Changes coming to healing mechanics in League’s Patch 12.14, Riot says

One of the biggest complaints that has plagued League of Legends players around the world throughout various metas is the state of healing in the game.

Strong healing-based champions are very frustrating to play against, especially when they get ahead, because they feel unkillable in the later stages of a game. In a new Quick Gameplay Thoughts post, Riot Games promised players that the developers will be hitting some of these outliers and adjusting healing to a more acceptable state, starting in Patch 12.14.

Riot specifically mentioned instances of “sustained burst healing,” which is when a champion can continuously heal themselves after taking a ton of damage from their enemies. As a result, they can’t be burst down by assassins, but they also can’t be taken down by champions with good DPS abilities.

For example, if Swain gets ahead of his opponents, he can become unkillable in a teamfight. Riot has, however, already started to give these types of champions heavily exploitable weaknesses that opposing players can take advantage of before things get too out of hand. In a similar vein, if players are able to bog down Swain with crowd control and avoid his ultimate ability, he’ll quickly return to normal form where he is much more easily dealt with.

At the same time, Riot does not want Grievous Wounds items to become something that all players buy whenever there is one healing champion on the enemy team. Instead, Riot wants to balance Grievous Wounds to be optimal “when the enemy team has more than two heavy healers doing moderately well.” Not every situation will be the same, but it is a good starting point for success, according to Riot.

Ultimately, balancing healing in League is a tricky line to cross since developers assess the issue with a combination of what they believe leads to healthy gameplay, while also considering what the community’s perception of fairness is. Next patch, players should see some changes to healing for some champions, along with general balance changes to the systems moving forward.