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Support item changes for tanks

My Big Tits·2/2/2018, 6:07:07 PM·9 votes·774 views

Alright, im a tank support player and I am not a fan of the support items changes. I play mainly taric and braum and I dont understand riot's thought process behind what they did in 8.2. Its a huge buff to mage supports and its frustrating to play around when you play a tank support thats not alistar. You can dumpster mage supports with a few good engages in lane but then after they are able to get 2 items they do too much damage to supports like taric and braum who like to grab locket and redemption. The shield battery passive on the relic shield line was fantastic for supports like these two, now it really hurt them without getting compensated for properly. I dont feel like tank supports are very good without a team that can play around it properly. Im willing to adapt to the meta if i really need to play more janna/soraka/lulu/bard etc. Taric's winrate dropped almost 5 percent after these changes, not sure if its the item changes in general or just more people playing him and doing poorly on him, but i digress. Please comment about what you think in regard to the changes and if you like them or not!

12 Comments

Warios2/2/2018, 6:16:58 PM5 votes

Last time I looked, Taric was around 51-52% win rate, if he did drop 5%, maybe these changes puts him more in line with other supports.

As a support, I do like the reduced cost to obtain vision, and I do miss the passive shield battery on relic. Not sure if the missing actives would account for a 5% drop in win rate though.

Kubox2/3/2018, 12:57:18 AM2 votes

And yet Tank supports are topping the charts, with the only exception being Bard (somehow) and Janna, who's always there.

I think you're not giving enough credit to the fact that the tank support tier 3 item is the only one worth buying.

ÈvilMorty2/3/2018, 1:27:38 AM2 votes

I agree with all of this. Giving tanks supports another item that provided the shield battery as a passive and the fom item active would honestly fix this

2500 gold 500 hp 20 armor 10%cdr passive: shield battery active: Fom shield scaling with max hp

Whisper872/2/2018, 6:14:59 PM2 votes

I agree the support changes are a little too beneficial to those who build any offense early on (mages/enchanters). I mean even Ardent has AP on it so they get a little damage boost before they even finish the item. It's silly because they nerfed Ardent so that you wouldn't want to rush it early, but now that you don't need to buy sighstone you may as well just rush the AP component giving you damage and/or utility power.

Nea1042/2/2018, 11:13:05 PM1 votes

Funny thing, TANK supports became good mostly because they DID DAMAGE, besides cc. Find the error :D

JarodDempsey2/2/2018, 8:35:46 PM1 votes

Damage is the meta, you cant win by building utility you either need to build damage or anti damage, utility items in general have been bad for like a year now (aside from locket before it got nerfed). As taric I'd recommend banshees, zhonyas, mercury treads, then maybe redemption unless youre fighting lots of ap then you could do locket, then censer isnt bad, and ofc warding item. You can substitute censer for a tank item if needed.

Also only poke supports really got off easy from supp item changes. Many enchanter supps who start coin due to cdr dependancy have gotten off worse than tank supps because the coin line aside from coin is complete trash compared to the other two lines (exception soraka).

The relatively meager shield that fotm provided shouldnt be dropping your winrate significantly. If youre having problems laning then rush a tank item before redemption or locket, I've found both to be consistently lacklustre unless bought mid to late game simply because they dont offer enough in the way of base stats and their utility is so situational and easy to make useless. Also theres really no point in uying locket unles they have major aoe burst and redemption isnt useful if your team is mostly squishies since it's too slow. I mean i guess it could help keep people alive long enough for your ult to happen but if you built more ap and cdr you'd likely effect the same thing through heals while also increasing your damage output.

TEA Nietzsche 2/3/2018, 12:15:23 AM1 votes

I feel like Riot hates playmakers: they promote tanks toplane who just can't make plays aside from TP flanks as they are too busy wet noodling toplane/sidelane but try to keep botlane tanks down when they are actually able to make plays with every trade.