Since the durability update in League of Legends’ healing has become a hot topic. With every LoL champion now being more innately healthy, and with the nerfing of grievous wounds, healing is considered excessive by the majority of the player base. Going up against a champion like Aatrox after patch 12.13 and having seemingly no outplay can be frustrating.
In a July 30 post led designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison has addressed the healing situation, with some changes being hinted at throughout. “Satisfying healing mechanics are typically frustrating for opponents to play against”, Matt begins the blog post, “Watching an opponent burst heal through your damage output and survive is typically a frustrating experience.”
The post explains how Riot intended there to be champions who have healing in their kit as their core identity (think Mundo, Aatrox, Soraka, etc.) and those who have it as an addition (Nami, Irelia). Matt explains a situation in which the durability update and the nerfing of grievous wounds have resulted in a pick like Irelia out-healing nearly all of an opponent’s damage by simply being aggressive, instead of relying on her W ability to mitigate some of the damage in order to survive.
For anyone other than Irelia mains, this isn’t a healthy gameplay experience, and can sometimes leave players feeling helpless in the face of their undying opponent. Matt goes on to state that, whilst they do believe that healing is innately a satisfying gameplay element, there are some outliers that can take too much of an advantage from this, overriding the core identity of those champions.
Grievous wounds is also in a strange state after the last few patches; the effectiveness has been nerfed, but healing has been increased across the board. This means that rushing something like an Oblivion Orb is now a regular occurrence on Summoner’s Rift, but with reduced gains. It leaves players frustrated with being required to buy an item that doesn’t work as well as it used to – giving some champions less item expression and room for innovation within their own builds.
Starting with patch 12.14, Riot is planning on “taking down some of these outlier healing cases and will continue to adjust healing to be more in line with designer and player expectations.” So, don’t worry, that monster Irelia in the top lane won’t be sending you back to the fountain every 10 seconds for much longer!