Increasing Support Utility

Hi Everybody!

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the position of the support role at the moment, given that it's pre-season and my heavily main role (I pretty much suck anywhere else XD)

I think it's fair to say that the focus around supports is to provide a safe landing experience for their partner, and bring a higher level of utility in their play and build, maximising their usefulness to the team as a whole, rather than their individual damage output (assuming you're actually running as a support and not going a double damage bot lane).

With that in mind, I think it's important to highlight the ever-increasing utility being implemented throughout the game, and for characters in every role, and how this effects some supports, especially those who may be a little older than most.

In the past year, we've seen 5 new champions that have all, in one way or another, broken the mould of their class. With one exception; Braum. I'm not putting him down, I love his play style and his position within the game, but while he brought a new KIT to his position, it didn't bring a shift in paradigm with it, in the way Gnar's rage, Azir's soldiers, Kalista's soul binding or Rek'Sai's tunnelling did.

There's nothing wrong with that at all; there are plenty of niches that can be filled in every lane. But one thing these newer champions did bring, and have been bringing for some time, is a greater level of utility in their play. Looking at older ADCs like Ashe or Vayne, you can see a damage potential there, but theistrong utility they offer tends to be mechanically complex (Vayne's wall impales) locked away in an Ultimate (Ashe Arrow), or otherwise has less direct impact on gameplay (Ashe vision).

Then we look at someone like Jinx and Kalista. Here we have a high damage slow, an easily-deployed stun, high mobility and power, in Kalista's case combined with a high degree of teamwork-orientation.

At the same time, we see an increase in Pre-Season of utility items that can be picked up and useful to specific champions or lanes as they progress.

So where does this leave supports?

I love the supporting role, and I know i'm not alone in this. Some can't stand taking the back seat, some love being there in the background cleansing cc and speeding their carry away from danger. But one thing I feel a lot of supports have in common right now is that, for some, their utility is becoming less pronounced as the game evolves.

Take for instance Janna. Janna is a great support, who can bring a strong knock-up, a strong single-person shield, a slow, team movement speed, and a fair bit of damage if built for the role. But her ult? decidedly lacklustre for it's extremely high cooldown. It gives you the knock-away, it MIGHT save your carry. But as more champions have been given better movement and more gap-closing potential, her ult is decidedly counter-intuitive; she has to choose between knocking someone away who, often, can still gain speed, or else use Janna as a staging post to jump into range, or else hold her ult and try and get some health to her team, who then immediately die as her team have to stay in range of her for several seconds.

Likewise, Zilean, who's high damage output gives him great poke, but has an ultimate that is little more than a targeted GA, and comes with very little useable utility; late game, as mr is built, he has to go all damage to keep up, or is otherwise nowhere near as useful to his team as any other primary support character.

Then there's Taric. Poor poor Taric.

Supports already number very low in the game. I think it's important that these few champions, ones who often suffer nerf for being too good in other roles, while others can simultaneously come into their role and dominate from their innate CC and high damage (Brand, Annie, Morg, I'm looking at you all), get the love they deserve.

I want to see a real benefit from being a support in the game. I don't want to see a slow being nerfed because it's 'too oppressive' on a character who is relying on that utility to remain viable, when comparative slows are given to high-damage characters. I'd rather see a support's scaling pulled back, so that they're less viable out of role, and in unison have their utility in-role scaled up to outshine those who out-damage them.

Some possible tweaks I'd love to see short term;

Janna's ult; remain as is, but either a) continue to hold back the enemy team while channelled (so basically forming a dome they can't enter for the channel time) or B) apply a 99% slow to all enemies to last 1 second, refreshed if they remain in the ult.

Zilean and Taric: give them the priority they deserve; I get that you have other champions that need love, but they also tend to be those in high-demand, high champ-count roles already.

Nami, Lulu, Braum: take a closer look at their CC and how it scales throughout the game; I think the nerfs to Braum's Ult slow were unfair, and I think both Lulu and Nami could be given great healing and cc potential without becoming broken, provided their damage scaling from items can be balanced to compensate.

Nunu: Is not a support. I'm sorry, but when you give a champion a spell for biting monsters, he's a jungler. Deal with it.

Otherwise, interested to hear your ideas/comments.

Peace out!