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The Pyke problem started earlier than his release

Smyrage·8/27/2019, 4:58:36 PM·59 votes·18,036 views

This thread is just about sharing a thought, that what led to release of a really unhealthy champion, which most of you loathe (including me) and that is Pyke . While he is permaban for me, I wouldn't like to discuss him in this thread, instead I would like to discuss your opinions regarding the current support meta as a whole. So as the title said: this said problem started earlier than his release. How so? It is simple.

The invasion of midlane mages on the support role That's right, even prior his release, there were "supports", who were extremely problematic: Lux Brand Zyra Morgana etc.. We liked to pretend that they weren't that bad, but they were. The issue is: they are even more so problematic to balance, because if you balance them around at support role, they become weaker on midlane, if you balance them around midlane, then they become too strong as support. Just remember Morgana . She is still an unhealthy support and will always be, because her Q is way too forgiving and she can poke with her W. When Riot decided to hit her W, so she could become less oppressive on botlane, then midlane Morgana mains started crying, that she as midlane shouldn't be killed off. I don't remember exactly what happened to her W nerf since then, but it showed that you can't balance champions around both mid and support. We also should remember, that mages in support role were supposed to be in the "tolerated" category, not the "encouraged" category, because they were supposed to be the inferior choice. Pyke is just this phenomenon taken to another level: a lot of people desired an assassin support and we have got one, so Riot only fulfilled something everyone desired. It's just another example of the "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it". And we got it. :D

Nerfing ADCs and Enchanters/Supports, letting the mages run amuck I still remember that a few years ago botlane was 1:1 = ADC:Support, when it came to efficiancy. Then last year (or was it 2 years now? I don't remember exactly) Riot decided to nerf every ADC. While their decrease of damage could have been a good thing, but in reality what really happened is a damage shift from the ADC to the "support mages". ADCs just become a farming supports for the mages, so they can spend their mana on poking and don't need to farm. item 3303 ftw.

TahmKench problem ... is basically when you want to enforce an unhealthy pick for toplane, but in the process you nerf his intended role to be really situational, but after a while you just nerf that unhealthy pick, and you end up with both roles gutted.

In conclusion: Pyke is just a new level of a problem, which has been a problem for a few years now and everyone ought to reconsider what a support really is, because this can get worse.

118 Comments

Linna Excel8/27/2019, 5:25:00 PM51 votes

The problem is that champs like Zyra and Brand became supports because their lack of mobility forced them out of midlane and their CC let them function as supports. Mage supports became a thing in part because riot didn't keep midlane assassins in check. Now riot is making support assassins and not keeping them in check.

I'm of the belief that there's only 2 things that'll kill LOL.

  1. Riot being out of touch or poorly communicating (2 ways) with the community.
  2. Riot's design philosophies and balance team push things too far, fueled in part because of point 1.
Metal Janna8/27/2019, 5:27:59 PM24 votes

It's too bad Riot listened to the "wahhh my trades are getting countered retroactively" crowd and nerfed shields and buffed damage.

Yeah, it was frustrating when you went for a trade by yourself and got countered by the support's shield. But guess what? That's what's supposed to happen in a 2v1 fight.

You know what's not supposed to happen?

Eating a bind and straight up dying at level 2 to anything other than a full CC and full damage duo. LeonaDraven.

That's only a thing because Riot made shields irrelevant.

To be clear: i'm not calling for shields to be buffed. I'm calling for damage to be nerfed. For enchanters, for tanks, for hookers, for marksman. Burst supports like Brand should instead have their CC duration or reliability nerfed. So that there is an actual tradeoff for picking full damage support. Also Soraka's healing. I get that it was necessary to buff it to counter the extremely high amount of damage in the game right now, but once that's fixed it'll need a nerf.

Dorans Pants8/27/2019, 7:34:25 PM12 votes

So basically the good old "everybody is allowed to be selfish and go for dmg except the support who is expected to play under completely different conditions"?

I for one am happy that there are mages as alternative supports and that I am not forced to play as a walking stat-stick for my adc like Soraka Lulu Janna exclusively who almost make me fall asleep behind my monitor and automatically lose if they don´t have a competent carry.

I bet most people complaining are adc mains who want their lanes dominance and power multipliers back.

Hayaishi28/27/2019, 5:43:00 PM11 votes

If we want mages in midlane we need to stop assassins from autowinning lane against them.

Then we also need to make their gold income matter. The risk needs to be higher. If they don't win lane they need to feel useless.

PiggyTheAstro8/27/2019, 6:00:51 PM9 votes

Mages came to support because they got pushed out by mid assassins. If assassins are nerfed we'll see brand, veigar, lux, zyra and possibly Morgana go back to support. Shields and heals could get buffed to counter the mages' damage and assassins like zed could get their damage nerfed. Nerf the damage of every assassins ability by 10-50 (based on level) and buff shields and heals (especially bard's heal, that thing is a joke) and the problem will be fixed. Next thing, we nerf duskblade, this opens more counterplay to 1shot assassins like rengar and kha, which makes it easier to peel. It also nerfs pyke, since he builds duskblade. BOOM! Support role is easily fixed!

5050BS8/27/2019, 6:59:01 PM8 votes

Yep when they gutted Mid lane Zyra because of Zyra Support and FORCED her Support when Mid is her MAIN role.

They didnt do that to Morg or Lux or Brand or Vel or Veigar.... Just Zyra.

Teémò8/27/2019, 5:44:33 PM5 votes

https://youtu.be/4PLvdmifDSk?t=94 -w-

A big thing with old mage supports was they ran out of mana reasonably fast. I can't think of the last time I saw a Brand run out of mana as a support. They made their skills easier. replacing annie from beginner friendly with brand. Its really rare for a zoning support to roam because they have no reason to put themselves at risk to gank other lanes. And their damage output is high enough that junglers would rather abandon that lane if their ally team can't follow up.

tldr they are like yasuo's stupid strong in lane garbage when not, but they have no reason to leave. p.s forgot they changed brands ult to prioritize champions when bouncing same with zyra's plants.

Porglit8/27/2019, 7:29:44 PM5 votes

The issue that caused all these other ones shouldn't be ignored either: they nerfed the traditional support supports. Sona, Janna, Raka, etc. etc. It's no wonder people look for other options when the dedicated supports took such a hit.

PaffWasTaken8/27/2019, 10:41:27 PM4 votes

The actual reason why mages are more often seen as supports nowadays rather than midlane is more because of the fact that they can't lane anymore under any circumstances against assassins.

Mages are still vital to a lot of comps though, while utility supports aren't in this burst meta. So, people managed to understand that replacing supports by mages is way easier than trying to make them work in midlane against assassins who, then again, completely outperforms mages in nearly every aspects except for waveclearing in some occasions.

We should focus on the actual problem that is midlane assassins right now and stop nerfing left and right mages who got forced into a role they literally need to be in because they've been pushed away from where they should be. Bring back balance to midlane then recalibrate mages as a whole with an ACTUAL AP itemization rework, then botlane would probably be a much happier place.

siilentdeath8/27/2019, 8:20:50 PM2 votes

they need to nerf the dmg output by lux, brand, viegar and zyra. when ever i get these champions as "supports" there is very little supporting going on. the lux supports do not build an item 3504 or item 3107 . they focus on big ap items instead of CDR. brand supports tend to not even build like a support they just go straight up mid lane carry then take the kills from me. so i am all for a straight up nerf on all AP mages that are used as supports. since they are not ever used as supports. the new thinking is " support is just another AP mid laner slot where i dont have to worry about an assasin counter pick". maybe if they nerf the dmg out put on the phony supports they might actually go back to being supports and not wannabe carries.

Slim Gragas8/27/2019, 10:45:17 PM2 votes

The community wanted support to be "fun".

JRobin318/27/2019, 11:13:30 PM2 votes

Meh. RIOT shouldn't design champions according to roles such as top, mid, bot, jun, sup. Once upon a time they knew not to do that. It was part of their design philosophy not to dictate META to the players.

Those days are gone.

Chimpanzzi8/28/2019, 7:32:08 PM2 votes

Just had my ass handed to me by a Leblanc "support". I'm contemplating on leaving botlane as a whole, the damage meta is ridiculously unfun to play in both the giving and the receiving end.

Xintium8/28/2019, 8:15:59 PM2 votes

What follows is my personal opinion on the matter (and a Wall of Text). I will avoid stating "in my humble opinion" (IMHO) at every sentence for brevity. Relatively little of what I have written applies outside of SoloQ. Pyke is the symptom of a bigger underlying problem, which was lurking behind the scenes since around Season 5/6.

The main actors of this problem are:

  1. Gold-income and aggresion-rewarding;
  2. Junglers;
  3. Vision-related items (Sightstone vs. wards inside the main support items)
  4. Auto-fill (back when getting autofilled was the same as going support unwillingly)
  5. Direct and indirect nerfs to enchanters
  6. Player Agency and perception of power

This is nothing less than Pandora's Box. Let's open it.

  1. Gold-income and aggresion-rewarding. No surprises here: you can't have Brand/Lux/whatever support without items. An aggressive play-style was also more fun to watch than a "passive" lane (e.g., Soraka), so the slow degrade of these lanes started. Poke-oriented lanes started to emerge as a safer alternative to Kill Lanes, which were often a bit too binary (binary = win hard or lose hard).

  2. Junglers became part of the equation for several reasons: dragons become really crucial to take early so ganking bot was a good option, most mid-laners (especially assassins) could roam really well, poke-oriented lanes were blurring into Kill-territory (one good Lux Q or Zyra E and it's basically the same as a Blitz Q), botlaners were rarely at 100% hp, abusing botlane, if successful, was a macro-play with no real answer (in most cases), and, later on, tower plating gold. Thus, the infamous "clown-fiesta" was actually a smart move to make.

  3. Vision. When the map was lit like a Christmas tree, botlane could at least anticipate and prevent such stupidly powerful dives with stupidly-high rewards. So, nerf vision multiple times, until they can't anymore. There was a time in Pro-Play where even the slightest sign of continued aggression was almost immediately responded by TP from both toplaners (this was before the CD nerf to Teleport).

  4. Auto-fill also comes without surprises. Why bother playing Janna Lulu Soraka when Brand Lux , hell even Malzahar (for a certain time), worked ? And also were a lot more effective than the off-meta picks they looked like at first glance.

  5. item 3504 this item sealed the deal. It was (rightfully) nerfed and most enchanters were nerfed alongside it. Remember, no one likes 10-15 minutes of farming in botlane. We need action, blood, kills. That's what everybody wanted. Indirectly, this created yet another reason for playing Brand/Lux/... supports.

  6. Finally, we arrive to where we stand now, when Player Agency is at its minimum (or barely above that). Sure, you can still play Janna perfectly, but one mistake in your ADC positioning, a Jungler gank at the wrong time and... boom! He is dead. You may also die trying desperately to save him, or be rational and at least not give them another free kill (though that may get you flamed by bad players). Now, let's try it with Pyke . Suppose you play Pyke perfectly. They are all dead. You take gold, also your ADC earns gold. The chances for a successful snowball (if you have a competent jungler and the other lanes aren't getting destroyed) rise dramatically. At the very least, you can say that "I did my job". You may still lose the game, but you still feel that you had more "power" in your hands, more agency. Playing Pyke was rewarded by enemy deaths, an immediate reward. And you get better at killing them as a result. Which feels even better. And the Perception distortion is now online.

The enemy support, let's say it was Nami, starts thinking: "wait, I played Nami so good for 90% of the time, poked them good, healed my ADC, etc.... yet one mistake (less than 0.1% of the laning time) led to disaster and now Pyke is killing everyone! Why I never was able to kill anything even if I got fed. You know what? F**k that, Brand/Lux/Pyke/... next game. At least I can kill the enemy carry and make a difference". And the circle is closed.

Yes, there are several exceptions to this last point, I am not claiming it is the thought-process of most support mains, by no means I am suggesting that. But it is certainly not unrealistic, especially when we have seen a shift (although for different reasons), including in pro-play, from Janna/Lulu to Pyke/whatever. The shift is real because the underlying motivations are real: burst/assassin-like champions are simply becoming more and more effective at the support's job, which, in the damage meta (or whatever it is called), is simply "kill before you get killed".

This was the underlying problem all-along: the support's job got reduced to "kill enemy botlane faster than they can kill you". This is disgusting. A Soraka-Vayne lane goal was just surviving and letting Vayne farm. "Winning lane", in that case, was having good CS and not dying. That's it. Now it doesn't matter, it's just "kill them". So, Soraka got replaced by Brand/Lux/Pyke/etc. (and Vayne got replaced by Kai'Sa, but that's another story).

On a final note.

I am (was) a support main. Back in the days of S4/early S5, my mains were Sona, Janna and Morgana. I also liked Braum a lot. Now, if I want to play support (which doesn't happen often), I rarely pick something outside of Brand/Lux/Pyke/etc (I started doing so well before they were considered "meta"), or the occasional "old-school" Kill Lanes (Blitz, Leona). Yuumi is the only exception, and will stay so as long as she stays significantly over-tuned. I am deeply unsatisfied with what the "support role" has become over the years (there is no more support role anymore, strictly speaking).

I don't know if Pyke was the result of "true" Supports (like Sona, Janna, Nami, ...) not getting recognized for their awesome plays. After all, they are not that flashy as the best montages of Zed/Yasuo/almost-any-champion-really. But I think that, in the old days, Janna (I'm sorry to always use her as an example, but bear with me) was over-tuned precisely because you were putting all your agency inside another player hands. And that's why some players wanted that agency back. And all the rest followed.

You may hate Pyke , but what the true supports (I don't count myself anymore as a "true" support main) endured in these years was far worse than anything Pyke could do. That's why I don't hate him (and also why you shouldn't hate him): I hate what led to him as the "solution" to the problem.

SouL1ess8/29/2019, 8:12:48 AM2 votes

I still think the problem is that champions are now designed around lanes not roles, and then balancing based on lane and not role.

Every champion adapting to meta by moving lanes gets nerfed.