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Supports still selling their vision item. Support gold fix happens when?

Tolinar·1/21/2020, 3:52:38 AM·1 votes·1,043 views

We have an issue. It should never be a question, in a good support's mind, whether they should "Sell their vision item" unless the game is 50+ minutes long. But look where we are.

Especially in low ELO, whether you should keep your vision item is a HUGE question. It's very hard to criticize throwing out an item that:

  • provides subpar generic stats
  • has no special abilities aside from wards
  • hampers your gold supply by 50% or more if you start getting funded

Bulwark of the Mountain provides 300 HP, 25AP, 100% base HP Regen, and 3 gold per 10 seconds, as well as wards.

At this point it has generated all the gold for you that it can. You can no longer smite minions and you cannot earn more gold, even if you stay with your lane partner the rest of the game. The cutoff line was exactly 1000 gold, for the record, but that doesn't matter any more.

When, in a 5 minute span, you kill more than 20 minions - or, put more clearly, you kill more than 2 minions per wave, the penalty will rob your team of half the earned gold. In higher ELO this is not a big deal, your teams will catch the waves. But for players stuck in low ELO, it means that they can't completely fix their teammates' mistakes.

My biggest gripe with supports is that they_ lack the power to shift the outcome of a game_ on their own. As long as they have had a gold deficit, they have always had less influence, which drives games away from a challenge of skill and more towards a coin flip, where the player who gets the better team is the winner - regardless of personal ability.

An item that's fine for efficiency at high ELO, but terrible for a player_ trapped in an ELO below their actual level of ability_, should still be considered an awful experience. It is astounding the number of supports who, due to friends, or ELO Hell, are trapped with poor players who don't catch waves, waste gold and exp, and meaninglessly chase and trade kills in the river and jungle over, and over, and over...

Let's run the math on selling your support item. We'll assume that after killing just one minion at a penalty, you return to base and sell the item.

Selling Bulwark immediately yields 160 gold, but costs you about 1,000 gold in stats. You also lose your wards. From there on out, you need to kill enough minions to make up the difference. The simple answer is 2000 gold, but due to scaling the true answer is closer to 1500 gold.

A wave of minions supplies 100 gold - about 200 on Cannon waves - so you'll need to catch 10 waves to make up the difference. In other words, you'll need to spend 5 minutes farming. Most games will run that long.

Now we hit upon the real problem of this dilemma, which is psychological. Wards are easily the most valuable thing you can offer a talented team. Nothing is more precious than information - that is -

-that is, in the eyes of your teammates. You know you can do a whole lot more than dump out wards. That doesn't diminish their value, information is precious, but to your teammates, you are only good for the wards.

And what if said team doesn't pay attention to the wards?

Then there's no question. You need to sell your ward item. The current support item situation forces players into a prisoner's dilemma.

Either they hope their team plays better, sign on board and join in the bad choices by their team - essentially ensuring the loss -

...or they play better. They farm and play safe. But, to do this,** they will be penalized, unless they sell the wards.**

Doing this is like a public declaration of no-faith in your team. It ensures your team will not pay attention to wards - there will be none to watch. And win or lose, having sold your support item will undermine every single teammate's trust in you. You'll be criticized for your choices, even if they were the ones that would most likely lead to victory.

This is not a dilemma any support should have to face. Whether to sell wards should be relegated to 50+ minute games when the support is sitting on a full build and 3000 gold.

Do you trust your team? Do you need to play better than your team?

Why should our ability to ward be linked to this?

2 Comments

Baby Ghoul1/21/2020, 4:07:50 AM1 votes

I doubt a fix would happen anytime soon. They made us live through the mage support meta for ages after they haphazardly removed Sightstone and gave us quest items.

In an ideal world supports would have their own items and it would be much easier to balance, but we can't have that apparently. Instead they try to come up with clever ways to gatekeep our items so that any champion can buy them if they're playing support. Ironically, the support meta feels stricter than it has ever been.

The issue that Riot has always had is that anytime a support item gets too good, pro players in solo roles start to abuse them. That eventually trickles down to solo queue. Then Riot has to quickly nerf the item.

Support is still the role that Riot thinks about last even though the support meta has huge implications in solo queue. They want good things for the support role, but they're indecisive and can't think ahead. It's not a flashy role, so they're fine with saying, "This is good enough."

They keep kicking the can down the road and each year it just gets worse and worse.

NY641/21/2020, 6:37:35 AM1 votes

Yes it is true support items face multiple problems. In my opinion these are the biggest problems with support items.

Point #1. Useless stats:

Depending on who you play, some of the stats the items provide, you don't even want. If I'm playing Leona I don't want the AP from Relic Shield or the AD from Steel Shoulderguards. I just want a support item that prioritizes health, gold per 10 seconds, and base health regen. The only reason you eventually want to keep it late game is for the vision. If you can't make much use of the extra wards you are better off just selling the item to buy something else that actually gives you stats you want.

Solution: Create more support items. Create a support item that tank supports truly want. One that doesn't have AD or AP in exchange for more health. Make a support item for enchanters that doesn't give a quest that force them to play aggressive and get blown up. Create more support items for the sake of variety and so supports won't feel like selling their core item just for something that gives better stats

Point #2. The Penalty System:

It definitely sucks to have those times where you need someone to push a wave to stop the minions from attacking your turrets but allies won't listen, so you have to kill the wave yourself and get the penalty. I feel like I'm just being ignored because I'm a crying toddler in their eyes. I get that the purpose of this penalty is to stop other roles from abusing the item to get a massive amount of gold but this makes supports feel terrible on how to handle a problem like this.

Solution: Remove the penalty system but create a system where only one player can buy a support item on each team. Yes I know this creates the issue of someone else being able buy this item to troll the support and the whole team. However, if someone is trolling, they are single handily throwing the game anyway so not much is really changing.

Point #3. The support quests:

The Spoils of War quest is fine so it doesn't need to be touched but Tribute is pretty bad for the support meta in my opinion. It's bad because not only does it make mage supports stronger but every time a mage support lands big damage and gets a kill, they also get a ton of gold which allows them to snowball harder. Even worse the main counters to these mage poke supports are enchanters but because they don't have a support item that truly favors them, they are forced to play aggressive and get Tribute stacks and get blown up as soon they are 2 inches too close to the enemy. Enchanters are stuck between getting an item that's good for them but has a bad quest or getting relic shield which is a much better quest for them but they lose a lot of AP. Because the counters to mage supports can't thrive just because of a quest on an item, it allows certain supports to rule the meta and have little opposition because their counters are stuck being weak.

Solution: Similar to point #1, more support items need to be added. There needs to be something that helps enchanters thrive. Either bring back Ancient Coin's quest or create an enchanter support item that has the Spoils of War passive.