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Let's talk about Ranked 2018 - specifically from the perspective of a support main.

Rigudon··13 votes·7,377 views

CAUTION: LONG RANT ABOUT SUPPORTING IN 2018 AND HUGE POST WITH LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT No TL;DR. If you care, then you'll read it.

I won't pretend to be unbiased - I've hated the game ever since the new rune system was implemented. Not only did it force me off my main champion, but it also completely destroyed the balance of my lane. As a support main, I no longer find my role enjoyable anymore. Here's why:

  1. I used to play Soraka , but now it's impossible because both me and my adcs get one-shot. The same problem exists with my other favorites, Sona, Janna, Morgana, Zyra, and Nami . Yes, I play some tanks such as Braum and Taric, but they struggle just as badly in the meta for reasons I will explain later.

  2. There is no way to avoid being one-shot. All new/reworked champions have a bit of everything (cc, gap closer, escape, damage, tankiness) making it impossible for me to stay within range, but at a safe distance. (Ex. Akali because she can dash practically infinitely and tower dive)

  3. Warding is a joke. Long ward cooldowns make the early game impossible, thus contributing to issue #2. Vision score replaced the ability to see if somebody has a ward available.

  4. Anybody can support. Supports have little to zero impact on the game unless they pick and are good at tanky playmaking champions such as Alistar Thresh. Even then, they only have limited potential. If you want to be carried, just play support.

  5. Continuous unnecessary nerfs. Stop nerfing squishy champions. They're already at the bottom of the win rates.

  6. Win lane, lose game. I cannot express how much I hate losing the game even every single lane won early. Perhaps it's not a complete steamroll, but every person won in their own right. How is it fair that when mid-game comes, I get one-shot while ahead? How does that happen? Again, I'll explain exactly why later.

  7. Riot tries to force a false meta. They didn't like that games last too long, so they buffed assassins so that they could end games quicker. Early game champions were allowed to snowball. Adcs such as Vayne fell out of meta because they'd never reach late game and hit their peak whereas champions such as Draven, Lucian, and Ezreal found decent success as reflected in their win rates because of their early game damage and favorable keystones. After realizing how weak adcs were in the meta, people started playing other champions bot lane. Some examples are gold funneling compositions, ap assassins, and mages. (ex. respectively MasterYi and Taric/Alistar, Leblanc, Vladimir/Swain) Now why is that an issue to me? It's because the fact is that it's better to go 2 damage dealers bottom lane than to play adc and support. I can't remember which pro top lane player said this exactly (link me if you know), but they said,

> "I think it's fair that bot lane has to adapt because top lane has to all the time."

IMO, I never agreed that top lane should have to deal with their situation. My secondary role is Top and I can't stand the fact that you could literally play any champion up there. To me, top mostly boils down to if you can counter pick the enemy. Just like how I feel about that, bot lane shouldn't have to deal with an everchanging meta. At the very least, the meta should be consistent for half a season.

  1. Following reason #7, the meta changes way too quickly. "Change for the sake of change" is a running joke that I see all the time nowadays. Instead of connecting with players who have stuck with the game for years, Riot just caters to new players. It's not hard to see why considering they lost a heavy portion of players due to their failure to balance the game. (Go ahead and check Reddit and other forums. Articles about it are not difficult to find. How does Riot cater to specific players while ignoring their long-time supporters? Well, Riot gives a daily win bonus thus forcing people to play daily. Many people cannot because they have work. Thus younger and newer players have an advantage. New players have had the EXP to level 30 halved and also free runes. (why this is bad will be discussed later) Even the failed Clash planned to have the competitions bi-weekly - a schedule that any young adult or working teen can't keep up with.

  2. Balance changes are poor. Yes, it must be very difficult to balance champions to be viable in both casual, competitive, and pro play. But the recent difficulties have been brought down by Riot Games themselves because they removed the old rune system!

Anyways that's all I can think of off the top of my head right now, so I'll tell you exactly why I feel these issues led to such a terrible year. Here they are (numbers match issue):

  1. After removing the rune system, Ranked has been just a big game of rock, paper, scissors for me. Either my team counter picks the enemy or vice versa. Once you are in game, it's practically over. I would say that I know I've lost 60-70% of my games just looking at champion select. Yet, I cannot dodge more than twice a day otherwise I risk a penalty). In the past, I could at least build armor and magic resist if I was in a particularly difficult lane. Now that is impossible. Even if I know that the lane is rough, I have no choice but to either concede lane by backing constantly or just die. Both of which rely on the rest of my team to simply snowball and carry me.

  2. How can we deal with champions that have a little of everything? Simply put, we can't. Champions get outdated - that's how it goes. They need to be reworked but that wont be an immediate thing. All we can really do is nerf assassin champions with crazy gap closers. (I'm looking at you guys, Kayn Akali Shaco Evelynn Nocturne…) This itself will be difficult. Take a peek at Issue/resolution #9.)

  3. Long cooldowns on wards makes every ward all that more valuable early game. Here are 3 simple warding scenarios that can leave bot lane with no vision to defend against an early gank or no vision to finish off an early kill:

(1) The adc and/or support ward in order to defend or engage in a level 1 invade.

(2) The adc and/or support ward the same bush because they are afraid of a level 1 cheese play in lane or the tri-bush (on blue side).

(3) The adc and/or support miss the bush by a hair. It happens.

  1. With increasingly more champions that have high mobility and gap closers (see Issue 2), wards have become more important than ever to avoid being one-shot. Additionally, supports have to wait for this ridiculous "Quest" to finish before they can place down more wards. What do I do in the mean time? Place down my 75G, destroyable Control ward in a pushed in lane just so the enemy support can clear it? No. I can't. That means I just have to either ward behind my lane or pray that that level 6 Talon doesn't fly in and banish my Jinx to the shadow realm using his R. Now it's not like 3-4 players down bot lane is anything new, but it's impossible to keep my adc safe by warding up. And yeah, I know Riot did this intentionally because they're trying to force another meta and that they know it's unfair. They said it themselves - the aim of their balance isn't fairness. They just want an _ever-changing meta _to keep the game "fresh". While I'm at it, I might as well touch on how Riot wants to also force non-support players to play support. Why is it that Riot keeps making the meta favor more aggressive, damage dealing supports rather than more passive, peeling supports? Why is it that Riot removed checking if an ally had wards up in favor of more statistics - vision score. The reason is that Riot wants people who play support to feel more gratification when they have higher vision. This means absolutely nothing to me as a long-time support main. Do you think I care how much higher my vision score is over my adc? No. I'd rather know if my team has wards for that bush they're approaching so that I don't have to face check or blow another ward w/ expensive cooldowns). I propose that we rid the quest completely and raise the price of the 2nd tier support items to 800G - the same as old Sightstone). If I pay for wards, I don't want them 13-15 minutes into the game when it's already too late to ward for lane. I want them immediately. And also, revert the ward availability to vision score change!

  2. The meta last season was all about my favorite champs. You may think to yourself that I'm simply upset because of the drastic change from healing/shielding champions from being on top to bottom tier, but you're wrong. I will fully admit that they were too strong last season, but I also think that they're too weak this season. Let me explain. One champion that completely took over the meta was Janna. She was strong because she could peel well and her shields kept her carry safe until late game. For those reasons, she was nerfed heavily. Janna's E CD is now 18 seconds at Level 1, shielding for 70 +(70% ap). Factoring in all possible rune combinations, the most you can shield an ally for (in lane, so WATERWALKING does not apply) is a grand total of...133.35 dmg when Janna is at full HP or 177.8 if the ally is at 40% HP or lower. It sounds like a lot especially when you factor in that the shield also gives the adc AD ...but it really isn't. If you decide to shield to protect an ADC from poke, most champions can destroy the shield almost instantly. For example - 1 W from a Brand with will instantly obliterate the shield and whittle the adc down with scorch. Of course there are champions that cannot pierce the shield in a single blow, but their cooldowns are much shorter than Janna's. They just continuously harass the adc while the shield is down. For this reason, Janna was unplayed for quite a while until players started building her as an AP champion and poking with W. Understandably she was nerfed, but then she was nerfed again unnecessarily. Her long E CD and the decaying shield has made Janna a very unfavorable pick in Solo Que. But it's not only Janna that has suffered through being nerfed prior to the runes & mastery rework. Other champions have been forced into this awful cookie cutter mold known as new runes. Champions that can quickly burst have become the meta whereas champions that prefer to stall games are getting one-shot. Take for example, some of my favorite mid-laners: Orianna and Syndra. Who are unable to build armor or mr early thanks to the new runes. What's the counter play to getting ganked by assassins which are in meta right now? Rengar Nocturne Kayn Talon Shaco? Control mages die instantly to their ganks and are unable to build any resistances in time nor do they have escapes besides flash. The ward cooldown is ridiculously long and they can't ward to protect themselves. If they get ganked, what prevents the jungler from coming back in after another 20 seconds has passed? And yet despite this, Orianna was recently nerfed because 'oh well she gets poke, so she should be easy to kill'. She's already easy to kill! What escape does she have? You'd have to have lightning reflexes to stop yourself from dying to a gank.

  3. This leads to issue #6: winning lane, losing game. I won lane and took their tower! Now what? Guess I'll just follow my adc and roam mid. Except that the wonky level system puts me and my ADC at lvl 7 and the enemy mid at 9 AND they're an assassin and can one-shot me despite having 0 kills. Why? It's because we don't have runes to give us armor or mr. How is it that I'm always 20 minutes into the game and have 0 mr built? Again, it's because of the terrible rune system. Assassins are free to kill me in 2 skill + auto + electrocute proc because there's no way that a support or adc would be able to afford something as luxurious as armor or mr early. Unless my adc is legendary and can one-shot them first, I guess there's nothing I can do about all these gap closing, invisible or stealthed assassins running the meta.

  4. So what's this "forced meta" thing I mentioned? Well I use it to refer to when a certain class is given buffs so that it can become the dominant force in the meta. For example, let's talk about how badly Riot destroyed adcs because they desperately wanted the meta to be short, quick games. After realizing and admitting their mistakes, Riot had a solution to fix it all: make adcs early game by buffing them all and nerfing every other class! Yay! Covering up mistakes with mistakes! Adcs were meant to scale. By making them all early game, you're taking away a lot of what it means to be an adc and also what it means for a support to protect their adc until late game. Adcs do too much damage early game now and they snowball just like assassins do. Once behind, its practically impossible to do anything as a squishy support. There's not a single support who can defend against these one-shot builds which Riot has made the meta. (Draven, Dark Harvest MissFortune)

  5. This has been argued a lot recently, so I'll just gloss over it. The meta changes too quickly. As I said before, many players don't have the time to play daily. There are too many major patches going on that completely overturns the meta. It feels like every 2 weeks, something new is top win rate (WR). Refer to outside websites such as Champion.gg and check out champion WR's over the course of several patches. Players cannot adapt. Those who are slow to adapt lose ELO and everyone knows it's more fun to win than lose. Regarding new players having an edge, they really do because they don't have to adapt like we do to these huge changes. Plus they have it easy because they take less time getting to 30 before diving into ranked. It's painful when you're forced to play with someone who has never ranked and has zero experience.

  6. I don't mean to rag on Riot about this, but really the runes and mastery overhaul caused a lot of the issues seen in today's meta. Because all champions are inherently tied together by the new Runes system and can no longer cover their weaknesses using runes, it's difficult to achieve balance. Even if your favorite champion fell out of meta, you could still compensate by putting whatever you lacked into your runes. This is no longer possible so I guess if you're that one person who mains an out-of-meta 40% WR champion, you're just going to have to take the L.

Whew! That was a lot to type... But now what do I want? Well, I want Riot to

  1. Stop catering to new players. Please just listen when we say that too much change is happening and we need time to adapt. The game length of (~30-40mins) was fine before. Stop trying to make games shorter in order to appeal to people who say they have no time to play. If anything, a daily win (not even play!) for some hard-to-get BE is even more annoying.
  2. Stop letting assassins control games. Assasins should feel strong, but not "let me one-shot you despite having 0 kills and being behind" strong.
  3. Let squishy champions have more armor/mr before 20 minutes. I shouldn't be resistance-less when assassins are allowed to do as they please. Preferably, I'd just like the old runes back but I know that'd never happen... (Rito, please! Listen to my reasoning!)
  4. Stop trying to make people play support. True support mains don't need recognition. "Let's make supports feel more important by making ward CD's absurdly high so nobody can prevent assassins but supports!" was the idea, right? Terrible. Even though I don't play other lanes often, I feel sorry that they have to constantly be prey to camping due to never having wards up. Vision score is useless in game; give us back the ability to check if wards are up. Stop making the viable "supports" damage dealers by changing the meta. I'm talking about ridding these high WR "supports": Leblanc Sion. They don't belong in bot lane. "The best cc is death," I often joke in my games. Too bad it's true. What is summoner 12 and summoner 3? I don't know because all I see is summoner 14. How do you win games? It's no longer about working as a team, it's all about DAMAGE.
  5. Fix lag issues above all else! And other quality of life changes. Just hold on a minute. Why should I have to lag like crazy every time I enter champion select and why does my ping spike in game? Why is it that when my distant friends and I play, we all go "Woah! Did you just lag too?" "Yeah!" I've checked. It's not my laptop. Everything else runs fine. Why was a Battle Royal rip-off made before essential things like bugs (in SR and TT) being squashed? I know bugfixes aren't as simple as switching a lever on/off, but they're really important to player experience. And why are you playtesting on Live servers instead of PBE? This isn't the place for that...

I'm really glad that you read this far (if you even did!) because I thought that after all this effort, my voice would go unheard. After all, Riot hasn't really listened to the players when it comes to their Ranked 2019 comments. Don't get me wrong - there are some things Riot has done that have made me happy this past year, but a lot has gone downhill. I know this is more of a rant than an analysis of Ranked 2018 since I haven't really pulled statistics. (Feeling lazy. Sorry.) I'll just cut it short here, but there are other things that I would like to post/talk about if anyone is interested such as:

  1. Ranked 2019
  2. How matchmaking can be vastly improved (both Solo Q and Flex)

So do you guys agree with what I think or am I just the only one? I really want to know everyone else's opinion on the matter. Personally, I never checked forums. Do people read these or am I just wasting my efforts? [sg-soraka]

9 Comments

FrozenFrostFyre5 votes

balance team doesn't know that champions SHOULD have built in weaknesses and just like to give a champion everything. it's starting to get really fucking annoying with them creation overloaded kits that can never be balanced the champion is either complete dogshit or overpowered as fuck (zoe).

they wanted to make warding a team effort but then greatly nerfed support warding specifically giving good support players less carry potential with well placed wards and bad support players much more leeway. all for the sake of "don't blame the supp with 0 wards placed"

rune system was just a clusterfuck of adding damage and taking away resistances that had been in the game for ages. i run the SAME EXACT "OPTIMAL" RUNES on each champion. I also hate how much summoner spells have been fucked with. i miss the old days when supp ran exhaust 99% of the time and adc ran heal. not this ignite barrier bullshit. even toplaners taking ignite instead of tp.(mostly just tired of seeing 6 ignites per game) I wish they made more augmenting items like they did for smite for other spells there is a ton of creativity there. possibly even nerfing flash so it's not a "must take".

so many changes feel cheap and just another way to dumb down the game this game use to be a real time strategy game, but now it's feeling more and more like a hack and slash.

Fízz v23 votes

many heal/shiels supports are still very good in soloq tho, Nami is at the top of the meta and Soraka Janna Lulu Morgana are all good

Daddy Ants2 votes

I'll sit down and read this tonight.

Nea1041 votes

I mostly agree. I don't think they're gonna fix or improve anything, thoug: if some people can work THAT bad, I don't think they can be able to actually do something good enough to sort out this awful mess.

Plus, if you look at the new "support" they've added Pyke , I ithink it's unlikely they are gonna revert their own game from this pointless one-shot fiesta. it's an intentional (losing) plan.

Disembark1 votes

Supports have been pretty strong all season. They’ve gotten nerfed a lot because ADCs are nerfed, and you used to be able to carry through your ADC.

This support meta is a lot better, you aren’t tied to the hip to your ADC all game.

Warlord Rhinark1 votes

Why you didn't post this in Gameplay+ is beyond me.

Rigudon1 votes

My apologies. This is my first ever post on the forums and I didn't know the difference between Gameplay and Gameplay+. I could delete and repost this to Gameplay+, but at this point I don't want to lose all the insightful comments and the votes on the poll.

After more looking around, it seems like mods can't just move this post either. But I'll remember the difference between the two boards in the future. Sorry. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

MasterDClone1 votes

I wanted to go through this point by point but the system won't let me so i'll go through what i disagree or what i have something to say. Just assume i agree with everything not mentioned.

Riot tries to force a false meta. They didn't like that games last too long, so they buffed assassins so that they could end games quicker. Early game champions were allowed to snowball. Adcs such as fell out of meta because they'd never reach late game and hit their peak whereas champions such as , , and found decent success as reflected in their win rates because of their early game damage and favorable keystones. After realizing how weak adcs were in the meta, people started playing other champions bot lane. Some examples are gold funneling compositions, ap assassins, and mages. (ex. respectively and /, , /) Now why is that an issue to me? It's because the fact is that it's better to go 2 damage dealers bottom lane than to play adc and support.

Now this bit I found interesting because what exactly do you mean by a false meta because this sounds really shitty to say, that a meta that doesn't benefit your class is a "forced false meta". No it is just a different meta cause by change just like all previous meta's such as s6 tank meta and s7 ardent meta this duksblade meta is just another cycle of the meta game. I understand why you hate that its 2 damage dealers bot lane instead of and ad and support, but this was the first meta ever where adc weren't a mandatory pick for every game, unfortunately supports got pushed out two but that was unavoidable with the fall of the adc.

To me, top mostly boils down to if you can counter pick the enemy. Just like how I feel about that, bot lane shouldn't have to deal with an everchanging meta. At the very least, the meta should be consistent for half a season.

every lane deals with an ever changing meta, and coming from a jungler and having the jungle change every season is really toxic imo, but the meta this season was consistent for half the season, that being the first half and at midseason was when shit when crazy.

Following reason #7, the meta changes way too quickly. "Change for the sake of change" is a running joke that I see all the time nowadays. Instead of connecting with players who have stuck with the game for years, Riot just caters to new players. It's not hard to see why considering they lost a heavy portion of players due to their failure to balance the game. (Go ahead and check Reddit and other forums. Articles about it are not difficult to find. How does Riot cater to specific players while ignoring their long-time supporters? Well, Riot gives a daily win bonus thus forcing people to play daily. Many people cannot because they have work. Thus younger and newer players have an advantage. New players have had the EXP to level 30 halved and also free runes. (why this is bad will be discussed later) Even the failed Clash planned to have the competitions bi-weekly - a schedule that any young adult or working teen can't keep up with.

I found this bit also very interesting because they don't change anything for the sake of change and have a reason, which is why that is joke and not to be taken seriously, although i do agree that the meta did change too quickly because they tried something new for midseason by having it happen over 4 patches instead of 1 which was a big failure. Next, riot does cater to new players, just like it always has and always will (one of the reasons the game is still alive), players will always leave and at no point in time was this game ever balanced so players aren't leaving due to the lack of balance but more due to novelty of the game wearing off and the players growing to have lives. Reddit has always had threads of people leaving so this is nothing new. There has always been a first win of the day bonus lol, again this isn't anything new. People growing up is natural and riot as a company will always look for the new because they can invest more time and money in the game than people with jobs and lives, the XP needed to lvl 30 in the past was absurd, i remember back in season 2 it taking me 5 months to hit level 30, which was a big barrier for new players. As for clash, i don't thing everyone was gonna play twice a month but it is good to have so many different times to play if you and your buddy's have the time to play on some weekend.

But the recent difficulties have been brought down by Riot Games themselves because they removed the old rune system!

the old rune system itself was very unclear and did have a lot of problems but imo the new system gave the game some fresh air even with the problems that rose up which was to be expected from a change of that magnitude. I am happy to see the changes coming next preseason to further improve the new system

After removing the rune system, Ranked has been just a big game of rock, paper, scissors for me. Either my team counter picks the enemy or vice versa. Once you are in game, it's practically over. I would say that I know I've lost 60-70% of my games just looking at champion select. Yet, I cannot dodge more than twice a day otherwise I risk a penalty). In the past, I could at least build armor and magic resist if I was in a particularly difficult lane.

from a supports perspective i can understand why that is true this season, but for me as a shaco otp i don't feel the same way at all and feel that every game is winnable, although i will use that same stat for games last season where i knew that 60-70% of the time i had lost just by looking at champselect, where in a tough game now i can always outplay the opponent in to victory which was impossible last season because i couldn't build anything against shields.

assassins just got nerfed with the duskblade, sudden impact, stormrazer, and electrocute nerfs.

The meta last season was all about my favorite champs.

I didn't put the whole thing due to lack of space Next for your rant about the change in supports i'm just going to predict that it's just for this season and next season we'll be going back to enchanters and marksmans, the change to an agressive meta was a rare shift for the game that won't last long so i don't see why you keep drilling this down but i will agree that ward cooldowns need to be reduced and that duskblade ward clearing passive need to be removed

Again i agree with you that there is very little counterplay to the meta champs this season but the same thing happened during ardent the only difference you were the one on top, i can tell you that there was nothing worse than jumping on a target just for that target to receive a point in click shield recovering all the lost hp and giving plenty of buffs for me to get one shot by. The old runes did very little to help me counter that many shields in the game.

This leads to issue #6: winning lane, losing game.

From botlane and some mid-laners this is true, because the game isn't decide by your lanes. In previous seasons I remember back when i main top lane that games were always decided by whichever team won bot, while your lane had very little impact on the game, this problem has been in the game for ages just that the roles are reversed.

So what's this "forced meta" thing I mentioned? Well I use it to refer to when a certain class is given buffs so that it can become the dominant force in the meta.

by this definition every meta that has ever happened is forced. I mostly agree with the rest of this point

This has been argued a lot recently, so I'll just gloss over it. The meta changes too quickly.

I will agree the meta this midseason was too much too fast but as for now the changes every patch since mid-season is a lot slower that previous seasons. The difference is that now we are no longer the new players so we just ignore that the game has always been like this and just look at the present while nostalgia blocks what really happened in previous seasons

Next your suggestions

  1. I found it interesting that the whole time you talk about people having different things to do and not have any time to play but here tell riot not to listen to people who want shorter games because they don't have time to play. Back in the day as shaco game that last past 30 minutes where a decided loss. Also you get BE faster than you get IP so again it helps both new players and those who don't have time to play

  2. This has just been 1 meta of many although that same quote of "let me one-shot you despite having 0 kills and being behind" was the same thing that happened with adc's last season. Assassin meta's are good for me personally but i can see why support main dislike it just like i dislike support/adc meta's

3.I kinda agree with this one

  1. Also agree with this one, what made champs like shaco and sion support so much fun was the fact that they werent strong and you could still win if good, now it just feels like shit to play.

  2. As someone who lags a lot in game i do agree with this one, although i do love me some nexus blitz and working on a mega thread like this one about it. I play the game at 400-4000 ping recently and it just pisses me off, already that i play on 8 fps due to my shitty laptop.

Next time put this in game play + and would be down for your insight on both topics mentioned, thx for reading

Nyarlathοtep

crazy gap closers and Evelynn

Pick one. Gap closer and evenlynn dont make a good sentence.

Seriously now people. I get it, you are too lazy to see her clear as a fking day weaknesses but, cant you at least say bullshit that makes sense?

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