Thought: *Maybe* supports should get more gold?

chipndip1··2 votes·486 views

Now hear me out, here:

  • A problem we have with support itemization is that it has to be super cheap, yet feel like a good item to buy. This leads Riot into forcing a ton of power into actives instead of just making a good item that feels good to fucking buy for your champ. It devalues the champ in favor of the item build. For everyone else, you pick a champ and the items you build are based on your take on that champ for that game that. For support, unless you're a mage support, the items you build are defined by the role, rather than the champion. Who you play is basically irrelevant as long as you mechanically function while using those items since your main objective, regardless of champ class within the role, is usually the same: peel some people. At least, it is if you think within the realm of these support items. For anyone that's gonna counter-argue, here's a thought: What really deters Janna from building a Knight's Vow? What really tells someone like Sona not to build Locket? Hell, what tells someone to not take Redemption on a tank support like Thresh or Braum?

  • Another issue is that there are supports that are highly defensive. These supports are already taken care of by heal/shield being blown up all over our itemization. However, outside of them, support-specific itemization is literally utter shit. Like, for the varied types of supports in the game, from tanks, to very defensive mages, to offensive ones, and those in the middle, support itemization is basically "Janna-style only". Tank support items don't get you tanky enough, and there's hardly any ap oriented support items to speak of to begin with. This is only an issue because tank supports are kind of expected to be tanky, and some of our enchanters are kind of expected to work with scalings over bases. Without proper itemization choices, as much as you can still effectively support, you can't really play into your champion's kit the way you'd like to...or be expected to.

So what does increasing gold for the role do? Basically, it'll simplify the problem and just void the need for a solution. You won't necessarily need "ap support items" if you can reasonably afford ap items, anyway. You can also make items designated for more supportive play have more stats and less painfully explosive actives/passives so every dive in 2017 won't be half-way invalidated by my sick BIG@$$PL@Y$ of mashing the 2 key for a shit ton of team-wide shielding/healing when someone gets near my ally. More stats = tank supports are tankier and enchanter supports that rely more on scalings for their kits to be potent, rather than base functions, have a means to do so without taking 45 minutes to build it all. Best part of all is that mage supports are strong off of bases, rather than scalings, so a mage support with more access to scaling items doesn't gain as much in the long run. So, what do you guys think? Yay or downvote spam the shit out of me?

5 Comments

wishbone251 votes

item 3096 this one does it

Proxy3451 votes

The game would just go back to the gold gp5 stacking days lol

chipndip11 votes

I said nothing about HOW they'd get more gold, only that they could use more gold if we're not going to solve the issues highlighted directly.

PrinceOfStorms1 votes

The issue with making the support items good is that if you make them too good, they'll be abused in other lanes, like how FQC was really popular in midlane for a while. A similar issue is present with jungle items, when Cinderhulk was meta.

chipndip11 votes
  1. FQC had ridiculous mana regen and a very overpowered active and EVERYONE skips over that note. It basically made it so that mid laners had infinite mana by Frostfang during lane (Frostfang had 100% mana regen at the time).

  2. The point is that people are whining about "other lanes abusing support items", but support itemization is hardly fleshed out enough to cover the champs in the role itself. If we don't want the issue fixed, we can simply sidestep the issue by allowing supports to afford solo laner items while making it so that these supports items can be used by solo laners as well. In other words: Make itemization more about your champ/class and less about your role.

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