Why people don’t play support – recent changes did not help

It doesn’t really matter what game you’re playing, supporting is often a vital role that can make or break the gameplay based on their performance. A good support can save allies in critical moments, enables carries like the adc to go on a fed rampage, and provides valuable vision control over the opposing team. Being a good support is more difficult than most people would assume, needing to react constantly to allies and enemies while predicting their actions. As a support you are the lifeline for your team, but also the bane of existence for the enemies… so why do people hate playing support?

1. No quantitative way to tract good plays When an ADC does well you can tell. High number of kills, good farm, and low number of deaths. When a mid does well, you can see it. If a top or jg does well than it will be visible for your team to see. Shout outs of “XYZ player is on a rampage” can be heard and you can see them taking objectives. Unfortunately, you don’t see that at all for a support. There is no solidified value for consistently assisting your team members, even if you are the keystone to the successful plays. A good support’s score generally has low kills, low deaths, and high assists, but realistically someone can AFK in base while using Raka’s ult and get the same exact score. This leaves support players highly under-appreciated and the team members to quickly forget the success you brought to the table.

**2. No honor for the selfless ** The new honor system overall is pretty good, but it does not reward support players. Mentioned previously, there is not quantitative way to judge a good support. A support can do everything right and all team members will remember is “look how good our adc did” or “so glad our mid got fed.” The support player could easily be carrying their team members and single-handedly making up for bad positioning or plays to allow this, but no player will truly remember the impact that was made. When the game ends I can promise you it won’t be the support getting the most honor - ever.

**3. Unrewarding champions ** Riot has done a lot of great things to make champions more enjoyable to play. Adding complexity to there kits and allows expert players to gain unique advantages over everyday players. People love this, but unfortunately it’s been a long time since the majority of support champs were updated. Most supports have very basic kits… heal… shield… heal… shield… knock up maybe… shield… stun…. Its all the same and provides no challenge. Being a good support comes down to the player making wise choices and only that. Any other role also has aspects of learning more complex plays with their champions. Champions like Rakan or Raka since her update do have an added layer of skill that are needed to truly shine with, but they are the rarity within a mass of one-dimensional champs.

4. Mini games are not enjoyable - no build diversity I hope I’m not alone in saying that the mini game aspect to support items is rather annoying. Not only that, but it often further solidifies the notion that supports are second-class to the rest of the team. Your adc doesn’t know how to control a lane? Good luck making use of your coin. Your adc leaves no room for you to make use of Relic? Good luck having any gold. You can mitigate this some by just outright claiming what is yours, but the fact that you have to fight with your team’s choices to just make a build is very lack luster. It is your only major source of gold aside from objectives, it should be more enabling. Support builds matter too. Not only am I less likely to keep up in experience when playing support, but also I’m lucky if I ever build anything outside of the same 4 core items every single game. Sup item, boots, sightstone, and maybe one other item. If I'm lucky I can grab another item... that literally every single support champ builds... No build diversity and no gold to enable it.

5. Lower scoring Mentioned previously, there is no way to successfully quantify a good support. End of the match you will generally see people with high kills, farm, and low deaths receiving a good rank. They’ve earned it… but what about the supports? Even if you get a perfect support score, no kills or deaths with a high number of assists, you aren’t guaranteed a good score. I’m not sure what logic goes into this scoring, but from what I’ve seen you are more likely to get an A or S rank when you DO have kills. This isn’t the support MO at all and they (should) shy away from taking a kill unless it’s absolutely needed to secure the play.

**So why does it matter? **

I want to see all of league players able to enjoy the game. Having more support players will reduce the need for auto-fill, reduce wait times between games, and has the potential to bring more diverse plays into the game. People shouldn’t see others in ranked auto-filled into support roles playing champs like LB because “support sucks and I don’t play it.” Things like that ruin the game for everyone. You want support to be rewarding and feel like it has an impact on the team’s success.

It would even help with the adc issues. Trouble balancing adc come from the fact that you can’t outright give someone with that much range a huge burst in early game power but they don’t often make it to late game when other roles have already steamrolled. Having a good and fun support aspect will help adc meet their late game and remove the need to such drastic early game items.

Give some love to your sups.

So… what are people’s thoughts?