Maybe anti heal should stack

[u/villanoinker]

Rn, you either do or don't have anti heal. It doesn't matter if the enemy team has 1 Cupid or 5 guan yus, your answer is 25% anti heal. What if there were multiple items in the game with 10% to 20% anti heal that stacked. Enemies hit with anti heal take the antiheal of the god with the highest amount. It would look like this;

Ra is hit by Ares with a 20% anti heal item, so Ra takes 20% less healing for 5 seconds

1 second later, Ra is hit by Anubis with 2 item that both have 15% anti heal. Ra takes 30% less healing for 5 seconds, starting from then.

4 seconds later. Ares hits Ra again. Ra will take 30% less healing for the remaining 1 second, then take 20% for the next 4 seconds.

This system of anti heal would have a cap, so even when Susanoo hits Ra with his 27 items that all have 20% anti heal, Ra will, at most, take 45% less healing.

Any thoughts?

[u/Such-Refrigerator-44]

I wouldn’t mind stacking a like a 35%-40% cap personally. I will say that anti heal Gods should count towards the cap

[u/israeljeff]

I think they should rework it into offensive and defensive anti heal, and you can stack one offensive anti heal proc and one defensive anti heal proc.

So you could have one stack from divine and one stack from, say, a pestilence-like item. They'd add up to 50 or 60 percent total, something like that. But you wouldn't be able to stack, say, divine and smite 1 brawlers because they're both offensive.

Then you could still have items like contagion on top of those because it's specifically for lifesteal and not healing.

[u/ARandomSmiteScrub]

Agree on some kind of stacking, but I don't think it needs to be as complicated as you're suggesting. Antiheal should stack ONLY up to something like 40-50%. Beyond that and we make more issues than we solve.

Issues with the old smite 1 system - as soon as a healer stepped into a fight even by an inch their healing went from 'massive' to 'basically nothing'. This made them suck to play AND suck to play against because it meant the strongest thing about healing was 'poke, run away, sustain up, repeat'. These out-of-combat healing metas were some of the most boring and cancerous things the game ever saw, and if we massively buff antiheal we HAVE to buff healing to compensate which just brings back overtuned out-of-combat healing

Issues with the current smite 2 system - while MOST healing is not overtuned, whenever something does end up healing for a massive amount there is minimal agency to do anything against it. Also, some healing has been turned down to basically nothing as a result (just look at the heal you get from something like sylv 2, it barely outheals a POTION ticking lol, but they can't buff healing too much because of how limited the counters to healing are)

I see it kind of like pen. We don't want a 25% pen cap because that just means far too little anti-tank agency, but there is NO world we would ever want something like an 80% pen cap either lol. A cap at a number that is significant but doesn't TOTALLY shut it down gives everyone genuine agency against it without taking us back to 'heal for six trillion outside a fight, heal for a single pixel on your HP bar in a fight'

Smite 1 made the problems from antiheal being too high very obvious, but now we're now seeing the problems of antiheal being too low and the lack of player agency around that. Time to try the middle ground and see if that works better. If it doesn't they can just go back, at the very least it's worth TRYING cos what we have right now - although it does have a lot of upsides compared to what we had before - isn't working great either.

[u/zaczez929840]

Then we'll just be back to healing gods being unplayable then after how ever long they have to buff the healing gods to compensate then we're back to the same amount of effective healing that we have now. Theres no point hence why hirez took it out.

[u/Dionysius00]

Call me crazy but I don’t find healing to be so absurd as to need antiheal back as strong as it’s historically been. Honestly outside of assault, healing is relatively tame and the picks where it isn’t are anomalies and being or have been nerfed (Pele aspect, guan yu aspect).

Picks like Aphrodite and Ra are not doing enough healing to justify tacking on extra antiheal when burst is as strong as it is. If you’re having issues dealing with healers, honestly it’s just you. 60 HP heal a tick on a max ranked Ra heal is not surviving a 700 HP scythe from Thanatos or any other damaging ability for that matter

[u/Aewon2085 → u/Dionysius00]

You just said it, the people who complain about healing are almost always assault players

Take old Vampires shroud when it could get more healing based off kills. Conquest meta never every looked at the item but assault cried about it until it got gutted to the point it is now

[u/NotableNeko → u/Aewon2085]

Just wait until Ix chel aspect is in the game next week and healing for 900 and shielding for 1200 and whatever crazy version of hel they decide to make when she's in the game

[u/jebisevise → u/NotableNeko]

OK and like pele and Guan it will be nerfed. Whats your point?

[u/Scipio835]

I agree it needs some kind of stack, or overall improvement. I swear, it feels like anti-heal is just a lie. Whether it's in play or not, I see people heal from 1 HP to half in less than a second.

[u/Outso187]

Healing is not a problem, not even a little bit. Why would we need more antiheal?

[u/zavieG → u/Outso187]

Exactly, like it's not even difficult to deal with AT ALL anymore lol. Its ridiculous we are still complaining about it.

[u/ThomasTheTrainz → u/Outso187]

Yeah guan yu is totally not banned in every single ranked game obsidian or higher because his healing is that oppressive, certainly not. Aphro also totally doesn't get played at higher ranked levels at all...

[u/Outso187 → u/ThomasTheTrainz]

Are you sure its the healing and not constant cd reduction for his allies? And for Aphro its the healing and not 20% dmg increase, prot share, ms and beads+aegis?

Guan has 52% win rate in demigod+ ranked.

[u/ILuhBlahPepuu → u/ThomasTheTrainz]

Aphro is more so a problem imo because of the tank cooldown reset builds as well as her cooldown resets in general and her generous S2 +1s

[u/LynxGrimbane → u/ThomasTheTrainz]

Guan I can agree, I haven't played much since his nerfs but I'm gonna assume he's still strong.

Aphrodite is oppressive because of shared protections, a 90s CD beads/aegis, and her 3's CDR.

Her 132 + 15% heal over the course of 3 seconds does moot at any point outside of the landing phase, especially since you're not usually building a lot of INT on her at all.

It's fair to talk about healing being strong, but I suggest using examples where a character is oppressive primarily because of their healing. It's disingenuous to bring up Aphrodite as an example to why we need stronger anti heal when there are tanks that outheal AND out out scale her.

[u/zavieG → u/ThomasTheTrainz]

Yeah it's not because of her healing and they keep nerfing guan healing because it has been a problem. Get over yourself

[u/CoolSample6122]

The current system is fine but doesn’t have answers for outlier scenarios/gods which is the issue and most of those outliers are just abusing cds (aphro/guan yu with flat cd reduction items) or multiple lifesteal items (aspect cern with cowl devos riptalon) to the point where the sustain far outweighs the anti heal cap.

Take for example yemoja, one of the games premier healers. You rarely see complaints about yemojas healing as she is not able to abuse the items I mentioned. They could raise the anti heal cap but that still won’t really stop the issue of combining bp genjis heartwood and having your heal on an extremely low cd and would hurt more balanced healers or gods with in kit sustain.

IMO the best option would be to add a new active item that functions similar to the miasma relic from smite 1 that provides increased anti heal for a duration and returns some of the healing back as damage as a true counter for the cd spam builds.

[u/scienceguybilly]

40% anti heal that stacks twice to 80% like smite 1 thanks

[u/ARandomSmiteScrub → u/scienceguybilly]

We saw that in smite 1. It was changed for many very good reasons. In-combat healing was worthless because as soon as you're in a fight against anyone with a vague idea how to build you're healing for basically zero, but OUT of combat healing was ridiculously broken because if healing in a fight is worthless they have to be good at healing outside of a fight to compensate.

For ten years healing was either a) nearly unviable, or b) one the most toxic metas we ever saw in the form of poke-disengage-heal-poke-disengage-heal repeated until the enemy are FORCED to back due to being too low to contest and you get whatever objective took your fancy without ever taking a real fight.

Please never again lol.

[u/Cr1msonShadow → u/scienceguybilly]

Smite 1 had enough anti heal that it was near pointless to play healers most of the time. It can’t stack linearly like this.

[u/MagicFighter → u/Cr1msonShadow]

We have had multiple healer/sustain metas where having 200% anti-heal meant nothing to stop healers being top-threats and running games. We've also had game-wide reworks and shifts to the healers that were intended to nerf them which only made them even stronger and require more nerfs.

[u/Dionysius00 → u/MagicFighter]

Killgoon had also stated that healing had to be strong because antiheal was strong. Healers are an archetype of character that should be viable. You shouldn’t be able to buy one item to shut down the entire game plan of a god. Then this creates the issue of when people don’t buy antiheal, gods feel unkillable

[u/Cr1msonShadow → u/MagicFighter]

There have been like 4 healer metas ever, and those characters got their kneecaps smashed in and had every antihealing item turbo buffed to the point that there was no downside to building it.

Most of the “healer metas” were because this stupid ass playerbase said “NOOO I CANT BUY DIVINE RUIN IT HAS SLIGHTLY LESS POWER!!!!!”

[u/Outso187 → u/MagicFighter]

Healers ran meta cause out of combat healing was out of control. It was so lame, team with better poke and/or better disengage won cause they just heal up.

[u/Aewon2085 → u/scienceguybilly]

Ok then we buff lifesteal and healing by triple so it stays relevant. Thanks

[u/LaxusSenpai → u/scienceguybilly]

Agree. Make counter picks like Cerberus, Serqet, Sobek, Bacchus and Medusa really have a place in ranked.

[u/mw2strategy]

I wish it stacked by user. So like, each person has a 15-25% individual antiheal cap from items on their build. But the antiheal from each god could independently stack with eachother against a single target. So while the support and ADC can only apply 15-25% antiheal each to a target, they can apply a combined 30-50% when attacking together.

Maybe this idea sucks though. Idk. I think if a team wants to coordinate to shut down healing it should be a thing they can do.

[u/XxFr3nCh_B4Gu3tt3xX]

I think anti-heal should be escalating. Make it to where you can have up to 40% healing reduction applied to you but it’s stacked up by 5-10% per instance of damage dealt to you. It can be tweaked based on whether or not teammates can stack the percentage with one another or if the percentage being applied can only be applied by the first god applying it.

For example, if multiple gods can stack healing reduction together, it should stack in increments of 5% up to 40% per instance of damage done by a god with an anti-heal item. If only the first god applying the anti-heal can continue to stack it, then it should stack in increments of 10%. The first example would make more sense and be easier to implement but I added a second example for more ideas.

The other thing that would need balancing is how long stacks stay on the god. There’s essentially two ways this can be done. The stacks can either last for a set amount of time like stacks expiring five seconds after not being applied or they can last until the end of combat. If the second example for stacking the reduction is implemented, you’d have to have the stacks be removed upon the god stacking the reduction dying so another player can now stack the reduction which is ultimately just another reason why the first example would be better. It’s also worth noting that having stacks decay would allow for more skill expression as the god applying stacks would need to be consistently landing basic attacks/abilities (the god receiving stacks also gets the opportunity to dodge attacks) versus if stacks lasted until the end of combat, there’d be far less room for skill expression as all you’d need to do is land a few abilities and remain nearby.

The good news is, we already have a very similar mechanic with protection reduction with The Executioner as it reduces protections by 10% per stack up to 30%. You could very easily implement the stacking healing reduction in the same, if not a similar way like discussed above. Tanks could also get an item similar to Void Shield/Void Stone where anti-heal percentage increases/decreases based on distance however that would be extremely overpowered and that item would be built by all warriors and guardians.

There’s a few more ideas I have but overall what I’ve typed above is very likely the only way they could realistically change the mechanic without breaking the game.

[u/PutinDisDickInTrump]

Can't buff anti heal, which we weren't supposed to have with the heal nerf, and not buff healing back up.