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High Damage Supports

SeraphimtheJudge·3/1/2019, 4:54:32 PM·2 votes·8,265 views

I've been playing league on and off since season 1 or 2. I only started playing ranked last season and I've been playing ADC and made it to Silver 1 or 2. At this rank, a lot of supports seem to want to play high damage/burst/poke champs like Brand, Zyra, or Lux. Obviously, those can be good and I have won games with all three of those champs as the support but I would take Lulu or Nami 100% of the time over high damage champs.

Maybe it's because I am a noob but I would much rather have a champ that can offer me some protection from Zed, Rengar, Yi, and Yauso than another primarily damage champion. Here is an actual conversation I had in champ select of a ranked game yesterday:

(Support pre-selects Ziggs) Me: "Would you mind playing a support?" Ziggs: "Ziggs is a perfect support" Me: "He doesn't offer me any protection and he doesn't have any CC. What does he bring to the table?" (No hard CC anyway) Ziggs: "Poke."

Ziggs was described as "a perfect support" because he has POKE! Mind-blowing. Apparently, somewhere between 50 - 75% of champs in League are "perfect" supports.

I know this isn't every support and poke/kill lanes can win but I am wondering what other people's thoughts were on the subject. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because despite doing well/winning/getting kills in bot lane, the 5/0 Zed or Yi two hits me after the laning phase and Brand simply can't blow them up fast enough. The other problem with this idea is that sure someone like Brand does a lot of damage but he is playing support! Aka not getting farm to really do that much damage until pretty late into the game.

Do other ADC's have a preference on the type (type or class not specific champs) of supports? What about higher tier players? Do you guys have the same problem or is it more of, "You just don't know how to play against assassins!" Which granted I really don't. I don't know what the counter play to a champ that can two hit me while I can't see or click on them is.

What about supports? Is the appeal just that it is more fun to do a lot of damage rather than cast a shield on someone? At this tier of play people don't seem to consider matchups hardly at all. Most people seem to decide who they want to play before the game starts and very little is going to change that.

In summary, I would prefer a more protective style support and a lot of that might just be because my own lack of skill. What are other people's opinion on the subject?

15 Comments

Rustypug3/1/2019, 5:36:41 PM2 votes

Bard Bard Bard Bard Bard disregard dps supports acquire bard Bard Bard Bard Bard Bard

Reaper Soraka3/1/2019, 7:14:13 PM2 votes

I'm currently Silver 4 in Flex and I'm swapping to play poke/damage supports until I'm a little higher up in rank. In solo queue I've hit higher silver so I seem to be faring a little better in lane/throughout the game with Soraka.

Flex I'm having a lot of trouble keeping anyone alive. It doesn't feel like my team is able to dodge anything, so a thresh+adc kill my adc in one full rotation at level 5/6. That early lead they get they just seem to snowball off too easily.

At level 6 Soraka can recover around 360 health in 5 seconds. I get to silence a circle, dealing 70ish damage and q with a slow for another 70ish.

At level 6 Thresh can deal 595ish damage (including empowered auto here) in 5> seconds. He will also have a stun/pull and knockback or pull effect from his combo.

Zyra gets the enemy thresh off my adc rather quickly, cause if he doesn't he goes with her. ...or sometimes just goes alone.

ROYALR3IGN3/1/2019, 8:17:50 PM2 votes

I get how you feel as I've played on both sides of this as an ADC and Sup. Honestly I hated it too when my sup picked damage instead of traditional supports. As I was the type that usually played stuff that could peel for my AD. The main difference was I usually duo'd with someone to make my role valuable. If my AD doesn't have the mechanics to carry the game it makes me useless too unless we have another auto based carry that's doing really well like Yas or Yi.

So I picked up Zyra and just ran over 60-70% the games at the elo I was in and man did it feel great. Playing a damage support puts agency back into your role. Damage supports bring more things that you might think of at first even if its not the same thing.

They usually still have a good form of some cc. Zyra has he E and R, Vk has his E, Brand has his stun, Xerath has his E and W, Lux has a 3/4 of her abilities that have utility.

On top of that they bring passive peel . See by being high damage threats themselves, they force the enemy to choose between focusing you or them down. If they allow the "Damage" support to live and go after you, then the damage support will nuke their team with their AOE damage, so they cannot be ignored and will usually draw attention to themselves by existing. This is passive peel as the enemy will use more of their CDs on your support instead of using it all on you as they would in a traditional bot lane unless you happen to be a Soraka.

Also having 2 damage threats in your lane makes it difficult for the enemy support to win the vision game unless their all in just as scary otherwise they will take a ton of poke damage just trying to get basic vision.

I suggest playing a champ that can self peel if you see your support going damage. Someone with a reposition is good, maybe Ezreal, Lucian, Kai Sa. Whatever so you can peel for yourself.

stay noided af3/1/2019, 7:01:54 PM1 votes

ziggs support is not a thing. But the reason some support players don't like playing enchanters is the same reason you don't like playing against zed, they almost all get blown up as fast if not faster then a typical ADC. That said, I enjoy playing sona and nami.

Boltonator3/1/2019, 6:01:50 PM1 votes

Not one person has mentioned the only true AD support Pyke

Tobykachu3/1/2019, 5:25:47 PM1 votes

The only really viable 'damage' supports are Zyra Brand Velkoz Lux and Xerath Ziggs generally isn't a support and isn't at all viable as such. Of the actual damage supports, a lot of them are okay as they are all extremely squishy and reliant on landing skillshots and getting fed as their items require more gold than traditional supports. Except from Zyra, I loathe her. Her utility is way too high for the amount of damage she offers and her plant damage is way too reliable.

Syrile3/1/2019, 5:13:53 PM1 votes

I am fine with supports that are based on damage. However, they can be easily countered if the enemy support knows what they are doing. Ziggs is basically a troll pick. The person had no interest in being a support and that was literally all they cared about.

The real problem with the game is that Riot has this obsession with making champions like Yi, Zed, and the other nonsense mobile, insta-kill burst champions overwhelmingly overpowered. Yi less so, but he is just annoying. Zed and the rest of the assassin squad (except maybe Fizz) have no weakness and are able to ruin the game for everyone else under the wonderful umbrella of "eSports highlight reels!!!" and making bad players look like they are the best in the world by pushing buttons randomly and occasionally getting the combos right.