Quantum Mages: Carry or Support?
Riot·3/17/2014, 7:11:40 PM·1 votes·2,137 views
Mage supports have been popping up more and more since the 2013 season. First, Zyra support was extremely strong, and played consistently by Cloud 9, and then Royal Club popularized Annie support at the World Championship. Most recently, we've seen both Kennen and Morgana support. However, this exchange is by no means a one-way trade, with Lulu being one of the strongest mid champions in the current meta. I sat down with some of the best supports in North America and Europe - as well as a few mid players – to get their thoughts! I came away with a bit of a unified theory of mage supports, so let's walk through it!
According to Xpecial, Annie is “strong against most supports because of her higher range and high damage at every level of laning phase,” and Kiwikid noted that while “she does give up healing and defensive abilities...offense is the best defense!”
Annie has an auto-attack range of 625, giving her long-ranged harass during the laning phase. Moreover, she has two ranged harass skills in lane, both with a range of 625.
Despite her advantage in lane, Unlimited thinks that “Annie is not stronger than Leona because Leona is much more tanky and after level 6 usually contributes more than Annie.” However, he thinks that the changes to support itemization will help mages, because “you can build full AP, which makes her scale better,” and “make her viable late game as a second AP Carry”. However, Jree believes that Annie has at least one advantage over Leona: “her w and ultimate are instant, so you can flash Tibbers and they get stunned.”
Morgana's range is completely insane, with 1300 range on her Dark Binding. Moreover, she has an instantaneous way to disengage: Black Shield. As we saw in the last week of NA LCS, it's not a free win vs Leona, however, as you have to space well as an ADC and support to prevent Leona from simply switching targets.
Jree likes Zilean because “you can be both aggressive...and defensive with your spells” and as well because his global passive allows your mid and top to “get level 2 after the first wave and possibly abuse that.”
However, two champions stand out of all of these: LeBlanc and Karma. According to several LCS supports interviewed, they both are very strong in the laning phase, with the only caveats being Karma's lack of a power spike at level 6 and LeBlanc's mechanical difficulty.
Finally, we come to Lulu, the support turned mid laner. She ends up being stronger in the mid lane than as a support in the current meta for a few reasons. First, her hard engage is situational, requiring an ally to get in the midst of the enemy team, makes her an unreliable support, despite the fact that she is strong in lane “with her early laning poke and...target CC for 2.5 seconds,” according to Jree. Second, the scaling utility makes her extremely strong as a mid, as she brings both scaling damage and utility to her team as she racks up more AP.
Essentially, going mid and building a lot of AP allows you more versatility, not less, because if you misuse your utility, at least you still have your damage. Supports rely on their utility, and thus need the range and reliability to ensure they get the most of their kits.
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman is a League of Legends mathcrafter turned esports journalist who spends his spare time staring at mountains of League of Legends data. Follow him @GentlemanGustaf on Twitter.
Laning Safety
Mages are naturally aggressive, between their damaging abilities and their initiating CC. However, without the sustain of traditional supports, they are very hurt by any hard engage onto them. As such, they want to have long range and easy disengage in lane.Engage Strength
Mages are squishy, so their engages need to be safer in one of two ways, long range, or instantaneous casting. A champion with a long range engage doesn't need to put themselves in harm's way in the first place. On the other hand, a champion with an instantaneous engage needs to be in danger for so short a time that they are never actually in danger. We can see that most of this comes down to two things: reliability of CC, and range of abilities. How do current and potential supports match up against these rubrics?Annie
According to Xpecial, Annie is “strong against most supports because of her higher range and high damage at every level of laning phase,” and Kiwikid noted that while “she does give up healing and defensive abilities...offense is the best defense!”
Annie has an auto-attack range of 625, giving her long-ranged harass during the laning phase. Moreover, she has two ranged harass skills in lane, both with a range of 625.
Despite her advantage in lane, Unlimited thinks that “Annie is not stronger than Leona because Leona is much more tanky and after level 6 usually contributes more than Annie.” However, he thinks that the changes to support itemization will help mages, because “you can build full AP, which makes her scale better,” and “make her viable late game as a second AP Carry”. However, Jree believes that Annie has at least one advantage over Leona: “her w and ultimate are instant, so you can flash Tibbers and they get stunned.”
Morgana
Morgana's range is completely insane, with 1300 range on her Dark Binding. Moreover, she has an instantaneous way to disengage: Black Shield. As we saw in the last week of NA LCS, it's not a free win vs Leona, however, as you have to space well as an ADC and support to prevent Leona from simply switching targets.
Kennen
Kennen has huge range, with a 550 auto range (the same as many ADCs) and 1050 range on Thundering Shuriken. More importantly, once he has a Mark of the Storm on a target, he can trade at 800 range with no skill shots required. However, Gambit's Edward finds it “unpleasant to play Kennen against champions who can literally grab you.”New Supports
What about the potential for new supports? The consensus seems to be that most of the mages that could support have some crucial flaw, namely low range or unreliable CC making engaging or disengaging risky. Xpecial comments that “Twisted Fate's low auto-attack range (525) will cause him to lose most trades, while Brand and Orianna suffer from unreliable CC.” Sure, Orianna's CC is unreliable mid as well, but her AP means she can still contribute a lot with her shield and slow.
Jree likes Zilean because “you can be both aggressive...and defensive with your spells” and as well because his global passive allows your mid and top to “get level 2 after the first wave and possibly abuse that.”
However, two champions stand out of all of these: LeBlanc and Karma. According to several LCS supports interviewed, they both are very strong in the laning phase, with the only caveats being Karma's lack of a power spike at level 6 and LeBlanc's mechanical difficulty.
Lulu Mid
Finally, we come to Lulu, the support turned mid laner. She ends up being stronger in the mid lane than as a support in the current meta for a few reasons. First, her hard engage is situational, requiring an ally to get in the midst of the enemy team, makes her an unreliable support, despite the fact that she is strong in lane “with her early laning poke and...target CC for 2.5 seconds,” according to Jree. Second, the scaling utility makes her extremely strong as a mid, as she brings both scaling damage and utility to her team as she racks up more AP.
Essentially, going mid and building a lot of AP allows you more versatility, not less, because if you misuse your utility, at least you still have your damage. Supports rely on their utility, and thus need the range and reliability to ensure they get the most of their kits.
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman is a League of Legends mathcrafter turned esports journalist who spends his spare time staring at mountains of League of Legends data. Follow him @GentlemanGustaf on Twitter.
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