Guardian Lifesteal?

Why no lifesteal on Guardians? I know they are tanky, and often include self healing abilities. But for those who don't, or even the ones who do, lifesteal is still a valuable ability. As a guardian, you play support. As support you should be taking out the minions, and opening up the way for your team. When taking out minions, don't you think that you'll become a target from the enemy team? Now taking into account the incoming damage, you want to heal as quickly as possible. Plus you are almost guaranteed a massive gold income. As this continues, you will only take the minions out faster, and give better buffs from your team. You may not get many kills, but you'll definitely be the big reason your team wins. I just wonder why I don't see this. Hardly ever actually. I've only seen it once to be honest. That was on Ares.

Hi Anarchy,

The biggest reason for no lifesteal on guardians has to do with how lifesteal works. Lifesteal takes a percentage of the damage you deal...this means that its effectiveness is increased the more damage you can output. And what is the purpose of lifesteal? Sustain.

Guardians inherently are more suited for the support role, due to their CC abilities, natural tankiness, etc. Builds are thus centered around health, protection, CDR, etc. This isn't to say they can't do some good damage...just ask Ares, Bacchus, or Ymir. That said, their basic attack speed is slow, and most of their damage is burst, and then a long wait for their abilities to CD.

Where do you see lifesteal most often? Hunters. Why is it so effective for them? It's two-fold. 1) Their kits focus on max damage at the expense of health/protection. 2) They've got great DPS...meaning, not just burst damage, but they can repeatedly output the same high damage, because they are based around their basic attacks. So in this situation, lifesteal acts as a type of sustain...not only for in-lane, but as they're boxing, it allows them to take more damage...similar to protections, in a way.

So, if you build lifesteal on a guardian, you're substituting at least one protection item for a possibly similar end effect, but a weakened effect because guardians don't have the DPS to make lifesteal very worthwhile.

The sustain, then, for a guardian, shouldn't come from lifesteal, but from a combination of protection and HP5. This allows them to be the tank they need to be with high protections, allowing them to take a good amount of burst damage.

That's my take.

Actually supports don't want to be the ones clearing the minions, as this stifles the gold flow of your adc/Mage etc.

Getting the kill (aka last hitting) on a minion awards extra gold and xp, so you want to be allowing your Mage and adc to clear the minions so that they get levelled up, and built, faster.

As a support you want to be making sure that your weaker teammates are able to clear the minions safely, rather than clearing minions for them.

And there's generally much better items, than any lifesteal item, for supports which will be much more beneficial to choose in most situations.

That's not to say lifesteal can't work on a guardian, there's just generally much better items for support classes

Like Bran already said you need damage for lifesteal for it to work something that most guardians don't really have unless you are going a full mage build (this applies to several not all). Getting Stone of Gaia would provide more healing then 2 lifesteal items on a support (low damage and high CD makes lifesteal worse)

The second mistake made got pointed out a bit by Cake. As support you shouldn't even be taking out the minions as long as another team member (that needs gold because not full build yet) is nearby. Supports are the lowest on the farm priority ladder. That's why most people get Watcher's Gift.

(also Cake last hitting only increases the gold gain not the exp gain)

The second part of the mistake Cake forgot to mention is if you plan on clearing the wave cause of your pretty low damage you wil be using a lot of your CDs and for several gods really important CDs (like how would you clear with bachus without knockup or stun). guardian have the highest CDs in the game. Even end game a mage/adc can instaclear a wave with 1 low CD skill while most support would need 2 to all normal skills to clear a wave. And on top of clearing a wave faster they also have more chance to poke.