Should Champions designed to support scaling on attack damage rather than ability power be a thing?

Kitsuki05·Aug 16, 2014·1 votes·590 views

And if so, what kind of skill/gameplay changes would differentiate them from their AP counterparts?

15 Comments

Old Man TeetoAug 16, 20142 votes

A support champion.

Who builds an Infinity Edge.

If you don't see a problem with that, may Jesse Perring have mercy on your soul.

EnvyDragonAug 16, 20142 votes

Stats that supports want to build: -CDR -Mana -Gold generation -To a lesser extent, survivability/movespeed/damage

Stats that are widely available on AD items: -Not those.

The itemization just isn't there. Even if it was, there are some serious potential problems with giving supports AD itemization; the first thing that comes to mind is that building AD gives you more, umm, attack damage. Supports are designed around supporting, yes, but most of them will still do some autoattack harass, and if you get increased AD in your natural build path, it gives you a serious advantage regardless of your kit. Ever fought a Support Pantheon, or a Support Lee Sin? It's stupid, and it barely works, but it's incredibly frustrating to face because if you get in range you just die.

Kitsuki05Aug 17, 20141 votes

Thee is no reason not to create an interesting champion concept just because the itemization isn't there yet. Itemization is one of the most constantly changing aspects of the game. Any AD support champ would most likely be melee, and as for you bringing up increased AD in the build path, I would point out that both thresh and lulu can deal serious damage with their auto attacks because of passives that scale from AP, and they're not game breaking despite being ranged. A support champion who is scary because of their ability to harass isn't anything new.

EnvyDragonAug 17, 20141 votes

I repeat: giving supports AD itemization would be a bad idea. I won't get into the nitty-gritty, but if you create items that give AD, CDR, and mana - ones that are accessible in lane phase on a budget - imagine what that does to AD assassins and fighters.

Much of the potential discussion on this topic is pretty heavily based on what the kit would look like. Designing a support champion who wants to autoattack constantly would be an interesting experiment, but to answer your question:

what kind of skill/gameplay changes would differentiate them from their AP counterparts?

the main difference is that an AD support would need to be balanced and built around the idea of autoattacking more often and being less reliant on abilities.

...Now that I've given it some thought, I feel like giving them different itemization might NOT be necessary. It just means you have to make them use their spells differently.

Kitsuki05Aug 18, 20141 votes

Exactly, a support AD champion would most likely have their supporting be done by types of abilities where you have to get up close and personal. They'd want mobility, attack speed, and maybe even a little crit chance, but they're not focused on killing people, more like disabling enemies, making themselves a target, and ducking away. If, for example, I don't necessarily have the power to kill your AD carry, but if I attack three times in a row they get a 50% attack speed reduction, you'd definitely want to chase me away from them in a team fight. But if I catch your ADC all alone, I'm not an assassin, I need to run away or they'll just focus me down. This provides my particular character the leniency to have more escape skills than an assassin. I'm more difficult to keep away, but me succeeding in accomplishing my goal does not mean an immediate loss for your team.

EnvyDragonAug 18, 20141 votes

Exactly, a support AD champion would most likely have their supporting be done by types of abilities where you have to get up close and personal.

Leona and Alistar do this this already without scaling off AD. Abilities where you "get up close and personal" don't necessarily require you to autoattack - in fact, we already have a class of champion whose abilities don't do much damage but require you to be in the thick of things. They're called tanks. Many of them are poor supports because they don't have the survivability early on to "get up close and personal" without dying. That requires health and resistances, not AD.

They'd want mobility, attack speed, and maybe even a little crit chance, but they're not focused on killing people, more like disabling enemies, making themselves a target, and ducking away.

Everybody wants mobility. There isn't a single champion in the game who sits back and goes "nah, I think I'll skip boots this game."

As for attack speed and crit chance, those are kit-dependent. The only people who want AS and crit for their own sake are people who want to do damage. A support doesn't generally want to do damage. But if your kit has on-hit effects, or stacking effects, or "on third hit" sorts of effects, then AS could help there.

Crit only really becomes an important stat if you build a lot of it. Putting something on a support's kit like, say, "when you land a crit, x happens" or "your crits additionally have this effect" means you're probably going to end up building Infinity Edge. Think about that for a moment.

If, for example, I don't necessarily have the power to kill your AD carry, but if I attack three times in a row they get a 50% attack speed reduction, you'd definitely want to chase me away from them in a team fight. But if I catch your ADC all alone, I'm not an assassin, I need to run away or they'll just focus me down.

Frankly, if your champion has an "attack three times in a row to apply a 50% AS reduction" ability on their kit, people are going to play that champion as an ADC or fighter. That just gives you incredible dueling capacity against non-casters, and dueling capacity is NOT something safe to put on a support kit.

AS reduction in general isn't a great status effect because it's unsatisfying for everybody involved. It doesn't stop your target from doing damage (especially if they have spells), but for the target it makes you feel like molasses. It's also much, much stronger than it appears - it's the sort of stat that can change a game, but it doesn't feel like it's changing the game, it just feels like the target is doing a crummy job somehow.

I honestly don't think that "melee range" is crucial on an AD support, because in bot lane that completely destroys the whole point of building AD. You build AD because you want to autoattack. On a support, you only want to autoattack champions. If you are melee range, you are not going to be autoattacking champions in bot lane and thus you may as well just build them AP or tank.

ElemonAug 17, 20142 votes

I've thought about similar ideas before... I think the problem is that AD is difficult to obtain early (especially on a support budget). Most AD characters are outclassed by AP characters while laning, but become estremely powerful late game. Supports, however, are mainly used to get the ADC farmed while laning and have less effect (though still a significant one) late game. Your three options are to give it high AD scalings so it can operate off of what it manages to get early game (but it gets insanely powerful late game), give it low AD scalings so it's balanced at the end of the game (but make it useless when its ADC needs it most), or give it really high base amounts and low scalings so it can be relevant early game and not as powerful late game (but they would then have no reason to bother with AD at all). Additionally, if a support gets AD, it would make its attacks become more powerful (obviously), which would make it be a pseudo ADC; however, in order to actually become powerful as an ADC, you would need to go all the way and wouldn't actually end up supporting. Overall, the roles of AD champions and true supports are just incongruous.

Kitsuki05Aug 17, 20141 votes

well the reasons supports exist is because they have inherent abilities that make them useful without the need to heavily scale and build expensive items, and even AP supports start dealing a chunk of damage late game, so an AD support being powerful in late game wouldn't be that unusual. One way you could give a support champion incentive to build AD despite not being a carry is to make their kit intrinsically dependent upon landing an attack every now and then.

Where most supports are mainly focused on either harassing from afar or staying constantly in the middle of the enemy team, an AD support would need to go in and out of melee combat to avoid being blown up. I feel like the game is just missing more rogue-like champions rather than straight up assassins.

ElemonAug 17, 20142 votes

Yeah, I suppose that would work... Give it low AS, but make it valuable to land occasional attacks and make its kit overall a bit weaker (because it would still deal more damage than MOST AP supports).

ploki122Aug 16, 20141 votes

Short answer : no

Long answer : right now, the AD caster itemization is rather poor. Creating AD casters (supports have to be casters, since they can't stay in the enemy's face forever) that are able to support with the current lack of "boom AD" items would not only be hard, but would require nerfs in the future once actual AD itemization lands.

Otherwise, there's also the problem of ADs tieing in closely with AAs. It's much easier to gate a mage's power since nerfing his ratios means nerfing his power. Right now, I'm starting to do support AD Shaco, and it's simply stupid the amount of tower pressure I alone present, since they can hardly nerf my Auto-attacks.

Kitsuki05Aug 17, 20141 votes

I don't see any reason an AD champion would have to be an AD caster to support. Yes, they should definitely be melee ranged, as previous concerns about AA strength have been mentioned, but they shouldn't be dependent upon their abilities to deal damage. Also, gating a champions power with their auto attacks isn't that difficult, limiting their ability to engage/disengage makes it much more costly to land attacks on your enemy. If you have to blow a 20 second cool down to get out of melee range in a pinch you're probably not going to be attacking all too often without setting up some sort of plan.

67chromeAug 17, 20141 votes

Kinda sounds like you're asking if AD scaling should be supported.

Concerning supports scaling with AD though: Janna has a +50 AD steroid, Nami gets close to 100 damage on 3 auto-attacks in a row, Sona gets what's essentially a double Sheen proc, Alistar has a +90 AD steroid, Thresh get's what's essentially 2 critical strikes with armor penetration on a single AA through Flay, Blitzcrank has a pretty solid 62% attack speed steroid and auto-attack re-set, Taric shreds a ton of armor, and Lulu's on-hit effect puts Kayle to shame.

Most supports currently scale pretty well with AD. Arguably better than a solid chunk of AD champions, they generally just lack the mobility and/or range to put that scaling to much use competitively.

So it really begs the question of what exactly you're asking.

Should marksman be able to be relevant AA threats through simply standing around in lane and supporting...another marksman?

Will a champion roll that pursues items with minimal combat stats in Sightstone, Talisman, Locket, Chalice, and Ardent feel any different with AD scaling instead of AP scaling?

Is there anything about having solid auto-attack damage that's supportive?

Anyways, as a support player the question of an AD support being a thing seems like it's completely missing the mark on what playing a support actually means.

At least half of the current supports are stronger AD than AP if you're actually looking to play them as a damage roll. Otherwise there job is to pretty much be a tank or a tank with range. You're not a magical damage or physical damage champion as a support (those are called mages, assassins, fighters, and marksman), your a defensive champion. Supports are like tanks (or are tanks in several cases). You're job is to protect allies, lock down enemies, and generally bring a lot of utility.

Kitsuki05Aug 17, 20141 votes

No, that's not really the question at all. None of these things you suggest scale with AD, they deal damage with their attacks, yes, but that has nothing to do with building AD items. No one plays support to be the damage roll, at least not in the serious sense. A support who scales from AD shouldn't do anymore damage than an AP support just because they're AD. It's all about play style, as made apparent by the follow up question.

Support, as it is currently, is stuck in rather two distinct archetypes. There's either, "I buff you with magic~" supports, or "I'm tanky and disruptive" ones. There hasn't been very much exploration in a character designed to be dueling and disruptive, at the expense of lacking real staying power. Why does this need to be AP? Well, mostly I think it's for thematic reasons; a duelist doesn't usually fight with magic. However, there is the consideration that a lot of AP items have some pretty nice defenses to them. If a character was incredibly disruptive and dodgy with tank stats, there wouldn't be much to counter that. Yes, AD items won't be perfectly designed to fit with a supportive character at first, but that's no reason not to explore new ideas. AP characters are given a lot of utility and defense in their build paths without sacrificing much power, which means that support characters who scale well with AP have to have less utility or else they do too much of everything.

Also, saying supports aren't aggressive directly contradicts saying their role is to lock enemies down. Supports are notoriously aggressive (blitz grabs, leona being leona, thresh engages, lulu harass...) supports just utilize aggression in a manner that doesn't immediately correlate to, enemy takes damage and dies. I would like to see an AD champion who uses aggression in this way as well, instead of just being another assassin.

67chromeAug 17, 20141 votes

No, that's not really the question at all. None of these things you suggest scale with AD, they deal damage with their attacks, yes, but that has nothing to do with building AD items.

Attack damage increases the amount of damage you deal with attacks.

Having incentives to auto-attack means incentives to build stats that enhance auto-attacks.

Support, as it is currently, is stuck in rather two distinct archetypes. There's either, "I buff you with magic~" supports, or "I'm tanky and disruptive" ones.

It's not that distinct - aggressive melee supports like Taric and Leona still provide magical buffs, and ranged supports capable of buffing allies like Sona, Thresh, Janna, and Nami can still be incredibly disruptive.

There's a pretty fuzzy line, a gradient that all supports tend to fall in varying places within. It's not black and white.

There hasn't been very much exploration in a character designed to be dueling and disruptive, at the expense of lacking real staying power.

Dueling means 1v1 Support means team fight.

Duelists are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum concerning play style to supports. Rather than supporting, they're being a lone wolf, going top-lane, split-pushing, and trying to catch opponents alone. Essentially, avoiding their team-mates and being allergic to supporting.

Dueling also doesn't favor disruption at all. If you CC someone for 1 second in a 1v1, that's 1 second you get to capitalize on their weakened state. In a 5v5, that's 5 seconds your entire team gets to capitalize on their weakened state. Also, if you CC an opponent, it allows your entire team to catch them, or your entire team to disengage from them. Supportive.

Mobility, on the other hand, allows the mobile champion and the mobile champion alone to chase an entire team or run away from an entire team. Which is largely the inverse of CC, and it's something solid duelists do have in high amounts. Jax, Lee Sin, Renekton - solid duelists tend to be pretty fast.

Also - AD and no staying power are at odds with one-another. By the very nature of auto-attacks costing no mana whatsoever, you get a solid chunk of staying power right there. Add in life steal, and there's a lot of staying power.

Also, saying supports aren't aggressive directly contradicts saying their role is to lock enemies down.

I said they're not a damage roll, they're focused on defense.

Not dealing damage and focusing on defensive aspects doesn't preclude them from being aggressive. CC heavy tanky junglers are the most aggressive junglers you could possibly get.

But here's the thing - you mainly bring CC.

It's not physical or magical damage supports are picked for. It's the utility, especially seeing as a lot of utility doesn't require any scalings to be useful in the first place. A 1 second stun is a 1 second stun regardless of having 0 AD or 1000 AD. A pull is a pull regardless of having 0 AP or 200000 AP.

You don't pick a support like Nami because your team is physical damage heavy and you want to balance it out with some solid, AP scaling magic damages.

Kitsuki05Aug 17, 20141 votes

Dueling means you single out a target and avoid as much collateral damage as you can because you won't survive full aggro, not that you don't want to help your teammates. The only people who really focus down one target as support are the one prone to being large tanks, and they still want to catch as many other enemies as possible. This means that those champions must inherently have their mobility nerfed, or else they just walk all over the enemy team. A dueling support without the option of going mega tank would still be able to pin down and disrupt that one key enemy, and would be free to have the mobility of jumping in and out of combat. The counterplay to this type of champ would be to catch them and kill them as soon as they pop out, like you'd react to any non-tanky character diving in on your squishy teammates. The idea here is a champion that is able to jump in, like an assassin, but isn't able to just instantly kill something. Instead, the penalty of letting them reach your back line is that the enemy team has some sort of opening upon that specific character, for example, something like a thresh lantern able to pull an ally along to where the vulnerable enemy is.

It is clear from you discussion about damage type that you aren't really reading what I have to write clearly, as I have previously stated many times the point of creating a support based on AD isn't for the damage, it for the type of items available to them. A champion that benefits from an AP build path gains additional defensive stats, whereas a champion based on AD has to sacrifice building attack damage if they want to go tank. The trick here is to somehow make building less attack damage make the character support not quite as well as they would with more, and idea that may have seemed ridiculous previously, but is now being implemented through AP ratios on all of the supports main niche, like nami gaining more of speed buff based on AP.

The main question here is, should a support who is penalized for not catering to a significantly risky build path be allowed to exist, rather than choosing the most gold efficient items just to get by. One one hand, it would suck for a player to feel like their CC is unreliable unless they have a lot of pricey items under their belt, but on the other, it could bring forth a more exciting version of supports who takes risks and gains rewards for the rest of their team when things pay off.