Support Mastery - Warden of Vision

P3NANC3··1 votes·787 views

As RIOT / LoL is considering some options to make the support role more attractive, I wanted to share a thought. I'm a support main, and love the role, even if I'm not nearly great or even good, I'm enjoying it and the game. I'm also grateful that RIOT / LoL is making many supports free for me to test and try.

One of the issues mentioned was supports are usually more or less required to buy Sightstone and spend 800 gold on it, which is a lot of gold considering it doesn't provide any stats (this would of course also be really overpowered if it were the case)

What could mitigate this issue, is a final mastery (like death fire touch, thunderlords, etc.) that would give extra wards. Obviously just plain giving 3 extra wards would also be very OP. So, my idea was something along the lines of giving a support an extra ward at for example 5-7 minutes, then another at 10-12 and 15-17. Obviously I'm just semi-random assigning minutes, as it would require a lot of balancing.

This mastery would however also have to limit a support from buying sightstone and placing a dozen wards a time.

Another part where masteries could shine for supports is specific masteries buffing ward time, vision, and hit points for example. Something like this might require a separate mastery tree, and of course will need extensive testing and balancing, but it could also mitigate the cash-flow problem supports seem to experience compared to other roles, as 800 gold goes a long way towards for example a item 3108 or a item 3070 .

This could be quite strong when it comes to vision and warding, but a support would have to sacrifice a lot of individual benefiting masteries to provide for the team as a whole. This could, making the generous assumption players on the team are not toxic or selfish, give more of a sense of team play or at least the support putting the proverbial collective before themselves.

What do you think? Would this be an interesting idea, or a potential solution to an issue that affects supports? I'd like to hear your thoughts, critiques, and suggestions.

8 Comments

Silverjust2 votes

I dont think this would be a solution. I think sightstone should cost less for (only for) supports, but still be a mustbuy item. Supports should not be forced to take a different keystone or even mastery-tree. Who would take windspeakers blessing then?

P3NANC32 votes

Hi Silverjust, Thanks for taking the time to view and respond. I do see your point, and I agree that supports should not be forced to take a different mastery. That is why I proposed that Sightstone would only be "disabled" for supports if they have this "ward" keystone. I suppose I didn't communicate this thought very clearly. Do you think I should edit this in my post to make it more clear? As a support-main I would of course be very happy with a less expensive Sightstone. What do you think is an acceptable 'cheaper' price, 600-700 gold? If the price would stay the same, do you think it should get some minor buffs, such as health or mana regen (25%) for example?

Silverjust2 votes

how do you clear wards, when you get more wards on your trinkets?

not shure about the price, but i would make sightstone cost less, because if you put more stats on it, different supports scale differently strong with it. It should be more like a general Item, good on a tanksup and a heal/shield or mage sup. Lets say I play Leona, manareg on sightstone would be almost completly wasted. If it costs less, you could buy the stats you need way earlier like armor. The only Idea I saw that would be good for every sup was to give more gold for wards you destroyed or something like this. But at the moment I find it hard to finish one complete Item in the laningphase because I need all the other stuff like goldgen item with upgrades, sightstone, boots

P3NANC32 votes

You mean that it would become a problem with getting Oracle Altercation for example when the "ward keystone" would add to "regular trinkets"? That was an issue that I was pondering myself too. At this point I only could come up with adding an UI element to cover this, say like a UI element was added for Kindred and now Rengar. This would however not be a very elegant solution to the issue, I agree.

I think you make a good point for just reducing the price for Sightstone, and I agree that currently as Supports we are hugely constrained in how we can buy items due to passive income, rather than sucking or being amazing at farming. More gold for destroying wards would be great. I had read this idea as well.

I suppose in the end I'd like to see more flexibility in options for supports (but I guess it would be cool if every roles had this) in builds between runes, masteries, and items. The gold-income runes seem to be very underused, if at all, due to it not being worth it compared to armor/mr or ap/ad, for example.

I'm curious to see what Riot comes up with, if anything.

Oglaf2 votes

I've always felt that "Assassin" is out of place in the Cunning tree. (like "Merciless" it seems to have been put there only because they ran out of space in the Ferocity tree!).

I think it could be replaced with a mastery that, much like "Runic Affinity" does for jungle buffs, increases the duration of green wards by like 15%-20%.

P3NANC32 votes

Hi Oglaf, Thanks for taking the time to view and respond to this post :) I agree that some of the masteries seem out of place in their respective mastery-trees, and perhaps some improvements could be made there. I do think that Riot did it more or less intentional. If it was too segmented nobody would really be able to diversify without giving up on keystones altogether. I also think having a ward-buff of sorts would be awesome.

ShinkoMinori1 votes

no

P3NANC32 votes

Hi ShinkoMinori, Thank you for taking the time to view and comment on this post. What makes you disagree with the idea that I put forward? I would really like to hear it as constructive disagreement and feedback that challenges this (or any) idea might help change my perspective. To me it seems an interesting idea right now, but perhaps with your help and feedback I will look back and see that it was not a very good or interesting idea. Do you main any particular role, and from that view, does it seem not to be a good idea?

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