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Any plans for support Lulu?

Acolarh·10/17/2014, 4:15:40 AM·8 votes·1,751 views

I miss playing support Lulu. I was just curious if there were any plans to redo part of her kit to make her better as support and perhaps cut down on her solo lane strength at the same time (since that's not something you guys want to be a thing).

Basically her laning is weak compared to most other picks. She's meant to be a poke lane from what I can tell, but with sustain being as strong as it is from lifesteal and pots and many support skills, the damage doesn't stick very long and you run out of mana before you can get them down low enough to act on it.

I actually think cutting her Q damage and in return lowering her mana costs some would help a lot, since I think that's the main problem I have as support lulu. She runs out of mana so fast. I don't know. Just wondered if there were any plans for changes, as she is probably my favorite support champion but I haven't played her much in so long because I don't think she's in a good place right now.

35 Comments

Acolarh10/17/2014, 5:40:50 PM4 votes

I think some of you guys are just theorycrafting too much. I mean yes, her AAs are strong, and no you don't want to spam your spells, but think of some of the common matchups you'll run into.

If you're up against a leona, you're not going to want to get in range to AA her at all past level 1, as she'll all-in you and they'll kill you before you can do anything. Against thresh, yes, you can probably get some poke in as long as you stay behind the minions. Nami/Sona will just poke you back and out-sustain you. Soraka will also out-sustain you. Janna will put up her shield and out-trade you. I'm not saying Lulu loses every lane, I'm just saying you can't say all she has to do is move up and autoattack the enemies. It doesn't work like that if you're up against opponents that know what they're doing.

I'm not saying she's severely underpowered, I just think she has some big weaknesses right now (mana costs, low move speed, and squishiness being my main concerns) that aren't made up for by what she brings to the table during laning. I guess if the argument is that she outscales most supports because she brings so much to teamfights then I can see that and somewhat agree, I just think it's a bit too much of struggle to get past the lane phase.

SpecterVonBaren10/18/2014, 8:32:07 AM3 votes

She's just not fun to use anymore. After the last nerfs to her, I all but stopped using her and have barely seen anyone else play her either. Getting rid of her ability to have a one point wonder in her w was the straw that broke the camels back I think. I despise the people that take her solo laning, because it's their fault that that's now the only place she works in exchange for gutting her her original purpose.

Acolarh10/17/2014, 6:20:23 PM3 votes

Ok I went and checked some stats from the wiki and here are a few things I found:

Lulu's base mana regen is 5 per 5 secs, +0.5 per level

Tied with 4 other champs for 2nd lowest base regen (out of all champs)
Taric and Alistar are the only supports that have lower mreg per level gains

Lulu's base mana is 200, +55 per level

Tied with Thresh and Blitz for lowest base of a support
Mana per level is admittedly very high, beaten only by Janna, Soraka, and Taric (out of the supports anyway)

Lulu is tied with various other champs for the lowest MS (325) in the game

Other supports with 325 MS are Blitzcrank, Soraka, and Zyra

Average attack range of 550

Bot lane champions that you commonly see, that Lulu outranges: Blitzcrank, Braum, Fiddlesticks, Janna, Karma, Leona, Thresh Graves, Jinx, Kog'maw, Sivir, Lucian
Champions that beat her are as follows: Annie, Zyra, Ashe, Caitlyn, Varus
Champions that she ties with in range: Lux, Nami, Sona, Soraka Corki, Draven, Ezreal, Miss Fortune, Quinn, Tristana, Twitch, Vayne
Yes, she outranges more than outrange her, but most of those champions have various ways to deal with that advantage. The melee champions have gap closers (except Braum), the ADCs have gap closers (Graves, Lucian), range enhancers (Jinx, Kog'maw) or in Sivir's case a spell shield to block harass.

So what does this mean? I think it all adds up to give her a very weak lane phase. Yea she's strong in team fights later, but it would be nice to rebalance some of that power so she doesn't get crushed during laning.

My two cents. Again, I don't feel like she needs a whole lot, I think she's mostly ok. Basically just her advantages (poke, shield sustain) aren't particularly good during laning.

Acolarh10/17/2014, 8:14:06 PM3 votes

I think something I'd like to reiterate is that she seemingly was designed to be a caster support. However, her mana costs and regen speak to the opposite of that. I don't remember if her mana costs/regen have always been like this since release, but they're currently more comparable to thresh/blitzcrank than to the other caster supports (like janna, sona, nami, karma, soraka, etc.).

I think that the reason thresh/blitz have low mana pools and regen are because they're pretty high impact if they land their hooks. It's an all or nothing sort of playstyle; hit your hook, go in, kill. Miss the hook, play safe for a bit. Lulu on the other hand, doesn't really have that sort of style at all. Hit your q....go all in? No, not really, it doesn't lock the enemy down enough for you to, and besides, she's not tanky enough if they fight back to guarantee a kill anyway.

TL;DR: Her mana pool and regen are set up like an all-or-nothing champion, yet her kit seems to be a caster support kit.

Pudii Pudii10/17/2014, 5:15:06 PM1 votes

I don't see anything wrong with lulu'a laning phase as a support. She is my most played support this season and last season and I can see dominate the bottom lane with her alone.

I don't know pair of support/adc that had a stronger level 6 than a lulu/adc. If you're running out of mana then you are playing her wrong. If you are using Q on your enemy and not following up with multiple auto attacks or allowing your adc to get off multiple free auto attacks then you don't really know how to lane.

She has everything a support needs to peel for her ADC in lane and outside of lane, she's an absolute boss in team fights. The only match up I see lulu struggle against are sona/nami.

Maybe it's different at different elos but plat 4 here and she is still my favorite support, Janna being a close second.

Cu Sidhe10/17/2014, 4:38:23 AM1 votes

Lulu support is fine imo. Been maining her since the season 4 support changes (was a Vlad top main prior). She does seem to be a bit weak in the lane phase as all in beats her poke and sustain beats her poke but get to team fights and you will really shine. Polymorph the assassin, shield the adc for the extra pix damage, and ult your initiator and you just turned a fight around heavily in your favor.

Lwnt10/18/2014, 7:26:15 AM1 votes

Dont you guys find it odd that they make her utility scale with Ability power in season 4 but it is not really helping support lulu. Most support players I know tend to buy items that give little or no Ability power either to make her tankier or to get an item active. What even makes it more odd that solo lane lulu can actually use the utility scaling better than support lulu which doesnt make sense because support lulu is suppose to have better utility scaling. Also they use Ability power to scale the utility of lulu which is a very gold dependent stat in other words you need a lot gold to get a high ability power items. This is especially hard on a support income which is usually the lowest compare to other roles.

missinggrave10/17/2014, 4:27:42 AM1 votes

Without seeing how you play, all I can say is that the few times I've played Lulu, I've never had any major problems with mana. I've usually had a pretty easy life relying on my auto attacks in combination to the occasional Glitterlance in case of opponents coming a bit too close for comfort. Then her buffs/debuffs are pretty reliant on certain situations to occur (( I.E; Engaging, Disengaging, getting your ADC to lane, zoning, etc. )) where they have very specific uses. It's basically figuring out when to burst, when to poke, when to engage, when to disengage, and how to peel for your carry/carries. Of course, that's just how I think, so my play-style may simply be more complimentary to her current issues with others. I for one have only ever succeeded in using her top once or twice and never mid, so her strengths may very well be dependent on the player currently.

Goumindong10/17/2014, 7:16:56 AM1 votes

Isn't Janna popular right now because of worlds.

Give you one guess who Lulu still dumps all over

MrSc0tty10/17/2014, 4:51:20 PM1 votes

I have never understood why support players go "ah, I'm playing a poke support. That means my job is to lob spells at the absolute maximum range until I go OOM, then sit in the bush and die to a gank/all in"

The greatest early strength of a poke support is long ranged autos. And lulu has the longest range autos of any support.

Here's a game to play: play a Lulu game as if you're playing Thresh. Pretend you never want to use your skills except when you land your "hook" (your Q) and you only want to try to hook when you can be certain it'll land. So you move up and poke usually with your autos, while waiting for a good opportunity to unleash a chunk with Q-W-E and interspersed autoattacks.