thatfunkedude
Active member
Restorative Locket, despite being a diversely practical defensive item, still has a brutally low purchase rate.
(I believe it's the lowest usage item of any T1 or T2, currently. And it's in the top 5 of least purchased items globally, beat out only by three 6200 cost and a 3000 cost. All of that, and RL is nearly beating them out, yet it only costs 1250!)
One massive cause of this is that RL provides zero offensive benefits. It is an entirely defense-oriented item, but as most experienced players will tell you, offensive items consistently outscale defensive items especially during the lane phase. It is almost always universally more useful to just buy damage-spiking items over buying an item that provides conditional healing and low resistances. The times RL is most useful is against specific heroes who favor ability spam and melee beatdown (Geist, Abrams, Pocket, Calico). But again, this item does not help you scale up your damage output at all. And so often times your lane opponent will simply "punch over" your restorative locket and outpace you over the course of 10-15 minutes in lane pressure.
So, here's one possible solution:
Make Restorative Shot a Component of Restorative Locket.
--------------->
If we do this, we can rebalance Restorative Locket to inherit some of the benefits provided by Restorative Shot. And since this boosts the price up to 1750, we can justify making Restorative locket an even more diversely practical item. It might look something like this:
In my interpretation, we replace the original +1m/s Sprint Speed with "+10%" Bullet Lifesteal, to adapt restorative shot's passive effect into a stat while retaining RL's original passive. We add "+9% Weapon Damage" which was previously provided as a shop bonus for restorative shot. (This also reverts the weapon damage nerf given to RS last week). To maintain its utility as a rotational tool, and to make up for the removal of sprint speed, we buff its active effect to restore up to 3 stamina points (previously it was a flat one stamina). Since we can have a max of 15 stacks, this means we get 1 stamina for every 5 stacks consumed.
(One jarring compromise of this is that we lose the "+100 Bullet Shield" given by Restorative Shot and instead receive the "+10% Spirit Resist" bonus of Restorative Locket. However this is not entirely unusual across items. High-Velocity Mag (Bullet Shield) builds into Pristine Emblem (Spirit Resist), for example.)
Restorative Locket's original design is not bad by any means, but "+1m/s sprint speed" does not necessarily generate value during the lane phase unless you're actively rotating between lanes early on. It generates late-game value as a rotational tool, but there are already a lot of other better ways to build sprint speed available by that point. I think that stat should be removed and replaced with lifesteal to make it more in like with Shot as a component, and its active effect should be buffed to provide more stamina. This would make it useful as a dueling tool, giving users an opportunity to replenish a lot of stamina mid-fight and keep them moving.
(I believe it's the lowest usage item of any T1 or T2, currently. And it's in the top 5 of least purchased items globally, beat out only by three 6200 cost and a 3000 cost. All of that, and RL is nearly beating them out, yet it only costs 1250!)
One massive cause of this is that RL provides zero offensive benefits. It is an entirely defense-oriented item, but as most experienced players will tell you, offensive items consistently outscale defensive items especially during the lane phase. It is almost always universally more useful to just buy damage-spiking items over buying an item that provides conditional healing and low resistances. The times RL is most useful is against specific heroes who favor ability spam and melee beatdown (Geist, Abrams, Pocket, Calico). But again, this item does not help you scale up your damage output at all. And so often times your lane opponent will simply "punch over" your restorative locket and outpace you over the course of 10-15 minutes in lane pressure.
So, here's one possible solution:
Make Restorative Shot a Component of Restorative Locket.
If we do this, we can rebalance Restorative Locket to inherit some of the benefits provided by Restorative Shot. And since this boosts the price up to 1750, we can justify making Restorative locket an even more diversely practical item. It might look something like this:
Restorative Locket (1,750) (Component: Restorative Shot) +14% Base Health |
+10% Spirit Resist +25% Melee Resist +10% Bullet Lifesteal +9% Weapon Damage |
(Passive) When an enemy uses an ability within 50m range from you, store one Restoration Stack. |
(Active 25s) Consume all stacks to heal target ally and replenish up to 3 stamina points. Can be self-cast. |
In my interpretation, we replace the original +1m/s Sprint Speed with "+10%" Bullet Lifesteal, to adapt restorative shot's passive effect into a stat while retaining RL's original passive. We add "+9% Weapon Damage" which was previously provided as a shop bonus for restorative shot. (This also reverts the weapon damage nerf given to RS last week). To maintain its utility as a rotational tool, and to make up for the removal of sprint speed, we buff its active effect to restore up to 3 stamina points (previously it was a flat one stamina). Since we can have a max of 15 stacks, this means we get 1 stamina for every 5 stacks consumed.
(One jarring compromise of this is that we lose the "+100 Bullet Shield" given by Restorative Shot and instead receive the "+10% Spirit Resist" bonus of Restorative Locket. However this is not entirely unusual across items. High-Velocity Mag (Bullet Shield) builds into Pristine Emblem (Spirit Resist), for example.)
Restorative Locket's original design is not bad by any means, but "+1m/s sprint speed" does not necessarily generate value during the lane phase unless you're actively rotating between lanes early on. It generates late-game value as a rotational tool, but there are already a lot of other better ways to build sprint speed available by that point. I think that stat should be removed and replaced with lifesteal to make it more in like with Shot as a component, and its active effect should be buffed to provide more stamina. This would make it useful as a dueling tool, giving users an opportunity to replenish a lot of stamina mid-fight and keep them moving.
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