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Supports: cut them loose from bot lane.

Madjack01·6/1/2019, 2:46:58 PM·10 votes·3,348 views

The way roles work makes it that we usually know what to expect when we jump into a match. In a lot of ways, that's a good thing. On the other hand it can be considered abusable and can make you feel stuck if you main a role and deal with lane bullies, hyper mobile playmakers, free ranged harass and so on. Once things start to go wrong, you're usually doomed to sit things out on your own during the laning phase.

This is where the support role comes in. A support should have the freedom to go where he's needed. For that he needs the flexibility to change lanes (and even to the jungle) at will. Start mid or top, help the jungle in the beginning, change lanes inbetween to for example help your bruiser catch up to a pesky ranged harasser or help your mid survive against an assassin.

The support role has the potential to be far more fluent in its position than being stuck with an adc bot. I'm not talking about all supports, just a niche of supports that can fulfill that role. Currently, the closest we come to that is Bard. He doesn't quite do the job though.

What is needed to make that work would be adc's who can hold their own 2vs1, more tower safety so people can respond to the changing numbers when a 1vs1 suddenly becomes 2vs 1 or vice versa, supports with either enough mobility to quickly change lanes or some mechanics to gain exp and gold while travelling.

No more cheese picks having free reign over their lane until laning phase is over. No more teammates feeling abandoned by their team because they go counterpicked and have a terrible time in lane. No more 2vs2 as the absolute standard in bot lane.

The support role already has some macro aspects in its core gameplay. Why not go multiple steps further with that and make some supports truly team oriented as top/mid/jgl deserve them to be?

PS: this is just a thought and not remotely fleshed out or thought through. So please let me know what you think and if you like the basic idea, what you would do to make it possible.

22 Comments

ı Sona ı6/1/2019, 2:51:05 PM8 votes

If I feel like supporting top lane I usually just pick jungle.

[sona-playing]

voidscaler6/1/2019, 3:26:44 PM6 votes

There is a very clear reason why supports stay botlane and don't switch lanes freely Experience The reason champions are in the roles they are is because of how well they use experience and gold Support and jungle champions do t need gold or experience to do well Top laners and mid laners are ability based and "carry" cha pions they get their main power off of level and experience so NEED to solo lane as a support will lower their experience gain ADC champions tend to have weaker early and low power gain with lvl but scale very hard with items, so it doesn't matter if they are lower lvl then the enemy so long as they have more items, which means it's best if they have access to the easier to kill tower (botlane tower loses its defenses faster then other towers) more kills available to them (due opponent's) anr a safer lane (side lane not mid) and CRUCIALLY an ally to defend them Supports go botlane so they don't steal exp from those that need it, and so they can't keep the adc alive to get his items

MrFawknSunshine6/1/2019, 3:01:19 PM5 votes

no one states the support has to stay bot.

i have long purposed the idea of two solo side lanes and duo lane mid with a roaming support/pseudo jungler you could have more objective control , side lane control and be able to roam to any lane with or with out jungler to help

Hemulen Magi6/1/2019, 10:12:39 PM3 votes

I agree and I've been suggesting this for years. I've posted many ideas for ways that support roaming could be encouraged. Here was one of my concepts from 2 years ago: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/AN1p6Ml1-support-shrines-role-rework-concept

Looking back at that thread, I still like the general idea, but I'd make some small revisions now...

  1. Remove all connection to the Clairvoyance Summoner Spell from the original concept. Those ideas were probably overcomplicated. Activating a shrine just requires a support item, but the support buff is only granted to one player and activating a shrine deactivates other allied shrines.

  2. Change the map mirroring for shrines so that both sides of the map have the same shrines in each lane. Top: Earth; Mid: Water; Bottom: Fire

  3. Replace the team buffs with a single allied player buff that appears at the shrine after activation, similar to how Ivern leaves red and blue buffs for allies. Champions with support items can't pick up the ally buff (discourages laners from building support items), but they get a support buff instead (described in paragraph #4 below). Each ally buff should give something tailored to be useful in each specific lane. Top (Earth): a buff that scales with base stats + bonus defenses so that it is best on beefy frontline champions. Mid (Water): a resource and mobility oriented buff for roamers and casters. Bottom (Fire): An AP+AD scaling burn that is best on ranged champions who can frequently refresh it for poke. Ally buffs last 2 minutes after picking them up and can remain on the ground for 1 minute before they disappear. Picking up one of these buffs should grant the player a small amount of XP as a minor compensation for sharing duo lane XP with the support during their visit.

  4. Support buffs from activating shrines should be integrated with the support item effects. Activating a shrine would enable to the support items' passives (ie., Favor on Ancient Coin) for 5 minutes, but the passives should be disabled by default. To compensate for support item passives being more conditional, bonus 1 bonus XP could be granted for each 1g counted towards its mission completion. To prevent people from gaming the system into gaining more than the intended amount of XP by resetting their item mission, support item mission progress should be shared between all support items and persist even if the support item is sold. To compensate for time spent roaming, activating a shrine should also grant the support a chunk of gold roughly equivalent to clearing a single jungle camp, and that reward would count towards support item mission progress. After reaching 100% mission progress on a support item, the item passive would be toggled to being enabled by default (no longer requiring shrine activation), and ward refill charges would begin to spawn at the shrines (as described in the linked thread). I think the gold required for quest completion could also be adjusted depending on whether players are finishing the quest sooner or later on average compared to before the changes.

  5. Remove shrine contesting. The idea of a support vs support fight was a bit silly and most likely it would just allow the more coordinated team to potentially cripple the enemy support. Roaming already has enough added risks and is less safe than babysitting one lane.

  6. Change the timing for shrines. The mid shrine is unavailable until 2:15 (so until shortly after helping leash your jungler) and the side lane shrines are unavailable until 4:30. Activating a shrine puts it on cooldown for 8 minutes and sets the other two shrines on cooldown for 3 minutes. Setting a cooldown on shrines overrides other cooldowns on that shrine, so if a shrine still had 5 minutes CD remaining from the 8 minute activation CD, it would still be set to 3 minutes after activating a different shrine. Activating a shrine enables support items for 5 minutes, so they need to roam at least that often to keep their support item This should result in a gameplay flow like this for supports: 1:30 leash jungler ⇒ 2:15 activates mid shrine ⇒ around 5:15 - 7:15 choose to roam to either (less likely) top or (more likely) bot and activate the shrine there ⇒ optimally roam again every 3 - 5 minutes until your support item mission is completed, after which you can choose to babysit one lane (or the team might be grouping up by then anyways) or continue to roam depending on your team's needs.

GonahtanuGepardi6/1/2019, 3:02:28 PM2 votes

As Sona kinda said it, that's the jungler's role.

But if they were to make supports with that kind of mechanics, it could potentially be highly abusable. League has been around for a long time now and the rules are established. One of those rules is support in the bot lane. There could be more support champions like bard and pyke that are very good at roaming and abandoning bot lane but it can't be made a common thing because that is their fairly unique and characteristic trait.

The whole established rules thing basically comes from the fact that support is inherently made to be with the adc and duo lane is best played in the bot lane. There is logic behind that rule and if riot wants to allow supports to move elsewhere, that would mean they have to alter the reasons why they are in the bot lane in the first place. That is too big of a change that they really can't afford to make because it changes the game too much.

Nhika6/1/2019, 3:29:44 PM1 votes

I saw a streamer play roam alistar..

Just rush mobility boots and run around giving random lanes your relic gold lol

Eedat6/1/2019, 5:10:40 PM1 votes

soooooo be a jungler that doesnt have to farm?

Ambitious Minnow6/3/2019, 7:55:37 AM1 votes

I've been having success in some matches doing this with Yuumi with Magical Travelers boots aha teleport. If you mess up the timing in any way changing lanes, you can end up one to two levels down in xp. When done right, I'm bagging assists and tower plating across the map. In new to support entirely, but have gotten some 30 - 40 assist games this way. Good times.

Grouchy Poro6/8/2019, 9:07:39 AM1 votes

well i wish tanks were actual tanks but we cant get what we want can we?

Good Little Girl6/1/2019, 3:18:05 PM1 votes

Bring back lulu mid and top then

Clockwork Mouse6/1/2019, 3:23:19 PM1 votes

I wish the Support items gave passive EXP tot he support when they are away from lane. Like maybe half as much as they get from sitting in lane. That way if you roam a lot and make some big plays, you don't fall behind. Because i have noticed that levels are more and more important as LoL goes on. Some guy can be only 2 levels ahead of you and it feels like they are giants.