League of Legends PBE: Major Changes Coming to Healing Items and Runes

Riot Games has been hard at work in Season 12 and it had to nip a lot of new, “unhealthy” meta right in the bud. It recently addressed gameplay strategies like the top-lane smite, and the Hullbreaker build on ranged top-laners. One major issue that the community has brought up time and again is the power creep in League of Legends and the amount of healing present in the game. It does get frustrating when an assassin dives you 1v5, slays you, and leaves the fight without even a scratch, thanks to the healing items and runes. To tackle this, Riot has come up with a plan to re-evaluate the cost of sustain in the game. The changes introduced to the fighter mythic items were also to address this evident issue.

On the League of Legends subreddit, one user posted the changes that they noticed in the new Public Beta Environment (PBE) cycle. They wrote, “Patch 12.5 just got released today but it seems like there are already changes on PBE. It seems like RIOT is targeting healing in the game overall, reducing it.”

One Redditor commented, “The amount of dead-but-not-actually in the game is too damned high. I don't mind when it's part of a kit like Tryndamere or Vladimir, or how Garen and Pyke have to be out of combat, and I don't even mind when it's like an ADC item like Blood Thrister because you can think about their ranged attacks, see it coming. But the amount of secret/hidden healing between runes and interactions is making target-prioritization a little weird and making team fights hard to read as 3+ champs with 1/3 life somehow win a 3v4 against full health bars.”

Changes to systematic healing items

The user also detailed all of the changes in their post.

According to the post, the following are the items and the subsequent changes they have undergone:

• Vampiric Scepter: Lifesteal 10%>8%

• Immortal Shieldbow : Lifesteal 10%>8% HP per legendary :50<70

• Blade of the Ruined King: Lifesteal 10%>8%

• Blood-thirster: Lifesteal 20%>15% Attack Damage (AD) :55<60

In addition, certain runes were also addressed in this PBE cycle.

• Legend bloodline: Lifesteal per stack 0.6 >0.4% (At max stacks, players get 100 bonus HP)

• Fleet Footwork: AD ratio on heal lowered

• The rune Ravenous Hunter has been removed

Commenting on the post for clarity, associate game designer Tim “TheTruexy” said, “Here to clarify the goals on these changes. As a general principle, sustain (like any other stat), should come at a cost. If you want to deal a ton of damage, you usually sacrifice durability. If you wanna itemize to be a drain tank, you shouldn't also present a high damage threat. So imagine this as a systemic pass at re-evaluating the cost of sustain. The early hints of these are seen in the Fighter Mythic changes over S11, with Goredrinker/DS having damage siphoned to cost their sustain power (also why they're not in this list).”

New Rune - Treasure Hunter

The Reddit post also mentions a brand new rune that would make its way into League of Legends in the next patch. The new rune is called Treasure Hunter and is seemingly replacing the removed Ravenous Hunter rune. The community is quite surprised by the addition of this new rune to the game.

Treasure Hunter grants additional gold to players the first time they collect a unique takedown, making it a solid rune choice for early game assassins with high mobility.

While Ravenous Hunter gave a lot of sustainability for the late-game by allowing champions to have lifesteal, this new rune, the Treasure Hunter, will be all about playing aggressively and getting kills on the board.

The League of Legends community has made it clear that it is all for reduced healing and passive lifesteal in the game. However, some of them have pointed out that Riot has left problematic items like Moonstone untouched.

Pushing aside the debates, it is clear that Riot Games is listening to its community and is actively working to make League of Legends a better experience. Earlier today, the community was taken by shock when it found the new Kassadin splash art on the PBE. With this cycle of the PBE being the talk of the town, Patch 12.6, which is slated for 30th March release, is sure to take the game by storm.

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