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Can the next supports not have so much of their identity wrapped up a gimmick please?

Josh Sand··2 votes·1,266 views

I don't understand why support keeps getting gimmicky champions, while every other role regularly gets champs that are just good at what they do.

Design gimmicks are a pain point from multiple angles. When you center champions around a singular gimmick, you narrow the ways in which you can maintain their viability and balance. And if players aren't interested in that particular gimmick, there's no chance of them having any sort of engagement with that champion.

Design gimmicks make champions harder to balance, and it narrows the number of players that actually want to play that champion.

Yuumi I'm sure there are some people who like to RP as Dr. Strange's cape, but I don't like the fact that the entire kit of this champion is deeply intertwined with her attach gimmick. Because if the attach gimmick ever ends up being problematic, and you remove her power around that, how would you balance the rest of her skills, when they are so dependent on attaching in the first place?

Pyke Pyke's entire identity is a gimmick. I don't know who was regularly asking for Riot to create an assassin "support" champ, but the entire premise was risky from the start. I don't know how Pyke can maintain any sort of viability as an assassinating support champion, while not performing better in solo lanes. Maybe Riot can solve this one. We will see.

My main beef with Pyke is that he was a champion that barely anyone was asking for, yet he still takes up a release slot for support champions, when we could have had a real support released in his stead.

TahmKench I loved this champion so much when he came out, but I don't know if he can exist in the game as a support while he has his Devour gimmick. I don't think Devour was intended to be a gimmick, but given it's impact in pro play, that's what it's become at this point. His main peeling tool is so problematic, that it has to be nerfed hard enough to the point where he just not a viable support, ends up back in top lane.

Can we please start getting just normal support champions again?

Nami Rakan Thresh

It's entirely possible to make quality champions that aren't dependent on a singular gimmick for their play pattern. Can we please start seeing more of these again with new supports going forward?

2 Comments

Dorans Pants3 votes

I am of the opinion that we need even more gimmicks for power scaling purposes. As a bard main, I love the fact that I can rely on an additional power source that is not dependent on my adc and rewards me for pursuing it. Supports have always had a problem with how much of their power budget and income is tied to non-skill expressive tasks.

They can´t farm and support items are subpar due to them being passive gold generators and the way I see it, you can either:

  • not allow them to have a decent income ( only CC, low mana costs, high base dmg ---> static power budget)
  • give a decent income for basically free ( still no skill expression income wise )
  • add a gimmick to the supports for their unique playstyle so they can have an income in an unconventional way that is still skill-expressive

I find that if I play well, the game should reflect that, otherwise you end up with champs like rakan where all your power is in your W-R combo and it doesn´t really matter what you are doing outside of that. These static power budgets are a giant crutch on one hand since you can never fall truly behind, but are also a major drawback on the other hand since you can never get truly ahead as well. I believe that this "my champ always plays the same no matter how well I perform"-syndrome is one of the major reasons why only very few players enjoy this role no matter how much of an impact the role has on the game in general.

With that being said, Pyke seemed to me like a step in the right direction by filling the void of flashy, dmg oriented, mobile champs in the support role, while also providing an alternative method to accumulate additional gold. I can understand why pyke is so frustrating, but when criticizing pyke, I would rather talk about the different parts of the kit that don´t work or work too well or how his gold sharing is too accessible than to simply declare that these things shouldn´t be part of a supports kit and can never be balanced.

laners have lanes jglers have the jgl supports should have gimmicks

Josh Sand1 votes

Those are fair points. I'll go ahead and admit that I have bias against Pyke because I've been praying and posting that the support role needed that flash, but for an Enchanter, rather than an untested assassin concept like Pyke.

I would fucking kill to see an enchanter enter the game that was as much of a legit one trick champion like Yasuo, Irelia, or Gangplank.

We have Thresh filling that niche as en engage support, so I would love to see that reflected in the enchanter class as well. But instead, we got Pyke, who has some similar play patterns as Thresh.

My argument is that supports should have at least a few champs in each class that feature kits with similar use that they give to everyone else.

Irelia, Qiyana, Fiora, and Jax all have some form of:

  • Mobility
  • Damage
  • Crowd Control
  • Defense

They have no gimmicks. They just work out of the box and arent overly reliant on some weird mechanic that nobody else has. It doesnt make sense that supports arent being built the same way.

Nami and Sona are perfectly good examples of being high impact, without relying on a gimmick.

I dont mind that gimmck supports exist, I'm just wanting Riot to move on from that design approach, and start introducing more supports that are just designed with more skill expression in mind, rather than trying everything into some cheesy play pattern.

I think that if supports were given different areas of skill expression around core things like CC, status ailments, countering mobility / stealth, etc. it would open up a lot of skill expression in the role.

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