Riot’s lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter gave an update last night on the upcoming Grievous Wounds rework intended for the preseason of League of Legends.
The simple healing debuff will no longer be the same, according to the latest direction that Riot is taking.
Riot is taking a “two state approach” to the new Grievous Wounds with “an optimization for each class.” There will be a small debuff of 40 percent reduced healing that’s applied with ease by each class and it can be ramped up to 60 percent by doing class-specific tasks. The classes are split into four categories: marksmen, mage/assassins, tanks/enchanters, and fighters—but the last one is still a work in progress.
ADCs will easily proc the small 40-percent debuff via auto attacks, with three auto attacks upgrading the debuff to 60 percent. Mages will proc it via damage with the debuff ramping up to 60 percent once the enemy’s health is low. Tanks will proc it via damage or Thornmail for the 40-percent debuff and ramp it up to 60 percent by using crowd control.
With healing becoming “more prevalent over the last few years,” it’s natural that its only counter would need to be adjusted, Riot said a couple of weeks ago in its preseason developer update. Instead of being a contextual choice, Grievous Wounds became mandatory due to the amount of healing in the game from runes, items, and champion kits.
Grievous Wounds is generally used to limit or minimize the healing, Spell vamp icon spell vamp, or Life steal icon life steal of one enemy champion ability such as Darius’ Decimate Decimate, Renekton’s Cull the Meek Cull the Meek or Sylas’ Kingslayer Kingslayer. It can also weaken burst healing champions such as Aatrox, Dr. Mundo, Fiora OriginalSquare Fiora, Swain OriginalSquare Swain, Trundle, Vladimir, Warwick, or Zac.
Grievous Wounds isn’t only useful against champions with in-built sustain. Some can build viable items or take runes that give them sustain, such as Death’s Dance, Bloodthirster, Conqueror, or Legend: Bloodline. Grievous Wounds is also useful against them. This is important to notice especially in situations where technically there are no champions with natural sustain on the enemy team, but they may own or have sources of bonus effects that would grant them sustain.
These changes should give more counterplay to the amount of healing in the game. But they aren’t final and could be altered going into the preseason, which usually begins each November.
