Lets Talk About The Support Role

So, if you look me up on OP.GG, you will find that in ranked at least, I largely play supports. I would consider myself a support main with a tendency to pick Taric, and well, only Taric because I simply do so much better with him than anyone else on a reliable basis. Enough about me, lets talk about supports and their players, or the lack there of.

Everyone knows that the support is an underplayed role. We all get short queue times, and I have been in my fair share of instant queues. This is good for us, but bad for everyone else. It also means that even those who like support but don't want to play it every game will be forced into that role until they hate it or until they realize that trying to play picking anything and support is a bad idea. I want to address this issue so that it draws in new people to play support and rewards people who play support (as well as probably sneak my opinion of DQ).

So, why don't many people play support? Well, it mostly stems from the nature of the role itself. Supports are played with the intention of protecting everyone so that they will carry you. Your won't carry the game (unless you are playing an APC with some levels of CC and aren't building in which case you are a horrible person and I hate you) . It is a similar thing with super tanky, high CC top laners. They don't do a ton of damage. They don't get a lot of kills. They don't always make the flashiest of plays, but they heavily influence the game in a more subtle way. Honestly, there isn't much that we can change to make people like this style of play more. It is just a mindset that people either have or don't have and Riot can't really do too much about it.

What they can do, however, is make the quirks of being a support more engaging. I would like better vision control, but more than that, make me think about vision control. I want a mini-game. I want a three hit passive. I want ward memes. MAKE VISION GREAT AGAIN! Also, I am not much of a balance person, but I feel like support items need a rework so that the support feels more impactful without necessarily being more impactful. I don't know how to do this, so I won't touch on it all that much.

What I can touch on is the reward system. Give people a reason to play support. No. Give people a reason to learn support. Give people a reward outside of individual games. Shoot, give the support player a little IP boost. "But that will be abused by people pretending to be support and not building sightstone!" I hear you say. Well, it should only be a boost if you win. That way, it discourages people from trolling because they are more likely to lose and not get the IP boost. It encourages people to actually get good at the support role so that they can win more and get the IP boost. I hope that this will bring more people in to play support and encourage them to keep playing support (if only for a limited time while they are grinding for IP).

There is my final, and maybe controversial, thought. In ranked, let the support queue with the ADC. I know, I know. The whole unfair to the people who don't queue together thing, but hear me out. I am more inclined to play support if I have an ADC who I already know as opposed to getting some random guy over the internet, at least in low ELO (I am quite opposed to it in higher elo). I want to play support more if I know that I am getting an ADC who I trust and have some synergy with. Bot lane is a duo lane and some supports like in particular need great communication to be fully effective. If you can duo with your ADC, then I feel you should only be able to fight people who are also duo'd, and have an invisible separate queue specifically for bot lane and bot lane alone. I suppose that is just my opinion, but it encourages me to play support, and I suspect that many other support players like to know who their ADC is.

Anyways, tl:dr **Give support players extra IP for winning. Make vision more interactive. Rework support items. Give bot lane a separate, invisible queue. **

Thank you, I'M OUT!