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Wishlist for the support role for season 8

Nymzo·11/6/2017, 4:12:47 PM·3 votes·1,684 views

Very soon, season 7 is going to be over and I would like to share my thoughts as a scrub d5 support main who always get carried by his teammates.

Before I begin, I must say that this season was ironically, both the best and the worst season for support. The best because it was the season where Riot made a lot of changes for supports when in other seasons, they only made a few but that was also the worst because those same changes were steps in the wrong direction.

So here for what I wish Riot would do:

1: Rework item 3107 and item 3190

With now that Ardent and Coin are in a reasonable spot, we need to take care of those two other elephants in the room.

item 3190, in my opinion, wouldn't necessarily need a rework. Maybe just a nerf to the base shield and increase the health ratio while of course also removing its interaction with item 3193.

item 3107 however, should definately get a rework. You will never convince me that an Aoe heal that does dmg on a barely two minutes cd will ever be balance even with a delay. If I could suggest one thing: why not rework it into an offensive item. We already lack offensive items and enchanters already have plenty of defensives one. What's more, did you ever use the dead passif on this thing? I personnally never did because using it to heal allies in the middle of a fight is ten times much better unless you got caught or something. Make him an offensive item that maybe either buff ally or hurt an enemy but make the item stronger if you are dead? I don't know.

2: New support champion with a new mechanic

This very minor, since I know Riot is probably already working on that. Just a heads up for later.

3: Rework the enchanter class

Notice that I say class, not champions. The champions are mostly functionable, the problem lies with the dilemma with this class.

I keep wondering if the role's core problem lies with their dependance on items. They really need items since they need as must help as they can for protecting their team ence why they are considered to be the safest subclass out of the three. Yet if they are behind, they are even worse useless than the other two since most of them (aside of Janna and Lulu) barely has any cc. It's not just Sona, they are so, so dependant on item 3114, mana regn and even defense items it's not even funny.

Not to mention their playstyle could get some tweaking. I had the idea to change their power budget: make their heals and shields not the core part of their kit, it end up being a wrong idea.

Them I mentionned making them have a niche role (like Soraka being the only healer), also bad idea. In the end I have no idea, I'm open to any suggestions that ain't gutting them since they kinda already are (aside for Lulu).

To a final note, Riot... I know you care about all of your players but stop listening to players that barely play the role. Yes autofill is annoying and the role is boring to non-supports main (if you would stop playing enchanters...) but this is not a reason to make us op just for the sake of making the role ''more fun to play''.

Do you want to know what I found boring to play? Every single other role that isn't my role! Yes junglers are fun to play but require massif game knowledge and practice to be effective on. However you wouldn't the jungle for players that don't even play the role would you? Then why did you end up doing that for supports. Yes we may not be able to carry (unless you are an ap support) but know what? It's find because we can either help our teammates OR we can prevent someone from the enemy team to carry. And that... is the magic of playing support.

5 Comments

Teridax6811/6/2017, 5:18:17 PM2 votes

I agree with much of this, and I think that supports will never be in an entirely healthy place so long as they're pushed towards building exclusively defensive items. The bonus to healing and shielding that some items give is a good start to making supports scale, but it affects only two of the many, many tools at their disposal, and as a result forces enchanters especially to turn into pocket medics, when they could be so much more. In this respect, Ardent Censer's attack speed boost could have been a step forward, but its focus on healing and shielding, and the marksman-exclusive nature of its bonus stat, meant that it only further pushed enchanters to support only the marksman, and ignore the rest of their team.

Because of this, I agree that we need more support itemization that focuses on offensive power, rather than defensive power. If Redemption lost its heal but instead had a slow and reveal, it would allow supports to pin down their opponents from huge distances and set them up for kills, for example. If we had more items that based themselves off of the steroids enchanters gave, or the CC of supports, then we'd have much more diversity, as there would be many more offensive options for supports. In general, defenses need to be made less accessible and less easy to apply, as one of the core problems with enchanters, and even with non-supports, is that their defensive effects are often uninteractive. So much work has gone into turning damage and most crowd control into skillshots, delayed effects, and so on, but most heals and shields instantly and reliably apply their full effects, which has gone to the point where often it's better to just pile on as many defenses as possible, rather than take a risk and go for more offensive power.

Regarding Locket specifically, I think its interaction with Gargoyle Stoneplate is more a problem with the latter item: Stoneplate giving raw maximum health, rather than a shield, as would be more appropriate for a temporary health bar, already generates a ton of unhealthy interactions, not least with Cho'Gath's ultimate. Changing Stoneplate's active to provide a shield instead of health, or otherwise just not scale with health scalings at all, would allow it to not be this massive instant power-up to anything with a health scaling. Beyond that, though, I think enchanter supports need to be weaned away from tanky itemization, and should be pushed to go for squishy builds instead. If the best option a squishy caster can consistently is an item designed and balanced for tanks, then there is a problem, as that means they don't have options that are catered to them which compete with it. In this respect, making Locket's active scale fully with the wielder's maximum health, instead of having a base amount, and perhaps having armor and MR amplify the shield even further after that, would make it even more exclusive to tanky builds.

OurLestrade11/6/2017, 5:00:13 PM1 votes

Here's to hoping we get another Braum-wall-esque support mechanic which is engaging for all parties, the less shield/heal spam support the better. I've never found that sort of stat check gameplay satisfying.