Supports: If poke is supposed to beat all-in, all-in to beat sustain, and sustain beats poke...

Mandang0·5/15/2015, 10:06:32 PM·1 votes·526 views

...then why is the gp10 designed for all-in (melee) supports given a passive that excels against their worst lane matchup?

I see buffs to the coin line on PBE & while I approve, I can't help but feel there's a better way to balance support. Sustain supports become more valued if you can't get sustain from all-in supports anymore, and if people still wanted to play all-in-capable supports, then maybe we'd see more Ali and Braum instead of always Thresh and Leona. If all-in supports no longer provide their lanemates sustain, you might see poke supports return to play as an answer. And lastly (because I know you all love her so much) if supports weren't always trying to murder you in lane, maybe Morgana wouldn't be as strong bottom.

5 Comments

IcyPepper5/15/2015, 10:10:44 PM1 votes

Well, you do have a point, but I like how relic shield gives all-in supports more interaction during lane instead of just waiting around then jumping in.

You see, they have to autoattack a minion, which means they have to be outside a bush and in possibly aa range as well. Sure, they'll get some sustain, but it gives poke supports and the adc a chance to poke them. However, if they do so, they might be in range of the all-in support's spell (Leona's E, for instance) and the all-in support can use that interaction as bait. However, the poke support might plan for this and immediately cc the main damage output and win the trade (Lulu for instance). And so on and so on.

tl;dr: because of how relic shield works, it gives all-in supports something to do besides just sitting in a bush, and their enemies some way to interact with them that isn't necessarily 100% risk free

Sona Ping5/15/2015, 10:31:54 PM1 votes

In the future, please leave links, copy-paste, and other relevant information in your writing. Not doing so makes it harder to respond or even understand what the point of your writing is. People are less likely to respond if they have to go look up the PBE coin buffs themselves like I did and found out they weren't really important to your comments about Relic Shield.

A good reason for having Relic Shield give healing, is because "all of one, none of the other" is usually not great for balance and without it the heal, Relic Shield would offer too little, in comparison to the other items in the other lane types. i.e. "poke lanes" buff would be too strong against all in, so there is some mitigation of poke lanes buff in the form of a bit of sustain.

It's not even like the sustain from Relic Shield is that great; it's 40 health per 60 seconds, so it's not any threat to sustain lanes strength either.

3tyson5/15/2015, 10:46:46 PM1 votes

There is poke and sustain Sona and some do both

i think a good suport should have something to peel