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Let's Take a Look at Support Builds and Gold

Mandaari·3/13/2016, 12:51:25 AM·14 votes·1,042 views

There are a lot of threads around talking about why support is so unpopular. I think they point out a lot of issues, but there's also the elephant in the room that's the root of the problem: Gold and items.

Let's take a look at Hai's support Morgana build in one of his recent games: item 3190 item 3050 item 3222 item 3092 item 2045 item 3009

First off, let's dismiss this myth that supports aren't impactful. Aside from boots, every single item has a game changing effect. Locket's impact, especially when grouped, is huge. At level 18 there's the potential for over 1700 health worth of shields. Getting a single lucky crit can turn a teamfight. Zeke's takes the luck out of that. Crucible's active can turn a disaster pick into no problem. Frost Queen's Claim can scout, start a fight, disengage a fight, and clean up a fight. Sightstone... Do I really need to talk about the impact of vision? This item it 100% mandatory on supports.

Now, let's take a close look at what I just said.

Every single item has a game changing effect.

.

item has a game changing effect

The items are doing the work, not the support. These effects barely change whatsoever if you put them on anyone else. Take the exact build and stick it on Nami. The impact of the items don't change. Locket is still strong because of the passive and the shield. Zeke's is still strong because it gives a huge crit chance. Crucible is still strong because its active can save your carry. You get the idea. The items also grant CDR and mana/MP5, which means you can use your abilities more often. However it doesn't mean your abilities are (substantially) any stronger.

Let's compare that to a mage build for a second. Here's a pretty standard Orianna build: item 3174 item 3020 item 3089 item 3157 item 3135 item 3285

Why don't we go through the same exercise of looking at what makes these items effective. The main reason you buy Athene's is to get a lot of CDR and a lot of mana regen. Sorcs make your spells deal more damage. Deathcap multiplies your AP and makes all of your spells way more powerful. Zhonya's (primarily) grants a stasis effect. Void staff makes your spells hit harder, especially against bonus MR. Luden's grants a lot of AP and splash damage (that scales with AP). The most important thing to note is that nearly all of these items give colossal amounts of AP. That AP translates to Orianna's abilities being substantially more effective.

Let's again take these same items and stick it on a somewhat similar champion, Lux. Again, the items grant a huge amount of AP. Ultimately it translates to Lux's abilities being more effective. Note that important distinction from support items.

Support items primarily don't empower abilities; they grant new ones.

That right there is what makes support not so fun for me. It's not the style of having indirect impact. It's not the treatment (I can't remember the last time I got any support related flak). It's the sheer fact that I feel like I'm playing a different game. Other roles get items that empower their kits. Mages get AP to hit harder, ADCs get a ton of stats to make their autos or abilities hit harder, tanks build health and resistances so they can live long and prosper use their abilities to direct fights. Supports are the only role that gets items that don't primarily empower the champion.

But wait, can't we stick these items on a support to empower their abilities? Yes, enter solo lane Lulu.

Notice I said solo lane Lulu. Obviously supports don't have the gold to build expensive items. That's not exactly news. Here are the numbers, for reference:

Hai's Morgana build costs 12,050 gold. The example Orianna build costs 16,950 gold. Keep in mind Frost Queen's Claim will eventually pay for itself.

Support items are cheap. Duh. They're cheap because supports don't have a lot of gold. Duh. But why don't they get a lot of gold? Well, there are 4 sources of income (3 lanes and the jungle) and 5 people that need money. When you share a lane all the gold is optimized onto the person who can make the most use of it, which is the ADC. Riot tried to fix this by adding the support gold items, but those have very clear problems:

  • The Spellthief's line requires you to be playing aggressively. That's usually not a problem in lane, but any situation aside from laning means you're not going to get a lot out of it.
  • The Ancient Coin line means you have to constantly be around minions. Again, that's a problem later in the game.
  • The Relic shield line not only requires you to be around minions, but also requires an ally to be around and that you're the one to get the killing blow. Again, not realistic late game, especially if you're in solo queue.

Really though, even in their perfect scenarios they don't come close to gold from minions. With perfect CS you can get around 4 gold per second, which only increases as the game goes on. Compare that to Frost Queen's Claim, which in a perfect game can theoretically grant 1.7 gold per second. Keep in mind that is only after you've completed FQC, which itself costs money. It's not even close to what minions provide. Even if you add in the maximum theoretical value from the melee version of the Bandit mastery you won't get what the person CSing will get.

IMO this is a fundamental problem with the game mode, not with the items. Sure, Riot could buff the gold income (which will probably create other balance issues), but why should I have to spec and build differently just so that I can get half the gold as my fellow laner? It seems like trying to hack together a fix to a problem created elsewhere.

I do have a couple of thoughts on how to fix it, but that's not really the point of this thread and they're likely far to naive to work:

  • Split minion gold in a manner similar to experience
  • Introduce objectives that are easy for supports to take, but hard for others to take.
  • Remove Sightstone and add other vision options, possibly tying into objectives that grant money and XP. Twisted Treeline shrines come to mind.

To the support mains: Assuming you had the gold to support your choice, which item paradigm is more appealing to you: Active-centric items (where the power comes from the items effect) or scaling-centric items (where the power comes from enabling your own abilities)? Why?

Ending note: I play a lot of ARAMs and I love playing supports in ARAMs. Nobody in their right mind builds a full support and plays nearly as effectively as someone with an AP build. A fed support is scary. They put their teams on their backs and force them to do well. You think engaging against a Janna is hard on SR? Try it when she grants a 600 health shield with 100 AD on a sub 7 second cooldown. That's the dream I have when I play a support, not to have an item that does a generic job for me.

16 Comments

StrangerL3/14/2016, 1:58:24 AM2 votes

Even if I have the gold income of a solo laner, I would still buy support items. I think building AP is not as appealing as building the support items. They introduced "utility scaling" in season 4, which was a great idea to remove some of the AP damage scalings and to give higher utilities when building AP. But, the scalings that some supports get are just hardly noticeable and their damage scaling got a pretty huge nerf. Newly released and recently reworked support (Soraka Bard )do not get the utility scaling at all.

Also, support items provide so much gaming changing utility and are generally cheaper as you pointed out. They also provide CDR and tank stats which a support wants. item 3050 item 3504 provides Ap, but people build them mostly because of other stats and the unique passive. Season 6 mastery (Windspeaker's Blessing) gives item 3190 and item 3222 a good item for additional shielding/healing. AP items are more expensive this season.

I agree that they need to have a variety of purchase that makes support's own ability shine. They also need to look at the AP utility scalings.

Daxanater3/14/2016, 2:51:51 AM1 votes

item 3031 item 3153 item 3085 item 3006 Soraka item 3087
item 3072 item 3147 item 3124

Ghiefelstein3/13/2016, 1:21:09 PM1 votes

As a support I buy whatever items help me support my team. If I had the income of a solo laner on support Lulu, I would still buy mostly support actives. Other items tend to increase my damage, which is not my primary goal in the support role. I feel like I am more useful protecting and amplifying my allies, and support items help me do just that.

However, I agree that having generic items as the main source of power in the late game for supports is a problem. If every champion can buy support strengths with items, you tend to pick champions that are best at winning lane and generating gold. Supports should be picked for their unique abilities and not just for being the strongest early.

If anything, I would like the difference between late game Janna / Nami / Morgana / Sona / [any other support] to be more pronounced. Having more variety in item purchases could accomplish that.

Lovely Pants3/14/2016, 4:07:00 AM1 votes

Are you kidding? I build support items all the time in ARAMs, traditional support or no, because they are ridiculously useful when you don't need to do additional damage yourself. They are very self sufficient items when you need a single buy that will give you significant impact in a pinch. It depends on the situation and what role I would intend to play.

I disagree almost entirely with your assessment of the late game relationship of a support and items. Being able to acquire more tankiness or utility through extra gold drastically changes how you can participate in a late game engagement or the kinds of plays you can perform. Certain abilities become less useful as the game wears on, but any champion who is identified as a support and not just one who is placed in their support role has abilities which scale without the need for great stat increases. True, champions who are used as supports, especially at higher levels of play, are used because they can reliably contribute without stat cushioning and some champions barely need any stats at all to work. But an item early on, say, Leona with a typical support build certainly increases the amount of baddassery you can contribute to a game.

Functionally, having more abilities empowers any of your other abilities. There's a reason why we get upset about overloaded kits, after all. Support items don't do your work for you. They let you combo with yourself more effectively. A support who can pop a Targon's or Locket active might be able to identify one more ally who can survive an engagement and redirect their CC and support accordingly if that one would be able to contribute to the fight better. A support with Frost Queen's Claim can create a safer area for a team to position themselves in and utilize their own ability to create picks easier.

I agree that there's a different visceral feeling with numerically empowering your own abilities and that is something that more players probably appreciate than not, so I'm not really saying that you're wrong in thinking that somehow reconfiguring the system to allow supports to do that as well would probably make more players be more willing to play the role.

I think there's one question that doesn't always come up in the discussion of the support role, however. Is it actually beneficial to the game to make the support role appealing in the same ways other roles are appealing? Whether the bulk of players who would be willing to migrate to the support position outweighs the value to players who want the existence of a different type of role is not something I have any solid evidence of either way. You threaten to isolate that latter group of players if you try to appeal to the majority for an extra position they don't necessarily need to enjoy the game.

IcyPepper3/14/2016, 4:23:35 AM1 votes

Remove Sightstone and add other vision options, possibly tying into objectives that grant money and XP. Twisted Treeline shrines come to mind.

I... wouldn't mind >.>

Honestly the support's job is to... support. I really don't like vision being tacked onto the role, but rather divided equally by the team. Supports bring plenty to the table in a tactical sense (cc, heal, shields, etc), but I don't feel like vision should be special for them. Everyone should have some manner of vision, equally accessible, and I feel like sightstone is just... bad design for support players.

Honestly I feel like they should add more trinket options, and buff them accordingly to compensate for sightstone's deletion (if they were to do so). Close-range wards for scout champions that have a lower cooldown, but carry inherently more risk (likely junglers would take it). Far-range wards that are—well, we already got farsight for that! And possibly a few others for each class and strategies.

I'm sorry, I just hate sightstone. It'd be tolerable if it wasn't mandatory on the support, but... it is. And people still think the ADC and other carries should never buy pink wards or use their trinkets -_-

Mokkun3/14/2016, 5:24:40 AM1 votes

To the support mains: Assuming you had the gold to support your choice, which item paradigm is more appealing to you: Active-centric items (where the power comes from the items effect) or scaling-centric items (where the power comes from enabling your own abilities)? Why?

The one that causes me to win the game. No, seriously. The paradigm is irrelevant as long as you're still playing inherently like a support. (IE supporting the team, not just being another carry) If I can do that better with use-items, I will do that. If building raw AP gives me the best benefit, I'll do that too. If it's a mix again... you get the picture.

I don't play support for the items one way or another. I play it because I like greasing the machine and making it work better. I prefer teamwork over personal heroism.

And quite clearly, examples like Nami and Morgana do in fact play differently. The use-effect items equalize things out a bit, but it still results in different champions doing different things. You see a much broader difference when you look at the build of a backline support vs a tank one. Support has sub-classes, and even within those sub-classes who build similarly, there are reasons to pick one support over another.

You pick Braum and Alistar for different reasons, even if their build looks similar.

Amelie3/14/2016, 4:05:45 AM1 votes

Assuming you had the gold to support your choice, which item paradigm is more appealing to you: Active-centric items (where the power comes from the items effect) or scaling-centric items (where the power comes from enabling your own abilities)? Why?

Why not both? Hai's support Morgana build is not what you "need" in every game, especially if you aren't playing at a professional level. I like to mix it up. Like, I won't build Zeke's if my ADC isn't good, or I am spending more of my time supporting another [better] player. I WILL sometimes build AP items and help the team with raw damage. Unless I'm playing a tank. Then I build actual tank items and avoid the active/support items. And a lot of the time, I have the same or more gold than half of my allies.

You CAN play an AP support if you like...