After a major update in patch 12.10, League of Legends has been facing a serious issue in recent weeks as healing abilities are out of control. Although Riot Games has significantly weakened many items that provide healing, this factor still persists and is making League of Legends increasingly imbalanced.
In professional tournaments, top teams have recognized the dominance of healing factors and are finding ways to exploit it. Notably, the gameplay revolves around three champions with exceptional healing abilities: Swain, Seraphine, and Senna, who have become very popular recently. Even an undefeated T1 team led by Faker has had to yield to this annoying gameplay, indicating how imbalanced it has become.
So why has healing in League of Legends become so imbalanced? The main reason lies in Riot Games’ excessive weakening of a series of healing reduction items. This nerf has even rendered those items too weak and not worth the investment from players.
Specifically, component items with healing reduction effects like Grievous Wounds, Cutlass, or Thornmail have had their healing reduction stats decreased from 40% to 25%. Following that, major items have also been similarly reduced from 60% down to just 40%. This excessive nerf has led players to stop purchasing them as these items provide too little value for the high cost of their healing reduction stats.
As a result, the purchase rate of healing reduction items has sharply declined, with very few players even using them at this point. Meanwhile, items that provide healing and lifesteal have only been nerfed by about 10-15%. Once the few “counter items” disappeared, healing abilities once again became imbalanced and out of players’ control.
And then we come to a bigger question: how can Riot balance this factor when they have already weakened a series of healing reduction items? Answering this question will take a lot of time because healing in League of Legends does not come from just a few specific champions; it exists across too many characters, items, and even runes. If Riot Games wants to make healing balanced, they must eliminate this factor across many champions and runes.