Boards›Gameplay

The Real Reason Riot Despises Supports

The Stoic Hero·3/23/2015, 6:38:03 PM·8 votes·1,286 views

Flashback to the upset of the century to understand why certain supports have been systematically pigeonholed to their roles despite Riots claims of role diversity.

Remember when Janna was a viable Mage? Remember her recent splash art update to make her seem more powerful? Remember the nerfs that came along with it?

How about the consistent Sona nerfs? Or this sarcastic line from the 5.5 patch notes:

Sona buffs. What a time to be alive.

I do not mean to complain, Riot has done some amazing things, especially in the last patch with the beautiful Visual Rebalance, but when it comes to supports, the trend has been troubling.

Take Bard for example. He is the first classified roaming support. Alistar and Janna could do this role long before, but have been punished repeatedly to non-viability. Alistar was a fun Jungle/Roam/Support, who could go to lanes and give the advantage they needed and move along perfectly fine. Janna had her passive gutted to be entirely situational(we would not want her catching Udyr anymore), then given more bonus speed to Zephyr without reducing the cooldown they nerfed back when she was seen in the LCS. Now Janna and Soraka have the most situational and useless passives because of misplaced thematic sense.

There are very easy fixes to these issues without breaking the champions, they just might not be very apparent. A lot of them have or had great kits that people really appreciated. They see play because of this, and then fall out of favor save the few dedicated players. They do not need to be overloaded, just solid mechanically.

Really, I just want to see these champions thrive. Let Alistar be the awesome roaming support jungle he use to be, give Janna back her wave clear potential on a fully charged Howling Gale, reward Karma for not just being a focus lane bully, make Sona's Crescendo a little wider so it actually feels like an ult and not just another ability, do not punish Soraka for being a healer, and let Taric shine as an awesome tanky support without losing who he is with the redesign.

10 Comments

Sailor Mint3/23/2015, 7:19:21 PM8 votes

Did you play support in Season 3?

We went from running around with two stacks of wards strapped on our back and a final build that was worth 3k Gold (Philo, Ruby Sightstone, Mobos. Kindlegem/Shurelya's when really fed) to being able to afford items. Back then we were essentially target practice for Ahri/Zed highlight reels.

Supports are in a really good spot right now.

Let Alistar be the awesome roaming support jungle he use to be

No. Jungle Alistar is dead. Buried and hopefully forgotten. Nobody misses getting level 2 ganked through their own turret.

Strawberrycocoa3/23/2015, 7:00:01 PM6 votes

Basically, supports are very good at stalemating gameplay interactions. Diving assassins get stunned, low-mobility enemies become barricaded away from safety, priority target squishies get locked down so your allies can nuke them.

Supports are tide-turners who can prevent a snowballed enemy from using their power advantage aggressively. Riot hates that. They are all about the Big Plays and the tournaments and streams. They WANT aggressive snowballed assassins shredding entire teams. They WANT pentakills and team wipes to happen. And in one regard those things need to be possible, otherwise games would never end.

Supports are the best role at delaying the game and negating aggression. This makes stream and tournament viewers bitch about "boring" games. People want to see action, people want to see kills. Supports obstruct that, so they get everything nerfed as low as it can possibly go without making them COMPLETELY useless.

Why do you think so many top and mid lane champions found play as a Support role? Because they contribute to action and kills and Big Plays without having the defensive play-negation utility of true Supports.

Ariel the Cruel3/23/2015, 7:59:00 PM5 votes

I remember that match. I remember how hard Karma dominated.

I remember when Karma was Played in the OGN. And practically slaughtered the other team.

I remember when Riot Deleted Karma. Because she was too team dependent.

. . . I remember when Riot released Kalista.

LoLKiru3/23/2015, 7:41:32 PM3 votes

I agree with most of these but, this is where you start to run into the OTHER problem with supports (this used to be a much bigger problem in the past) where they go to roles they really arn't intended to be in and just become frustrating as hell.

Notable examples are Jungle Alistar knocking you away from your turret at level 2, and Janna clearing the entire wave with Howling Gale, moving back and then rinse and repeating over and over.

How is Soraka punished for being a healer by the way? Last I checked she had the strongest heals in the game (for allies anyway, other people have stronger heals for themselves)