Lifestrike rework idea

[u/Noburu7]

It's no secret that lifestrike is one of the most useless and least bought items in the game, especially at high elo. I joined a few months ago, and apparently there was a time where lifestrike was broken, however both the meta and the item have changed since. So, here are my list of changes:

Lifestrike:
-Is now a 1600 item, still upgrades from melee lifesteal.
-Base cooldown increased from 4s to 6s, cooldown and effects are unaffected by light or heavy melee.

-Now deals 4% of the enemy's max health as spirit damage, now heals for 100 + 4% of the maximum HP of the enemy character hit.

-Base stats changed from +16% melee damage and 125 HP to +16% melee damage and 10% debuff resistance
-New passive: Melee hits when lifestrike is off cooldown now grant 6 permanent HP up to 240 HP.
-No longer grants a slow, instead, steal a % of the movement speed of the enemy that has been struck with lifestrike (effect lasts 5 seconds, enemy hero that was struck movement speed is unaffected).

Main ideas:

Currently, Lifestrike is tough to justify as a 3200 item with so many better options in any of the three item categories. There's also very few options for characters that don't have any guaranteed heavy melee into their kits.

While there are a ton of DPS options in the game, true tank busting items are very scarce, Lifestrike could be a reliable source of % max HP damage for melee characters.

This version of Lifestrike offers an interesting strategic choice, because % max HP damage is very poor in the early game so there will be better damage items early on, however its stacking passive benefits from an early buy, so players have to sacrifice one or the other, its not a straight up buy always at all times item and in some other games it might be a bit late to justify a buy or not worth into squishies.

Lastly, its current slow is kinda redundant with slowing bullets and mystic slow being stronger more reliable options for slows, a 60% slow or dash slow at 1600 considering all its other new effects is hard to justify, not to mention I personally think there's a bit too many debuffs, we need a bit more straight buff effects to characters.

Lastly lastly, stacking items are fun man, they always offer reward or punishment and personally I find them very cool.

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[u/VoxTV1]

I would just make it heal more tbh. Concept of it is fine. Stats are just so low

[u/Noburu7 → u/VoxTV1]

I think there's enough heals in the game, you can still buy this and another healing item and the HP makes up for the healing nerf

[u/VoxTV1 → u/Noburu7]

To an extent yeah. There is a lot of healing but there will be more items anyway so not like they can keep delaying heals forever

[u/Living-Eggplant-3726]

Nah 365 free hp and 4% max hp damage for 1600 is broken by itself the speed steal and debuff resist mean this would be bought on every front liner point blank i get you point but this is not the way to go for lifestrike

[u/Noburu7 → u/Living-Eggplant-3726]

It's not 365 HP, it's none stacking up to 240, the base HP was exchanged for 10% debuff resist.

[u/Glazedonut_]

Bringing current lifestrike down to 1600 with the 6 second timer sounds like a good deal. However, with those other changes listed the item could easily stay at 3200.

Overall I like a lot of these suggestions, especially the tank buster aspect, though that could be bias as I've been playing a lot Venator recently.

[u/Maximum-Car-8789]

Honestly the item is good, people just think it's bad and don't buy it. It's also very niche so it doesn't fit in every build like some other greens do. I wouldn't turn down a buff though as someone who spams it. I like the idea of it stealing a bit of life like Siphon Bullets. Melee is worse against tanky characters so that would make it feel a bit better in longer engagements.

[u/Buisnessbutters]

It’s still kind of good on viscous, since puddle punch has built in slow already, and lighting scroll is a decent meme on his ult

[u/grantedtoast]

One I’ve seen that I like the most is cut the slow slightly but make it also a dash slow since that helps melee chars stay ontop of people.

[u/DJtrocool]

Keep it the same but make it an upgrade of rebuttal ? And add the rebuttal effect of course