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Playing Support: How Pyke Breaks Support

Rydogshaw··1 votes·2,279 views

I am ecstatic about the release of Pyke, as mentioned in my previous post, this new champion turns support on its head and has reinvigorated my love for support. But the question that keeps coming into my head over and over again is whats stopping from actual assassins from playing support. It can be argued that Pyke was poorly designed for support, his q and e offer some cc but he is intended to build damage. I know so many people hate it when people play off meta, but in reality no position in league is locked in. Mages and assassins do not have to go mid, top laners are not restricted from going mid. Although each champion may seem perfectly suited for their role, support is not all that unique. You could play a variety of champions support and buy a relic shield or redemption and be classified as a "support." What seems so wrong with an assassin or a mage going support but getting a little less gold but still picking up some kills, I mean in theory wouldn't an extra source of damage be beneficial to a team. This is where the term utility gets thrown in, maybe an assassin like zed wouldn't bring "utility" to support but I mean one shotting someone seems like a pretty reliable form of cc. Of course this is just me rambling out of boredom please do not torment teammates by playing an assassin support against their wishes, you always need permission to try these things out. Do not be afraid to use the comment section to flame me uncontrollably about how idiotic this sounds, or comment the state of League of Legends and if we can ever expect a complete change in lanes by certain champions.

20 Comments

Mysticman892 votes

The issue tends to be typical assassins need gold/levels to snowball, both of which the support is lacking in typically, providing they're not taking cs/kills. If they are taking those things, the adc ends up falling behind, and the team DPS loss from the adc is unlikely to be counteracted by the DPS increase from the assassin (and if the assassin DPS does offset it, further optimization would result in the 'adc' actually just playing support to the assassin, at which point it's better if they picked a support champ who doesn't need the gold to be effective in the first place).

Pyke overcomes this partially by being 'allowed' to take the kills since doing so no longer sets the adc behind, so he can potentially do the snowbally assassin thing from the support. Theres no guarantee of a snowball though, which is why taking other assassins support is typically deemed unwise. Pyke on the other hand does have utility in his kit to fall back on, so the team isn't totally screwed in the event that specific assassin support fails to get fed, unlike if kat or zed or similar was played support and ended up so far behind they couldn't assassinate anyone.

Rydogshaw1 votes

{quoted}

The issue tends to be typical assassins need gold/levels to snowball, both of which the support is lacking in typically, providing they're not taking cs/kills. If they are taking those things, the adc ends up falling behind, and the team DPS loss from the adc is unlikely to be counteracted by the DPS increase from the assassin (and if the assassin DPS does offset it, further optimization would result in the 'adc' actually just playing support to the assassin, at which point it's better if they picked a support champ who doesn't need the gold to be effective in the first place).

Pyke overcomes this partially by being 'allowed' to take the kills since doing so no longer sets the adc behind, so he can potentially do the snowbally assassin thing from the support. Theres no guarantee of a snowball though, which is why taking other assassins support is typically deemed unwise. Pyke on the other hand does have utility in his kit to fall back on, so the team isn't totally screwed in the event that specific assassin support fails to get fed, unlike if kat or zed or similar was played support and ended up so far behind they couldn't assassinate anyone.

Yea gold is definitely an issue but do you think that riot games will continue to make champion that are specific to certain roles or do you think they will allow players to get creative and make a flexible champion

Mysticman891 votes

They're generally happy to see player creativity and see champions be flexible provided they can be healthy in their roles.

It's just extremely difficult to design a champion that can be balanced in multiple roles at once, since the needs of a solo laner are somewhat different than the needs of a jungler, which are different from the needs of the duo laners, and the strengths/weaknesses of one group can be directly opposite to one of the others.

For example, if a champion is balanced in a duo lane where they're getting less xp (adc/sup) and less gold (sup), then theres a good chance that champion is going to be OP in a lane where they get xp/gold that much faster unless theres specific weaknesses to their kit pulling them to a duo lane, so they have to keep specific roles in mind when designing.

They can't really responsibly just design a general all purpose champion and just throw it into live and be all "here you go, this could be anything, get creative!", since the community would quickly figure out that although they might be 'viable' everywhere, they're actually an 80% winrate super OP mid and then they'd simply be a mid.

I'm sure they'll continue to have interesting innovations in future champs where theres more unusual class/role combinations and they'll find ways to have various champs balanced for a couple roles simultaneously, but it's pretty safe they'll have specific roles in mind whenever they're making those designs, because a 5 role super broad champion even if perfectly balanced would either be super convoluted with extra rules all over so they could specifically tune each role, or just being a very boring champ without any super good reason to be picked for any of those roles.

MagicFlyingLlama1 votes

44% winrate

What stops actual assassins from playing support is it sucks.

Rydogshaw1 votes

{quoted}

44% winrate

What stops actual assassins from playing support is it sucks.

ah yes that might be it

IcyPepper1 votes

He needs the kill gold on ult to buy more expensive AD items, for one. Other assassin supports either have to be even more selfish or fall off as they cannot buy as much items.

Another problem is that Pyke actually has cc on par with other supports, enough to make bot lane defensible. Assassins like Zed do not offer that same utility. Champions like Ekko could maybe work...?

MagicFlyingLlama1 votes

Sup Ekko is sort of half-viable (ie no worse than Pyke right now).

It relies heavily on the other team not knowing how to react to something so weird.

Rydogshaw1 votes

{quoted}

He needs the kill gold on ult to buy more expensive AD items, for one. Other assassin supports either have to be even more selfish or fall off as they cannot buy as much items.

Another problem is that Pyke actually has cc on par with other supports, enough to make bot lane defensible. Assassins like Zed do not offer that same utility. Champions like Ekko could maybe work...?

Ekko seems like a plausible in this case, I think he would offer enough raw damage to be effective in lane and constantly apply pressure with his w

Tesladin1 votes

It's very very simple, supports don't do gold, can't into items, can't do shit. It's not efficient. Mid-game when jungle can still farm just about anywhere including the enemy jungle and in lanes, support is expected to stay with the major part of their team and babysit/protect their adc.

There's sort of a limited amount of farm available on the map, at least until midgame.

Rydogshaw1 votes

{quoted}

It's very very simple, supports don't do gold, can't into items, can't do shit. It's not efficient. Mid-game when jungle can still farm just about anywhere including the enemy jungle and in lanes, support is expected to stay with the major part of their team and babysit/protect their adc.

I think you're right but I would find it interesting to see some change in the typical game of league of legends

Tesladin1 votes

Play another role, everything will be totally different. If you want to play assassins you can play them mid.

Rydogshaw1 votes

{quoted}

Play another role, everything will be totally different. If you want to play assassins you can play them mid.

do you see any change in the future of league of legends role wise, or do you think we can expect role's to remain static

Tesladin1 votes

There would be less variety in the game if every position could be played by every role.

Subject 51 votes

I've been playing Pyke support with great success after practicing in customs for 3 days. Although the 3 great performances I did have, the following happened:

Game 1: Yasuo went 0/11 and kept pushing until he died top. Mid was afk since lvl 6, then finally DC'd. Game 2: Top and Mid fed 22 kills to the enemy team, both are pretty useless. I was still able to 1V1 the fed camille and escape certain death more than just a couple times that game. Game 3: This one was an actual legitimate game. I was able to 1v1 and stall Yasuo from doing the bronze 5 split push until you die method of playing the game, even at one point forcing him to b because I could take a beating and escape while he just kept taking losses. The problem was just that we banked on Renekton hopefully getting ahead, and when he fed 12 kills to the enemy team . . . well. No more frontline except for me. Which I did a really good job as the front line.

I would say the problem with this champion is him being played in lower elo like in plat and below, and he would otherwise be INSANELY strong when people play him in higher elos. He needs time, and in this elo people just feed so fucking hard. As a support that can play Soraka I can prevent this feeding and win. So not Pykes fault, it's more like Call Of Duty doesn't let Pyke succeed in lower elos; and in higher elos newly released champions take time to develop into being used.

Rydogshaw1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Subject 5,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=J8R5lIGP,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2018-06-04T04:37:51.690+0000)

I've been playing Pyke support with great success after practicing in customs for 3 days. Although the 3 great performances I did have, the following happened:

Game 1: Yasuo went 0/11 and kept pushing until he died top. Mid was afk since lvl 6, then finally DC'd. Game 2: Top and Mid fed 22 kills to the enemy team, both are pretty useless. I was still able to 1V1 the fed camille and escape certain death more than just a couple times that game. Game 3: This one was an actual legitimate game. I was able to 1v1 and stall Yasuo from doing the bronze 5 split push until you die method of playing the game, even at one point forcing him to b because I could take a beating and escape while he just kept taking losses. The problem was just that we banked on Renekton hopefully getting ahead, and when he fed 12 kills to the enemy team . . . well. No more frontline except for me. Which I did a really good job as the front line.

I would say the problem with this champion is him being played in lower elo like in plat and below, and he would otherwise be INSANELY strong when people play him in higher elos. He needs time, and in this elo people just feed so fucking hard. As a support that can play Soraka I can prevent this feeding and win. So not Pykes fault, it's more like Call Of Duty doesn't let Pyke succeed in lower elos; and in higher elos newly released champions take time to develop into being used.

Yea you're right I think Pyke has some really strong potential when put in the right hands, he may not have the full healing potential champions like soraka might have but he definitely brings something unique to the table

Kei1431 votes

Death it's the best CC. This is coming from a zyra main that 1 shots squishies.

Aptest1 votes

I have 2 thoughts on this matter.

1 a basic premise of this game is that combat stats are relative to gold earned. Therefore the general case is, low gold means low combat stats and low kill pressure. This basic premise keeps most damage oriented champions out of support role.

what happens if an assassin type character gets to brake this premise? that while having low gold, will still have high kill pressure and can combo 100->20% or similar of opponent whenever skills (+ult?) are up? Does this mean opposing ADC can no longer lane because own support can not respond in time, and even if can respond, response is ineffective?

This is doubly true if the assassin in question has an unanswerable combo like some previous zed iterations (complete combo and snap back before opponent response time, begin combo with untargetable) or previous rengar iteration (complete combo before opponent response time, have megatank stats to absorb fght back and attack speed for follow up)

We've seen Rengar support. Whenever that was viable, it was incredibly oppressive. He'd try to go for you at levels 2-3 with full bar, and if he'd succeeded with some supplementary damage from his ADC, he could start killing you solo from that poont on, which would happen whenever he had his ult.... unless ofcourse you are playing one of the few dedicated point defense champions and stuck to the ADC like glue, which was no fun at all.

2 I really like roaming as a play style for support players. This requires 2 things - that you are effective against your roam target, and that your ADC doesn't get insta-dived the moment you roam. the question i am posing is this: by putting assassin as a support, are we raming up threat against ADC to the extent that roaming solo is not viable for support player?

Kats Pajamas1 votes

Assassins can be support because:

  1. They can fend for themselves with mobility
  2. They have the highest damage for the least gold
  3. They rely on picks, vision, and positioning to do their damage, not items.
  4. They are more XP based class than Gold Based.
  5. They like to roam, and we are currently in a meta that every normal support roams.
  6. Top lane is your leader, and ADC counters top lane. Assassins counter ADC, so you remove them from the equation early if you win lane. Most people will agree a bad adc doesn't win the game, and so sending an Assassin bot to give them a hard time can be more beneficial than letting them farm up for mid game fights.
  7. They almost have as much wave clear as mages, if the adc dies, they protect lane with damage. Braum sits there, and even gets dove, Assassins clear waves, and it's actually difficult to take their tower because of it. ADC's are babies letting freeze minions do half the tower hp so they have time to walk down lane. Just give the gold to the Assassin.
  8. The main purpose of support is warding. Anyone can ward. Whatever you bring with that, you have brought something if you control vision on top of it. This is why Assassin supports that can turn invisible are slightly more valued, for deep wards. Like Shaco.
Kitsunes Lust1 votes

Brand +Zyra+Annie support btw and they dont build any support items. they build raw ap. so what's the difference? pyke can steal your kills and you'd still get something out of it. while these mages steal your kills and you dont get anything good out of it.

Colgate Gator1 votes

You do realize he's simply an AD version of the so called "mage supports" people have been bringing botlane for entire seasons now, right?

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