Supports are now Roaming Carries

Vapo12eon·3/26/2016, 11:14:33 AM·4 votes·1,064 views

Ok, so I've been noticing a very disturbing trend in ranked play lately.

Supports will not only take a champ that is typically not a favored support (Heimerdinger, Sejuani, LeBlanc, etc), but they will not take income items as their starting build. They then proceed to take CS up until about 4 minutes into game, then never go back to bot lane, roaming across the map as ADC struggles versus diving tank/adc combos and successful jungle ganks.

As a support main myself, attempting to utilize carries to make my way out of bronze (support main life means you don't get out of bronze if you are at least attempting to play proper support), this is really frustrating and is a formula for failure. I've seen it succeed zero times in game, and only succeeds in an underfed ADC and very toxic eruptions in chat, resulting in a loss.

Has anyone else noticed this in any other elo?

How do you counter this?

7 Comments

NoPaxt3/26/2016, 11:34:25 AM2 votes

Playing support doesn't mean the ADC in bot owns you, you have a team work with, Supports roam because; 1- ADCs treat them like trash. 2- The only way to get a Queue is to go Support 3- It's what they find more fun than an ADC who blames the for EVERYTHING going

LOLsmileyfaces3/26/2016, 11:26:51 AM1 votes

Uhmm.... No. Unfortunately, that's just a bronze thing you're experiencing. Advise you to main a carry role until you're out of bronze and silver, then go back to support.

Baby Ghoul3/26/2016, 11:50:57 AM1 votes

That's a Bronze thing. One of the few things that is uniquely low Bronze.

In Bronze 1 to Gold 3 there's something else that's going on, sorta similar. People are abusing item 3092 , and they take something like with summoner 14 . They attempt to get a cheesy kill very early on, so they can build AP like a traditional mid lane champion. Sometimes they don't even build item 2049 . A big difference is that they don't take CS, they probably recognize that taking CS from their ADC will get them reported. However they fail to realize that often times they end up getting all the kills, and having no CS. It's also their job to support their teammates. They don't do that.

If the enemy team withstands all their cheesy damage, they fall off quickly and now they have no carry bot lane for when team fights starts happening. What's worse is that a smart duo bot lane will recognize this play, and they'll be annoyed until the ADC hits their spike and kills them both because nobody is there to support either of them. Duo lanes do not work against smart opponents.

I think a lot of things are contributing to this kind of "support" trend surging recently. It's always been around, but most supports agree that season 6 hasn't been kind to our role. Roaming used to be common, but it's become increasingly more difficult to do as a support because of scaling issues and the marksman update making ADCs much deadlier.

I still think you can help win games, but it's painful at times. On top of this, item 3092 is just too good compared to the other two support items. Some mid laners are even using it. It just provides you with nice stats, high utility, and allows you to build into AP.

I think AP poke supports do need some love, but unfortunately it's an example of what everyone is worried about when we talk about supports. AP mid lane champions abusing items mean for AP poke supports. It's a challenging thing to balance.

Duke Anax3/26/2016, 12:16:30 PM1 votes

Oh they are catching on? But as usual those "supports" fail to do it properly

Roaming support is a great way to carry Bronze games if you do it right.

First you need a champ that can actually support their teammates (I take Soraka). If you just try to be a third damage carry, you are gonna fail and you are gonna handicap the other two as well.

Depending on the game state you can actually delay Sightstone pretty far, but you can't skip the gold item or steal CS. Get level six asap.

Then gank the hell out of the enemy Jungler and Midlane. When you leave this usually causes Bot to push so you can gank them when you come back, try to bring your own Jungler and Midlane for that.

Also I usually build these two items: item 3001 item 3025 They give a perfectly rounded composition of damage, defenses and utility.

Vapo12eon3/27/2016, 4:26:37 AM1 votes

I understand the ganking support role, as I have done so on occasion when my adc is csing well and has half a brain. I also understand "cheese" combos (Janna and Yasuo is a lot of fun), I just don't understand what I've written above.

I was in a game last night where Sejuani played support, and left lane at 2 minutes and 45 seconds to gank our winning top lane (Riven already had FB and was pushed to tower). Vayne was left to fend off Lucian and Leona, which resulted in 3 tower dives in the next five minutes.

Vayne was actually very polite at first, asking Sejuani to return to lane, to which she replied "be nicer". This is before Vayne had said a single word all game. Then top and jungle told her it was get fault for picking adc in bronze, that she shouldn't expect to win, that Vayne isn't a good adc, and that being adc meant that she should expect the support to carry anyways.

How is this logical?? It's the most ludicrous chat I've ever seen, and I've seen some crazy stuff.