Let's talk Grievous Wounds!

RiotZenonTheStoic·Apr 8, 2014·13 votes·15,564 views

There are two wonderful threads out there where the inimitable FeralPony talks itemization, and in the older one of the two he quickly touches on Grievous Wounds (GW) and calls me out by name. As well he should! I am working on Warwick's relaunch and part of that is "how do we deal with GW on a tank that derives his tankiness from self-heal?" As you may expect, I have some thoughts.

I posted a long and ranty post on that old thread and then realized that no one was going to look at a week old thread, so instead I'm reposting my original answer as the first post in this thread.

My argument is this: I don't think our game needs GW. The things GW "fixes" can be fixed on their own. I may be wrong--hell, I expect I'm wrong since that's where disagreeing with FeralPony usually gets me, but let's have a conversation! I'll repost my rant and then open the floor for all of you: how do you feel about GW? How do you feel about the ITEMS that currently provide GW? (And let's not forget the skills, such as there are--Tristana E, Varus W, Fizz W, Miss Fortune W and Katarina R) Is it okay that I can counterpick your Volibear/Swain with a Tristana?

65 Comments

RiotZenonTheStoicApr 8, 20148 votes

Yup, that thought indeed came out of the Warwick discussion. Basically, IMO there's roughly three use cases in which people might theoretically be considering grievous wounds (and I'm not sold that 3) is actually a thing)

High burst sustain self-heal champions. This is the likes of Mundo, Swain, Warwick, Volibear etc. There is usually a single, expensive (i.e. non-spammable) event where you want to apply GW: Mundo/Swain using ult, Warwick jumping in with ult and trying to spam Qs after (something he can't do constantly as Q is STUPID expensive on live), Volibear's passive proccing etc. I believe the reason people want GW in these situations is because the effects themselves may either be overtuned or feel like there's no counterplay once the champion gets ahead. Introducing a special item to "fix" this feels like a design crutch to me. It's taking away those champions' high moments.
Strong in-combat sustain healing. I don't know if this really is a thing anymore, but imagine having a support soraka, a top-lane nidalee and a mid kayle on the enemy team, and something like a jungle Xin who jumps into your team and starts being a man. In those cases it feels like you require GW to counter the enemy's setup, because the usual counterplay to Xin jumping into your team (burst him down) isn't available. Again, I don't think GW is the answer here. The problem is that there are strong offensive champions who get a big heal for free by itemizing in the most aggressive way possible (Nid, Kayle). As for support healing, whenever we push our supports away from in-combat healing, we make out-of-combat sustain ("top up" healing in between interactions) the stronger choice, and I think we generally find that to be the less healthy pattern (hence Soraka's armor buff on her heal, Taric's big CD chunk on basic attacks, Nami's bounce heal/hurt spell--all of these mechanics are meant to push the optimal use case of the spell to in combat rather than out of combat. I don't think they work, but the intention is there.)

IMO, if the enemy wants to build a team that enables a strong deep diver to live much longer than normally, they should be paying for it in some other way. If there is a legit setup with such tradeoffs that manages to get to the point where Xin can dive and wreak havoc, cool! Your entire enemy team coordinated to do a cool thing, they should get rewarded for it. I don't think it's fair to offset coordination through the pick phase, the laning phase and inside teamfights by simply buying one item and saying "hah! You're screwed now!"

End game ADC lifesteal sustain. So a lot of designers throw this one around as the reason for GW, but call me doubtful. End game ADCs, no matter what reddit and the forums say, are still absolutely insane in our game. There is no role that scales anywhere near as massively as dudes who right click you. They have access to more multiplicative stats than any other role (AD, AS, crit chance, crit dmg, procs, armor penetration) combined with the single most powerful innate tool in our game (range) and some of the sweetest deals in terms of itemization. The theory here is that if they mix in lifesteal in their build (which they can do easily enough; both BT and BotRK are great items even WITHOUT the LS on them) they can feel unkillable and as such, GW should give you a window to try and solo kill an ADC in the late game. I cannot argue with this intellectually; it makes perfect sense.

The problem is: I've never in my 1000+ games of League actually seen anyone use GW in such a way. I've never seen it on a stream, never seen it in a competitive game, I've not seen it in Silver II ranked, I've not seen it in normals--I'd love to be proven wrong here, but I don't think it's a thing!

So to back off and reassess the problem space at hand: sustain is a thing in our game, and in many cases it's totally fine to have. However, there's a handful of cases where sustain can feel so overwhelming that players want a "NOPE" button to turn off the enemy's sustain. That NOPE button should be GW.

RiotXelnathApr 8, 201413 votes

Since we're making this a public discussion, let's get to it.

I agree that the super power abilities are reduced slightly by the existence of grievous wounds.
I agree that it is pretty much only the existence of ignite's heal debuff that keeps Mundo in check
I agree its possible to reduce the effectiveness of those abilites

However, it is the worst-case stacking of these abilities that is the most frustration game experience in league. It's "rough" when an enemy champion gets a clutch level-up, giving them the 50 hp they need to survive a close fight. Warwicks, Mundos and Swains are frustrating to fight when they are ahead. It's frustrating, tiring and throws off your sense of judgment.

Note I did NOT include endgame ADCs in this list

While those fatty, tanky champs are highly frustrating, ADCs remain fragile. Effectively bursting one down is extremely do-able when they are caught out of position, nuked by mages, etc.

Thus, the nature of ADCs - finish me off completely, or I top off - but remain incredibly fragile is an appropriate archetype to have such sustain/healing levels.

Aatrox - a recent drain tank-type is incredibly fragile to make up for this mistake, along with sacrificing his passive to have a "1-minutes every X minutes" to cope with that fragility.

Drain Tanks are frustrating and due to the lack of interplay - Healing CANNOT be prevented, it mandates the existence of the ignite healing reduction and the existence of an item that negates it pre-emptively, though the existing item sucks. item 3123

tl;dr - The game would be healthier without drain tanks. Heals should be powerful, gated and rare, extending a fight by a flat duration - not an infinite one.

MinishmasterApr 8, 20149 votes

I disagree with you here. I think that drain tanks are actually a good thing for the game. Look at the situation right now, especially in high level games. The average competitive team comp can easily burst for amazing damage, and tend to have great AoE damage output, but without the marksman, they other four champions would be lucky to pull out 700 raw dps on a single target. Drain tanks are around to counter team comps like that. Separate the marksmen from the average competative team from the team, and then throw something like a Locket/FoN/Visage Udyr right in the middle of the remaining four. Not only is he able to survive their burst, but he is easily able to outlast their damage output afterword.

Shield/regen-focused tanks are around to force teams to think about having DPS on their teams for more than just 'that guy that pushes the towers'. Right now, there aren't really any options that support these regen tanks, so there is no risk attached to low dps picks, which is why we see so much focus on assassin mids, assassin-esque junglers, and even assassin-esque supports. Ever since the removal of FoN, which was essentially THE regen-tank item, at the end of S2, we've never seen assassin mids fall off of the FOTM, and the exact reason why is because without a champion that requires high DPS to be killed, DPS is simply not a valuable stat.

ThaddeusMikeApr 8, 20142 votes

1 champion in isolation should never counter 4 other champions in a group unless the 1 champion is massively ahead.

Linna ExcelApr 8, 20141 votes

Xelnath, I think this is pretty much it. You need to be able to counterplay the drain tanks as they are. Until all of them are reworked into not being drain tanks, you need an itemization option to keep them in check.

However, I think drain tanking should be in the game, but probably not to the extent it is. I like things like Spell Vamp and Life Steal and Ahri's passive. But I also think you should be a little more fragile because of it. You should have to give up other tank in order to get drain tank.

The problem with the champs you listed is they can both be tanky and have good draining abilities.

SalganosApr 9, 20142 votes

It's worth noting that while ranged ADCs certainly can't effectively drain tank due to fragility, a trend arises in ARAM where certain melee ADCs, mostly Fiora, can become unstoppable just by having a Ravenous Hydra, even if they started out quite behind. This might be related to her (current) Ult giving her the AOE lifesteal while she's invulnerable, but it's pretty much insane when it gets going. Granted, ARAM is ARAM, but it also comes with built-in healing reduction (which seems to do nothing). Akali does essentially the same thing, as can Swain, but my main point is that lifesteal can produce this drain-tank effect on melee champions. (It's very annoying.)

Edit: I haven't seen Aatrox pull this off much outside of SR laning, however.

Nilous7Apr 9, 20142 votes

I might be too late to the party on this topic but, I'd like to try to offer my own opinion:

I feel some efforts that could be done to improve Grievous wounds is to make it less of an ALL or NOTHING kind of effect. It should be able to stack in intensity from different sources, so a single grievous wounds isn't going to completely undo someone focused on draining, but will hamper it. As well, I feel the amount on an ADC should be looked at for how easy it is for an adc to run off into the jungle, hit one camp and come back at full health. Life steal should only be applied off the damage the target suffers, not the damage dealt. Thus an ADC who hits for 300 damage on a minion with 50 health left, should only heal off that 50 health.

StealthinessApr 9, 20141 votes

I agree that it is pretty much only the existence of ignite's heal debuff that keeps Mundo in check

I play a lot of Mundo. I agree that there should be a way to counter him when he is ahead. However, I dislike how ignite and healing reduction abilities, the main counters used, are chosen during champion select. If Mundo is fed, enemies should be able to reduce his power, maybe through some form of grievous wounds. If Mundo is behind, it's annoying that so much of his power is still lost to choices that were made before the game started.

If more items are added that counter tanks in general, then tanks can be strong in a typical game without becoming unkillable when ahead. I see that as the best option.

ILoveTiramisuApr 10, 20141 votes

@Xelnath and @ZenonTheStoic, I agree with you, but I think an item like item 3123 would GW an enemy for at least 4s. Because when he goes under turret, you cannot touch him.

Limakoko808Apr 8, 20142 votes

Honestly i would have to agree that GW isnt all that needed. The only time we really see it is with ignite, and innate GW on abilities, and those abilities are rarely used solely for the GW.

The reason why GW feels like a must in the first situation is because of how strong these champions heals are, and Spirit visage's passive.

And for combat healing vs out of combat healing, yes there are much better benefits to healing in combat, but if you really think about it, you lose nothing if you heal out of combat(besides maybe nami w).

And GW affecting making late game adcs killable is laughable at best. Adc will always be the best scaling champions in the game, but they always hold the same difficulty and paper thin durability. An adc cant just face roll and get a pentakill late game. In fact with the amount off cc and burst damage any given team will have, if the adc player messes up even a tiny bit he is dead. Its so nerve racking playing adc at times because you know how easy any enemy can kill you. I hold in my farts in a teamfight as adc, thats how serious it is.

However taking away grievous wound would necessitate changes to champions like mundo and swain. Obviouly their healing would have to be nerfed, but to a level where it still feels important. Perhaps changing some healing effects to kind of like irelias passive? More enemies=more healing. Or we could reserve that for spirit visages passive?

Idk im not a game designer. But you are right, GW isnt necessary for the game, however removing it would need significant balance changes. So while it isnt needed, removing it isnt needed either. I feel there are different areas that require more attention than GW but if you can find a good solution many of us would support it.

XzandrateApr 8, 20142 votes

I think that with the current lifesteal numbers, GW is very much needed. Like others have said, unless we are looking at a LS change as well, GW should stay.

Here's what I see as the major issues with GW as it stands right now. GW is frontloaded to the early game, which makes it imbalanced early, but generally lacking when we need it late game, primarily because of poor itemization.

So I think GW needs 2 major points.

It needs to scale. Either in duration or effectiveness. The quick fix would be a duration scaling based on level, 2/3.5/5s at 5/10/15 for example. I'd love to see a more complex mechanic that increases the effectiveness based upon the strength of the heal, but I think it would be too difficult to determine the strength of a flat heal unless you looked at the % of health, which then punishes the squishier characters. Maybe make it more effective versus self heals?
It needs to be a late game team fight ability in effectiveness and itemization. Early/mid game laning is not when you want to completely shut down healing with GW, where we commonly see it now. Whereas when you start making it to the mid/late game teamfights, the current items don't have enough growth or stats to make them effective all around items, most players don't see the trade being worthwhile to counter a single champ.

I'm forced to wonder, is GW a stacking % like slow currently? Could we make it more like slows, more ubiquitous ability across a higher number of items/abilities that provided smaller percentages that could be stacked more effectively?

Likely, the biggest take away that will come from this discussion is the general displeasure with the current LifeSteal mechanic over GW. As has been echoed already, ADCs can too easily completely reset after a close fight off only a few creeps; which means it is required to 100-0 an ADC, whereas you can leave any other role to run through a jungle and clean up afterwards.

HigeRApr 8, 20142 votes

I think the most important thing to have in consideration is itemization... I mean there's only 2 items with grievous wounds and one of them has crit chance??? why? I think you did this for duels between adcs but honestly the best way to counter LS is having LS yourself :S

Applying grievous wounds is something the support or the tank should do, in order to neutralize the enemy healing there SHOULD be a team effort, not just clicking a skill if you've got it.

For example: Kat, yeah she can apply it by herself, but in order to do so she must sit at the verge of danger. Trist's is ok since she's single target so you gotta make a decision (Do I target mundo or their adc?). Varus is restricted to an area. Fizz is melee. Miss fortune is... wrong she can apply it in quick succession (AS steroid) from a safe point, I'd shift that around in her kit to her Q since you wanna hit the most 2 important targets but in order to do so you must break your head with geometry.

Now there's something that could work as GW, and that's DoTs, a strong enough DoT can deter healing enough as to make it not count or at least not count as much... there are GW paired with DoTs already in the game, Trist's and Fizz', these GW are more effective since it doesn't just cut healing, but hurts you at the same time, this is something Exec calling tries to achieve but fails by sheer numbers. That being said an item that could be considered "defensive" GW is thornmail, it won't negate healing, but it neutralizes it a bit.

I think drain tanks are healthy for the game since it's not a conceived thing but something that was born out of pure mechanics and logic, therefore the counter to that is just more logic around mechanics.

What I'd like to see though is more champions with GW, a support, a tank, a ranged mage, a jungler, a fighter... as it is right now only melee mages and adc has got them and building a team to counter uber healing is almost impossible (yes, uber healing is a thing) of course, not just point and click GW but intrincate ways of applying it (Soraka's Q with morello's is pretty stupid...) and since GW seems to be such a good valuable stat, items with it need to have low offensive/defensive stats, so I'd opt out for removing them and adding GW to new champs plus adding scaling effects on the skills that already have GW, for example:

Explosive shot:

Active: Trist fires a bullet that applies grievous wounds that reduces healing by 10/20/30/40/50%

Miss fortune on the other hand would need less scaling, never hitting 50% reduced healing since she can apply it more effectively.

NeofederalistApr 8, 20144 votes

Zenon, you were pretty comprehensive in your list for GW situations. I think you're just missing the forest for the trees. You can sort of handwave away the problem when you break it down into the individual situations, but given that three distinct situations exist adds value in and of itself, IMO.

I also disagree on point 3 to an extent. Back when item 3123 wasn't terrible in S2 or whenever, I'd buy it on a lot of top lane champions, Gangplank in particular. Now, I didn't buy it specifically to counter the ADC late game, I bought it early game to compete in lane, knowing that the stat still would benefit me once I got to late game. That's a subtle distinction. When the item had early game value as a laning component, but still gave value late game, it made up for it's general weak stats. With GW items, it's the same thing as if you're itemizing for anything. If the only magic damage on their team is Vlad, I'm probably not rushing a spirit visage as Renekton. I'll just get blown up by their ADC. I agree that ADCs are still extremely powerful, and the 'threat' of going up against an ADC late game is/should always be a factor, even when buying early items.

I mentioned this in one of the FeralPony threads: GW isn't the problem. summoner 14 is.

If Grievous Wounds were gated like any other reactive aspect in our game, through expending gold and an item slot, or by choosing a specific champion, GW would be an interesting decision. As it is, any champion can get GW essentially for free with an otherwise useful early-game combat summoner.

I would love GW to be limited to items like item 3165 , item 3123 , and certain champions (though I wish there were more champion options). As it stands, GW is bad and lacking counterplay because every team will always have 1/2 sources of GW regardless of champion choices or in-game decisions.

Joren UniekApr 8, 20142 votes

I agree with what Xelnath remarks about ADC sustain: It is not a problem because they're burstable.

In-combat sustain like Mundo/Swain etc. is generally overtuned to the point that you must have a source of GW (usually Ignite) to be able to reliably play against these champions. It should be doable to nerf these abilities and GW at the same time.

Out-of-combat sustain (Nidalee, Kayle, etc) is in my experience currently the worst kind of sustain, since they completely invalidate your poke unless your poke is extremely bursty or extremely frequent, and there is no way to actually consistently apply GW on them to counter this. I feel these abilities need to be nerfed regardless of the existence of GW.

(Because they scale with offensive stats, Nidalee/Kayle/Soraka mid also have high in-combat burst heals, but they fall into the first camp of overtuned but counterable by GW.)

So personally I can't really see why GW needs to exist except as a way to not have to balance Mundo properly. Using GW never feels satisfying by itself, even though the healing reduction is objectively really strong and (against Mundo & co.) necessary.

hashinshinApr 8, 20145 votes

So I was with you until the end and uhm...

In your 1000+ games of League, all your watching of streams, all your watching in competitive games, your ranked, your normals...

You've never seen a top laner ignite an ADC when they start to fight to deny the lifesteal? I think you've made a critical error in what you see here.

Linna ExcelApr 8, 20141 votes

The problem is: I've never in my 1000+ games of League actually seen anyone use GW in such a way. I've never seen it on a stream, never seen it in a competitive game, I've not seen it in Silver II ranked, I've not seen it in normals--I'd love to be proven wrong here, but I don't think it's a thing!

Assassins and burst champs don't need it to kill the ADC. Most fighters can kill the ADC anyways. Tanky CC champs don't have any items for it. Supports don't scale will enough to go toe to toe with an ADC and/or don't have the money.

The only people who'd need it are non-burst mages and another ADC. As I posted above, the only items for either group have a lot of issues.

Newbert NewmanApr 8, 20141 votes

Zenon, MF can actually duel adcs better than most because of her GW active. It's part of her power budget and is part of why she's good. Any thoughts on this from you, or maybe @RicklessAbandon's take on how MF would be affected by a GW change?

HellioningApr 8, 20144 votes

In my opinion, remove GW entirely and rework or rebalance all the champs who relied on it to not be amazing. I almost never see someone use an ability that causes GW for the GW effect, it's just something that happens when they want to go in. As a caster support main, I almost always buy a item 3165 entirely because late game ADC lifesteal is strong enough that it's a good idea to lower that, even with the conditional GW effect. item 3123 is a badly itemized item; the only class that cares about crit, ADCs, are also some of the most selfish in the game, because they only get their supreme damage potential by building the 'correct' path every game. This means the only ones who MIGHT get it are non-AP champions who are fine with giving up a bit of power for team utility, which means, like Thresh or Leona .

I'd also like to express my opinion on something that Xelnath said about Drain Tanks in this thread. I like drain tanks. The most fun I've had top lane was me as Irelia fighting a Warwick and attempting getting into a good 30 second long duel in which we attempting to out lifesteal each other. It may have been stupid and not at all mechanically difficult (our strategies were 'PRESS BUTTONS WHEN THEY ARE OFF COOLDOWN) but damn if it wasn't tense as all hell. I'm fine with in combat sustain as long as it's a strength that has associated weakness; maybe in exchange for their ability to regen up, they're a bit less durable than standard tanks, or they do less damage, or something.

Also lifesteal is terrible, lifesteal itemization is way too good, and lifesteal is way too cheap, so please do something about poke supports, because I like them.

JingerbeardmanApr 8, 20144 votes

I personally feel that Grievous Wounds should be broken into two categories, so to speak, for this discussion. Zenon already eluded to this in that you have ignite and items that apply GW and then there are champion abilities that apply GW.

Tristana in particular comes to my mind. She is the one Marksman/ADC that does not have a regular "poke" skill. Because of that I feel grievous wounds is alright on her E as it makes the damage impact-full and not simply washed away with sustain. I also feel that it is an interesting element to have on Varus's E as well since it is truly temporary and in a fixed location giving it strategic value. Miss fortunes W on the other hand is not the same, it has no real strategic value because it is tacked onto her auto attacks which means it just gets reapplied over and over again. The counter argument is that this only occurs by activating her W and for a limited time. While this may be true, when it is on she is able to apply it to multiple targets. In my mind this defeats the purpose of it being there. The same can be said for Fizz and his W. As for Katarinas R I could take it or leave it.

If there was a way to add limitations to drain tanks I do feel that GW on ignite and on items would no longer be necessary. I would still keep it on champion specific skills as it adds additional flavor to the game and increases strategy. Except when it is simply being applied by auto attacks by activating an ability.

PS: thanks for calling my threads wonderful xD

RiotZenonTheStoicApr 8, 20147 votes

That's a very interesting point you raise about Tristana there. I think we're looking at the problem from the wrong side again. The problem here isn't so much that Tristana has no poke (and I'd argue that passive procs from E can somewhat fill that role, but that's a different conversation), but it's that everyone in bot lane goes hard into LS and as such no poke really sticks unless you can keep applying it over and over.

To say "here is a skill that stops you from healing up after an engagement" is dangerous, because that skill necessarily needs to be long duration (and Tristana is already at the longer end of what I feel we can do). We do hate on sustain heal a lot, but I'm somewhat in Xypherous's camp of "heal is a viable fantasy we should find a way to support". If there was a healthy heal champ, it wouldn't be pickable against a Tristana with an E that effectively functions like that, and one of the design pillars of League of Legends is that no game is ever decided in champion select (what you do with your champ, even in a disadvantageous lane matchup, should always matter).

So here's how I'm going about adding gating to WW as a drain tank:

De-coupling of offensive and defensive branches. If you invest into more healing, you do less damage. If you buy offensive items, you heal less. Current WW can theoretically build a chunk of AP and get both offensive and defensive advantages. If my WW opts into lifesteal, that means he opts OUT OF damage. It's true tank itemization.
Add gameplay to the drain. Most drain tanks run into the problem that they're very "stat checky" -- do I have more of the stat I need to succeed than you or not? This is where triple BT Master Yi or massive spell vamp Akali come in. Aside from locking away offensive itemization from drainy WW, I also moved more than half of his drain budget into the stack gameplay. TLDR is WW needs to build stacks by attacking things to access his full healing power. These stacks fall off quickly if you kite him / CC him at all.
I curb excessive in-lane sustain (immovable object type of problem) by halving healing against minions.

Do you think those approaches would go some way to alleviating your concerns?

ChaosThiefApr 8, 20142 votes

I was thinking of a different approach to the WW problem. He builds AP to do massive heal and damage, but if you can't lock him down he wreaks havoc.

Is there some way where WW buys AD that adds damage to his bite, but he builds something else for the heal, like AP or health? In addition, have a max heal if you don't have the damage for it? This would cause WW to have to build multiple items instead of a "1 type for all" character.

Also, the heal should be reasonably weak if you don't have the right balance between the heal and damage. Thoughts?

GW seems nice, but the only item I get for it is nomicon, and sometimes not even, due to more AP.

Joren UniekApr 8, 20142 votes

I think your direction is great, but I wonder what drain tanking is going to be 'for' if your long-term invulnerability doesn't let you deal damage.

Unless you have team utility of course, in the form of buffs or CC, you're just going to be ignored if you're an unkillable drain tank that does no damage.

So then drain tank itemization becomes an exercise in getting the mathematically optimal balance of damage and healing, and with that itemization you either reach the stage of 'I am invulnerable and will kill everyone' and are a toxic design, or you don't and will never be picked.

Or at least that's what I would be knee-jerk worried about. Maybe you can invoke some smart design magic and get around this.

Linna ExcelApr 8, 20141 votes

To say "here is a skill that stops you from healing up after an engagement" is dangerous, because that skill necessarily needs to be long duration (and Tristana is already at the longer end of what I feel we can do). We do hate on sustain heal a lot, but I'm somewhat in Xypherous's camp of "heal is a viable fantasy we should find a way to support". If there was a healthy heal champ, it wouldn't be pickable against a Tristana with an E that effectively functions like that, and one of the design pillars of League of Legends is that no game is ever decided in champion select (what you do with your champ, even in a disadvantageous lane matchup, should always matter).

Umm, you'd never intentionally pick a soraka support going into a tristana lane. You'd only do that because you need to silence a channeled ult in a team fight.

I've played that lane before and it's unpleasant as soraka because you basically can't sustain your ADC in a fight. You giving him a short term armor buff early on in a trade and that's it. Also because you are a support champ, your ability to use your Q in that situation is also handicapped by the fact your ADC needs creeps more and not everyone is happy when you push the lane.

So you've basically got no escape, no heal, limited bully, and bananas that take forever to reach their target. Tristana is the closest thing to a hard counter for support Soraka as there is in the game. Soraka is just a liability in that lane unless your ADC needs a lot of mana. Most shouldn't and if they do, you are playing Soraka too passively for riot's liking.

Sigh...

I curb excessive in-lane sustain (immovable object type of problem) by halving healing against minions.

Spell vamp is already crap when it's AOE.

JingerbeardmanApr 8, 20142 votes

I think we are still on a different page with regard to Tristana. I am looking at her E ability when used in combat, be it duel skirmish or team fight, not after combat has ceased. Poke was also not the proper word I should have used but rather burst, and for Tristana i would go even further to say "safe" burst outside of her ult.

For a Tristana to wait to use E until after a trade is a waste and to me would be poor decision making. I do see your point however if it were used in that way. I don't feel picking her in champ select because of a healer support invalidates the other pick though. There is a great deal of strategy in champion selection alone, even more so in the competitive scene. If I want to take a healing champ I should take into consideration if they might pick Tristana, or even worse Miss Fortune, and plan accordingly. Tristana's E has a limited duration and cannot be cast in rapid succession which means there are times before and after that full heals can be applied. Miss Fortune on the other hand has the exact opposite effect, her GW application, although short in duration, is reapplied with each auto attack for the duration of the W active, making the GW duration more like 8 seconds. (Reducing tristana's GW duration to 4 seconds wouldn't be terrible either).

Warwick's drain tanking ability has never really been a huge offender to me beacause of how gated his mana is. However I do like the ideas you have proposed and they would definitely make how he heals feel far more rewarding for the WW player and much more fair for his opponents. The real drain/sustain tanks that I feel are offenders are Swain and Mundo. I am not out to hate against them as I have considered both a main at one point in time or another myself, so I would say it is quite the opposite in that I am actually rather attached to them. Be that as it may I still recognize that they pose a strain on the games health when they activate their ults. So long as Swain has mana and Mundos ult lasts (Volibear feels similar in this way as well during his passive) they feel unkillable on your own without the aid of others or ignite (Aatrox is even starting to feel this way now with feral flare).

There is something that could be tested though to see if it would be possible to remove GW from items and ignite. Since they are there to be a resource to combat the Insane sustain champions, altering how those champions sustain is where more focus should be placed. I had some interesting Ideas as I was writing this reply that I think merit a bit of testing internally.

1)Mundo: Currently Mundos ult gives him a constant stream of regeneration over its duration. If this was changed so that he regenerates a great amount at the beginning of the ult (3-4 seconds) that quickly starts to drops off at an exponential rate over the remaining duration. You still regenerate the same amount of health over the 12 seconds but creates better ways to combat him during it. (same approach could be done with Volibears passive)

2)Swain: This time take the reverse approach. When swain first activates his ult he deals extra damage (eg 50% more) but heals far less (eg 50% less) for the first 3 seconds which then begins to decrease/increase respectively over the next 3 seconds and would then hit their individual caps which I feel should be slightly lower than live damage and slightly higher healing than live. For Swains that build to deal more damage and carry they might want to stop using ravenous flock to refresh it in order to deal the increased damage again. Players that are out to soak in damage and tank would want to stay in ravenous flock for as long as possible to maintain the increased healing effect. I would probably not have the mana cost begin to increase until after the first 2.5-3 seconds though. Not only would this pattern create a better opening for opponents to try and focus down Swain and eliminate him before he can simply out heal everything, it would also effect his ability to simply sit in lane once he turns 6.

JingerbeardmanApr 8, 20141 votes

I ran out of room for my last little point. when it comes to life steal in lane What if the amount you stole from minions was reduced (not neutral monsters). It would make poke far more impactful, champions with heals would feel better, and would reduce some of the annoying sustain cases certain champs in top lane have (I'm looking at you Susan and Jax)

Nilous7Apr 9, 20141 votes

The issue with completely removing lifesteal is that melee champions need that life steal to weather the damage of a ranged champion. Go try playing Nasus against a Teemo or a Jayce top lane, and tell me that every point of that lifesteal isn't needed.

JingerbeardmanApr 9, 20141 votes

never said remove it, just reduce lifesteal from minions. As for your argument regarding Nasus... those are 2 of his counters... so you are kind of making a moot point.

Fucking MagikarpApr 8, 20141 votes

I do 3) almost all the time. I even buy an executioner's calling item 3123 instead of a statikk shiv (going PD and IE / BT / BOTRK then) most of the time to have the edge in a 1v1 versus an enemy ADC. Just me though, I've never seen anyone else do that aswell.

And it works all the time too. But then again I'm only silver currently.

KauljrhnApr 9, 20141 votes

If putting focus on healing sacrifices damage, why would a ww player go with healing? Will he have more disruption or other threat-generation?

Unless he poses some threat to replace the damage, healing more won't serve any purpose. Maybe he could generate some scaling effect based on current health, incoming healing, or stacks of his passive.
In exploring these changes, are you reassessing Warwick's theme as a ahem werewolf who tears people apart? Maybe you could work in the feeling that he's 'addicted' to feeding on his prey- he could get temporary health that goes away if he leaves combat.

I get the impression that drain tanks and melee assassins/carries face similar problems given their dependence upon melee attacks, but drain tanks feel more conflicted.

With the carries, they obviously fill a damage role and can depend on damage, life steal, and attack speed. They generally don't have much if any cc or disruption.
A drain tank, however, is about durability through persistent attacks and disruption of some kind (it can be threat generated by dps). They seem to depend on attack speed/on-hit items ( ) along with supplementary life steal or tankiness. Opting out of these sorts of items returns the champion's role to that of a 'normal' tank since they depend on attack speed.
Being so basic attack oriented seems to beg that some of their disruption is applied by or gated by their basic attacks- such as CDR or greater ability effects through supplementary actions (such as hitting different targets like Jarvan's passive). The ramping heals on Warwick's passive make him work in a long-haul battle, but I'd like to see any changes to the rest of his skill set to make him more diverse than "stick to a target until one of us is dead."

RCIXApr 8, 20144 votes

After ruminating on it some, my main thought is that Mundo, Fiddlesticks, and possibly Swain are the only cases where you're really saying "I need GW to counter something". Any sort of support sustain-heal, poke-heal, or engage-heal situation is currently at the point where heals will prolong a fight but they won't win a fight (URF mode aside). And the issue with drain tanks is that there's no gameplay associated with the heals. The one possible drain tank that DOES have that ( Zac ) was only ever played when his kit was overtuned.

Mundo in general is a big ball of stats (W = sunfire cape, E = BT or maw, and R = a zillion HP regen items) and a broken as hell % damage nuke; he is, as you put it, the biggest "stat check" in the game right now. Super spitballing here, but if Mundo had an ultimate that was like "Increase all self-healing by 500%" and was given 2 more abilities with situational, partial health refunds I feel like he'd be a lot healthier. I'm just having trouble with the concept of a tank whose sole fantasy is "I can ignore whatever you do to me while beating on you with a foam stick".

Other than that... I honestly can't think of a single case where Grievous Wounds couldn't be removed and replaced with appropriate tuning and mechanics tweaks. The corner case about ADCs is more where you apply Grievous Wounds to try and let DoTs + ignite finish them off instead of letting them right click sustain through them. In-combat, they're fragile enough for lifesteal to not really matter against any target on semblance of even ground.

JackYAquaApr 9, 20144 votes

I think the solution to item 3123 is to simply remove Grievous Wounds and replace it by something that's supposed to fulfill the same role.
Maybe an Armor, that makes it so enemies cannot LifeSteal or Spellvamp off of you.

Fashion MageApr 9, 20141 votes

That's actually a pretty good idea imo.

FelaerisApr 8, 20143 votes

Once upon a time item 3123 applied GW as an active effect that required people to give some thought to when to apply it. It wasn't much thought. considering the CD was very short in itself.

item 3123 was changed to a passive so it would be less micro-intensive and to try and improve the chance WW, Swain, Mundo, etc, could escape the effect that was temporary in duration. I think there was also a part in there where they removed the lifesteal on it so that it could maintain a low price (15-20% lifesteal for barely more than the intial Vamp scepter was crazy.)

But now we've come to a point where it's bringing a broken lawn chair to a brawl. It's a broken "I win" button that nobody likes to touch because its nasty, doesn't bring a lot of 'visible' DPS that all the little kids are fond of, and is itemized very poorly for the slot.

Also the ADC is the only one to even think of touching it as a result.

I still buy it. I still use it in place of the defensive slot against WW, Voli, Mundo, Swain, and even Akali when I play Draven. And as incredibly awkward as it is to do that.... if I don't they tend to roll face.

Arguably Varus has the best incarnation of GW's in the game. Not necessarily because it's effective, but because you can -do- something about it as a team to escape or trap the above champs in it.

But mobility creep and the small area of effect tend to bar it from being useful anywhere but on paper.

Maybe it should go back to being an active effect but apply a 'Tainted ground' effect similar to Varus ?

Sire HippingtonApr 9, 20142 votes

I think with the current GW, there are 2 problems.

Ignite, having a source of GW free for everyone without any tradeoff as Ignite is picked anyways for it's truedmg by 2-3 players per team every game somewhat makes GW as a choice to counter healing pointless.
GW has to be removed from Ignite, or ignite has to loose a good bunch of dmg so u realy pick it for the GW, not as free dmg that somehow happens to have GW on top.
It currently reduces heals by 50%, wich is to much imho. 50% means the difference between GW and no GW is realy huge, makeing champs like Swain or Mundo feel overhelming if u face them without GW, but pretty underwhelming if u play them and eat some GW, wich ends with playing against and playing as feeling bad.
with a lower value like 25%, u could still use GW to counter Healing, but realy heal dependend champs could get tuned in a way that makes them strong but not oppressive without GW, while they still would heal enough to not get totally destroyed by GW.
With GW beeing less strong, u could also give a bit more power to skills and items that currently apply GW, and Executioners needs a rework anyway.

Remlap1223Apr 8, 20141 votes

I like the idea of grievous wounds, because as Xelnath said that and summoner 14 is the only thing keeping this guy DrMundo (and to a lesser extent this guy Garen ) in check. Mundo's ultimate can just get so out of hand if he gets fed or builds well enough, in that he can actually heal more damage then the entire enemy team can output. I feel that if we could get grevious wounds to scale with total health, they'd be much more balanced. After all, tanks are natural damage sponges anyways, why have them heal away what little damage they took in 10 seconds? Having grievous wounds scale with health would also make adcs have more favorable trades against another opponent who is just building damage and lifesteal.

CritkeeperApr 8, 20141 votes

What if "grievous-wounds" filled up black on the left side of your health bar as a function of how much health you are restoring, in other words it functions as temporary damage rather than permanent damage.

Its keeps the intuitive "when my health bar goes black I die" and it is clear just how much damage is temporary and how much is permanent (the temporary works off the left and the permanent works by taking chunks off the right)

You could extend the system to include "plain-old-regular-wounds" which aren't a function of how much you are healing, and instead have a flat value or a % health value, depending on the skill.

Most burst mages that have enough damage to chunk a laner for half their health can also keep doing that over and over, and so they must be mana gated or gated by some other condition. Having a new type of damage instance "wounds" would remove the need for that additional condition because the damage doesn't "stick". You either make use of it or it disappears in a few seconds.

That means burst mages that are actual burst mages can have wounds based gameplay and those that aren't won't (and would sport some other strenghts instead).

The cost of such an implementation is a slight increase in complexity. I think its worth it if it allows you to implement burst mages and healers in a game healty way. The real question that follows is "Ok, if we implemented this system, HOW EXACTLY can we gate the burst of burst mages and the heals of healers, in a way that promotes gameplay?"

And the answer to that lies in the fact that the damage is TEMPORARY. That means it is naturally transient-- usually the condition will be elapsed time. It could be positioning or some other gameplay oriented condition however.

ModCaptainMårvelousApr 8, 20141 votes

My main problem with GW is that it only seems to counter sustain abilities or short-term effects. Stop Soraka Heals, Stop Swain's Ult, Cut down Mundo, etc. I've NEVER felt that GW was super useful for, say, late game ADCs or people with egregious amounts of life steal. Sure, drop ignite on that Vayne. It's too bad she heals for a good chunk of her health regardless of the effect.

If GW was more expensive but offered a bigger effect on life steal yeah, I'd be interested in getting it more often. Asides, I don't feel a late game ADC should suffer just as much (If not more) than people who sacrifice portions of their kit for this sustain power.

LVNsNASmurfApr 9, 20141 votes

Zenon: Hey man. You make a comment that lifesteal / healing tops you up but you remain fragile. Thats what you need to hit on.

You need to retune all healing.

Whats wrong now is that all healing is inherently more effective on higher resistance targets. Mundo not only heals 60% of max HP, but builds stupidly high resistances.

Mundo is a problem.

I can build 40% lifesteal on an ADC and still get gibbed in 2s by an assassin.

ADC sustain is not a problem.

So, I have a very simple solution: Have lifesteal and heal effects heal you for that amount of effective HP.

Say you have 200 armour and 100 MR: That means you take 33% of any incoming physical damage and 50% of any magical damage. You're a I dunno, shen, and on 300 of 2000 hp. Now, Your total effective HP is 6000 vs physical, and 4000 vs magical, for an average of 5000.

Now, your soraka Wishes back 500 HP. You have an effective HP-> Hp ratio of 2.5 You only heal for 200 real HP.

Your ADC teammate who has exactly zero mr and armour due to {reasons} heals for the full 500.

Boom. Now, we have healing is inherently less effective on tankier targets. This means that when you apply a heal of X, damage of X will exactly negate it.

In order to keep some champions balanced (mundo, garen) we change their passives to heal a percent of their effective max HP per second.

So, lets see what we've got for GW now. Well, tough champions inherently heal worse than fragile ones, so we can just redamage them rather than having our only option be GW away the heal. As for squishy champions, we can burst them.

There we go, we have no reason to have GW any more.

Lets look at the three main classes of healers: ADC's and fragile drain tanks (fid, swain). You can burst these champions 100->0. Or, you can grind them down. Basically, the fight will go as normal, but at the end of it, these champions will quickly hit 100% Hp again. No GW needed.

Next are tough drain tanks. Shyv, Xin, Trundle: Through lifesteal or other reasons, these champions no longer exploit healing more effectively than more fragile champions, since healing for X is wiped out with X damage. There's no need to inhibit their healing now.

Finally, there are champions with heal casts: These are now automatically less effective when cast on a tough teammate, meaning that you can't just top up a shen or something with some cheap heal requiring a massive damage spike to deal with. These heals can be tuned for use on ADC's / Mages, because even at full HP those champions can be spiked.

There you go Zenon.

Earl EulrichApr 9, 20141 votes

That really would be a bad idea...it essentially would cripple the scaling of heals, rendering them useless later on vs already outscaling dmg from carries.And you cannot compare sth. like Mundo to an adcarry. Mundos only way to enter a fight is to run in, he cannot avoid to get a frontload of dmg into his face - so if he isn´t able to survive a good amount of burst he simply can do nothing at all in a teamfight.

I´d agree though that he really could need some kit changes, as Mundo really is just a ball of stats running around mostly.

But getting Rid of GW/tuning it down to a more balanceable lvl surely doesn´t mean there wouldn´t have to be some real big changes to heal-reliant champions to rebalance them. It might very well be a project of a scale that can only be made work out during preseason.

pandaleonApr 9, 20141 votes

Grievous wounds : Healers and Regen/Drain Tanks ::
Defense Penatration : Armor/Magic Resist Tanks

Grievous Wound should provides a passive counter play to and from strong healing champions. If I apply GW before heal I have reduced the heal efficiency of the spell and denies health that other wise would have to be dealt with by damaging the opponent. (note it doesn't completely negated the heal as that would make it toxic to the healer and the patient). On the FlipSide A healer that notices the debuff and hold the ability till after the debuff fades or is quick to heal before its applied is rewarded by successfully delivering the health to their ally/self and wasting the spell application of GW.

It makes me think of the waves of an ocean. back and forth till one side gets a better wave and wins.

The thing that I think GW abilities have to be careful with is the duration of the GW uptime vs the Time Frame it can be applied again. if there is no to little window to recover/heal then it becomes a poor mechanic.

Healthy examples are: Tristana 's Explosive Shot 5 second duration GW vs a 16-9.6 sec cooldown.

This leaves a 11-4.6 second window open to heal and recover. considering the possibility of full CDR.

MissFortune Also have fair time for recovery while the spell is on cool down.

One simply has to walk out of walk out of

Varus hail of arrows to stop the GW.

summoner 14 with a 5 second GW vs 210-189 second cooldown.

In addition to the availability to any summoner and the Heavy True Damage, this spell can be chained with an existing GW spells in a champions kit. Which is why it warrants such a long cooldown.

A Near Unhealthy example only because (condition must be met properly) is:

Fizz 's Seastone Trident with a 5 second attack application buff + 3 second application time for 3-8 seconds of GW Vs 10-6second spell downtime.

Best case is dodging/avoiding his auto attacks and making fizz wait 10 till he can try again.

Worst case Fizz manages to hits his Melee Auto at the start and the end of active duration and has 20%CDR. Grievous wound would never go Away as long as fizz has manna!

Katarina 's Death Lotus that applies GW for 2.5sec + 3sec duration to 3 separate targets best case Kat gets interrupted during the start of the channel and only applies a 3 second GW + damage gets minimized from ult. she gains no kills for the rest of the time her ult is on cool down Kat must wait for ult to try again. 3 second Gw vs 60-45 second down time.

Worst case with 30% CDR or max Rank Ult she gets the full channel off and gets two or more kills allowing her to cast ult a second time and potentially kill all remaining teammates while having GW on the who fight on 3 or more champions assuming they were not the ones that died first.

Two full ult channels for a possible 11 seconds Vs your whole team dieing... We all know we can't outdamage/outlast a Kat if you don't stop that ult. Kat is the game where the damage is real and life steal/spell vamp don't matter q_q

KurasamiApr 9, 20141 votes

not sure where the thoughts on WW Q changes go but i really dont think the ap scaling should be changed, yes the healing is absurd but when you build full ap and aim for that high dmg/healing champion you become a glass cannon and can be burst down just as fast as an ADC - been attempting it in URF and hes a lot better than normal. AD tanky just doesnt feel very ww like. he should be an all in hunt you down and kill you champion. not sure how many wolves sit around waiting for there dinner?

MaybelaterxApr 9, 20141 votes

When playing support (or occasionally mid), I do actively buy Morellonomicon if I'm playing a character who can proc the passive on several enemies and if there are certain champions who really heavily on regenerative abilities (Mundo, Aatrox, Akali, Soraka, or a double bloodthirster Draven). I think it's a very smart way of countering specific champions, and as previously mentioned this logic can even be applied to champion select.

My friend and I have had great success playing a Sona/Soraka botlane, for example, and (aside from burst) the greatest counter is heal-reduction. (Arguably, with the new heal changes that could all change, but we haven't tested that out yet.) Playing into a Varus or Tristana gives us a really hard time, and if the enemy is smart enough to choose those champions for those reasons then they should be rewarded for that.

However, the problem lies in itemisation. Although Morellonomicon is a great option with a bunch of mixed and useful stats, Executioner's Calling is very rarely bought (if at all) because of the strange mixture of stats it provides. Crit chance would imply that champions who auto-attack should use the item: namely, marksmen and a few melee AD champions. The low amount of AD it grants means that it takes up a lot of space in your inventory for a late game item whilst containing the ingredient of a GP10, implying that it should only be upgraded later on in the game. I think avarice blade is the biggest problem here - if the GW passive were to apply on spell damage, it would probably be overpowered, and if the item were geared towards late game and more expensive with better stats it could become a must-buy. It feels like it is healthiest when laning against the likes of a Mundo, preventing his regen and dwindling his life down through lane, and then relying on the passive past level 6 to still be able to burst him with the help of your jungler.

FelvyneApr 9, 20141 votes

I really feel that GW shouldn't exist without being tied to a champion. However, I feel that the heals should be tuned with its own stat: as well there is a stat to decrease the duration of the CC (Tenacy), champions should be able to have a stat that increases heals and, imo, too the CC, but items more supportish for prevent being abused (Mikael's Crucible is a nice item but only sups use them, for example).

And one way to counter heals... I think that shields could be some kind of counter (less or none drain)

Meep ManApr 9, 20141 votes

Most of what I see here is exactly what I think everytime. Truly, I think the Executioner's Calling needs a buff item wise, like giving it some attack damage. Then maybe so its not as "pick this in lane to destroy heal champs" maybe make it to where it uses a stacking Grievous Wounds system such as 10% Grievous Wounds per attack, stacking up to a set number of stacks. I also think spells for Grievous Wounds shouldn't be continuous Grievous Wounds. Maybe make things like Fizz's W and M Fortune's W apply on the first attack with a slightly longer duration. But Im really wanting you to consider stacking GW so their heals will be good for a bit, but eventually be much less insane. If the Drain Tanks really hate GW, then they can just get Heal. So my suggestions...

Stacking Grievous Wounds for On-Hit GW Items
Buff Executioner's Calling
No More Continuous Grievous Wounds

As far as getting great healing with offensive stats (Nid Kayle) maybe make a unique resource for healing? Or make it scale with an existing defensive stat.

OnegarionApr 9, 20141 votes

Now i stopped about halfway though this thread because everyone had great points and its hard to really read so many great points in a limited time. Yet while i was reading I had 1 thought always coming to my head and it was brought on with all the talk about ignite being the main use of GW. So i like to build items like on supp champs like nami or instead of on mid champs when i know champions like mundo and swain are starting to roll or become a problem since healing is a big part of their kit. Other than that these GW items aren't really useful for their stats alone. Now has some nice stats for AP supports, but when else do you actually see it consistently and doesn't stand with many champs other than adc and crit focused champs. which is a very select few.

My idea

Now my thought that i have initially strayed from is that what if we took the the GW off of ignite and gave GW its own summoners spell. Now this would in itself be a huge change for ignite, but would this at all change the way ignite is used and maybe make GW more situational and not so easily obtained. This way maybe GW wouldn't have to be removed, but instead just slightly boost it since it would be on its own. This way it would be more strategic to use it and it would work at any time its activated for X amount of seconds. Make it a 60% reduction for about 6 secs we say. This way its use more widely against more than just the DrMundo , Swain , and Warwick .

With this you would in turn take it off of item 3165 and item 3123 and itemize them differently for other things. So you would still have it on champions, but maybe make them have less influence with it or it would again instill their position to actually counter these kinds of champions. If we take this route will we need to add more options of using it through champs because only , Varus , MissFortune , Katarina , and Fizz can do it. While fizz and kat are popular at the moment I don't see to much MF or varus play and mixed tristana play personally. So with this point I think it would be beneficial to have some other champs have it as well in their kit in other lanes because at most you are going to have 3, but how often do you see fizz/kat top, trist/kat/fid mid, and trist/varus/mf in a game at the same time? More than likely you would have 2 with kat or fizz mid and trist/varus/MF adc. even then you don't have varus really using his E trying to get GW on someone since its an area o the ground and they could just move out.

overall i'd have to say that at this time i think it would only perpetuate the raw power of drain tanks if we were to remove GW without some massive changes to the champions many have listed. Those that rely on that healing to do their job.

ZorellaApr 9, 20141 votes

I use GW to counter absurd health regen, like when facing Mundo, because otherwise there's no way I can live in lane, let alone kill him. Perhaps looking at health regen and healing would be a productive angle? Healing, especially heals like Soraka's, I find to be useful for making a champ "pseudotanky". They can still be bursted down, but they have the illusion of tankiness. I find the same effect to a more extreme degree in life steal. There, not only are they healing, they're healing faster when they're actively killing me (as opposed to hanging out on the back lines, avoiding poke). I like the dynamic of "attack and heal", but it feels about as futile to try to kill an enemy with tons of LS as it does to kill a tank. But, if talking about GW opens up a discussion on healing, I will be happy about that.

ModIts Yuu and MiApr 10, 20141 votes

Hmm. Sure let's talk.

I think that it could be removed, but the better question is, should it?

I think no. I think Grievous Wounds should feel good to the player using them however.

I think this could be achieved in a few ways.

Do a -minor- buff to GW Chamions. Right now it just doesn't feel like there's any benefit in taking Trist or MF over Jinx or Draven against a Voli or Swain. I'd say buff the GW part. If it starts to be overbearing for certain particular champions, then buff them in return. The reward for countering them should be greater-- but in such a way that it doesn't inhibit their existence altogether. I think overall it would be fine to buff the GW parts of Champion kits because then they'd be suitable counterpicks to healing-based Champs... But those Champs could then do just fine against most others anyways.
Make Executioner's Calling a real item. There I said it. Seriously. Feral Flare just came out, now Wriggles is viable. Do something similar with this. I could rant on about it, but really, just make this a viable option-- and give it an identity. Is it a niche pick for ADCS? Melee bruisers? Who?
Make Morellonomicon stand out. It's a great item, but Athenes is much prettier. Both have 20% CDR, both have AP... Athenes has better regen and MR, Morello has GW. Either buff it or nerf Athene's... I'd say the latter in my opinion.

Getting rid of Grievous Wounds just to get rid of them sounds silly in my opinion. I think there's a lot that could be done to make drain tanking a more interesting option, with GW as a reliable counterplay mechanism.

OtherMaTwoApr 10, 20141 votes

Just make dissapear Executioners Calling item. No one uses it. Pass the GW buff to Zephyr item.

OtherMaTwoApr 10, 20141 votes

I've been testing GW stat and it's pretty useful. But Executioner's Calling is a terrible item.

GlawalApr 10, 20141 votes

Hello, I'm sorry if I do some spelling mistakes, I'm not english and I'm just learning this language. I think remove GW isn't a good idea, why ?

1. If you remove GW, healers and predominately self-healers will be played like gragas and ziggs or ban like... not kassa but... frequently, because without response they will be so strong. Then, the normal response to this is nerf them (heal for tanks and damage/heal for carry) but without heal they haven't real advantage over their enemies and they will probably become new urgot or skarner (I'm exaggerating but...), it's my opinion but I think is a likely outcome.
1. Take a GW for counter an ennemy is limitation, indeed if you take an item with GW for counter an ennemy, you lose a choice of item so power. but with GW removed, you can't counter a self-heal, and then, you lose more power than with GW don't removed because you can't kill a self-heal ennemy. So, it comes back to point 1).
1. For teams-based on heal, it's important to can counter them, and we can do this with GW or (a GW), and it's important for the healer to save his power, then the new or is a good idea.I like this principle : pick => counter-pick => counter-(counter-pick). but I think it's so narrow actually.

My answer :

I curb excessive in-lane sustain (immovable object type of problem) by halving healing against minions.

a) I think it's a good idea but I think is better with -33% and a GW nerfed with 33% than 50% (and only stay with 50%). It's a response for a team-based on heal : "you're all healers, ok I take this item" and the healer is now less important but not broken. The same in lane and for Swain, Mundo, etc. stay necessary if you want really have an impact (and response to the swain team is or if they want really befenit to the heal).

I haven't other idea to propose for the moment but I think a moderate change is preferable.

Cordially,

aureliend66