[UNPOPULAR OPINION] There's no good way to say it [BRAVEPOST]

Mages in this game are bullshit.

And what I'm referencing here is the popularity of mages taking over the support role (again). Right now, mages functioning in the support role over actual supports is the norm aside from defensive mages who serve one function: protect allies (think Janna, Soraka and even Nami). You can't even dare play a tank support currently. And when you can play tank tops, there's really no need for it anyway. Which leads me back to mages being bullshit. Why would I pick a defensive utility support when I can pick a mage who can fit in the support role, do the most damage in the game - granted most of it is in lane phase but they still do a colossal fuckton of damage in teamfights - and STILL offer extremely powerful utility that makes them relevant regardless of their score.

For example, Zyra, Brand and Malz support all bring incredibly powerful CC to the table and with the purchase of , their cc becomes even more obnoxiously strong. Not to mention, it gives them the ability to kill targets either on 1v1s or do considerable aoe damage the enemy team, neither of which can be ignored. And the thing is, this isn't the first time this has happened.

You may recall brand support of last season prior to his rework. You'll recall zilean support, Annie support of the past and Morgana. These are prime examples of champions who once functioned as solo lane mages but are versatile enough to be supports. And quite frankly, unless balanced appropriately (as Annie, Morgana, Zilean, Zyra and Brand) as supports 1st, these champions will force real support oriented champions out of the meta. We thought brand was fixed but we were wrong. Zyra is basically a support now but the rest are still mages first. And the thing is, this is going to continue to happen - mark my words. These champions won't be fixed until they are rebalanced around being supports, which will likely severely weaken them as solo laners. But they'll still have solo lane capacity.

People complain about ADCs and the need for them and that's a valid complaint but in all honesty, adcs only serve one function: damage. And only in one instant have adcs forced other classes out of other lanes, and that was preseason 6 with the marksmen update. And many of them were simply overturned and rebalanced properly. But mages have been doing this forever. Mages force melees out of top lane all the time. For all the bitching about assassins, they really haven't been good as a class since s3 and mages force assassins out of lane simply by being better overall champions who scale better. Survive the rough early levels and watch the assassin become useless as you scale significantly better as a mage. I've already explained mage she forcing supports out and we've even seen instances of mages forcing tanks/bruisers out of the jungle (granted, these are very isolated incidents the same as ziggs forcing ADCs out of bot).

But what other class does this? No other class universally fucks every lane the way mages do. And it's because mages have too much going for them. They have insane utility, typically safety from long range and absurd damage with very overstated weaknesses that aren't significantly as damning as made about to be, immobility being the biggest example. But who cares about immobility? You can clear waves from fog of far with a significant amount of mages, so positioning easily takes care of that.

Mages need to be seriously looked out again and have their versatility toned down. You can tell have the best of 2/3 worlds (damage and utility) with the third being durability (and even then you have itemization that hardcore double dips in defense/offense). Until that happens, you're going to keep seeing mages shit on everything and then have to be rebalanced accordingly, which isn't fun for the mage player who's champion eventually gets significant changes they don't want or the people's playing against it.

Okay, drown me in your mage bias downvotes