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Support Itemization : I would like to know what people build and when

Wallach··1 votes·1,011 views

Hello every one. First let me start by saying that, in most of my games I play Mage Support champions. Now, I've been playing quite a lot lately, and I was trying to build a full support build. Some games it was really easy. For example: playing vs 3 AP champs and 2 attack speed based AD champs. I got item 3009 item 2045 item 3107 item 3190 item 3110 and just because I love it on Sona, I finished withitem 3100 . Well, It doesn't matter if it's the correct build or not. The Important thing is that I found it easy enough to think of it. In other cases the situation is completely different for example: playing vs 1 Ap, 2 Tanks, 1 Attack speed based AD and Lethality based AD. I got the item 3009 item 2045 and the item 3107 and from there i wasn't sure what i should get (keep in mind I'm playing a Mage Support). I need to add that in a lot of cases if I play something like Janna Lulu Sona I'll getitem 3504 but if your ADs aren't Attack speed based, you wont get the needed results, and so I wont buy it.

So, I was wondering if you guys would share with me what builds you're building, on what champs, and under what situation.

p.s. I know different champs, on the enemy team , on your team, and their builds, will change the way you'll do your own build. and that's why I'm also asking in what situation.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope it will help other people as well. :)

13 Comments

Erockandroll3 votes

Sona main here, My personal build for her is Sona item 2301 item 3009 item 3107 item 3504 item 3100 The final item is flexible, but often I don't reach that point.

I mostly chose, swifties because since I get so much CDR from other item, I don't bother with Lucidity boots. (Though swaping for merc treds or the like isn't bad either.) I get redemption first, after since it's active is good, and it's cheaper than Censor. I particularly like Censor on Sona. Even if your ADC doesn't especially synergize, Sona can apply the buff to the entire team. With Lich bane maxing out the CDR, and giving a fair heft in damage latter on.

Wallach1 votes

Hey Erockandroll, I totally agree with you about the boots. about the Censor less so. I had many games In which Censor wouldn't have the right impact on the entire team and not only on the ADC. I too love this item on Sona because of the fact that she can activate it's passive on the entire team using the aura of her W. Personally I play a lot of Sona, and I found that I like item 2045 more than item 2301 and that's because of the extra sustain and the CDR on items Actives.

I would like to thank you for your input, thank you mate :)

Mysticman891 votes

I haven't played sona in awhile, but I often like lucidity boots on most non-tank supports not so much for the ability cdr (although the early cdr is nice), but because of the summoner spell cdr that you can't get anywhere else. Having flash/(exhaust/ignite) up slightly more often can be pretty important, and that form of cd reduction is often overlooked compared to the raw ability cdr.

Eternal Torment2 votes

i can only help you out with thresh right now but what i can tell you from my small but General Knowledge is that your itemization depends on A which champion you Play as a supp and B which comps both have.

for your 3 General supports you most likely wanna see a item 3504 if you have adc's like vayne or ezreal or generally have at least one champ who scales strong with attack speed. since all 3 champions of yours have either a shield or/and a heal i recommend building something like item 3222 when their team has many tanks, combined with item 3107 and quite possibly an item 3190 and a item 3174 for the simple reason that you want your team to win the extentional fighting while keeping up some good Little poking and scale your shields and heals really strong. ecspecially on janna who has a fat shieldand a ridiculous AoE heal with a potential 5 man knockback in itself athenes and Mikaels will do wonders versus comps that focus on excented fights and positioning. but again, i can only give you recommendations based on what i know as an here-and-there thresh supp who initially mains assassins and ryze.

but it varies strongly depending on the enemy composition and on how comfortable you feel with which support. all three supports you have focus heavily on protecting with shields while making small setups and kill-cockblocks with a semi-degree cc like lulus transmorph Janns Q knockup and R knock back and Sonas R stun, and while they are good to set up a fight or turn it around, you still have to remain very much active during the remaining sceneries so stacking your shields and making the best out of your heals and/or protectional kit is my personal idea of what you should do. worry most about helping your team live.

i hope however my Little Knowledge has helped you out, and if not, well fuck me sideways then

Wallach1 votes

First of all, let me thank you Zed Bot Tacocat, for your input. I would like to emphasize that the 3 champs mentioned above are only mentioned in regards to the item 3504 . I myself usually play: Bard Brand Janna Karma Lulu Lux Morgana Nami Sona Soraka Velkoz Zilean Zyra

I do agree with your opening statement, and I wrote something similar as well. Also, as I do play a little Thresh, I would like to hear you build for him, and under what situation, with what team vs what team. :)

Eternal Torment1 votes

well, as i said i only Play him here and there but i think i can put up enough Knowledge to have a fair judgement over how i personally would Build him and, who knows, maybe even give a helpful recommendation!

so as for thresh, he is imo the one you can most possibly compare to janna here in Terms of Build because both of them can work with pretty much the same, more or less, the difference is thresh can utilize tank items like sunfires and randuins better while janna can profit from some ap like a morellos or athenes.

as for thresh itself i Build depending on my comp vs their comp entirely, doesnt matter what adc i have in a specific case. do both teamcomps possess a lot of brawling potential or are otherwise focused on Extended fighting via onhit or lots of tanks then i go with standart items like a item 3401 item 2045 item 3190 item 3111 item 3107 item 3109 which the latter 2 can be optionally replaced with item 3143 item 3068 item 3110 item 3222 due to the reason that i want to mostly focus with a lot of defence while also stacking CDR for my peel so my E is up most often and i can disposition their ranks. hereby i heavily focus on the midgame and while my earlygame is rather unforgiving for mistakes in trades or stupid all Outs, it Spikes strongly for the later phases and helps my team Overall get past the 30 minute mark with positive results.

if their team has a lot of mobility or i Need to snowball the ever living shit out of the laning phase incase they have something like Vayne Braum combo or a Jhin and Leona in the enemy ranks then i exchange item 3401 with a item 3069 and rush item 3110 first so i can maximize CDR and cooldowns while also maxing E first instead of Q so i can make the most out of early trades by slapping them harder with my auto attacks

with thresh you always have the question of are you gonna peel for offense with Snowballing and dispositioning for an provoking attempt to bait mistakes, or are you gonna peel for defensive purposes, disposition to aid your team in having a superior trade and cut off their ranks from assisting each others, per say split the supp from their adc when they have an heavily defensive support like Soraka Lulu Janna so depending on that you have to considere also going for a item 3143 to further slow their comps down if you dive in so they cannot Reposition as quickly.

it is ideal for me because i Play thresh as this kinda guy who does not lock down one Person, who does not peel or hook like madlife, but personally focus on simply disorienting their ranks so my team can do most of the job, so you have to probably stack some tanky stuff and maybe even consider some bonus heals and shields.

having said that my go-to standart Build for thresh is item 3069 item 3110 item 3107 item 3190 item 3117 (which late into the game get changed to merc boots since i buy them early on to maybe roam mid here and there) anditem 3109 OR item 3143

now many support mains will raise a brow and tell me "why not a ruby sightstone?" reason here is beyond simple. the biggest cooldown here is item 3190 with an 60 second cooldown i believe, redemption and talisman have a 45 second cooldown which ticks once the proc is fully completed, which makes the item cooldowns so short that already in the early they are most likely present and ready to use for every fight that happens ecspecially when it then transcends into the lategame.

Assuming you Build randuins you are already in the lategame so it's comparably high cooldown with 90 seconds (again i think, not sure thoe) will be rather irrelevant because one fight will pretty much decide win or lose unless you as the thresh supp are the last man standing, and Knights vow you are likely not going to change fast so it's 45 second cooldown to reactivate the bonding becomes almost entirely nonexistent. i combine low item cooldowns that can all-round serve me well while i also stack the hell out of low cd for my skills to maximize my peel and my depositioning of the enemy comps, which in Terms makes me into this sort of sabotaging infiltrator rather than a purely peel or defence type of guy.

janna for the most part is similar except you can switch out item 3110 with either a item 3504 or item 3174 and the last item make the second of These two, whichever you choose but she and thresh in my opinion have 4 items in common, to which talisman is optional and you can possibly go for a item 3092 instead, both work on her honestly.

as a thresh newbie who just Plays him here and there when i get autofilled as a support this is by far not the most optimal recommended guide but it is what works best for me and i hope this gave you some answers

Wallach1 votes

Thank you for the insights. I like the way of thinking, and I might try it from time to time.

To be frank, I'm Gold 3 at the moment, where a game can be over before you get even one 5v5 fight. so if you don't have a lot of interaction with their strong AP (if they have one), Solari becomes redundant (in my opinion of course).

But yes, as a Thresh you've got the tanky options you mentioned and there for has less of a trouble finishing your build. I think it's the main idea behind this post. As a support mage, situationally, you have to go for AP items, because the support items, are not enough/wont do as good.

Eternal Torment1 votes

yeah, but the proper balance between the initial AP the items give, the stats as a whole and the bonuses the items give have to be very balanced out because your purpose is to help your team over both short and Extended durations. if you have a support who weights heavy on shielding and healing with positioning like janna does then athenes and mikael's are a good combination, the 20% heal and shield boosting for her that Mikaels gives are a heaven sent and athenes heal with jannas shield works wonderful because until you can use your E incase it is on cd you are definetly gonna poke and peel someone with your Qs and Ws down and therefore get to successfully stack the necessary ticks to heal whoever you will shield, which then also gets empowered by mikael's passive bonus

Funkin Dunkin1 votes

item 3070 item 3070 item 3070 item 3070 item 3070 item 3070 [slayer-jinx-catface]

Mysticman891 votes

For Janna I tend to do item 3096 item 3158 item 2045 item 3107 item 3041 item 3504, with intent to swap nomads for morrellos in super late if I have that kind of money, or occasionally locket. If I manage to complete morellos, then I'll start looking to swap ardent for a deathcap unless I have a super AS based adc, but that's more theoretical for those 1 hour stalemate games.

If the game is a dumpster fire where I'm getting repetitively murdered I'll skip the mejais. (If the game is a dumpster fire where my team is getting murdered but I'm still getting by, I'll often still get it, as it very rapidly becomes gold efficient if I can snag a handful of assists without dieing, and when behind is when I need to make every bit of gold count.)

I'll still build ardent for the majority of adcs for the sake of cdr and the heal/shield passive, although if theres a dire need for keeping a slot open for control wards ardent tends to be the item to be cut (or sometimes I'll wait until I can buy ardent in one go and skip the components).

Wallach1 votes

Let me start by thanking you for answering my question Mysticman89.

I'll start from the end. I think that as a support, the last think you're lacking of is CDR. Almost every support item has CDR, and more than a few times i find myself getting over the cap. ex: item 3107 item 3110 item 2301 poof, your done :)

As to your first paragraph. building an AP build is easy, ex: I would love to go with Sona item 3009 item 3165 item 3100 item 3152 and what ever next. and I used to do it in lower ELOs in order to carry the game. But the higher you go in the ranks, you understand that you team really need a support and need you to go with a support build. so getting a morrello or a deathcap is not an option most of the times.

This is just my opinion, but I thank you for your input :)

Mysticman892 votes

Theres lots of cdr options sure, but notice the build I outlined has exactly 40%, and are all things you don't really want to give up as an enchanter support. I wouldn't want to build frozen heart on janna 99.9% of the time since she's not likely to be tanking things, and further if she's in the midst of the enemy team for the passive to be doing work, then somethings already gone wrong with the teamfight.

Building AP might be 'easy', but it's also expensive, which is why morellos/deathcap are late game things. Mejais sneaks through since it's super cheap, and Jannas entire kit is basically about preventing death, so when played well she should almost never die.

Also somewhat unique to Janna is that building AP primarily increases her supportive utility, rather than making her into a damage threat. Her q is basically a 1 point wonder with a shitty ap ratio, but her w is an increasingly strong slow with ap (plus more passive movespeed), and more AP for her e means bigger shields (AP items generally give more additional shield strength than the heal/shield passive items) and further give her more bonus AD on the shield which the heal/shield passives don't impact. Extra healing on her ult is nice too although it's usually just a quick peeling tool.

So while I'm not a fan of most AP 'supports' trying to build damage and carry the game, in Jannas case more AP is a support build. (Not much of a locket fan on Janna, since if she's in a good position to use the locket active for big aoe shields, she's probably also in a good position to ult and just heal everyone instead of a shield that'll disappear soon, and her e shield tends to be superior to locket shield if it's just single target thats in trouble. Also, locket doesn't have any cdr, and again the build I lean to that excludes locket has exactly 40% so changing something for locket means not being at the cdr cap.)

(edit to add: I might mention I'm a high plat-low diamond ish Janna main, so am somewhat familiar with how some champs can have ELO based build differences.)

Wallach1 votes

This is a very interesting point of view. I appreciate you taking your time to explain all of this. I just want to emphasize that the 3 item I've shown above were just an example for fast CDR, and I do agree about not using FH on janna.

p.s. I looked at your profile a bit before, so yes a noticed what your ELO is.

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