New Support skill

only zhule·Aug 15, 2015·2 votes·610 views

So I was thinking about ways to make it so that supports don't have such a hard time getting up to the end game. One idea i had was put a new utility skill in (maybe somewhere between tier 3 and 5) this skill would have 2-4 ranks. As for what it did, I was thinking something along the lines of offer 50% of a minions gold to the character provided they were in a certain range and an allied champion got the killing hit. Basically think an Amulet coin but much stronger.

I think this sort of skill opens up the chance of supports to not be stuck trying to compete with champions who get considerably more gold simply by playing a normal game.

25 Comments

Leaf of the lakeAug 15, 20152 votes

So basically you want to buff scavenger to god tier levels.

I want you to think for a moment about how much gold this would generate. I want you think for a moment about how everyone tends to group up past lane phase, and how there are four allied champions that don't get to last hit the minions in a wave. This would literally be so good that every role (except maybe mid, since they tend to be the ones with waveclear, or adc if you let them take all the minions instead) would have to invest into utility for it, because doing otherwise would be willingly taking a disadvantage. A full team with this mastery would be able to literally triple their gold income when they're pushing one lane. Teams would just rotate from lane to lane pushing them up, not even caring if they get the towers, because they would be generating so much passive gold that they hit massive powerspikes and completely overwhelm the enemy team, unless they're also using the same strategy. And then you have multiple people rushing talisman because they can, giving them even more roaming power, as well as crazy engage potential to use their massive gold lead.

There is a reason scavenger is not stronger than it is. There is a reason supports are not given literally half of the gold the ADC gets from last hitting by just standing there. This is not a meta we want to encourage.

only zhuleAug 15, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Leaf of the lake,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-08-15T08:21:04.983+0000)

So basically you want to buff scavenger to god tier levels.

I want you to think for a moment about how much gold this would generate. I want you think for a moment about how everyone tends to group up past lane phase, and how there are four allied champions that don't get to last hit the minions in a wave. This would literally be so good that every role (except maybe mid, since they tend to be the ones with waveclear, or adc if you let them take all the minions instead) would have to invest into utility for it, because doing otherwise would be willingly taking a disadvantage. A full team with this mastery would be able to literally triple their gold income when they're pushing one lane. Teams would just rotate from lane to lane pushing them up, not even caring if they get the towers, because they would be generating so much passive gold that they hit massive powerspikes and completely overwhelm the enemy team, unless they're also using the same strategy. And then you have multiple people rushing talisman because they can, giving them even more roaming power, as well as crazy engage potential to use their massive gold lead.

There is a reason scavenger is not stronger than it is. There is a reason supports are not given literally half of the gold the ADC gets from last hitting by just standing there. This is not a meta we want to encourage.

I'm curious at your logic here. You claim that it would put people at a disadvantage to not take this skill. Wouldn't it be more of a disadvantage to drop 12-20 points into the utility tree for this skill, when you are a tank/ADC/Mid. Remember you have limited resources for your masteries, i would think that kind of investment would strongly damage the damage out put of a carry and the tank effectiveness of tanks. Also let's not forget that even if they got the skill, to use it they have to be out of their lane and in an allies thus negating any gold income they would have from normal farming.

You are right in theory this could lead to 5 people cramming one lane and trying to push it all the way. So you now have 5 people, 3 of which are poorly spec'd in masteries, trying to push one lane while jungle, and two other lanes sit empty for the opponents to push at their leisure. Also i could be wrong on this but isn't experience shared among all allies in the lane? So wouldn't you have 5 people all leeching off the same base amount of experience, thus leading to the enemy team out leveling them super quickly if they play defensively? Maybe i'm wrong but i would assume 2 people could hold back the enemy team, in the early game, for a few minutes. Let's say until they hit level 4. So 5 people all sharing the same experience pool, what levels could you expect the enemies to have by this point? I expect at least 3 of the opponents would be rocking levels around 6-8, more then enough to push out a bunch of under leveled characters.

Leaf of the lakeAug 15, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=only zhule,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2015-08-15T16:46:47.056+0000)

I'm curious at your logic here. You claim that it would put people at a disadvantage to not take this skill. Wouldn't it be more of a disadvantage to drop 12-20 points into the utility tree for this skill, when you are a tank/ADC/Mid. Remember you have limited resources for your masteries, i would think that kind of investment would strongly damage the damage out put of a carry and the tank effectiveness of tanks. Also let's not forget that even if they got the skill, to use it they have to be out of their lane and in an allies thus negating any gold income they would have from normal farming.

You are right in theory this could lead to 5 people cramming one lane and trying to push it all the way. So you now have 5 people, 3 of which are poorly spec'd in masteries, trying to push one lane while jungle, and two other lanes sit empty for the opponents to push at their leisure. Also i could be wrong on this but isn't experience shared among all allies in the lane? So wouldn't you have 5 people all leeching off the same base amount of experience, thus leading to the enemy team out leveling them super quickly if they play defensively? Maybe i'm wrong but i would assume 2 people could hold back the enemy team, in the early game, for a few minutes. Let's say until they hit level 4. So 5 people all sharing the same experience pool, what levels could you expect the enemies to have by this point? I expect at least 3 of the opponents would be rocking levels around 6-8, more then enough to push out a bunch of under leveled characters.

You misunderstood the strategy (and I did a poor job of explaining it). In early game, lanes will be fairly standard, with the goal of pushing down outer turrets as quickly as possible. Once a talisman is picked up, the grouping phase begins, and the team shoves waves to the second tier tower, then rotates immediately and does the same in another lane. Their goal is not to siege. Their goal is simply to get as much gold as possible from minions.

There would be a slight experience deficit, but it would be offset by the fact that the team is collectively making an average of 240 additional gold for every 6 minions in a lane. Suppose they miss some of the cs because they're all roaming as a team, so only 75% of the available gold is picked up, 300%*.75 is still 225%, and the team is farming all three lanes. In effect, the team that uses this strategy has twice the potential gold income as the team that doesn't. Even if they fall behind slightly in levels, the raw gold advantage should be more than enough to win a teamfight.

Some calculations: Standard gold income per wave is about 120g, for 480g on the map every 30 seconds. Including cannon minions, it's about 525g on the map every 30 seconds (prior to the 20 minute mark). In a matter of merely three minutes, there is a potential 3150g for a team to pick up by cs, split between three members. Your proposed mastery would theoretically triple this value to 9450g, split between 5. Now, some of the cs is going to die before they get to a lane, so we'll say it only doubles it instead, for 6300g. Conventionally, it takes about 8-9 minutes for three laners to each pick up one big item, not including passive gold. In that same time, a team using this strategy will generate enough gold for six big items. These calculations have thus far ignored the jungle. With a full team of 5 roaming together, jungle camps would fall nearly instantly from all of the burst, maximizing gold gain as they roam from lane to lane. The loss of offensive or defensive masteries would not be that big of a deal compared to the sheer amounts of gold that are being brought in.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Leaf of the lake,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2015-08-15T19:27:05.286+0000)

You misunderstood the strategy (and I did a poor job of explaining it). In early game, lanes will be fairly standard, with the goal of pushing down outer turrets as quickly as possible. Once a talisman is picked up, the grouping phase begins, and the team shoves waves to the second tier tower, then rotates immediately and does the same in another lane. Their goal is not to siege. Their goal is simply to get as much gold as possible from minions.

There would be a slight experience deficit, but it would be offset by the fact that the team is collectively making an average of 240 additional gold for every 6 minions in a lane. Suppose they miss some of the cs because they're all roaming as a team, so only 75% of the available gold is picked up, 300%*.75 is still 225%, and the team is farming all three lanes. In effect, the team that uses this strategy has twice the potential gold income as the team that doesn't. Even if they fall behind slightly in levels, the raw gold advantage should be more than enough to win a teamfight.

Some calculations: Standard gold income per wave is about 120g, for 480g on the map every 30 seconds. Including cannon minions, it's about 525g on the map every 30 seconds (prior to the 20 minute mark). In a matter of merely three minutes, there is a potential 3150g for a team to pick up by cs, split between three members. Your proposed mastery would theoretically triple this value to 9450g, split between 5. Now, some of the cs is going to die before they get to a lane, so we'll say it only doubles it instead, for 6300g. Conventionally, it takes about 8-9 minutes for three laners to each pick up one big item, not including passive gold. In that same time, a team using this strategy will generate enough gold for six big items. These calculations have thus far ignored the jungle. With a full team of 5 roaming together, jungle camps would fall nearly instantly from all of the burst, maximizing gold gain as they roam from lane to lane. The loss of offensive or defensive masteries would not be that big of a deal compared to the sheer amounts of gold that are being brought in.

This your numbers sound bad, but let me ask. At what level are you expecting the roaming to start up? Is the team comp built to clear the minion and run off quickly and repeatedly without worry about being engaged by the enemy team? How do you account for the travel time and super tight corridors that your team will have to pass through repeatedly? How does the fact that most of your team's mastery pages being utility based based effect their ability to do or take damage? Do the possible gold gain offset the experience discrepancy your team will have compared to the other team who is using a more traditional means of clearing the waves? How do the numbers look if you lose a teammate approximately 20% of the time when clearing a lane like this?

Also i believe i said at the start that the mastery would only effect minions not jungle creeps, so no offsetting travel time, cost, experience by fast clearing the jungle on the way through.

Leaf of the lakeAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=only zhule,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=0001000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-16T04:58:00.123+0000)

This your numbers sound bad, but let me ask. At what level are you expecting the roaming to start up? Is the team comp built to clear the minion and run off quickly and repeatedly without worry about being engaged by the enemy team? How do you account for the travel time and super tight corridors that your team will have to pass through repeatedly? How does the fact that most of your team's mastery pages being utility based based effect their ability to do or take damage? Do the possible gold gain offset the experience discrepancy your team will have compared to the other team who is using a more traditional means of clearing the waves? How do the numbers look if you lose a teammate approximately 20% of the time when clearing a lane like this?

Also i believe i said at the start that the mastery would only effect minions not jungle creeps, so no offsetting travel time, cost, experience by fast clearing the jungle on the way through.

The jungle clear isn't to offset the travel time, it's to make the most use out of all sources of gold income on the map. The level discrepancy actually shouldn't be very significant; you'll have roughly the same total experience on the team, it just will be split evenly among the team members. Additionally, since you're going into the utility tree anyway, you can pick up the +20 exp for being near a higher level ally, quickly catching bot and jung up with the mid and top lanes in exp. Assuming they ward correctly, being caught out while roaming shouldn't be an issue, and are actually more likely to be able to make picks on the enemy team due to the focus on team movespeed buffs.

As for the mastery issue, the loss of going 21 in offense masteries does not make a significant difference. Having a whole extra item does. Since the masteries further in the tree tend to be more lategame oriented, a team comp utilizing this strategy would be more likely to lose if the game went to 40 or 50 minutes (where the enemy team gets full build), but if they make use of their gold advantage and snowball the midgame, games should never get to that point. Going 9/0/21 or 0/9/21 is not a significant disadvantage when you get that much extra gold.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

You very well could be right, that said i personally don't think this would be how the game shifts. I would love to see the idea at least tested out, and if it does look like the meta would shift to hyper roaming teams that can abuse it, then the idea should be scrapped. Over all i would just like to see supports end up with more gold in the early-ish game. It's always a bit depressing when your allies are on their 4th-5th big item and you are on your 2nd.

I will also admit that i tend to play Sona as my support of choice, and the way she is currently set up is a joke utility wise.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

personal challenge to you. Pick 1-2 none support characters for each role and give me a rough idea of how you would build their mastery pages. Let's assume Scavenger is now a 4 point mastery, each point give 12.5% gold when an ally kills a nearby lane minion.

How does this differ from how you would normally build the character? How do you think it would effect your laning phase? How about the end game? What did you have to cut to get the points needed to pick up this mastery?

Leaf of the lakeAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=only zhule,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=0001000000000001,timestamp=2015-08-16T05:14:15.857+0000)

personal challenge to you. Pick 1-2 none support characters for each role and give me a rough idea of how you would build their mastery pages. Let's assume Scavenger is now a 4 point mastery, each point give 12.5% gold when an ally kills a nearby lane minion.

How does this differ from how you would normally build the character? How do you think it would effect your laning phase? How about the end game? What did you have to cut to get the points needed to pick up this mastery?

9/0/21 or 0/9/21, for all of them. The 21st point in the utility tree is immensely useful for this strategy, helping the team roam, and you would already be invested so far into the tree it wouldn't be that much more of a stretch to take it.

Due to the passive nature of high level games, the laning phase would not be greatly affected. Farm, wait for jungler, fight with numbers advantage. Nothing changes about that. Sometimes they might be unable to secure a kill they would otherwise get, but this would only apply to situations that skirt the razors' edge to begin with. The additional risk introduced to the laning phase would be completely offset by the midgame dominance this team would exert.

edit: An ideal teamcomp for this strategy would probably look something like... sivir adc, karma support, orianna mid, reksai jungle (she can roam independently and then join up with the team with her ult), and some kind of tanky cc top laner (mao, gnar, etc). Karma rushes sightstone and talisman, reksai picks up a sightstone too, and the team roams as a unit knocking down outer turrets and pushing up waves. If a pick opportunity presents itself, they take it, and if not, they just move on and avoid a straight-up engagement until they get their big items. This team comp would have insane amounts of engage potential and incredible wombo in teamfights, which they would easily win with the massive gold lead they would create.

5000000000000000Aug 15, 20151 votes

Eh I mean there's already one that gives you 1 gold for each naerby minion kill that isn't yours.

only zhuleAug 15, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Eh I mean there's already one that gives you 1 gold for each naerby minion kill that isn't yours.

1 gold if an ally kills it, doesn't proc off minion kills. That aside, even if you ally last hits the entire wave that's "bonus" 6-7 gold. That's really not all that much, even if you factor in the gold items it's not all that impressive. item 3301 mean you get 24-28 gold per wave, if you upgrade it that number goes up to 30-35 per wave plus the 2 gold per 10 seconds, if we figure each wave takes 1:30 to spawn that mean you are getting 56-61 gold per wave with a tier 2 support item. item 3303 offers you 77-78 gold per wave timer assuming you expend all your charges and never have overlap, this number goes up to 112-113 if you upgrade to tier 2. item 3302 is a little bit more "reasonable" offering you 1 1/2 charges per minion wave and the gold bonus is based off how much gold the minion is worth. If you upgrade you get 3 charges per wave. I will admit i don't know the math of how much gold minions are worth compared to how much time as passed or if it's based off average level of champions.

All that math aside, i would say that i'm pretty sure an ADC who manages to get all their last hits each wave is going to get much more gold then their support will off their support item. the Spelltheif line might in theory garner more gold at the start but it requires a much more active attempt to gain that gold (and making sure you don't accidently kill a minion).

5000000000000000Aug 15, 20152 votes

I mean, that's the point. The support is supposed to work without gold, but since it was really boring to be a support, they added gold income items. And they do a pretty good job of giving some gold to supports.

More importantly, each mastery point is supposed to be worth approximately 40 gold. It would be incredibly broken to give half the gold income from a minion, since that would be (with perfect CS) about 60 gold from just one wave.

NekusenAug 15, 20152 votes

{quoted} each mastery point is supposed to be worth approximately 40 gold.

here is a gold worth calculation per mastery, its a bit outdated but regardless, a lot of masteries are worth a lot more than 40

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1rkvad/calculating_gold_efficiency_of_masteries/

only zhuleAug 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I mean, that's the point. The support is supposed to work without gold, but since it was really boring to be a support, they added gold income items. And they do a pretty good job of giving some gold to supports.

More importantly, each mastery point is supposed to be worth approximately 40 gold. It would be incredibly broken to give half the gold income from a minion, since that would be (with perfect CS) about 60 gold from just one wave.

I understand the idea of supports working with limited gold income, but in reality that doesn't tend to work out. Let's assume for a moment that you go the entire laning phase without getting a kill or assist, the enemy team also doesn't have any kills or assists in your lane. For sake of having a number to work off of, let's say laning phase had 12 waves, 78 minions spawn over this period of time. Let's say your ADC manages an 80% wave clear rate. So your ADC has gotten 1,152 gold from killing minions, you have gotten 62 from the current ability. Coin bumps this number up to 248, shield's money is based off what you last hit to use up charges and spell thief is based off how many times you managed to land an offensive spell on an opponent, so i can't give confident numbers on either of these at this time.

Either way the passive gained gold by a support does not offer enough to support the idea that you can get the funds to buy the items you need to assist your team.

I look at it like this. My teammate got enough gold off killing minions to buy a BF sword (lets say 1000 gold got), off those same minions i got maybe 200 gold off Coin, if i'm lucky spell thief netted me 500 gold for being super aggressive. And shield got me maybe 300-350. So my ally get's a powerful early game item, and in the same time frame i get a sightstone, maybe tier 1 boots?

5000000000000000Aug 15, 20151 votes

Let's see with 100% CS. I'm gonna use http://mullinator.com/tools/cscore?c=76&t=7.5&p=100 In 12 waves, there are 76 (not 78) minions. Total gold gained from CS is 1554 with perfect CS. Passive gold income is 1159. So ADC would make 2713, and support will make 1159. With coin, you would get 228 extra gold, even if you don't upgrade. With the mastery you'd also make 78 gold.

That adds up to 1465 gold. With that you can get sightstone and first gold income item upgrade. That's already pretty good by 7-minute mark. You can complete the coin upgrade by 10 minutes or so, even if you get 0 assists.

only zhuleAug 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Let's see with 100% CS. I'm gonna use http://mullinator.com/tools/cscore?c=76&t=7.5&p=100 In 12 waves, there are 76 (not 78) minions. Total gold gained from CS is 1554 with perfect CS. Passive gold income is 1159. So ADC would make 2713, and support will make 1159. With coin, you would get 228 extra gold, even if you don't upgrade. With the mastery you'd also make 78 gold.

That adds up to 1465 gold. With that you can get sightstone and first gold income item upgrade. That's already pretty good by 7-minute mark. You can complete the coin upgrade by 10 minutes or so, even if you get 0 assists.

Ok so 7 mins in, assuming perfect CS and no kills/assists. my ally has 2713 gold and i have 1,465 assuming coin was purchased. So i have a little bit more then half of my allies gold reserves, my ally can their first big damage item and tier two boots. I can buy a sightstone and either upgrade my starting item or buy tier 1 boots.

Let's bump this up to 15 mins into the game. if we keep the starting assumptions, no kills/assists, you haven't upgraded your starting item, and your ADC has gotten 100% CS. There have been 171 minions spawned. Your ADC should now have 5694 gold, 3680 from killing minions and 2,014 passive gold got. This means you as the support starting with coin, have 2,014 passive gold + 171 from the current mastery + 513 from coin procs (total of 2,698). So your ADC has likely finished or is just about to finish their second big item. You have enough gold to upgrade your coin to talisman and get tier one boots.

Upgrading coin will net you 1 gold more per minion killed. So assuming you pick up the upgrade at 5 mins in, you gain a bonus 127 gold off the upgraded passive. The gold per 10 nets you another 120 gold by minute 15, and greed will net you 90 gold in that time. So upgrading your coin at the 5 min mark will get you 337 more gold then not upgrading it. So 3,035 total gold by minute 15. You have fully upgraded coin to talisman and have your tier 2 boots.

5000000000000000Aug 15, 20151 votes

So you have engage/disengage item that refreshes every 40 seconds and tier two boots. How is that bad? Besides, this is assuming the worst case scenario. It's still a decent amount of gold, although not ideal. You're still relevant at this point.

Tell me, how much gold do you think supports should make to be "fair?" Because supports get enough gold already. And this comes from a support main.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

{quoted}

So you have engage/disengage item that refreshes every 40 seconds and tier two boots. How is that bad? Besides, this is assuming the worst case scenario. It's still a decent amount of gold, although not ideal. You're still relevant at this point.

Tell me, how much gold do you think supports should make to be "fair?" Because supports get enough gold already. And this comes from a support main.

to answer the question slightly less then an active role, but markedly more then they currently get. If we assume the ADC is getting approximately 5700 gold by the end of laning phase, i would hope that as a support i would be getting 4000-5000. Still less then my ally but enough that i'm not constantly behind on everything compared to my team.

The claim of being a support main interests me. Because it makes me wonder who you are playing where a bonus 1000-1500 gold over the course of the laning phase would not be a marked improvement. I personally can't think of many support focused champions who wouldn't benefit from the extra gold, nor can i think of all that many who would snowball too heavily from having a higher amount of gold by the end of the laning phase.

Also let's assume the coin line of items isn't going to be picked 100% of the time. So let's look at relic shield. Assuming you get roughly the same amount of gold compared to coin, you now have face of the mountain and tier two boots. Do you feel equally powerful and useful to your team? How about spellthief? you have a short range slow, a small amount of AP and tier two boots. Are you still as powerful and useful to your team as if you have talisman?

5000000000000000Aug 16, 20151 votes

I mainly play Soraka with coin or Nunu with shield. I've been trying out top recently so if you check my match history you might see a lot of top lane matches, but I do main support.

Of course extra gold helps, but I don't think supports should have more gold than they currently do. You can still contribute to the team without doing much damage, and that's not a bad thing. As Soraka, I don't need a big ap item for my heals to be meaningful (although it would definitely help). Maxing CDR is almost always a must, but it's not difficult to get max CDR by buying cheap support items. and taking CDR masteries and/or runes. Anything else is usually just extra bonus.

Honestly I think spellthief's edge is a shitty item line because it's hard to constantly poke the enemy and doesn't give enough mana regen to constantly poke the enemy, but I think coin and shield are in fine spot in terms of gold income. I don't really like the Face of the Mountain active, so I usually pick coin supports. Other support items could use some changes, but not necessarily by giving them more gold.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I mainly play Soraka with coin or Nunu with shield. I've been trying out top recently so if you check my match history you might see a lot of top lane matches, but I do main support.

Of course extra gold helps, but I don't think supports should have more gold than they currently do. You can still contribute to the team without doing much damage, and that's not a bad thing. As Soraka, I don't need a big ap item for my heals to be meaningful (although it would definitely help). Maxing CDR is almost always a must, but it's not difficult to get max CDR by buying cheap support items. and taking CDR masteries and/or runes. Anything else is usually just extra bonus.

Honestly I think spellthief's edge is a shitty item line because it's hard to constantly poke the enemy and doesn't give enough mana regen to constantly poke the enemy, but I think coin and shield are in fine spot in terms of gold income. I don't really like the Face of the Mountain active, so I usually pick coin supports. Other support items could use some changes, but not necessarily by giving them more gold.

I feel i need to ask. Why do you feel that supports don't need more gold then they currently get? I'm kind of looking for a reason beyond something simple like " i think they have enough to "be useful" as it is", and more a reason why the extra gold would be a bad thing for the game as a whole.

Leaf of the lakeAug 16, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=only zhule,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=0000000000000001000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-16T07:49:35.044+0000)

I feel i need to ask. Why do you feel that supports don't need more gold then they currently get? I'm kind of looking for a reason beyond something simple like " i think they have enough to "be useful" as it is", and more a reason why the extra gold would be a bad thing for the game as a whole.

The more gold you give to the support role, the less need there is for "true supports." We've already seen the mage support meta and are in the tank support meta now. Your support of choice is actually one of the greatest victims of supports getting a gold income. Because sona is expected to build AP, her bases are fairly low compared to other supports, so she is allowed to scale better. This goes against the core ideal of a support class, which is designed to succeed without a large gold income.

Even if you were to find a way to increase the gold income for supports without buffing the gold income of every role on the map, all it would do is bring more non-supports into the support role.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

A valid point. The issue seems to be though that having a "true support" has it's own issues. Take for example Sona or Soraka before their reworks. What better forms of "true supports" a character who gives large amounts of basically free healing and mana to her allies. And a character who can exist on the very edge of battle and gift thousands of gold worth of stats to her allies.

as i see it a true support is in a very odd spot, they need to have a kit that does little damage but provides very powerful buffs/healing. They need to be mildly squishy, so they can't just sit in the middle of a team fight with impunity. But Riot has made it clear they don't want healing to be a huge thing because it's very unfun for others to see large chunks of their work just disappear with a couple button presses, or a character who basically made sure their ally never wanted for any resource. Nor do they want champions who exist to just be walking balls of buffs who can stand on the edge of combat and still heavily effect the flow of everything.

One idea could be to have an anti (pre rework) Sona, type character. One who's abilities passively weaken your opponents. even with low damage, imagine a character with an aura that negates 10-15% of your armor and MR. Or lowers healing by 30-40%. Top it off with an aura that lowers AD/AP and you know have a pure support based character who lacks burst, lacks hyper healing, but who still has a huge impact on team fights requiring her to be focused. Or combine Sona and anti sona. Like have Sona with aura's the size of her cast range, aura stays up .5 seconds per target tagged. Allies get a buff, enemies get a penalty.

5000000000000000Aug 16, 20151 votes

Basically what he said. Giving more gold to supports is technically a buff to all supports, but it's especially stronger on mage supports or assassin supports like Annie, LeBlanc, Nidaliee, Ekko, etc.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Basically what he said. Giving more gold to supports is technically a buff to all supports, but it's especially stronger on mage supports or assassin supports like Annie, LeBlanc, Nidaliee, Ekko, etc.

I know you are right and the low income does keep certain champions away most of the time. But still think it would be nice if the role wasn't designed around always being behind in gold and levels compared to the rest of the team.

Leaf of the lakeAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=only zhule,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-16T08:24:41.417+0000)

A valid point. The issue seems to be though that having a "true support" has it's own issues. Take for example Sona or Soraka before their reworks. What better forms of "true supports" a character who gives large amounts of basically free healing and mana to her allies. And a character who can exist on the very edge of battle and gift thousands of gold worth of stats to her allies.

as i see it a true support is in a very odd spot, they need to have a kit that does little damage but provides very powerful buffs/healing. They need to be mildly squishy, so they can't just sit in the middle of a team fight with impunity. But Riot has made it clear they don't want healing to be a huge thing because it's very unfun for others to see large chunks of their work just disappear with a couple button presses, or a character who basically made sure their ally never wanted for any resource. Nor do they want champions who exist to just be walking balls of buffs who can stand on the edge of combat and still heavily effect the flow of everything.

One idea could be to have an anti (pre rework) Sona, type character. One who's abilities passively weaken your opponents. even with low damage, imagine a character with an aura that negates 10-15% of your armor and MR. Or lowers healing by 30-40%. Top it off with an aura that lowers AD/AP and you know have a pure support based character who lacks burst, lacks hyper healing, but who still has a huge impact on team fights requiring her to be focused. Or combine Sona and anti sona. Like have Sona with aura's the size of her cast range, aura stays up .5 seconds per target tagged. Allies get a buff, enemies get a penalty.

Riot has a problem with auras in general, in that they are often "invisible power." Your "anti-sona" would have all the same problems as old sona, just in a different form.

If you want to look at what successful "true supports" look like, look no further than janna and nami. These champions support their team with heals, shields, buffs, and CC. You can build AP on them, but it's not really that effective. They aren't great tanks either. But they manage to remain relevant throughout the entire game, even on a very low gold income.

only zhuleAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Leaf of the lake,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Yz3RpEgc,comment-id=0000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000001,timestamp=2015-08-16T08:42:01.474+0000)

Riot has a problem with auras in general, in that they are often "invisible power." Your "anti-sona" would have all the same problems as old sona, just in a different form.

If you want to look at what successful "true supports" look like, look no further than janna and nami. These champions support their team with heals, shields, buffs, and CC. You can build AP on them, but it's not really that effective. They aren't great tanks either. But they manage to remain relevant throughout the entire game, even on a very low gold income.

I hate Nami so much, she's very similar to Sona but with better ratios and base numbers... Plus your movement speed bonus is tied to your heal not a really underwhelming spell.

I had considered the "invisible power" idea, was wondering if it would be enough to just have a constant color glow for each aura. Kind of like how her effects currently glow, but just make the area MUCH larger. Not sure how that would play out in color blind mode.