20/2014, 6:23:43 PM1 votes

The current implementation of grievous wounds is always a 50% reduction in health regen. I think they could open up the design space by making that variable in some instances. Ignite could always be 50% reduction but Executioner's Calling could scale with AD or only apply grievous wounds on critical hits, Morellonomicon could scale with the enemy's percent of health missing (maxing out at a 50% reduction when the enemy is at 40% health).

Hirok02/20/2014, 11:39:43 PM1 votes

If you poke well, you should be able to out-poke her heals, end of story. Moreover, she cant heal everyone at once all the time. If they have to run to heal, you push on them slightly. Don't pick on the horn girl. Give grievous wounds an altered effect. Maybe it can apply a bleed or reduce the target's damage output, as if they were mortally wounded. But not flat out make it available so much that it may as well not have ever been implemented at all.

Marthian2/21/2014, 6:27:16 AM1 votes

making grievous wounds more available doesn't just affect Soraka. It affects every other support that heals, and literally every ADC.

And ADCs are in a somewhat bad position as it is, being blown up by unkillable bruisers or little-no counterplay assassins.

Also Trist has a Grievous Wounds in her kit already.