More Barrier Ideas

tl;dr Give barrier the secondary ability of blocking all incoming debuffs while it is out. (not hard cc)

Since the new heal came out almost, nobody is using barrier, this is mostly due to the secondary movespeed that heal was given, the massive utility plus similar shielding numbers (115-455 for barrier and 95-475 for heal) mean that nobody is losing anything by switching over.

In the way that Heal counters Ignite by removing the debuff, I thought it would be cool if barrier could be given something so that it has interaction with its counterpart, exhaust. The reason i say that exhaust is the counterpart to barrier is that mainly adc's and assassins take barrier and exhaust goes hand in hand with trying to shut them down.

My idea for that interaction between barrier and exhaust is for barrier to block incoming debuffs while the shield is active. If the sheild is broken by damage or the debuff is applied before the shield goes up then it will not cleanse it. This means that if someone were to predict and time their barrier perfectly with a casting of exhaust their barrier would block the exhaust allowing them to continue being an assassin. This type of out-play requires mind games and skill and is exactly the type of thing that makes league of legends feel rewarding to skilled players.

How it would interact with other spells?

Hard cc like stuns or immobilizes would obviously still be applied, the only debuffs that it should block are slows to movespeed or attack speed, reductions to attack damage. It should not block channeled abilities or any debuffs that only cause damage like poison or ignite.

Just like how heal eclipsed barrier wouldnt this change make barrier better than cleanse?

No, cleanse is mostly sought after for stun removal or to allow someone to escape from chain-cc. This change to barrier would not allow you to escape from already applied cc, it only adds to the spirit of barrier blocking that 1 spell you dont want to get hit by. This change would just allow barrier to let you not get hit by the slow or the damage.

Thank you for reading, I would like to hear what someone who knows more about game balance thinks. Cheers :D