Remember when Ziggs botlane was introduced?

woobee··9 votes·1,426 views

Boards were all for how this meta shift affected how people viewed the necessity of AD marksmen carries. What I don't understand is why the boards are at the same time bashing mages who take the "support" role in the botlane, effectively having two carries in it. There is a hypocrisy that needs to be addressed: If mages replacing AD carries is welcomed as a meta shift because the AD isn't inherently necessary, why can't they replace supports? I feel like every time this is brought up, the boards gathers around, crouches over, and rapidly jerks their downvotes into the post in unanimous agreement not to honestly ask themselves that question. No, I am not in favor of mages completely wiping out the possibility of traditional supports being played in the botlane. If they're made to be healthy as a "high risk, high reward" tactic that is an alternate way of playing the game, I'm good. Pure supports should NOT have to be in every single game, in the same way that a midlane mage or a botlane marksman doesn't have to.

17 Comments

ScissorsNstuff11 votes

the problem is that mages didn't behave like supports and kindof made the support role obsolete and were winning a lot against actual supports.. support mains be like "is there even a reason for me to play league anymore? nobody wants me"

DeathBurst4 votes

Yeah, +1

Mages botlane do not play a supportive role, do not protect the carries, they just try to outdamage you and kill you faster than you can kill their carries. It's not really interesting.

And that's only talking about gameplay, but if you add social considerations to the mix: Ziggs bot was adding more diversity and freshness to the game, it was cool to see it and experiment/adapt around it. Whereas a lot of "mages supports" are auto-filled players who act selfishly and behave like spoiled brats, trying to carry the old way by themselves from a role/position not suited for that. They hurt their whole team both in the macro game and in the morale field.

Errastas1 votes

I've played support for a few seasons and this season I happen to enjoy playing mage supports. Playing a traditional support and having to build redemption/locket every game is boring. Speak for yourself, but I don't think you're hurting your team by playing a mage support. A lot of poke, usually some form of CC, and an extra carry. I don't play to get the kills but it happens, when I playing Brand I'm just looking to dump out as much damage in team fights so my team can clean up. If I'm playing Vel, I can poke or help my adc kite for days, I can burn tanks extremely easy, hell I can pretty much melt the entire enemy team if they're unlucky and lineup for my ult. Plenty of reasons to play different mages in the support role.

DeathBurst1 votes

Well, I'm happy if any support main can play the game and enjoy it, we need more of them and we need them to enjoy themselves.

That being said, from my anecdotal experience and from some comments by Meddler/Ghostcrawler, you seem to be the minority. People who claim to be Support mains usually play traditional supports, people who flame their team and do not have a proper support attitude usually play Mages and the rise of Mages as Support has been linked to the rise of auto-fill.

Errastas1 votes

I miss my traditional supports, but I'm not having easy time this season with them. I'll play them still if they're requested by my adc, but I find when I do the team just can't get any damage out. I'll play then again once I'm out of silver, but until then damage with a bit of utility is what's working for me :)

Ok sure but why5 votes

Hey, hey, hey. I never wanted Ziggs bot. I never wanted Annie, Lux or Malz bot, either.

woobee1 votes

Alright, this post is kinda assumptive, I'll admit. But my point still stands.

Grift985 votes

because ziggs wasn't stupidly oppressive with the only counterplay being leave the game or turret hug. he was just something different

ZT Xperimentor1 votes

Because there's different groups of people playing; that's like saying democrats & republicans are the same set of politicians.

Hauling Ashe1 votes

Because muh carryarchy.

The one role that is always despised on the boards is the role of the ADC. Tank mains always say it's the ADCs' fault for damage creep. Supports are always whining about that one toxic ADC player who pissed them off. Mid laners complain about how useless ADCs are even though they enjoy the privilege of deleting ADCs with virtually no counterplay. Junglers... Well, junglers are usually pretty chill, actually.

Basically the boards has a low ADC population/tolerance and they revel in seeing marksmen being trash tier and moan when they're actually decent.

To be fair, Vayne is a marksman and one of the most unhealthy champs in the game. And Varus and Jhin are monsters if Riot even gives them the slightest of love taps.

But yeah. Boards hate ad carries.

Wînter Fox1 votes

Ziggs is one option with a certain strategy in mind. Picking him is a fair trade off that means forcing the early game advantage and having a weaker late game.

Multiple mages completely replacing supports is not about trade offs or niche strategies - it means supports are weak and there's no other option but to bring "TIBBERSSS!" to bot lane

Jeddy0171 votes

I'm honestly fine with mages being "supports" (I'm never calling them actual supports tho). Are they annoying/frustrating? Oh hell yeah. But that's not saying much when this game is about 50-80% frustration/annoyance, there's a few varying factors there.

Frightning1 votes

The problem is that right now, they pretty much invalidate traditional (ranged) supports (aka enchanters); they are just about as good in lane, and scale far better afterwards. That's mostly, imo, an issue of enchanters being antiquated designs and especially being overnerfed because of the power of utility in very high levels of play...and that's not a simple problem to address. Basically the backlash is people complaining that those mages are crowding out traditional (ranged) supports. It will probably take a class rework on enchanters (and their items) to fix those issues. Mages themselves are in need of work too, as they've been a longstanding anti-fun problem (ex: how 'fun' is it to get deleted by a Syndra because she pressed R and clicked on you?)

Knoyle1 votes

Mages in the support role is a horrible idea that just needs to be snuffed out of any serious team play. They rely so heavily on cheesing a lead that if the opponent is anywhere near competent they won't do much but just kinda be there with underfed damage. What's worse is this also promotes a kind of playstyle to compete with the ADC for gold at times. This is why supports should be effective and impactful without much offensive itemization. They function as engage, peel, defensive playmaking and aggressive play making. They never be the carry but they damn sure make sure the carries succeed.

Take this as opposed to the usually selfish low utility, useless when behind "supports" like Brand Annie Zyra It's just awful to play along side when nothing goes right and downright just annoying to play against even when you win lane.

Ziggs bot however, that just served a niche to achieve FB turret gold more quickly. However it's not to say everyone welcomed it. It seems to have barely functioned well considering it's now rarely seen.

While I understand what you are trying to say about X should always have to go Y, In this game there are some things that just don't work when you half ass it or just "wing it" which is usually what is happening when people do things like take mage "supports"

Tristana has huge drawbacks like lacking AoE for teamfights and waveclear. Aatrox barely functions as a champion Gnar Jungle doesn't get the job done as well as most would like.

Nymzo1 votes

I've talked about that subject a lot on the boards. Here's my point:

Ziggs ''bot lane'' was created by Shiphtur at a moment when Adcs were really weak: the games were finishing too fast in order for them to be useful for their team. What's more, Adcs are also necessery to claim objectives such as towers. Which Ziggs can do an excellent job because of his w execution. Riot even approuved this pick.

Meanwhile, the problem with these mage ''supports'' is that they are the failures that came out of the mage update (aside from Velkoz). Zyra Brand and Malzahar are these 3 champions that are the problems.

Because Riot gutted their ap ratio while buffing their base dmg, they only need 2 items in order to be useful : item 3151 and item 3116. Because of that, it removes the ''high risk, high reward'' that they had before the rework. Not to mention that they can no longer mid lane especially Malzahar, who was never a viable support before the rework. Not to also mention that they are opressive to lane against and you will probably lose lane unless the jg helps.

Another problem is that right now, all you need to be viable support is:

A. To have one source of hard CC

B. item 3107

C. item 3190

Guess what? These 3 have one source of hard cc, but they also bring dmg in the mix. Which means that they overshadow other supports which is super unhealthy for the role.

Thought they lost a little bit of their popularity right now because of Lulu, it won't take long before they comeback if Riot do something about Lulu with touching them.

Yaskamasandwich1 votes

Because when Ziggs went bot lane, certain marksmen could go to other roles. Well maybe not at the time because of divers, but a good certain amount of marksmen can go top, mid, or jungle. The majority of enchanters and wardens on the other hand can't go to other roles. Whenever either support class can solo they become over powered. So if mages took over support role then enchanters and wardens become obsolete and removed. It's one of the reasons Riot has not changed every single tank to a warden and forced them to support. It would screw up the entire system.

RexSaur1 votes

Mages should get the fuck out of bot lane.

Ziggs adc was awful to play against.

More from Gameplay

More by woobee