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Support, ADC, APC, Assassin, Bruiser, Off-tank, Tank Differences

creatureplex··2 votes·2,804 views

Start with their kits, and go into detail later in this section to start though

Support-Leona, Soraka, Thresh, Sona-A support is a champion that kit is built around being a support, most supports aren't classified as only support in fact, no supports are solely supports. A support champion needs to have a kit that help their adc, and later their team, stuns, silences, snares, knockups/backs, steroids, heals, shields just to name some, and they scale very well with supportive items like Ardent Censor and usually grab a gold related item for them to get gold throughout the game without starving the adc of their gold.

ADC-Ashe, Miss Fortune, Corki, Vayne-A marksman champion that relies solely on their auto attacks and very little on their actual abilities, these champions rely the most on items to ditch out their damage unlike any champion in this game getting the right items for the right circumstances is essential, building very little defensively but instead looking to completely devastate the entire enemy team.

APC-Annie, Morgana, Lissandra, Syndra-A mage, these champions rely heavily on their abilities to ditch out their damage and should never be taking lightly or underestimated, they as well don't really depend too heavily on defensive items, but their items are designed to increased how much damage their specific abilities do. They are the early game and early mid carries and usually they start losing damage output late game.

This next section gets a little more confusing because the next 4 roles depends solely on what items they grab throughout the game.

Assassins-Assassins are designed to not really ditch a whole lot of damage to the enemy team but specialize in taking out priority targets like Mages and Marksman. They are usually very mobile and hard to pin down and usually have some way to initiate and to get out and kill their opponent before the enemy team has a chance to react. Assassins unlike any other classification build absolutely no defensive items, they need to go full on assassination to be effective. Some assassins like Master Yi, Jax, Tryandamere, Vi, are some examples of assassins, though they are also fighters which means with a few changes in their builds they could be bruisers.

Bruisers-Bruisers again most of these fighters are also assassins like the names mention above while others are more tanky in their design this classification is the most situational type classification as they can build up to 3 defensive items to only 1 and still be very effective due to their unique kits like Jarvan IV, or Gangplank, some assassins like Rengar, or Pantheon could also fit in this category depending heavily on how they build their champion.

Off-Tanks-Most confusing type of champion nobody seems to know what a true off-tank is off-tank build at most 2 offensive items, and at the very least have 1 they are not pure tanks but could just as easily fill the full tank role if instead they elected to build full tank, like Warwick, Trundle, Udyr, Shen.

Tanks-Tanks build solely defensively usually having kits designed to taking a beating, tanks could range from supports, bruisers, to off-tanks depending on how they build there champion. Arguments over what these champions should build come up all the time and is a huge debate even with my cousin and I as he believes that a tank should grab at least one offensive item, while I believe that to be a true tank u should build full tank as your kit does the damage that is necessary for you to be effective, some examples, last game I played this Poppy that grabbed Maw of Malmortius and Trinity Force though very useful on her grabbing these items made her more of an off-tank rather than a true tank. Some better items for tanks could be spirit visage instead of Maw of Malmortius, or to do a little more damage Titantic Hydra would of been nice, or even Black Cleaver, Frozen Mallet as all these items are tank items just the same.

20 Comments

Critmaster Garen2 votes

i disagree on most of the list. youre classifying the champions a lot into what lane theyre going. leona and thresh arent actual support champions for example. theyre just played in the role of 0cs duo laner.

support: squishy, low damage, high utility, range. often focused on buffing allies in some way. there is often some overlap with mages.

sona, soraka, janna, lulu

support mages: mix of damage oriented kit with some utility, squishy, ranged

morgana, lux, orianna

mages: suishy, ranged, heavy single target burst or aoe damage focused kits, low mobility

brand, malzahar, veigar, annie

tanks: high defense, medium sustained damage in melee, high utility, peel and hard engage

leona, maokai, nautilus, thresh, alistar, malphite, sejuani

bruisers: a really broad spectrum of champions. their job is usually sustained damage in melee, while having a certain amount of suriviability. damage, mobility, and survivability can heavily vary.

anything between garen (low mobility, high damage, high defense) and jax or irelia (high mobility, medium defense, high damage).

assassins: high mobility, strong burst, suishy. single target focused.

talon, zed, leblanc, diana

creatureplex1 votes

No I'm classifying them based on their kits not their lanes technically speaking any good person at this game could support with relatively any champion in the game, and no not all supports do low damage syndra, sona just to name a couple do lots of damage, plus karma..... but you are wrong most assassins are also fighters which indicates that depending on their build they can be a bruiser like Master Yi is famous for assassinations but he can build like a bruiser and still be very effective. My point of this post is to give people a hindsight of what these champions intel. For example a support isn't supposed to do the damage yet a lot of people choose ap supports like Annie and Brand me I choose not to play with them there are several options for support I don't need an Annie or a Brand to win my lane or win the game I need a support that's going to save my ass from that Evelyn, Shaco gank, Thresh and others are famous for this. Supports jobs are supposed to be centered around protecting an adc making the laning phase easier and protecting them Annie and Brand kind of destroy that balance though they have counters, you are normally faced with this simple mechanic they either snowball or become useless mid to late game. They are kill lane champions though other supports have that potential they could usually play more passive and be effective late game examples like Zyra, Sona, Blitzcrank, Alistar, these are really good supportive champions that could have a terrible early game but still help their team mid to late game. Annie and Brand are like a scale, put all your weigh on it all your eggs in one basket and go all in get the kill or you lose, their's no back up plan for this. I use to play Starcraft 2 for a long time was very good kicked ass against Protoss and other Terran players as a terran player myself. I always put Annie and Brand support like the equivalent to the 6 pool strategy the Zerg used, they had to breach your base if those early zerglings don't the terran player practically had an easy win, and usually ended up thanking the zerg player for the no challenge win, Annie and Brand are like that dominate or go home I never lose to a annie support or brand support if they don't do their job right, unless my jungler completely negated my lane. It's easy for a jungler to get kills in this type of lane focus the annie or brand kill them adc is left with no utility and no escape and usually dies shortly afterwards but almost always guaranteed to have to blue pill while sona karma morgana others would save my life and possibly because of them I would be able to stay in my lane and keep going as if that fail gank never happened. Yes your common argument well they have a stun, okay fine that's great both depend on their spells being ready for a stun, while other supports missed their snare it's okay morgana could still use her shield or ult, lux has a built in barrier and slow with snare potential zyra has snares blitzcank can pull or silence jungler on approach tahm kench can eat someone to get them away from their adc, several options for different reasons annie and brand have one option if it fails their's a good chance both her and him and their adc dies.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

No I'm classifying them based on their kits not their lanes technically speaking any good person at this game could support with relatively any champion in the game, and no not all supports do low damage syndra, sona

holy wall of text. im gonna stop you here and say, that syndra isnt a support. shes a mage.

and while sona has some respectable poke damage early on, a lot of her is focused on buffing her allies. and mid to lategame even whgen built on a ap heavy build, most of her power is in her utility. she grants aura bonuses to herself and the champions around her.

i did say there is some overlap between mages and supports. but sona still cant keep up with the full damage rotation of actual mages.

i think the misunderstanding here is that youre doing what a lot of people do. youre confusing the champion class of "supports" with the role of "0cs support" or "0cs duo laner". which is taken by many different classes of champions nowdays. usually supports, mages, or tanks.

the reason the role is often just called "support" is, because originally people only went into that position with actual support class champions like janna, soraka, etc. due to their low item and level scaling (which was later changed when utility scaling was added in a major rework of those champions). and the name simply stuck, even when other champion classes saw a surge in bot lane as 0cs support.

its like people started calling "bot" as a role "adc" because for 6 years now the role of bot laner has been taken by the adc/0cs duo, and they dont even understand anymore, that there is a difference between "adc" and "bot". because over time new players joined the game, and they learned only that people called adc and went bot with them.

especially recently we can see that marksmen as a class of adc are not only going bot, but often going mid lane, top lane and into the jungle now.

overlap exists to a certain degree between a lot of classes. but usually only in individual cases. there are still clear extremes that showcase the main attributes of a champion class. like talon is clearly an assassin, and garen clearly a bruiser/fighter. while squishy melee adc yi is mostly a fighter with a tiny bit of assassin, since his playstile early on tends to revolve around cleaning up fights.

or yasuo is actually a light fighter/melee adc, while he has some overlap with assassins.

creatureplex1 votes

Syndra is a mage support, she is a support if used correctly.

creatureplex1 votes

Syndra is a mage support, she is a support if used correctly. All wrong Master Yi is not an adc, he's an assassin, or a bruiser depending how he builds. Yasuo is an assassin not a carry, he just tends to get fed because of his kit making him very hard to gank and very hard to outplay him in lower ello so it seems sometimes he can carry a team but he's not the carry. The problem people are facing is this they're constantly trying to make their champion more than what they are and in lower ello it kills the game entirely and makes strategy against certain comps hard to predict therefore as this game progresses it's going to be harder and harder to get out of lower ello for players that enjoy the meta and play this game base on the meta. While other players it'll be easier and easier to get out of lower ello from trolling while most players don't have the skill to adapt and learn new things. Which is where the term ello hell comes from I can play 3 Jax vs Nasus matches in a row, same skills same everything but how they play changes entirely.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Syndra is a mage support, she is a support if used correctly. All wrong Master Yi is not an adc, he's an assassin, or a bruiser depending how he builds. Yasuo is an assassin not a carry, he just tends to get fed because of his kit making him very hard to gank and very hard to outplay him in lower ello so it seems sometimes he can carry a team but he's not the carry. The problem people are facing is this they're constantly trying to make their champion more than what they are and in lower ello it kills the game entirely and makes strategy against certain comps hard to predict therefore as this game progresses it's going to be harder and harder to get out of lower ello for players that enjoy the meta and play this game base on the meta. While other players it'll be easier and easier to get out of lower ello from trolling while most players don't have the skill to adapt and learn new things. Which is where the term ello hell comes from I can play 3 Jax vs Nasus matches in a row, same skills same everything but how they play changes entirely.

yasuo and yi are designed as melee adc. riot originally classified yi as adc, before they changed to the new, more generalized system fighter, marksman, assassin etc.

the mark of adc is high sustained damage through auto attacks. tryndamere, yi, ashe, sivir, basically every marksmen are all adc.

actual assassins ususally have high mobility and burst damage. yi doesnt burst. he carries with sustained damage.

and while syndra has some utility in her kit, none of her abilities empowers her allies. there are no shields or buffs in her kit to count as support.

morgana, orianna, lux. those are actual support mages. because theyre primarily mages who focus on putting damage on the enemy team, but still have one ability slot dedicated to being able to buff allies.

creatureplex1 votes

Syndra can support though I've had it happened once where she fed the shit out of me badly I mean we talking around 20 something kills at end game where 6-7 of those came during laning phase. Better choices maybe but I prever her over a Teemo any day of the week shit Ashe would even be a better support than Teemo. No all assassins are burst, Mastery Yi, Tryandamere, just for example are assassins design to get to your back line and kill that damn marksman they do it just as effectively as Shaco or Rengar, just like with mages their being different type of mages, there are different types of assassins. Maybe in the old days it was different I don't know but now days that's how it is. Put Master YI up against 5 full health champions, and let's see how he does, or Yasuo see if he could get a penta kill with 5 full health champions. It's not likely going to happen unless the enemy team just sucks that bad but in all honesty I don't think a assassin pro could even do that.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Syndra can support though I've had it happened once where she fed the shit out of me badly I mean we talking around 20 something kills at end game where 6-7 of those came during laning phase. Better choices maybe but I prever her over a Teemo any day of the week shit Ashe would even be a better support than Teemo. No all assassins are burst, Mastery Yi, Tryandamere, just for example are assassins design to get to your back line and kill that damn marksman they do it just as effectively as Shaco or Rengar, just like with mages their being different type of mages, there are different types of assassins. Maybe in the old days it was different I don't know but now days that's how it is. Put Master YI up against 5 full health champions, and let's see how he does, or Yasuo see if he could get a penta kill with 5 full health champions. It's not likely going to happen unless the enemy team just sucks that bad but in all honesty I don't think a assassin pro could even do that.

ive been trying to explain to you.

support as a champion class, and 0cs support are two different things. many different classes can play as 0cs support. mages, supports, tanks.

the reason why the strategic position is called "support" is because the position was only taken by support class champions originally, so they became synonyme very early on. over the years, people have experimented and used different types of champions in that position, as long as they have enough utility to stay relevant without a lot of farm.

annie is clearly a mage, so is syndra. soraka, janna, and sona are support class champions, who focus around buffing allies. all of them can be played on 0cs and have an impact on the game.

as far as yi and yasuo go as carries. they have the tools to carry against tanky targets when played on glass cannon builds. yi is bloody hard to pull off like that and you need almost godlike reflexes, but his original design intent is to carry with sustained damage on a similar build as marksmen. it is actually possible, even when difficult and they do have a lot more carry potential in return.

Anraton1 votes

According to your post Cho is a support :-D Silence, Knockup + slow, tanky even without many items as he stacks his ult

No it is not a joke I know cho support works

my point here was ... there are Champs that aren't tagged as support and can fill that role (as shen, poppy and Trundle do) due to their kit

creatureplex1 votes

As I said though not the best option for a support Cho'Gath technically speaking yes he can support an adc if he goes very tanky he can do very well, any real tank could be a support, they're called support Tanks, besides Braum and Leona, but Cho'Gath the reason he is not a support tank is because of the fact that he relies on getting his kills to increase his size, he can't do this without starving out his adc, which is why he's not the best choice for a support. ADCS need those early game kills as they need their items, in my opinion every game you need 4 different type of champions, you need an adc to do the damage late game, an apc to do the magic damage and force enemy tank to want magic resist possibly even their entire team instead of armor, tanks, to protect their team, supports to protect the adc until the adc is well fed, the other 1 role could be anything another adc, another apc, a bruiser, assassin, off-tank, even another tank. As long as you have those first 4 roles filled, your chances of winning a game increases quite dramatically doesn't mean you have to have those 4 in every game but it for sure will help insure a victory.

Mirkhail1 votes

i think there are different kind in one class for example, poke mages, burst mages, dot mages, utility mages. And also a lot of champion don't do a single thing so they can have different role.

creatureplex1 votes

Regardless they're still apcs just different types of apcs.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

Meh either way some of what you said is mixed up because of riot screwing up roles and such.

Some of the champs you said are actually "Carries" champs who scale more in effectiveness come late->end game(usually with Crit) and if given enough time can wipe out a team. Which benefit late game.

While the assassin role you are mostly correct but they tend to fall off late game.

Jax also doesn't fix assassin role because he's a scaler into a late game monster and by no means an assassin with how weak his early game is.

I just wish riot would add new roles so the melee carries can have a better role name.

Also wish there was a duelist role..... that would be perfect for melee marksmen too.

creatureplex1 votes

And no there is no suck thing as a melee carry, they are assassins that tend to ks a lot early game and snowball off of it because of it which makes it seem like they are really strong, but in actuality they're not. Their purpose take out the squishes, now their are assassins like Yasuo that is just a bit op for most team comps, but that's different, most assassins do their job and that's it. As for Jax he does not have a crappy early game take it from someone that uses him a lot he's a very strong champion throughout the game, but if counter pick or outplayed he could become rendered and useless. And there are no melee marksman, that would defeat the purpose entirely. The carries are what they're supposed to be wipe the game while assassins wipe squishes, Jax is primary a fighter first, he's not just an assassin, he's a duelist he can go toe to toe with most champions just like any other fighter.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

Lol you never played back before riot screwed up role names then.

Fiora/yi/tryn/gp and yasuo+ a few more melees were actually melee carries who hyperscaled with crit and would take out an enemy team if not focused(just like marksmen who were ranged carries back then)

Assassins aren't able to fully wipe out a team because AD+Penetration doesn't give them enough ability to deal damage to more than 1-2 targets before they have to get out vs carries who were able to build crit+AS+lifesteal and lw in order to chunk the enemy team if left alone until they died.

There were melee carries you just didn't know.

While jax, he's always been a bruiser but his synergy with dodge runes waaaaay back got out of hand until he was heavily nerfed/reworked (Back then you feared what would happen if jax had a real weapon instead of a lamp-post). Jax currently has a god awful early game and can hyperscale if built right but not oppressively. I didn't mean to call jax a carry or assassin if I accidentally did he's just a bruiser(renamed to fighter)

Melee marksmen/ranged marksmen were ALL called carries.

creatureplex1 votes

No this game is older than my time of playing it and I'm still relatively new in consideration to a lot of gamers that play this game. But now days my biggest issue in this game is people that are trying to play a master yi at bot lane, me personally I would love that okay cool easy win for me regardless of what marksman I was playing, I would pretty much snowball I have range and if he does go ham on me thank god for my support with massive cc in their kits. Pretty much I don't like troll picks don't make me go up against a Le Blanc bot lane, it's just real op to do and will almost always wipe the adc out making it impossible for them to farm.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

OH....yea people don't understand that just because they are/were melee carries doesn't mean they take up a marksmen's spot. All melee carries were usually top and sometimes mid/jng as time progressed.

Although pre-nerfed yasuo was a freaking awesome support that was back when his E would refill his passive meaning he could go in harass then fall back to fill up passive and try it again, it wasn't even oppressive since you would still die if you didn't use your passive correctly unlike ap yi and more ridiculous abuse cases.

LordGeovanni1 votes

is that why adc skills span about 8 seconds and thats not even counting essence reaver that can give them max cdr while just building damage and crit

creatureplex1 votes

Their auto attacks are what they normally rely on doesn't mean they don't use their abilities, take ashe for example, or other marksman their are some but their auto attacks are their bread and butter.

LordGeovanni1 votes

which is how it should be but if you have been playing this game the past half year you see that most adcs that are popular have poke and they spam spells until the enemy is low and only then go in and auto attack to try to pick up the kill

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