I don't think any queue will ever solve the support problem

Lord Boltrix··9 votes·1,393 views

This is a general overview, but among the vast majority of players: nobody wants to support other than support mains or fills, and even they are getting tired of having the same role. I think it's not just the cause of a queue problem, but a symptom of an even bigger problem.

And that lies in the fact that support doesn't appeal to anyone else who could go mid, top, jungle, or adc and can feel validated by their kills, which many people feel are 'earned,' whereas a support getting a kill is either 'luck,' a serious misplay by an enemy champion , or a 'killsteal.'

So, maybe instead of trying to treat the problem of the amount of times your secondary support role gets you support, we can cure the problem by answering the underlying condition: how do you make supports interesting to play that more people would not regret choosing the role, enough that people could play the same role now but enjoy being able to impact the game meaningfully, maybe without necessarily getting kills?

I was thinking, maybe something could be done to implement a means to promote wandering supports, you know... something like a second jungler who ganks lanes to help more than just the bot lane? Junglers do a whole lot without having to necessarily get kills, would be interesting if supports could wander the map, helping other lanes, perhaps running from enemy junglers.

I mean, supports hate being the ADC's 'butler,' as it's often referred to; until the laning phase is over, a little lane variety would be nice, right?

I mean then the role of the support is less defined: you could follow the jungler and support them, making some junglers more viable with someone to aid them, then you both could either duo-gank the same lane or each choose to gank a different lane. You could go aid the proverbial island of top and let the jungler focus the other lanes, or have the support stay mid and try to ream the mid tower for early zone control. You could do the role of ganking instead while the jungler does nothing but farm, ensuring that when they enter the teamfight, they are more than ready to make up for their lack of pressure on the map.

It's just a suggestion, but I'd like to see other ones.

29 Comments

GigglesO3 votes

The real issue is with how Riot treats items that supports are supposed to pick up.

"We can't make them attractive to other roles, because otherwise those other roles would pick them up"

So you can't have actual stats on Sight Stone, and ect... because Riot doesn't want top/mid/jungle picking up the item. However, Riot dosen't compensate the support player enough for not having those extra stats.

Lord Boltrix3 votes

A lot of the items supports pick up are inexpensive, which is the result of supports being designed to be effective on a low budget due to little meaningful income, since four other players need gold income without having to compete for it. Supports are designed to be useful without relying on damage to make a difference, usually because they bring a lot of crowd control or utility to their team, but nothing physically prevents other laners from taking support items... only their lack of stats is what keeps them from abusing it.

Remember the Frost Queens Claim patch, where everyone and their mother took it?

It's ultimately the problem of having five players and only three lanes (four if you include the jungle), and unless you have some means of locking gold income items onto supports only, laners being able to abuse support items will keep those support items from lacking meaningful stats.

...of course, even if they gave them those stats, they'd still be more expensive as a result, and supports still have a support budget.

Amelie3 votes

"how do you make supports interesting to play that more people would not regret choosing the role, enough that people could play the same role now but enjoy being able to impact the game meaningfully, maybe without necessarily getting kills"

I think you can't. The people who absolutely hate support are the same people who feel validated by having a lot of kills/gold or just dislike laning with another person.

It's already possible to take something like Lee Sin or Pantheon "support", get kills, roam the map, and do more interesting things. But most people would rather just have a 1v1 lane.

No matter what, even with a roaming support or whatever, it's always risky to leave your ADC alone bot lane. Even if he's already fed, or playing safe. It's very easy to punish, and it's not fun for the ADC player if they're not experienced with such a situation (and most of them aren't).

I think something else would have to change, like removing the KDA scores completely and/or rewarding players who work together more. But I don't think there's any simple solution to make the support role more enticing.

Lord Boltrix1 votes

There are people who only feel validated by the '1v1' and 'kills/gold' mentality and you are right: those people are mutually exclusive with the playstyle and mentality of supports and how supports play. But that isn't everyone, some people don't like the support role because they feel less like 'someone helping the whole team' and more like 'someone who babysits the ADC.'

I played support for a good deal of season five, and my beef with the role wasn't the lack of kills or gold or damage, but the fact that I was stuck to the same lane and was basically expected to act as a servant for the adc. I would have enjoyed the role more if I could just go to any lane, help that lane, and stick around as long as I want and then move onto another lane to help them. I did that a lot actually, sometimes even when I wasn't supposed to, but it was fun to support mid or top for a few minutes and then wander off to save another lane.

Amelie1 votes

I don't think there's any help for those people because the support role was made exactly to babysit the ADC. Maybe if the meta changed?

cllesh2 votes

stop being practical.. its depressing my support main...ness

Sona love

Darkslayer852 votes

Bard fits your description

GIMPY UNICORN1 votes

I get what youre saying withBard but what about other support champions,Taric Sona, they cant move around as easily like bard can, he has his tunnel to get in and out of fights do he can do a secondary junglers ability but no one else has the mobility. so if someone mains any other support like i do then they couldnt do that with out some rework or changing up there whole build to get movement speed or some other thing like getting summoner 4 instead of summoner 3 so a support can do there job. i think maybe an item that helps supports or something to that nature might make this possible but as it stands his thinking would only work if you played Bard like you said.

Pika3101 votes

In regards to Sona being a poor roamer, this is in direct causation to Rito gutting her E spell, 'Song of Celerity' during Gutting 4.13, which used to give passive MS and made her much more mobile than she is now. Oh and they nerfed her base MS for literally no reason at all.

Lord Boltrix1 votes

I played Sona for quite some time, she and Leona were my main supports. From my understanding of things, Sona had a little bit of everything, and was in many ways as difficult to deal with as Soraka, and in some ways worse. In the early game, leveling up Q allowed me to just chunk squishy ADC's and supports for a good bit of damage (since most ADC's who would invest in magic resist runes would go for scaling magic resist to survive the late-game better), and considering Q isn't a skillshot, just being in range of the Q was enough to virtually guarantee massive harass.

So what I often did was just get in range to poke with Q, then retreat, then go back in to poke, rinse and repeat, creating a lane that was difficult to deal with for lane opponents. If I had that increase to my base movespeed, I would in all honestly have massively abused that to get easier free poke and likely dodge any skillshots, and heal up any auto-attacks.

Honestly, it was likely they could have nerfed her damage to the point she could only be heal and utility even in the early game, but decided instead to make her have to risk more when going in to poke like that.

Pika3101 votes

I can't even tell when you're referring to. It honestly sounds like you've never even played her pre-4.13, or even pre-5.1 for that matter. Gutting 4.13 turned Sona into an unplayable mess, it removed her ability to heal and roam. It gutted her damage output, whilst simultaneously severely increasing her risk for less reward. Hell, she's literally THE ONLY mage support in the game with melee-range spells. There's no reason to ever play her anymore so long as ANY other support is open and I doubt 6 or even 10 bans can magically cover dozens of champs. Even then, I'd still rather have any off-support over Sona, she's just that bad of a character now.

Lord Boltrix1 votes

I apologize if I seem unknowledgeable about Sona, I played her for a while but I wouldn't call myself an expert on her, and as I explained that was how I played her. Wasn't the best way to play her, but I played in a style that I liked, was probably why I didn't see much success with her. You probably know better than I do what her limitations are.

Lord Boltrix1 votes

You have a point there, perhaps an item that grants self-utility, such as movement speed in the river that allows for less time spent traveling and allowing more time ganking lanes, so there isn't a lag in experience. I recall the item, the Staff of Flowing Water, that would have been perfect for AP-based wandering supports that need mana regeneration and would encourage roaming to other lanes. Hell, it was 1635, very reasonable for a support budget.

Lvl 1 Human2 votes

If supports only sits in lanes with their respective adc's until laning phase is over, they don't know how to support. That's fact.

What riot should do is force people to have a chance of playing the role. Change dynamic queue to more like team builder, whereas you pick your primary role and your secondary role is locked in as support. They can have a rolling cap for it too (like after x games then you can do change the second role to whatever, after x amount of time the cap is placed back to your account on a loop).

Lord Boltrix2 votes

That wouldn't really do much to solve the underlying problem, in fact that would just create MORE frustration all around, and still wouldn't make supports more appealing to play - and therefore addressing queue issues sourced from the lack of supports - and might only lead to more overall toxicity.

Lvl 1 Human1 votes

I'm confused on what you think the underlying problem is. The role of supporting needs something to make it more appealing? For who? The players who don't want to play it? If they have no desire to play a role that's specifically designed to help other players do well, no matter what Riot does to it, its not going to make it appeal to them.

I'm sure no support players are experiencing queue issues, as the wait times are sub 15 seconds (rarely have I seen a minute). Its those players who pick solely pick between the other four roles.

warpenguin5552 votes

the thing is that Riot doesn't care about about making support more desired or they would have done it by now. If we demand they do the response will be something like "why dont you play it and add more demand?" or something stupid like that.

Lord Boltrix1 votes

Perhaps they just haven't found a way that would make supports feel more fun, at least not without seriously shaking up the current meta. Wandering supports might change the entire meta, and Riot might be afraid of shaking things up... or perhaps they are afraid of how we, the players, might react to a meta where supports are no longer tied to bot lane, and how all our team comps might change as a result.

cllesh1 votes

haha, ya know this is more true than we prob know...

company A: we wont do what you want till we see it's what most of you want and will make $$$ player A: we want to see something from the company before we spend the money...

push repeat

BastionKross2 votes

Riot's in a bad place right now in regards to supports:

  • Supports can't have strong base values, or else they go to solo lanes to be toxic.
  • Supports can't have good stats on their items, or else solo laners will abuse them.

So what we end up with is a class who starts out mediocre to outright weak, and doesn't get a lot stronger by buying items specifically designed for them. It's no mystery why people don't want to play that. Why would I play a role that's gimped right from the start, roughly stays that way, and has no benefit for being like that?

Imagine a new champion comes out that's been designed and balanced as a top laner. It starts out weak, but doesn't scale well with common top lane items. It usually ends up helping other people kill the enemy instead of killing them itself, and carrying as this champion is extra difficult. Would you play that champion? Hell no. Other top laners would shit all over it, and even if you manage to escape a beating early game, you don't get that power fantasy of getting kills of your own. It's the same situation, but for roles. Why play support when there's four other roles that allow you to do damage, and get gold, and kill enemies, and carry much easier? For the vast majority of League players, the answer is "You wouldn't". And we're seeing that reflected in how supports are, and have always been, in short supply. It takes a special type of personality to sacrifice that kind of power potential to assist allies instead, and League isn't a game that attracts a large number of those players.

So what do we do? The quickest and easiest thing would be to improve support itemization, but in a way that can't be abused by solo laners. That would give supports meaningful powerspikes inside their own itemization instead of having to build a deathcap at thirty minutes to finally feel like they do something. There's a good way to go about this that Riot pussyfoots around, but never engaged in seriously.

Example Item - 500 GP +X HP +Y AP +Z% Movement Speed High amount of GP per 5 seconds Passive: Gain bonus experience when near an ally killing a minion or monster. Unique Passive: You Are A Support - If gold is gained from a minion or jungle monster, all abilities on this item except this one are temporarily disabled for 60 seconds. Gold obtained from minions or monsters is reduced by 50%.

Boom. Now you have a single support item that supports can start with at the expense of sustain, gives meaningful stats, is powerful as hell, and can't be abused by other roles.

"But laners could just buy it and ignore cs!" They certainly could, then they'd get pushed to their tower because they can't interact with the lane, and the tower would take unnecessary damage as a result. CS isn't just for gold, it's also to protect your turret and push lanes at opportune times.

"But what if supports need to attack minions to clear a wave off their tower, or accidentally take one?" Then that's a meaningful choice on the support's side of things. Do they clear the wave and sacrifice a whole lot of stats, in the hope that an enemy champ isn't nearby to jump them while they're weak? Does that Sona poke an enemy with hostile minions nearby? Does Blitz risk wading close to the wave after level 6? Does Leona engage in the middle of the enemy minions while her W pop could kill one? These are all situations where the support has to make a judgement call, and those types of calls are all over the game for every role.

Imagine that, the support role having more meaningful choices similar to the other roles. What items like the above allow is for a support to get items like a deathcap as their first big ticket item quicker and experience champion growth and powerspikes like the other roles.

Then we buff yellow trinket so that it does the same job as sightstone, and we have support itemization that is bound to the support playstyle, delivers power, and consists of two items: one being a first buy, and the other being free.

RussoRed1 votes

Blitzcrank Bard Annie Morgana all scumbag sups u can play it can be fun just pick a champ with high cc and most wont care especialy in lowere elos

Lord Boltrix1 votes

Of course, but a lot of those champs have very obvious means of impacting the game, same with Alistar , Braum and Leona who go balls to the wall and make stuff happen. But what about other supports, Zilean and Soraka and Lulu, who don't appear as physically impactful except with maybe one ability other than their ult?

Also, you mentioned Annie , which is a sign of a common trend of taking champions from top or mid lane and bringing them bot lane: to make things more interesting, because otherwise the support role can be very dull otherwise with so few 'support only' champions. Many of those champs brought down have a lot of crowd control or effective poke range, allowing them to bypass the lack of gold income with means by which to be still be highly and visibly impactful, often in an aggressive manner in the same way junglers can be impactful in ganking lanes.

RussoRed1 votes

i main zillian and second bard just hes asking for ones that can carry with ease bot lane because hes boared thats why my list looked that way

EmEx1 votes

take a look at my thread its a simple way to make support more fun and in return decrease wait time for everyone. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NpNiNZfi-making-support-more-fun-to-play

Lord Boltrix2 votes

I looked over your thread. The issue of your suggestion is that, fundamentally... supports are still going to have a support budget, because the current meta game is based on gold efficiency: four players can earn gold from cs without competing for each other, the presence of a fifth player is why gold income items exist: so that one player can make do without being able to cs unless nobody else is around who could benefit from that gold income more. So you help your team without being able to contribute in the same way they can through powerful items with incredible stats, and instead often rely on actives on items that aren't too expensive but still help the team.

EmEx1 votes

Try support with Ancient Coin or Spellchief instead of Relic Shield, you will have only a bit less gold than the team average (in high elo its more than in low elo cause they farm better). If we get rid of the team boost items like Relic Shield, Sightstone, Locket etc... you will automatically be strong. You can even fight 1v1 if you play your cards right, thats my experience if I play selfish support style.

This way support is gonna be a lot more fun and enticing to play for many people and no need to last hit 24/7 like the laners. Therefore a support would be someone who has the abilities to defend a carry which lies in their kit, no more would they be weak as hell.

So more fun to play support leads to more support players and less waiting time for everyone! Right now I have to wait an average of 10-15 minutes (in Bronze) if I dont pick support or fill.

PapaGreg211 votes

Give the upgraded support item an active where they can teleport every 60-90 seconds to a tower. That way you can wander and get back to protecting the adc if you want. You basically become a hybrid jungler/support.

Krigjer1 votes

The problem with changing supports to be more interesting to play to other role mains is that you might alienate actual support mains.

How would you feel if I said I wanted top lane to be changed to suit my needs, and it ruined your top lane experience? You'd be pretty angry, right?

ll League God ll1 votes

The only reason i dont support - If someone rage quits, or you are getting smoked, its much harder to carry as a support.

Regardless of what plays you make, if your team doesnt properly follow up, those plays mean nothing

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