More ways of utility scaling or riot hate it now?

StrangerL·3/14/2015, 10:35:16 PM·1 votes·569 views

Like range: (cast range, ability width, aoe range) %increase per 100 AP etc? The idea is actually came from Scout masteries in utility tree.

I would not mind if you further remove damage scaling, just I want utility scaling to become a main thing for support champions and have more way to scaling with utility (not just about movement speed, slow percentage).

Or, actually, do Riot hate utility scaling now? Recently reworked support champion: dont have these type of utility scaling. only got a bit scaling on powerchord E and W. Newly released has none.

3 Comments

67chrome3/15/2015, 2:07:30 AM1 votes

There's 3 big problems with utility scaling:

Utility automatically scales in how it's used. A 1 second stun when you're the only person to capitalize on said stun is only 1 second of extra time for you. However - a 1 second stun when you have 4 allies nearby is a collective 5 seconds your team has on the stunned champion, which is usually more than enough time to kill a rather fed but squishy champion.

As LoL tends to balance champions on their power over the course of an entire game, you could very well make several utilities that are good in team-fight scenarios almost completely useless early game.

Which would make several supports 100% useless for the baby-sitting a weaker champ in lane aspect of why they're picked.

Utility has been used as a way to allow champions with low gold/levels to maintain a prescience in the fields of justice since pre-season 1. Without scaling, a 2 second stun always being a 2 second stun means it's 1 seconds early, 1 seconds mid game, 1 seconds late game. You don't have to worry about being phased out or useless even if you can't tank/damage things in a meaningful way.

With scaling, it's also worth noting that a item 2049 item 3069 item 3190 item 3158 item 3222 build for a support (if they even get enough gold) isn't exactly uncommon at the competitive level. I've seen that run on Nami a couple of times already, and an important thing to note about it - 0 AP. Beyond AP, such a build mostly focuses on supporting and utility over stacking any single stat like HP, AP, or AP. The only stat support builds tend to amass a large quantity of is %CDR.

With scaling - you also kill the other key aspect of supports over a strong early: Being good with minimal income. If supports need income to actually support, then they're useless in lanning and useless late without items.

If the scaling is solid and worth pursuing - you send that champion in a farm lane. So they have the gold to get the items that boost that scaling:

A lot of supports don't have much scaling because a reliance on scaling is anathema to every reason to use a champion as support in the first place.

Which also does a decent job at explaining why a lot of mages (with no reliance on scaling for their CC/utility) started booting out a lot of traditional supports when Rito decided Sona, Lulu, Janna, and Soraka should have AP needs tied to their utility. Then Lulu and Soraka took over mid lane because hey, better scaling than mages >.<

Sona Ping3/15/2015, 2:35:53 AM1 votes

to become a main thing for support champions

I would love it if this would NOT and never become a thing.

Something I certainly don't want is even more champions to be reworked, and cut, and nerfed, and scaled to force them into one certain way of play. Especially because, at that point, they likely wouldn't even be as good at said role as other champions who didn't go through this.

Abyssphere3/15/2015, 3:02:38 AM1 votes

I don't think there's anything they could have given AP scaling on with Soraka. A silence is a silence, so is a snare. Unless you want to scale duration with AP which I'm not a fan of. Zilean's slow/speed boost could have scaled with AP but I think they really wanted to fixate on the 99% boost there so didn't want it to be conditional on AP. And hey at least his ult HP scales with it.

I do agree Bard could have had AP scaling on his stuff, basically just on his W speed boost. Not sure why he had none there, even if they don't intend him to build AP.

I really like AP utility scaling, it's a cool way to make you feel a lot more powerful as a support. When I see Janna, Nami and Sona's utility going into crazy levels it's really fun and I see a lot more impact in my abilities. So I really hope they're not abandoning the concept.