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Suggestion for making supports more desirable to play

A is for Atlas·12/17/2016, 12:12:17 AM·3 votes·745 views

Hi guys, I'm a Bronze/Silver support main, so feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt, as I'm sure there a thousand thing wrong with what I'm about to suggest. I want to get out of the way, that I'm not concerned with supports being too weak or too strong right now, just that people simply don't want to play them.

I genuinely enjoy playing support, but from how people talk about autofill ever since the new champ select came out, it seems most players do not agree.

Some of the reasons I think most people dislike the role (in no particular order): Generally, supports

  • gain EXP slower than other champs
  • gain gold slower than other champs
  • deal less damage than other champs in most stages of the game
  • have way more items with active effects, causing a bit of button overload (some people may like this, though)
  • don't "get to" farm until mid/late game, because the adc/mid usually need to max out on farm to deal damage
  • though it is (and always has been) everyone's job to ward, supports are still treated like ward vending machines in lower elo

Some of these issues have been mitigated a bit in the past with various support items and trinkets, however gold gen items and the cheaper "support" items can't be stronger (in the way a laner would want them to be), because otherwise laners would start using/abusing them.

What might be interesting to see, is something similar to the season 4 jungle changes, where either exhaust (or a new, different summoner spell) would be designated as a support summoner, and support items were limited to champions that have taken this spell.

Now before going any further, YES, I KNOW THAT IF WE JUST HIT A SWITCH AND MADE ONLY THIS CHANGE THAT IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLY STUPID. This would have to be an overhaul in the long run. New Items, changes to build paths, changes to support champions (and likely ADC role as well), changes to summoners (to make the new one/exhaust attractive only to support roles), and possibly a change to the overall feel of the active-item, ward-dropping, engager/healer/peelers that make up the support role.

What this will allow, is for item that let us CS more often than once every 30 seconds, or an item that grants bonus exp when destroying wards. It can open doors for supports that want to play/build more like a laner, and still have build options for supports that want to play/build more like a "traditional" support.

I don't have all the answers, this is just a little baby idea, but I'm hoping to have just a little discussion on it, and see where it goes.

Thanks for reading this far, let me know what you think!

3 Comments

Great Muta12/17/2016, 1:02:22 AM2 votes

Yep. I've mentioned before that a Support specific spell like a smite would differentiate the role and might make it more interesting.

Erockandroll12/17/2016, 6:10:07 AM1 votes

I think the potential backfire in that plan is, the Support role is not really bound by the summoner spells in the same way that Junglers are. Not to mention that your making the support role even more restrictive by binding said summoner spell. (Remember when people complained about not being able to go smiteless anymore?)

And your still going to run into issue of laners abusing those items, because they can still make effective use of the spell itself. (Exhaust is good in it's own right, especially against assassins.) About the only way I could potentially see this working is if you removed sightstone, and replaced that with a spell. (But then you just replace a necessary item with a necessary spell)

I don't like the idea of Restricting the Summoner spell choice of supports. (Exhaust is popular, but the pro's often take ignite) But working on that idea, I think an added potential is to allow Support items to augment spells.