Can Preseason introduce the removal of Mage supports bot lane?

50CaliberHecate··20 votes·7,666 views

Swain. Veigar. Brand. Xerath.... Just the ones I can think of as I don’t have the full champ roster in front of me (on mobile), but I’m pretty much over these champs having so much control when they support because’ Support champs are not equipped with sustaining so much damage from these champions, especially when their range is enormous (Brand and Xerath) or their health (Swain) lets them sustain ADCs damage AND the little damage support champs put out. And now with support item changes on Targon, Veigar is gonna be even easier to scale with which means more damage and less shield/heal support provided from true supports.

The little heal power and damage I can put out with someone like Sona or Yuumi is almost slim to none when your enemy is spamming damage spells your champ isn’t equipped to handle early. Late game isn’t as bad cause’ you’ve built Ardent or Crucible for heal/shield boost... but it’s still not allowing them to keep up. I love playing Soraka, but when you’re fighting Xerath having to give all your life to your ADC who is trading, he literally just ults you dead from the safety of his turret once done so (which he can do mid but it’s not so much of an issue cause’ most of the time he’s gonna focus on his lane). Or if you play anyone who can’t handle CC blowups from someone like Veigar or Swain, you’re practically perma pinned under turret.

Maybe Aery could get a perma change too! Remove the AP damage and boost the shield and provide heal power! This allowing champs whose soul purpose is to heal/shield have a boost up!

34 Comments

Its All Skillzz22 votes

Blame riot for making mid lane a hyper mobile high damage cancer place that anyone who doesnt have a million dashes to avoid the constant ganks/camp cant even compete. Zed Yasuo Talon Akali Katarina Fizz All make mid lane super un fun to deal with and is easier to go bot and just poke for your gold and not have to worry about much.

Dasdi969 votes

[{quoted}](name=Its All Skillzz,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EAE5GZrB,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2019-11-09T02:24:36.923+0000)

Blame riot for making mid lane a hyper mobile high damage cancer place that anyone who doesnt have a million dashes to avoid the constant ganks/camp cant even compete. Zed Yasuo Talon Akali Katarina Fizz All make mid lane super un fun to deal with and is easier to go bot and just poke for your gold and not have to worry about much.

I still see immobile mages doing fine mid lane.

Its All Skillzz2 votes

{quoted}

I still see immobile mages doing fine mid lane.

dunno this is the last 5 games i played in mid plat. Yasuo mid, zed mid, irelia mid, fizz mid, kat mid.

In solo Q assassins are everywhere cause everyone wanna be the edgy call of duty player off for kills, was funny cause the fizz game actually threw his 15-0 lead by diving for kills on our support and fed me + jinx shut downs and i hard carry on ezreal.

D357R0Y3R4 votes

syndra and ryze dominating midlane in proplay only qiyana is picked because of her bullshit AOE stun

mages are weak ofc

Thefrostyviking3 votes

{quoted}

syndra and ryze dominating midlane in proplay only qiyana is picked because of her bullshit AOE stun

mages are weak ofc

Ryze and Syndra are basically ranged assassins post some point though.

They see you, they walk in range and suddenly your healthbar is vaporized in the blink of an eye even if you´ve a heap of health and a fair amount of resistances.

Ryze needs more time to get there but he does it better than Syndra later.

SweedishGunner1 votes

Are you forgetting how high prio LB and Akali are?

D357R0Y3R1 votes

I was talking about AD assassins if you want we can count other mages, like kayle who is an AP champion since she builds ap+attack speed or vladimir who is a mage cosplaying an assassin at this point

Ragnaveil1 votes

The whole "mobility problem makes Assassins OP' argument doesn't exist. Mages hardly have a problem dealing with Assassins if they can just run Inspiration and go Biscuits, Lost Chapter, and Corrupting. If a Mage plays right, an Assassin wont do shit. Especially with the free Stopwatch rune still existing.

R0ses R Red14 votes

Spelltheif's is getting changed to their detriment(no mana regeneration and less gold income during the later stages) so their presence may drop. Tank sups and sups that don't need items are pseudo-buffed.

D357R0Y3R3 votes

they're also removing the bonus damage of spellthief

Ragnaveil2 votes

And the health from the relic shield item procs. Enchanters just got heavy buffed IMO, and Mages (although being shafted), get a slight buff from that being removed.

Sirsir4 votes

How?

It's like ranged top. Everyone wants it to happen but no one can give a 'how' without breaking some other aspect of the game.

Crank ADC MR? ADC mid. Nerf Spellthiefs? Affects enchanters too. Nerf mana? Kills their mid presence unless you add a refund system for farming. Which didn't work for Velkoz BTW.

864002 votes

Buff enchanters? Make them able to 1v1 mages and just go with it.

Sirsir4 votes

So they straight slaughter ADCs?

864002 votes

Yes. I want to be Nami hard carry.

Baby Ghoul4 votes

It's taken them forever to nerf item 3303 , and partly why this season has been such a nightmare. The damage creep is the other issue. Bot lane usually gets called the earliest and can effect the entire map before anyone has a chance to hit their power spike.

Mage supports were indirectly buffed when Sightstone was removed due to pro play solo laners abusing it. Vision was just too good not to get, and many supports got Sightstone as their first item because of it and it gave you health as well. Mage supports had to rely on early game cheese before the first back, but if you could play carefully around that, their pick was never that useful outside a few occasions where Zyra became too powerful.

When they removed that item and gave us quests, it made it so that the support's no longer had to build Sighstone. item 3303 's quest is incredibly easy to do for mage supports, and they can immediately build damage, which often blows marksmen and other supports out of the water before they get a chance to do anything. I don't understand why they thought it would be a good idea to remove the barriers and risks for mages bot, but I'm glad they're at least thinking about nerfing item 3303 . Honestly, I don't think it would be enough though.

Mages bot never feel fair unless they have significant risk associated with the damage they deal. So before, they had to make a play very early and overwhelm the enemy, or they'd have to make a choice between losing their power and building Sightstone or going straight into damage and risking the entire lane by being outclassed in terms of vision. That felt fair, but now it just doesn't.

I'm an enchanter main, and I think every enchanter would agree that mages are a problem and we know it's because of item 3303 .

Ragnaveil1 votes

Issue is, the support item changes are gonna cause another issue: Your class would become top dog after those changes because the relic/targon replacement items do not possess the health from proc, so you'll be able to poke people out to the ends of the earth, with or without the damage from the thief replacement item proc. What Riot should do is fix Health Regen as a stat. One bad thing happens and god forbid you are allowed to exist

Resolution4 votes

Pretty sure Brand is intended to be support. All of his abilities work better against multiple targets.

He's weaker in a solo lane. I know he's annoying but he feels unnatural as a mid champ these days.

ChiefDovahkin1 votes

{quoted}

Pretty sure Brand is intended to be support. All of his abilities work better against multiple targets.

He's weaker in a solo lane. I know he's annoying but he feels unnatural as a mid champ these days.

He has a very dated kit relative to the mobility that is always present mid lane

boricCentaur13 votes

You act like there good when they are almost all bad. Damages supports have not been good for seasons. Maybe if you played support you would know that. Almost all the time a adc with a sona or yummi will be better and win lane vs a mage support since they do not do much. Adcs already do a good amount of damage meaning buffing, healing and ccing for them will be better then having a another damage champion in lane.

Also the fact most mage supports have less then a 3% playrate really shows how shit they are. Like when lux was good it was not damage lux that was good it was enchanter lux.

PhearBunny2 votes

personally I like there being a few mage support options for the sake of team composition. but I also agree that some of the current ones don't belong down there.

thefatlazycat2 votes

exactly, champs like swain and morg aren't doing much damage in the bottom lane (edit: meant as in to the health of the lane, not actual damage output)

Need Gold 4 Tent1 votes

Morg's "OP" just because of the direct counter to the meta engage supports (and surprise surprise, other mage supports too). Once those go away, she fades with them.

thefatlazycat1 votes

never said she was OP

Need Gold 4 Tent1 votes

Actually in this sense she is. Because of the current meta, she suddenly overperforms because of how hard she shuts down the OP meta champs, in a way becoming one of them. Like Riot has said before, some champs don't need to be buffed to become stronger, they just become stronger because of the meta. And this is the case here.

5050BS2 votes

Im fine with that if the mages can actually play mid lane which means AD assassins and Yasuo need Mobility and damage nerfs. OR the mages need ways to deal with them.

BigFBear2 votes

No. Don't remove them. Finally we have diversity in botlane! Also it could solve the problem that no one wants to play Supp. With those champions more people will cue up for Support.

Just balance offensive and defensive Supports so they are equal and both viable.

Infernno2 votes

this post is an example of a bronzie who doesn't know the game or how to balance a game. you see from your point of view but don't see the others the champs you play may get countered by those mages so you have come to believe that they are broken but if you look at an assassins perspective they think they're useless because they can delete them. mages like those are designed to blow you up, outrange you, and have big cc. but they also have clear weaknesses such as if you dodge their abilities they're autos deal little damage and mobility will counter most of them because they have little of that

TyRamos1 votes

The preseason changes will probably make all of those less popular. Supports will have even less gold than they do now plus we'll have less experience too. (EDITED BY MODERATION --CaliCoastReplay)

Smyrage1 votes

The supports you mentioned apart from Brand were never really close to that relevant, only Jhin an Ashe enabled them to do their thing. Also Brand is no longer a viable pick as Support, because his CC is unreliable and his damage without Rylai and Liandry isn't really reliable as well. Xerath is too mana hungry for the support role. Veigar can't really stack. Swain is eh, he doesn't have much damage as support.

Enchanters were and still better than mages. It is excruciatingly difficult to play a mage against e.g. Janna.

CasterGilgamesh1 votes

im fine with mages bot only mage i hate with a passion bot is Zyra

ChiefDovahkin1 votes

This is something I also asked myself recently. More specifically, why has it become 'normal' that if you get cced bot lane at level 3 you get one shot by the enemy duo? Even thresh does a lot of damage, he just doesn't burst quite as hard or as quickly as other picks. The damage in this lane seems to have greatly increased since when I began playing in s3. Based on what I've seen, runes have contributed a lot to the overall damage with support items making this non-farming position pretty efficient.

"Swain. Veigar. Brand. Xerath."

These all used to be hard scaling champs with unreliable damage early game. Now, things like glacial augment make them easier to play and options like electrocute just result in a lot more burst. Now throw in an item which gives gold / mana / vision just for poking and taking safe trades, both of which these 4 excel at.

These champs wouldn't have worked as support in the past because there was no easy way for artillery champs to easily generate gold while building damage. They used to lose much harder early in the game to all-ins from some tanky cc heavy supports like Leona and Ali. Now, their poke comes more often at higher damage for less cost and more reward while tanks really only have boneplating as additional poke resistance. Relic is technically effective at countering poke, but when you consider the time to get stacks and the aoe of the above champs' skillshots, it's pretty obvious that you won't have the necessary sustain to stay healthy in the early game.

Troll Slaiyer1 votes

it is annoying .even if brand tilts me the most, i do like diversity.

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