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Current state of support items

Verdade·12/26/2016, 10:44:06 PM·17 votes·3,562 views

Season 1 support veteran, got to gold back in S1 with just Soraka and i've been playing supports since then.

Long ago, back in 2013 there was huge nerf to base utility stats to all supports where they added AP scaling. This was to promote BUILDING AP ON SUPPORTS, so SUPPORTS CAN GET POWERFUL WHEN AHEAD. What we got nowdays:

AP support-oriented items item 3504item 3174item 2301 item 3092

Tank support-oriented items item 2302 item 2303 item 3401 item 3109 item 3190 item 3222 item 3107 item 3800 item 3069 item 3050 item 3060 item 2045

11/16 items have HEALTH/MANA REGEN on it, which are completely irrelevant stats in combat scenarios 12/16 items have CDR. Stat that doesn't improve their power alot, especially power of their ultimates. It's extremely easy to get huge amounts of CD from runes, making CDR even worse. 4/16 have AP. These items that do have rather small amounts of it, namely 60, 50, 40 and 25.

You might say "HP regen works in lane, MP regen does work in prolonged fights...". That's true. However, these are percentual stats. They are more effective on certain champions and less on others. Guess what. Supports have LOWEST BASE REGEN VALUES, so they BENEFIT FROM BONUS REGEN THE LEAST OF ALL CHAMPIONS. To make things more ridiculous, SUPPORTS HAVE HIGHEST AVERAGE MANA COSTS IN GAME. Janna's Q costs 150 mana, E 110 mana... there aren't even ultimates on NORMAL champions that are this expensive.

Moving on, most expensive support item costs 2400 gold. These items are literally cluttered by "gold sink" stats like CDR and Regens. So not only they are extremely item slot inefficient, they are also extremely gold inefficient. GOLD INEFFICIENCY ON CLASS THAT GET THE LEAST AMOUNT OF GOLD OF ALL CLASSES Slot inefficient items on class WHICH REQUIRES THE MOST ITEM SLOTS BY DEFAULT. I mean, supports have half of their item slots cluttered by mandatory items - Slavestone, Boots and Vision wards.

Next, actives. All of tank-oriented support items have ACTIVES. Few of these actives (the most impactful ones) scale with level. LEVEL SCALING ON CLASS WITH LOWEST AVERAGE EXPERIENCE GAINED These actives are overloaded, and half of the supports would gladly trade their baseline skills for these item actives as their abilities. This makes supports even more boring to play, as every support is more or less the same nowdays. You just build your shiny active items (don't forget slavestone or get reported) and click them instead of your abilities.

So, what about we nerfed the crap out of support items and gave power back to supports themselves? I mean, look at Janna's Q. It's 0.5s knockup with pitiful damage for 150 mana. W is 40% slow for 3 seconds with 12s CD. Seriously? This on a SUPPORT of all things?

I mean, how bad is the situation if SQUISHY GOLD-DEPENDANT MAGES outshine actual supports with their UTILITY AND DAMAGE? I mean, VK, Brand and Zyra can kite much better than Janna while providing substantial damage.

Having to watch "autofilled supports" because nobody wants to play this role is ridiculous. So PLEASE FIX OUR SUPPORTS. WE DON'T WANT TO PLAY NEUTERED SUPERMINIONS CAPABLE OF PURCHASING ITEMS. WE WANT LEGITIMATE CHAMPIONS WITH POWER COMPARABLE TO OTHER CLASSES.

Edit: This might even fix stupid 5v2 bot lane clown fiestas, as it is much easier to gank one legitimate and one neutered champion than to gank two legitimate champions. Mid laner can just roam bot and try to kill ADC without any real risk of being killed, sometimes even in 1v2 situation, just because how bad supports are.

32 Comments

Headmans Pride12/26/2016, 10:55:12 PM5 votes

Glad to see I'm not the only season 1 ap soraka

ChaddyFantome12/26/2016, 11:12:15 PM4 votes

FIGHT FOR SUPPORT FREEDOM and AWARENESS! *RAISES FIST

SGT Dingle Berry12/26/2016, 11:21:55 PM4 votes

i never really thought about it until this post but it would be nice to have higher AP, not just for damage but for shields/heals etc.

For example I play Karma and early lane isn't too bad especially if I land a mantra Q and they eat both, but after lane phase all I am is a shield bot that wards and presses 1 and 2 for redemption and locket. Now granted that brings a hell of a lot to the table especially when the enemy supp is auto fill and refuses support items, but if the enemy is a tanky supp with supp items he literally struts around undying and causing mayhem while I'm waiting for a cooldown/mana.

If their goal is to keep high damage mages from completely taking over bot lane I'd be fine with higher % bonuses on items like ardent censor. I get 8-10% heal bonus while crit champs get 150% go figure.

Jon117412/26/2016, 10:51:38 PM3 votes

item 3107 how is this a tank item? because it gives health?

Teridax6812/27/2016, 9:57:58 AM3 votes

I don't think all of these items can really be labeled "tank support" items simply because they give defensive stats. Sightstone, for example, just builds off of the most generic stat in the game because it's meant to be universal, the yellow trinket line is mostly for caster supports who don't necessarily feel like building AP, and Mikael's/Zeke's were both designed with caster supports in mind as well. However, all of this does highlight a major issue with support items giving mediocre amounts of stats that, ultimately, don't make the wielder feel all that powerful. Health regen isn't even an interesting stat on tanks, and is essentially filler on support items, and while the massive amounts of mana regen in itemization render supports practically manaless later in the game, they're offset by the highest in-kit mana costs in the game as well. Effectively, support items right now are a lot of padding with some exceptionally good actives, and a few good passives.

The problem with AP on support items, which Riot brought up as well, is that it's still not the most appropriate stat on them. Because it always adds more damage onto support kits, and supports aren't meant to deal much damage, they can't really be allowed to have consistent amounts of AP every game. AP is also a stat mostly tied to mages, and making it affordable enough for supports to stack means that mages would be liable to abuse those items for cheap damage, on top of good utility. As long as supports run on sub-par gold income relative to other classes, they will never be able to reliably access good AP.

As the OP mentioned, the central problem with supports is that they still have no real means of enhancing their own power through itemization, which, when combined with the numerous top-tier actives their items have, means they end up converging towards the same kind of strengths and contributions. The closest we have to a support "stat" is the shield/heal enhancement passive, but even that only covers a relatively small amount of the utility supports can provide.

Many other players have brought this up, but I think this might be a good time to introduce a new stat to the game that would specifically enhance utility. A stat that could amplify healing and shielding, but also buffs and debuffs (though not necessarily crowd control, as that's tough to balance around fluctuating values) could allow supports to make their entire kits feel more powerful, instead of just a handful of abilities. For example, with this kind of stat, Sona could amplify the power of her Q and E auras, as well as her W debuff, and not just her W heal/shield. It doesn't even have to be a matter of tacking an entirely new stat onto itemization, either, and I think health regen could be changed into cover-all utility: since increased utility would mean increased healing, it would also mean increased health regen, which should also allow tanks to make good situational use of the stat as well.

Supreme Senpai6912/27/2016, 7:05:34 AM2 votes

I'm sorta confused on what you're trying to get, not that it's a bad point. There's AP items that you can buy if you want to do damage. The AP support items are there for the supports that scale with AP but don't want to do damage, like Nami, Janna, Soraka. Ardent Censer has low AP but it also gives +10% to shields and heals to make up for that. There's support items, then there's AP items. If support items gave good AP, mid laners would totally take support items. And we all see what happens when mid laners take support items.

DemoGuide12/27/2016, 9:10:34 PM2 votes

Upvote for Slavestone. Such a good name, such a stupid item that should be removed.