I'm normally very pro Riot. I can see the logic in pretty much everything they change about the game, and very rarely disagree with their decisions. I think, in general, they do a fantastic job of balancing the game.
However, this Heal change I think is one of the worst changes they have ever done, for a number of reasons.
Reason #1: Heal is now too similar to Barrier.
The new Heal is basically barrier 2.0. Barrier gives you a 2 second damage shield. Heal heals you for roughly the same amount, also gives that healing to an ally, and a movespeed boost.
These are pretty much the differences between the two.
Heal - Can be used to save an ally, gives a movespeed boost.
Barrier - Can be used while Ignited to full effect.
I'm of the opinion that the entire purpose of summoner spells is to give meaningful choices to the player, and allow two players to have different playstyles with the same champion. Ignite vs. Barrier is a meaningful choice, do I want an offensive summoner or a defensive one? Ignite/Barrier vs. Teleport is a meaningful choice, do I want a summoner that helps me win my lane, or a summoner that lets me help my teammates lanes? The decision between taking these options is very meaningful and healthy.
The decision between Heal and Barrier is not meaningful, because they are too similar. Do I want to prevent damage to myself? Or do I want to prevent damage to a myself and an ally and get a speed boost? It's not a hard decision.
Right now, Heal is just better than Barrier. Even after the nerf to Heal in 4.6, it is still better than Barrier. But the underlying issue here is not that Heal is better than Barrier, it is that these two summoner spells are so similar that no matter how you balance them, one is always going to be better than the other. The decision between them can never be a meaningful one.
Reason #2: Heal is a summoner spell that limits counterplay.
I want to look at the counterplay opportunities between Barrier and Heal.
Barrier only lasts for a short time, so there are many ways to play against it. The main way is to just do so much damage that they die anyway. However, you can also bait a Barrier, wait for it to run out, and then kill them. You can get somebody to Barrier and then turn on his teammate. Since Barrier must be used as the damage is happening for full effect, there is a lot of interaction between the two players of when to use Barrier.
Heal doesn't have this issue. If you cast Heal, you get healed. Your opponent can't wait it out like they can with Barrier. They can't switch targets, because you likely also healed whoever they would be switching to.
The only unique counterplay to Heal is to take Ignite, and to use it before the enemy player uses Heal. I'm actually kind of okay with this feature, but because Heal is so good right now, it's causing additional problems.
Reason #3: Heal reduces the amount of choice available in summoners for BOTH teams.
Because Heal is so good, lots of champions are running it over Ignite. This makes Heal even better because you can't take both, and Ignite is the only way to counterplay against Heal.
Secondly, if the champion taking Heal has heals of their own, such as Soraka or Nidalee etc, it removes the counterplay of Ignite, because they can cast the summoner to remove the debuff and then use their own Heal. This makes Ignite even less valuable, so fewer champions take it, which makes Heal (and these champions) more valuable. It's not a surprise that Soraka and Nidalee are suddenly VERY popular. This exacerbates the problem and is why we saw games in 4.5 where there were 4 Heals on each team. If the Jungler didn't have to get Smite we'd probably see 5 Heals.
The solution to this problem was to reinstate the 'recently healed' debuff, which I think does more good than harm, but it's not a desirable solution because all it does is limit player choice. Now Heal is still too good, but duo lanes can't run double Heal anymore. Basically all this is going to do is reduce the number of heals on each team from 3-4 to 2-3.
Reason #4: The old Heal was a unique summoner spell and way more interesting.
This is more personal opinion than the first three reasons and I can understand why somebody wouldn't agree with it.
There was already a game mode where the old Heal was extremely popular, and even with the debuff you could see 5 Heals on the team. This game mode was ARAM.
This is because the old Heal was very strong when you were grouped as 5 and pushing early in the game. It rewarded a different type of team oriented play altogether. And in fact, this is a type of play that we've seen before at the highest level of competitive play on Summoners Rift.
+ Show Spoiler +
This is an old game, but it's a game of competitive, high level LoL being played in a way that is totally different from anything you see in a standard game, that actually results in GSG beating one of the best teams in the world. This is awesome, and it's the sort of game where the old Heal would have been very valuable.
I don't want games like that to be normal for competitive League of Legends, but I would like to see that strategy happen on occasion, and I think the old Heal summoner was a great way to incentivize this strategy. The new Heal is not. Sure people are taking it now, but it's just the new Barrier, and the game has not improved because of it.
What I'd like to see:
This is my proposal of what I'd like to see Riot do with Heal.
#1 - Remove Clarity from the game. I have never seen someone take this summoner in season 4 outside of on ARAM. It's bad. Taking it is bad, and makes lower league players lose games. It should not even be an option at this point, much like Revive and Clairvoyance.
However, once we remove Clarity, we can do something neat with Heal.
#2 - Make Heal affect the whole team again. This makes Heal functionally different from Barrier, and makes it more about 5v5ing, sieging and tower pushing than 1v1 fights.
#3 - Combine Heal and Clarity. Rather than having Heal give 495 health at level 18, have it give 255 HP and 255 mana. The numbers are obviously tweakable but the idea is that Heal should give both health and mana, and give much less health than Barrier.
#4 - Make Heal give this health and mana over time, rather than instantly. Have it give the health/mana to the team over lets say 10 seconds. It's giving the whole party a potion, basically. This promotes the sieging and tower pushing aspect of it, and further removes it from Barrier. Once you do this, you can also remove the recently healed debuff. Instead simply have a second Heal extend the duration rather than doubling the effect.
#5 - If you want you can keep the movespeed bonus and healing debuff reduction, but make it only for one target rather than the whole party. When you cast Heal you click a target and it affects them and also heals all friendly champions within a radius around them.
So this is what you end up with:
Heal
- Casts on a target, removes healing debuffs and grants a movespeed boost for 2 seconds to that target only.
- Restores HP and Mana to that target and all allied champions within a set radius over 10 seconds.
What we've done here solves all of the following issues.
A - It makes Heal very different from barrier. One is immediate damage reduction and the other is healing over time to both HP and mana.
B - It removes Heals lack of counterplay. If the enemy team dives on you all you're getting is a movespeed boost to one person, since the health gain happens over time. If you use it during an extended siege you get all of the health/mana gain, but the movespeed boost and healing debuff removal don't matter. Now it's a very interesting summoner.
C - It gets Clarity out of the game because Clarity is bad and needs to be removed.
D - It promotes a different sort of team oriented, push centric playstyle, while at the same time still being a good pickup for Soraka and allowing Ignite to not shut her down so hard.
If Heal remains the way it is, no matter how they balance it it's either going to be better or worse than Barrier, and everybody is going to take one over the other except in extreme edge situations.
And it makes me very, very angru.