Worlds Support Meta
Hey everyone, I was a bit out of the loop on the early Worlds games and was surprised to see Janna become the clutch support pick. Can someone summarize the meta shifts that led to her and Nami being top picks for supports?
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Not many teams can pull out a sucessfull double-layer initiation (or even a simple hard engage for that matter), but a lot of teams like to just rotate around and try winningthe game without a fight - so the strong disengage+passive ms is exactly what they are looking for. Janna pretty much punishes teams very hard if they cannot pull off a perfect engage or just fall behind on the rotational play...and she also fits in well with the still popular "protect the hypercarry"-comps.
They counter the popular all in comps with their ability to reset fights.
They both provide knock ups and these synergize well with a few champions but Yasuo most of all, and he's quite popular this season.
They both provide speed boosts to their allies, and this season has seen more rotations. There's a trend away from heavy farm, or to counter hyper carries, or to give their own hyper carries an easier time in lane.
Since adc's are mostly all about scaling, supports that give heavy peel and sustain work a lot better than, engage/ tank supports who function best with early game adc's ( most of whom are weaker at all stages of the game to the scaling adc's like Trist and Kog because of the itemization changes)
Janna has been a top tier pick all season. There have been plenty of support mains swearing by her. Why? Because she's Thresh/Leona's biggest counters. Later people found Morgana, whose spell shield and snare worked wonders against a hard engage support, and when Braum came out he too did well against Thresh/Leona in terms of saving his carry. Janna was there first though. Not only was Janna there first, but unlike Morgana she doesn't require any big ticket items. Morg really wants her Zhonyas for her ult. In higher level play if she tries to ult a team and doesn't have Zhonyas, she's pretty much dead (not that this isn't true in lower elo). Janna doesn't need a Zhonyas or any other expensive item to set up her CC.
Nami was actually a support that was preemptively nerfed. She doesn't really 'counter' the tanky meta supports of Season 4, but she had good enough disengage/cc that nobody ever complained when you took Nami against someone like Thresh or Leona. Nami has good disengage like Janna, she has good sustain with her heals, she has good engage.
Basically the tanky supports that ran everyone else out of botlane in the beginning of the year are finding counters with heavy disengage oriented CC supports. These supports have good buffs for their allies (who doesn't like 50 bonus AD?), good sustain (whereas thresh/leo have none), and they fit well with almost any ADC.
Wasnt she like top eastern pick that the rest of the regions had to adapt to?
Thresh and Leona are the top support picks, and with Yasuo, Fizz, and Zed still popular mids, the meta encourages diving in all day, everyday. Janna is huge disengage. She trades off some of the heavy laning phase power other supports have for late-game saves. In Worlds, most of the time they don't have a legit laning phase. 2v1 top switch, running as a team and killing turrets, not engaging the enemy duo until post-six at least... Given this typical set-up, this allowed Janna's weaknesses to be overlooked. There was one Caitlyn/Nami game that she got destroyed, and some other recent tournament match (can't recall) where the enemy baited Janna's ult and killed her team multiple times. Unfortunately, haven't seen that much, so Janna shines like a gem right now until people smarten up :P
Edit: Nami is good all around and goes with most adcs easily. She's better poke/sustain than Sona because she has heavy CC instead of a slow, which better sets up kills or aids with escapes. And that auto-enhancement and slow? Super yummy. And like Janna, she's got a huge disrupt for her ult (though they're used quite differently, yes).
Janna has long been doing what Azir was birthed to do. Split teamfights.
I'm sure it's due to being able to protect the hyper carries, letting them stay alive and do their thing. They offer protection in the form or shields, heals, peel and disengage. They also prevent/stall assassins from doing their job. That's why I think we've seen this resurgence in these supports anyways.