So with the release of Aatrox and the massive difference in opinion between his sustain being OP, and him being bad I think it's about time we went back to look at healing deficiencies.
The great granddaddy of terrible decisions...
What is a healing deficiency for?
Well if we track them back to where they first became a huge thing (read: required) it was in WoW. Since WoW had a strong desire to never nerf healers (ever...) there had to be something to stop them from dominating PvP. Arms warriors had Mortal Strike which reduced healing gained by 50%. This became vital to any PvP group, organized or not. A healer could restore a player's health bar in mere moments and the only thing that stopped them was the 50% healing reduction. Additionally many healers became mana efficient to the point of absurdity, where not having a healing debuff meant they could sit there and heal for 10 minutes without breaking a sweat. The only real way to kill them without a healing debuff was chain crits, and in TBC (the burning crusade expansion) they added ways to mitigate crit damage, nullifying that option.
So healing deficiencies were added to Rogues (so now Rogues and Warriors, 2/9 of classes) to try and spread around the love. The only problem? It quickly became apparent healers were balanced as if they were healing debuffed at all times. This means classes WITHOUT the healing debuff had a like 2% chance of ever killing a hero. Since the game acted as though everyone had a healing debuff on them at all times it effectively became part of the game, coded in to it if you will. if you healed a target in PvP it came with 50% reduction.
This kinda sucked for everyone.
Rogues and warriors were now balanced on being in a group, and other classes were balanced as if they had a pocket warrior or rogue. It was only until far later (with mana burns) that other group options became relevant, but I'll get in to that later. Basically, you HAD to bring a healing debuff with you which meant a rogue or warrior was in every group. 3v3 arena? Warrior or rogue! This cut down on creativity a LOT because obviously 2/9 of the classes were in 100% of the groups. For healers you had a choice between 4 classes, for healing debuffs you had a choice between 2, and people were complaining healers were hard to find. Hah.
Since warriors also had the best healing debuff (best of 2!) they had to kinda suck when not in a group or they'd just be blatantly OP in a group. 1v1s aren't super important, but they're important enough that yo have to keep them in mind. 1v1s are always fun to do, and people will always complain when they aren't balanced. Warriors lost to mages... and druids... and warlocks and priests and shamans and paladins and rogues. And even hunters. Warriors could at best go even with some classes, but overall were just not fit for dueling which took away a lot of their fun.
And the power creep that resulted from it just ended messy.
Since heals were reduced by 50% you could buff heals a lot. That was the mentality anyway. Since in order to be balanced against a 50% reduction heals had to always remain OP heals constantly went up in power (2 healer 3 man arena teams were a common sight.) Eventually it became clear that heals were being balanced against the 50% reduction and then even passed it in power! People eventually just said fuck it and the meta went to mana burns. Attacking mana became more efficient than attacking health! It's really kind of amazing how far down the hole blizzard let this situation go. Damage was no longer the best damage, mana burns became the best damage. This is the end result of balancing against a counter, and aggressively balancing because of a counter.
This is what happens when it gets too crazy, what happens when things go too far.
So how does this apply to LoL?
Aatrox and Mundo. One of these champions was released before healing deficiencies became incredibly easy to get and simplistically placed on every champion, and one of them is Aatrox. In order to get Mundo viable Riot had to give his ultimate an absurdly low CD + ridiculous numbers. Aatrox on the other hand was released AFTER healing deficiencies became commonplace and he's clearly balanced against it. It shows that Mundo had to have crazy numbers to be viable, and Aatrox even with crazy numbers isn't viable. If healing debuffs didn't exist both of these characters would be decent, but with them existing they aren't. They have to be balanced against them, and therefore must be more powerful when not healing debuffed. The bigger problem though is that....
Healing deficiencies are everywhere, for free.
Ignite? Healing debuff. Every team has at least two. Morellonomicon? Healing debuff. And it's a perfectly viable item never even proccing it. MF? Healing debuff, cause I guess an ADC needed one... Varus AoE? Healing debuff, because nothing says cool aesthetics as much as something that seriously impacts the game for many champions. Kat? Healing debuff. Because something as powerful as 50% healing reduction definitely belongs on an ability that haphazardly shoots in every direction.
And what does that mean?
BACK TO AATROX. Ever trued to kill an Aatrox without a healing deficiency? Yeah, not quite possible is it? But when you DO have a healing deficiency? Yeah he doesn't live so long does he. This have/have not situation would be a bit more desireable if the counter was difficult to obtain or the difference between the two were smaller, but we're talking about HALF here. The only other thing that ever reaches half debuff is attack speed, and those don't have a very good history of not getting nerfed.
Basically we're at the part where WoW was where they started to balance aggressively against the healing debuff. Aatrox can heal enough that even under a healing debuff it's somewhat good, and when not under a healing debuff he's gonna straight out heal you. We're at the point where it is EXPECTED of you to bring a healing debuff, and this causes some issues because it's so easy to bring a healing debuff there's no reason not to. It adds a "burden of knowledge" on the player that ignite isn't just there for the damage, it's there to screw over Zac too.
Dominate the low rank, useless at the high rank.
This is my biggest problem with healing debuffs. Champions like Mundo, drain tanks like Aatrox, and healers like Soraka tend to be far more brutal at the low ranks than the high ranks because the high ranks understand and use healing debuffs like crazy. Ignite when you know they're gonna die, morellonomicon on supports. They do amazing things to ensure that Mundo is troll pick worthy, and Aatrox never gets to spam his healing W.
And the end result is: It's just bad for the future.
Let me throw a scenario for you out there. Magic the Gathering has had board wipes forever. Because board wipes exist creatures have had to become ridiculously good and aggressive because on turn 4 they're gonna get all wiped out by 1 card. Well because they got so fast and aggressive it became much easier to kill them. Etc. Etc. Eventually the game looks like it does now where every creature is doing something on deploy because nobody expects anything to last longer than a turn. You can call that game progression, or you can call that not balancing to the future. Future you is going to think "oh hell why did I put that in the game..." Future you is going to have to work with the fact you put such a hard counter in the game.
Future you is going to have to put out something that can exist against such a large counter, and that thing is going to just exacerbate the problem. You get a cat to eat the mouse, you get a dog to eat the cat, you get a lion to eat the dog... and now you've got a lion. Did you want a lion? You just wanted the damn mouse to go away. Well sometimes instead of buying a cat you have to go in there and fix the problem yourself. You gotta be nice to your future self or you're gonna regret it when all your options are so constrained.
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Posted 7/7/2013 3:55:32 AMThere are some problems with this article. First and foremost is trying to compare WoW to LoL. Are there similarities? Sure! They were both born out of the RTS genre, they both have a fantasy / steam punk aesthetic, and they both have great acronyms... but that's about where these two games stop having similarities.
Warcraft is first and foremost a PvE game. Blizzard balances all aspects of the game around end game raiding. Their dev team has stated numerous times over the years that they do not want abilities to act differently dependent on the chosen game mode, which is why healers aren't nerfed across the board. It's NOT simply because they have an aversion to nerfing healers.
League Of Legends doesn't have this same issue because it's not a PvE game. If a champion in LoL is imbalanced adjusting that champion isn't going to fundamentally wreck its ability to perform in other game modes.
Second I'm skeptical of how much thought you put into this argument. For one ignite isn't going to help you anymore against Zac or Aatrox than it is against any other champion. Yes they both have heals but there are ways of countering the effects of ignite, and more importantly even after you've landed a killing blow on these champions, it's not over for them because they have a revive you have to deal with as well.
It's almost as though you've taken a myopic view of the entire game and focused on this one area that really isn't an issue.
"This is my biggest problem with healing debuffs. Champions like Mundo, drain tanks like Aatrox, and healers like Soraka tend to be far more brutal at the low ranks than the high ranks because the high ranks understand and use healing debuffs like crazy. Ignite when you know they're gonna die, morellonomicon on supports. They do amazing things to ensure that Mundo is troll pick worthy, and Aatrox never gets to spam his healing W."
Do you know how many aspects of this game you could say this very thing about? This entire section tipped your hand I'm afraid.
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Posted 7/1/2013 10:32:20 PMIt's amazing how Hanshinshin can start writing a great article and then use it to prove a point that makes no sense when you think about it.
Comparing mundo and Aatrox? Wth? One is a tank, he needs to absurdily heal to be usefull since he has worse CC and defensives steroids than other tanks. Aatrox is a melee ASSASSIN that can switch to fighter on the fly.
If you want to heal tank as Aatrox you're doing it wrong. On team fights you should wait for the inital burst to fall on your tank and then dive the enemy squishies, use all your burst and DPS to kill 2 of them, happily DIE, see your passive in action and THEN switch to heal stance to out-dps the bruisers/mages on cooldown.
If you can't out sustain him in lane shove the minions and go gank somewhere, don't fight him and tie the lane, ask for a gank or counter jungle. You don't have to kill him to win, and as him you shouldn't want to outsustain an enemy, you should want to out-damage him. Got ignited? Either change to damage stance or, brilliant idea: Fall back, wait for it to stop, heal on minions, engage again and win. (You have 5 minutes for that...)
That's how you play Volibear. Face tank ignite, wait 2 minutes to get your passive again and then out-sustain the enemy and his jungler if he dares come gank you.
This game is NOT like WoW with counters and hard counters. If someone counter-builds or counter-picks you there's lots of other things you can do to counter that as well. Crying about it won't make anyone a better player, coming up with better strategies will.
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Posted 7/7/2013 3:33:31 AMIf I could like your comment I would...
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Posted 7/1/2013 6:11:13 PMLove that last paragraph.
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Posted 7/1/2013 5:40:43 PMI see where you're coming from and overall i agree with you. I still think they should be in the game but should exist as niche or actual counters. as it stands right now no one picks MF/Varus/Trist specifically to counter those champs and no one takes ignite for the healing debuff, they take it for the dot. the debuff is always just seeming to be a positive side effect except on morellonomicon. My opinion on a good way to solve that is to make it more thought required. maybe make it so ignite only does the debuff if you get the mastery for it. I dont feel its OP or anything just that like you mentioned. all it does is make champs with a lot of sustain either OP or ineffective. and no one should be made ineffective with out the opponent actually ACTIVELY doing something. I think the best idea is to do something similar to the solution in wow. make the debuff 25% and balance the high sustain champs accordingly.
I feel the healing debuff existing is very important for the game as a whole, but the two options to help make them less problematic for balance is to either reduce the "free" effects that are available or reduce the overall effect of the buff.
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Posted 7/1/2013 6:13:21 PMWell of COURSE no-one takes those things specifically for the healing debuff, because everyone knows that healing-focussed champions (Aatrox, Mundo, Soraka) aren't viable, so you don't NEED a heaing debuff as a counter. Of course, if those champions ever DID come into common use, you can bet anything that MF, Varus and Trist would become the only ADCs we'd ever see in use, until the healers went away again (which wouldn't take long). Catch 22.
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Posted 7/1/2013 6:33:50 PMthats the point, theres no happy medium with the current set up. Its not that soraka/aatrox/mundo arent viable. if you think they arent then you're wrong and have no way to draw that conclusion because if you ask good players if they are they will give the wrong answer. good players know exactly the things to do to counter those champs. less skilled players dont. so it reflects exactly what i said before. they are either SUPER strong or not effective. and unfortunately too many people have a source of free healing debuffs with out any work or thought required. with the debuff being 50% and spread around so freely it automatically makes those champions unbalancable. because in high level play they are instantly and easily countered. but you cant buff them because then in cases of low level game play they would run rampant stomping everyone and everything even though in high level play they might actually be useful.
the only way to change that would again to either reduce the effect to something closer to 10-25% while subsequently nerfing champions with high sustain kits by 5-10%. or to make the debuffs something you actually have to sacrifice for. or ACTIVELY do something to make available on your team.
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Posted 7/1/2013 2:36:55 PMI like the way GW2 does it. Everyone has a moderate amount of healing and every profession (I think) can access Poison, a DOT condition that also reduces healing by 33%. Everyone also has condition removal. The result of this is that Poison helps you kill everyone, but you don't NEED it to kill anyone, and if your build focuses on healing yourself more then you can save your condition removal to deal with Poison. In other words, everyone starts on an even playing field and there are meaningful differences between optimal use patterns and noob play, but they don't make or break the game.
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Posted 7/2/2013 11:35:50 AMThis is because people don't take GW2 PvP seriously. If they did, you would see the exact same thing as is happening in league (everyone using what has been proven the best in pro-games and flaming "non-meta" play.).
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Posted 7/1/2013 2:23:27 PMOne of the few articles you write that I heartily agree with. Other thing is there is no counter to re-applying healing debuffs, or the ignite healing debuff.
Swain wanna get rid of that nasty debuff? Cleanse..... oh wait, if it was ignite, the debuff is still there, you just got rid of the damage.
Qss? well now its considered mainly an ad item due to its build path, as well as it only gets debuffs off you once...... what if they had a re-applying debuff like MF's AA's or Varus AoE.....
Theres just TOO much of a shut down when someone uses those on a healing-based character. IMO, ignite should have a reduced effectiveness healing debuff due to the fact that its so common and it does true damage on top of that. Bring it down to something like 30%, 25%..... something that doesnt instantly spell death for some champions.
Items you pay for? ok, those could probably have 50% reduction still.... you paid the price and opportunity cost, you might deserve it as a counter.
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Posted 7/1/2013 1:33:18 PMI actually like this article. I don't get why it always had to be 50% healing reduction. Why that high? Because the heals are just too good?
Here's a solution, Nerf the heals a little, aka aatrox, mundo, etc. Leave the healing reduction items, but drop them to like 10-15% or something. The heal post debuff should be better than what it is right now with the 50%. For example, a heal could go 170-->130. Instead of 210-->105.
It's so stupid that a simple item/ignite/spell can make a champion go from completely broken and invincible to completely useless. Like he said in his article, other defensive options do not give you 50% instantly. Imagine if you could buy an item that says: "Physical damage you take is reduced by 50%". That would be stupid, and is exactly the same as the healing reduction bullshit we see right now.
This way, the item/spell is not required to counter a champion, but it is still a strong choice, without having to be mandatory.
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Posted 7/1/2013 1:26:49 PMAll modern mmos have idiotically overpowered healers because otherwise noone would be playing them.
Imagine you can play a killer and a healer and both are equally strong. Which one will 100% of players (except gays and women) choose?
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Posted 7/1/2013 1:42:47 PMWay to end your comment with a big fat pointer to how ignorant you are. Because clearly only women and homosexuals have the inclination to play healers. Nobody ever has wanted to be a healer that didn't love the cock.
I just, wow, I'm too dumbstruck by that to even try and point out everything that is wrong with your comment.
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Posted 7/1/2013 3:00:37 PMyou do know he was just being ironic, right?
what he meant is perfectly valid. you can see it in LoL. do you see ppl fighting over the ultra burst dmg heavy mid or the only sustain/shield support?
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Posted 7/1/2013 3:06:27 PMNo, he was not being ironic. He was just being the product of a society that hates everyone who is not an heterossexual man.
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Posted 7/1/2013 3:39:05 PMoh my god... you guys sure have some complexes.. i would say the same thing, and i hate homophobia. because its a joke..
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Posted 7/1/2013 4:35:15 PMActually all humans are mentally conditioned by evolution to hate different things in order to preserve the gene pool. Therefore hatred towards homosexuals is perfectly natural, no matter what mass media pour into your happily accepting heads.
Just look at yourself. If you were able to get a hot and smart girlfriend or ugly and stupid one you would always pick the hot one. Despite the fact that the only thing the ugly one did wrong was having bad luck and being born with bad genes.
No mercy for different and inferior. Thats how nature works and thats how you work too as a part of a human race.
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Posted 7/1/2013 5:53:37 PMThat's not true. You think you're way smarter than you actually are. The exotic has always been attractive.
Secondly, don't presume to know how nature or humanity works, cause you don't. No one does. People who hate homosexuals tend to either be conditioned by a culture and/or have never knowingly met one.
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Posted 7/1/2013 7:11:23 PMOh really, try picking up a psychology textbook sometimes. You would be surprised how primitive humans are - women are only interested in finding a man capable of securing their children (in todays society it translates to "any rich guy") and taking care of him. Mens only real desire is to reproduce with as many young attractive women as possible to spread his genes.
You are way dumber than you think you are. Get educated immediately to change that.
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Posted 7/2/2013 3:07:17 PMno one knows how humans or nature work. lawllll made my day good sir. LoL is full of uneducated dumbshits galoreee