Support: Starting Doran's Shield

The Situation The intent behind this was to survive laning phase against heavy early poke, and so far I have had great success in normals, and even won a ranked game doing this (Bronze 1, don't get excited.) However, I discovered this also lets you be more aggressive in lane and recover afterwards with an advantage. There's a little more to it than just Doran's though. Do note, even if your first item is the shield, your first back will always be your gold-gen item.

**The Build ** Obviously, you start Doran's Shield, but what else? For this build, I also dipped 12 into the Resolve mastery tree to really capitalize on the extra healing. My Runes were flat armor and flat mr, but ALSO flat health regen. This is important, considering how you want to trade with Doran's Shield. Also, most of my testing was done on . This is relevant because Karma has a lower HP/5 than typical tanky supports, such as Leona, Alistar, and Braum. She also has lower base armor than Lulu and Soraka (but superior hp/level).

The Pros Comparing to , Doran's Shield has far superior sustain and slightly better HP. It becomes incredibly hard for your enemy to poke you out early without a committed all-in. Additionally, your trades become far more favorable because you can heal up faster than your opponents. In short, your damage sticks better than theirs. This is especially important when talking about....

The Cons Let's face it, as an enchanter support like who typically favors heavily poking opponents, your damage is just lacking. You have to commit harder to securing kills, and they will slip away from you. Additionally, while your gold generation item will ALWAYS be your first back (and you may even back early to grab it), it does put you slightly behind gold-wise. As long as you don't die, this will usually break even by mid-game, but it's still noteworthy.

Is it Worth? So far, I have to say yes. I recently survived an and bot-lane while they were heavily poking, and went mostly even or positive. I have a feeling it'll be far more viable on tanky supports because, as mentioned, you have to give up so much early damage that it's hard to snowball a game unless you're meant to be a tank. Playmaking was a LOT easier though, as you can better survive diving for kills than you otherwise might. The trade-offs are there. I think this is viable as situational answer to an otherwise difficult early game.

What do you guys think? Am I crazy, have I just gotten super lucky? Or do you maybe have better suggestions in mind?