Support Minion Rule
I can't seem to find very many posts on the forums regarding the new support items, and if I can they're very old and I cannot find one with an official response. The new support minion rule is ridiculous, to say nothing about the rest of the changes. I understand that the purpose behind the rule is to prevent it from being abused by other laners, but I believe the design of this solution is too simple a fix for a very complex issue.
And before I continue, I will admit that the current state of support items technically solves a major issue, even if it introduces a smaller one. However, I believe that it is possible to sufficiently solve the issue while also avoiding more harm to an already pained role. I believe a more sophisticated approach to the issue would require a combination of the new mechanics along with the old mechanics.
I believe the approach that protects a support's versatility while preventing other laners from picking up support items would be to have the amount of CS supports are allowed to obtain per 5 minutes be reduced for the first 10 minutes of the game, and begin to scale up slowly akin to Gathering Storm. I also believe that the penalty for exceeding this number should be increased drastically during the first 10 minutes of the game, with the penalty softening over the course of the game into nonexistence.
For example: Anti-Poaching Eat the Rich: Farming more than 10 CS per 5 minutes (1.5 out of 10 waves) reduces gold from minions by 90% for the first 10 minutes. The penalty fades over time, gaining access to 10 more CS every 5 minutes until 30 minutes. Math: Once the penalty kicks in, your CS gold is reduced to (90 - (5 * Each 5 minutes exceeding 10)%. This effect ends at 30 minutes.
The reason why I believe this new Anti-Poaching strategy would work is because it still allows supports to take a minor amount of cs in the first 10 minutes without penalty, but prevents other laners from taking the items without hemorrhaging a massive amount of their income. It also allows supports to slowly begin taking more CS later into the game when necessary, but limits laners to a maximum of 40 efficient CS at 15 minutes and 70 efficient CS at 20, when their opponent would likely have more than double their CS at this point (making the 1000 free gold less impactful overall).
Other solutions, such as slowing down the regeneration of charges when an ally is not nearby (or more drastically preventing them from being activated at all) are also worth considering, but the current state of the support item's anti-poaching both fails to punish some laners enough to discourage them from using a support item while also punishing supports too severely for existing as a role.
Thanks for reading this. Hopefully somebody at Riot sees this and is at the very least invigorated to give these new, cool support items the mechanics they deserve. I understand y'all are busy, but I think this is worth some consideration. If you got this far, tell me your thoughts! I would love to hear them!
Sincerely, Sad Support Player w3dnesday0 [sg-soraka]
