Boards›Gameplay

Ideas for Support Changes

gemini333·3/14/2018, 12:40:43 PM·2 votes·319 views

Haven't posted anything in a while, but I wanted to try my hand at re-balancing the gold-income items on supports, given the current changes made in the last few patches. One of the continuous problems plaguing support income items is that they are often abused by other roles once they become gold-efficient enough. This forces Riot to put certain limitations on the item or straight up nerf it, which can indirectly hamper the support role's effectiveness. There is also the problem of heavy burden of knowledge for the income items, though less talked about. Simply put, there is a lot of additional effects that are being loaded onto the income items in an attempt to make the role more appealing (the main example being Quests and Rewards). However, this also has the side-effect of making the item's description texts bloated (too many effects) or too vague on details. This can act as an entry barrier against newer players trying out different roles, turning them away due to the text-heavy effects the starting items have. Hopefully, the changes suggested below can solve (or at least, alleviate) these two problems.

#General Changes#

Removing Quests & Rewards. When Quests were first introduced, they were intended to give support players "additional rewards for good play that aren't just gold and experience." However, the new implementation of Quests doesn't match that ideal anymore. Warding is an essential requirement for a support, and locking it behind Quests makes it less of a bonus for good play and more like a punishment for supports that fall behind during the lane phase. It also doesn't help that they add a whole load of text onto the item description, some of which is fairly vague ("slows Tribute generation"). Removing this aspect would solve these issues, especially since they don't fulfill their intended purpose anymore.

Re-introducing Sightstone. With the removal of Quests, putting the normal Sightstone item 2056 back into the game allows supports to determine when they want more vision for their lane, without having to jump through hoops to acquire it. This also smoothes out the current build paths for 3rd tier items, though it does so at the cost of getting free wards from Quests.

#Gold-Income Items#

item 3303 Spellthief's Edge

  • costs 350 gold
  • grants: 10 AP, 25% base MP regen, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 97.86%

Unique passive: Tribute - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), your damaging spells/attacks against champions or structures will expend a charge to deal 10 bonus magic damage and grant you 15 gold. You lose a charge every time you kill a minion or non-epic monster.

item 3098 Frostfang

  • costs 850 gold (item 3303 + item 1004 + 375)
  • grants: 20 AP, 50% base MP regen 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 111.96% efficient

Unique passive: Tribute - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), your damaging spells/attacks against champions or structures will expend a charge to deal 15 bonus magic damage and grant you 20 gold. You lose a charge every time you kill a minion or non-epic monster.

item 3092 Eye of the Watchers

  • costs 1900 gold (item 3649 + item 3098 + 250)
  • grants: 200 HP, 40 AP, 50% base MP regen, 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 101.05% efficient

Unique passive: Tribute - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. Your damaging spells/attacks against champions or structures will expend a charge to deal 15 bonus magic damage and grant you 20 gold.

Unique active: Warding - Consume a ward charge to place a stealth ward at a target location (600 range), which reveals the surrounding area for 150 seconds. Holds up to 4 ward charges which refill upon visiting the shop.

> Notes - The main change within the Spellthief item line is that it now requires a nearby ally in order to proc the Tribute passive for the 1st and 2nd-tier items. This prevents solo lanes from abusing the item, as there is no other partner to activate the passive. As an added precautionary measure, both Spellthief and Frostfang also lose charges whenever the item holder kills an enemy. Supports themselves won't lose out on much as minion gold is higher than the bonus gold provided by Tribute, but other roles won't be able to utilize the passive anymore without forfeiting minion kills. Note that none of this applies to 3rd-tier Eye items, so supports can freely proc their passives without repercussion once finishing their first item.

item 3307 Relic Shield

  • costs 350 gold
  • grants: 125 HP, 2 gold per 10 seconds
  • gold efficiency: 95.24%

Unique passive: Spoils of War - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), your melee basic attacks can execute normal minions below 50% health. Executing a minion this way expends a charge to restore 20 (+2% missing health) HP and grant you 15 bonus gold, while the nearest allied champion gets the kill gold instead.

item 3097 Targon's Brace

  • costs 850 gold (item 3307 + item 1006 + 350)
  • grants: 175 HP, 50% base HP regen, 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 103.92%

Unique passive: Spoils of War - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), your melee basic attacks can execute normal minions below 75% health. Executing a minion this way expends a charge to restore 35 (+2% missing health) HP and grant you 20 bonus gold, while the nearest allied champion gets the kill gold instead.

item 3401 _ Eye of the Aspect_

  • costs 1900 gold (item 3649 + item 3097 + 250)
  • grants: 450 HP, 150% base HP regen, 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 100.88% efficient

Unique passive: Spoils of War - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. Your melee basic attacks can execute normal minions. Killing a minion expends a charge to restore 50 (+2% missing health) HP and grant you 20 bonus gold.

Unique active: Warding - Consume a ward charge to place a stealth ward at a target location (600 range), which reveals the surrounding area for 150 seconds. Holds up to 4 ward charges which refill upon visiting the shop.

> Notes - The gold mechanic for Spoils of War has been brought into line with Tribute so there's a clearer baseline for the kind of gold supports get in lane. The passive no longer heals allies or grants you kill gold, which is a detriment to tank supports. As compensation, the gold efficiency for the Relic items has been increased to match the other support items, while the minion execution effect has been made easier to access as a whole.

item 3301 Ancient Coin

  • costs 350 gold
  • grants: 25% base HP regen, 25% base MP regen, 5% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 95.24%

Unique passive: Favour - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), damaging an enemy champion or healing/shielding an ally expends a charge to grant 15 gold and restore 6% missing MP. You lose a charge every time you kill a minion or non-epic monster.

item 3096 Nomad's Medallion

  • costs 850 gold (item 3301 + item 1006 + 350)
  • grants: 75% base HP regen, 75% base MP regen, 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 101.96% efficient

Unique passive: Favour - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. While an allied champion is nearby (1000 range), damaging an enemy champion or healing/shielding an ally expends a charge to grant 20 gold and restore 6% missing MP. You lose a charge every time you kill a minion or non-epic monster.

item 3069 Eye of Acension

  • costs 1900 gold (item 2056 + item 3096 + 250)
  • grants: 250 HP, 125% base MP regen, 125% base MP regen, 10% CDR, 2 gold per 10 sec.
  • gold efficiency: 101.75% efficient

Unique passive: Favour - Store a charge every 30 seconds, up to a max. of 3 charges. Damaging an enemy champion or healing/shielding an ally expends a charge to grant 20 gold and restore 6% missing MP.

Unique active: Warding - Consume a ward charge to place a stealth ward at a target location (600 range), which reveals the surrounding area for 150 seconds. Holds up to 4 ward charges which refill upon visiting the shop.

> Notes - The current Favour passive just isn't working out for supports in general. While the item line is fairly inefficient stat-wise, the gameplay its passive promotes just gives a lot of reward for very little risk. As such, I'm reworking Favour to be more like Tribute, while upping the gold efficiency of the item line. While the Coin items still support a sustain-based playstyle, there is now more incentive and reward to interact with other champions. While it's possible to put Heal/Shield power into this item line, I decided against it because it would bar other supports not reliant on heal/shield mechanics from using it.

Although I've done calculations for the gold value of each item, they should be taken with a grain of salt since I really don't know how they'll play out in-game. They're more a proof of concept than anything else. Nevertheless, I'm open to suggestions on making these items better, and less abusable.

2 Comments

InTheory3/14/2018, 1:41:54 PM2 votes

I want to compliment the way you made that thread - it looks really good. But I personally don't agree with any of the statements you make. You basically propose two different changes: a) revert the changes to tier 3 support item build pathes that include bringing back sightstone while removing support item quests. At this point it's not an "idea" its just a suggestion to revert something to an earlier stage. b) some changes to the passives.

I myself think that granting wards as questrewards is one of the best changes within the lst years made to support role alongside with the increased variety of support effective items. Even having the quests gives you something to play around and be more interactive with the game at all - you are given special tools and are rewarded for using them properly. Unless you want to make a sightstone a 400g statless (would be a horrible idea in terms of map wide vision play), the current version is more gold efficient in terms of building up other items on top of having access to wards. Especially the latter is a major improvement that gives supports a real first item power spike compared to having sightstone + fragments only.

Spellthief line: Making the charges only proc with an ally around removes power from supports in situations where there's no ally around, leaving them vulnerable to other threads. 3 charges can have a very good trade back potential against e.g. enemy junglers you encounter when you are warding. You make supports more dependant which is a bad design imo. The possibility for AP mid laners to just rush the third tier version leaves them abusing the additional gold generation as always.

Reliv Shield line: You flatten out the maximum charges and the gold granted to the support. I don't think it is intended by you that you get more out of the item if you get the caster minions instead of melee while still losing gold potential of killing canon minions. You increase the gold efficiency of the item by straight up buffing its stats while decreasing the gold generation over time. That leads to a point where you start being worse than before while buffing early game. On top of that you heavily buff tank supports who are REALLY strong at the moment which is the reason why the item line has been nerfed in HP in the first place.

Ancient Coin line: You get infinite sustain both on mana and health. You even get gold for and mana when shielding or healing an ally - if when that doesn't even make sense. Like no enemy their? Shield your ally and get gold for it. That's really bad design. I can't even follow your statement "The current Favour passive just isn't working out for supports in general" - that sounds really arbitrary and has no context connected to it at all.

Other aspects: You increase the gold per proc but decrease the procs per time resulting in decreased gold over time from playing out the gold generation passives. On top of that, you remove the gold over time which is a fallback mechanic when falling behind and have a harder time to get your procs off in the first place. Even when not having to rely on it because of the removal of quests, thse are net nerfs in gold generation.