User blog:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Spell-Based Sustain

Spell vamp has always been in a weird place: designed as a counterpart to lifesteal for spellcasters, it's a stat that only works on a handful of champions, but scales so well with them that it tends to be borderline broken. It's also a stat that's difficult to balance, due to its one-stat-fits-all approach: unlike lifesteal, which works on autoattacks and a select few abilities, and therefore works along pretty consistent rules, spell vamp has to deal with DoTs, AoEs, spell-based DPS and massive burst. In its current state, there's no real way to change it: buff its AoE power, and while you may make it a better choice on, say, or, it would become monstrously powerful on. Buff its single-target strength, and would become near-impossible to kill, even if you'd make better use of it on champions like  or. On top of that, the stat is plain confusing: it's difficult to know what works with spell vamp because it's limited by arbitrary conditionals, namely its one-third reduced effectiveness on all AoE and DoT spells.

The big problem here is that spell vamp is trying to follow too many rules at once, when it's not made to work the same on everyone. Burst champions like and  aren't going to make use of spell vamp in the same way as DPS champions like  and. Spell vamp can't be fully functional right now, because it makes little sense to group up all the kinds of ability-based healing you can have into just one unified stat. A Rioter mentioned a while back that spellcasters would benefit from different kinds of sustain: DPS casters would do best with constant, moderate spell vamp, whereas bursty champions would benefit most from tons of spell vamp within a very short window of time. With just the same component,, I think it's possible to cater to both types.

Additionally, I think this has some carry-over to a currently underused item,. Originally planned as a sustain alternative to for more spell-heavy AD champions, the item never really caught on due to falling short early on (you get the mana restoration passive way too late, when even the most mana-hungry champions don't have too many mana problems) and late-game (you get half of BT's sustain, and a passive that won't help you as much in the middle of a fight). The item needs a new build path, which Riot's currently working on, but also needs to offer late-game sustain that makes it distinct from BT, yet equal to it on the right champions (i.e. spellcasters).

Hextech Revolver=

Changes

 * New unique passive: Spell Vamp.
 * Allows the wielder to heal for 100% of the magic damage they deal (after the damage is dealt), up to a cap of 12(1level) health every 5 seconds.
 * Only applies to sources of magic damage that apply spell effects.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that does not restore actual health (i.e. the wielder is at full health already) does not count towards the cap.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that is mitigated by Grievous Wounds still fully counts towards the cap, as long as it restores health to the wielder.

Changes

 * New unique passive: Spell Vamp.
 * Allows the wielder to heal for 100% of the magic damage they deal (after the damage is dealt), up to a cap of 12(1level) health for every instance of damage.
 * Only applies to sources of magic damage that apply spell effects.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that does not restore actual health (i.e. the wielder is at full health already) does not count towards the cap.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that is mitigated by Grievous Wounds still fully counts towards the cap, as long as it restores health to the wielder.

Changes

 * Stats, active, recipe and cost reworked (see here for the rationale).
 * New unique passive: Spell Vamp.
 * Allows the wielder to heal for 100% of the magic damage they deal (after the damage is dealt), up to a cap of 60(5level) health every 5 seconds.
 * In the case of Hextech Gunblade, applies to all magic damage, and not just magic damage that applies spell effects.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that does not restore actual health (i.e. the wielder is at full health already) does not count towards the cap.
 * Healing from Spell Vamp that is mitigated by Grievous Wounds still fully counts towards the cap, as long as it restores health to the wielder.

Masteries

 * allows the user to heal for of the damage they deal, instead of giving  life steal and spell vamp. This is a buff to the mastery, and perhaps a significant one, as you'd heal from certain on-hit effects and items. The safe move here would be to disable the healing on item-based damage and perhaps even on-hit effects that proc neither life steal nor spell vamp, but the mastery is so underused, due to it being placed at a high point in the Utility tree when it primarily benefits champions who spec into Offense, that it may not have a significant effect.

Champions

 * 's Discipline of Might allows Akali to heal for 6% of the magic damage she deals, reduced to one-third effectiveness on, and no longer gives spell vamp. This isn't immediately obvious, but this would allow Akali to heal from the magic damage on her basic attacks, but would no longer allow her to apply her spell vamp to 's active. Considering she's heavily dependent on the item already, and doesn't autoattack as much as she should late game, this would probably change her for the better, if only slightly. Again, I'm not trying to change Akali's playstyle or power in any real way here, though I think she should probably have her sustain reevaluated, and would have her power affected by changes to Gunblade.
 * no longer grants spell vamp (see here for the rationale). The TL;DR here is that I want to rework Lee Sin, as indicated in the linked article, and in doing so remove his sustain in favor of a significantly better shield, plus a few other things. The alternative is to simply have Lee Sin heal for a percentage of the damage he deals on autoattacks and spells, with reduced effectiveness on and . This is the exception to the champions mentioned here, as I'm pretty sure that Lee doesn't need spell vamp and have an idea of what he could do with instead.
 * no longer gives spell vamp, and instead allows her to heal for of the damage she deals with her abilities, tripled on . This is pretty much a rephrasing of her current passive without the word "spell vamp", which would also highlight the actual power she gets with her passive on her mostly-AoE kit. Morg's in pretty good shape now, and her passive sort of works okay without drawing too much attention to itself, so this may not even need a change in the immediate.
 * no longer gives spell vamp and instead allows him to heal for of the damage he deals through abilities. This is pretty much the exact amount of healing Ryze actually gets when he activates his ult, give or take a fraction of a percentage point. His spell vamp and spell AoE-ification sort of work against each other, so the stats listed are a lot less impressive than they look. Still, that sustain is enough to qualify as really, really strong, particularly when Ryze reaches a full build and gets to lay down a ton of constant damage. Considering Ryze's kit is really, really old and has a few problems (it's nearly impossible to catch up against him when he's ahead, plus he's fairly oppressive against melee champions), he may require a rework, and that might include taking another look at his ultimate. However, this change at least would make his actual healing a lot clearer to understand.

Healing Amplification

 * Healing amplification, such as 's unique passive, and  all amplify the healing from Spell Vamp, and this additional healing does not count towards the cap (so you reach your cap at the same rate, except your total healing is increased by your healing amplification). While this shouldn't have much of an effect on, it highlights the issues with Vladimir and spell vamp, namely his propensity to overscale on it. He definitely needs a rework, mainly because of his low focus on interactivity and decision-making, and while he may continue having a lot of sustain he probably could do without excessive amounts of healing amplification. Alternatively, the other option here is to have healing amplification increase your healing, but have that extra healing count towards the cap.

Other Items
Morning Star=
 * Nothing much to say about (it's getting removed on live and I proposed a rework to it here that removes its spell vamp).

Changes

 * New recipe: Morning Star + + 240g (Alternatively,  +  + 680g).
 * Attack damage increased to 25 from 20.
 * Life steal removed.
 * Now grants +10% cooldown reduction.
 * Mana restoration is now Reap, a unique named passive.

Changes

 * New recipe: +  +  + 425g.
 * Total cost increased to 3500g from 3200g.
 * Life steal removed.
 * New unique passive: heal for 10% of all the physical damage you deal.
 * Mana restoration is now Reap, a unique named passive.