Does Riot have any metrics by which they can judge/quantify Role Impact?

Metal Janna·Jul 21, 2018·3 votes·2,232 views

So I keep seeing people claiming supports are overpowered. Personally, I think they're wrong, but what I want to know is what sort of data does Riot look at when judging such matters? When they suspected junglers may be having too much impact on the game, what data did they look at to determine how much? Is there some statistical tool that can quantify "better jungler wins"-ness?

Would love to be able to cite an actual statistic at the next post that claims that my preferred role is somehow secretly carrying matches. At the same time, if the stats say support IS the most impactful role, then that would stroke my ego too because it would mean I can credit myself more for my teams' wins.

5 Comments

CoolKnightSTJul 21, 20183 votes

Support are barely from overpowered. The issue with supports is that they are becomming more and more a high risk high rewards role that becomes harder and patch every patch. Matchups used to depends on what type of jungler your where facing and against certain matchup what type of support you where laning against. Right now it's way more than that. You have to known both the support, jungle and botlane carry matchup and than I didn't even mention the synergy between them. Every botlane combination can change the entire laning fase will it be a Heimerdinger Fiddlesticks lane an Xerath Velkoz lane, Morgana Pyke lane or an Xayah Rakan lane. Their is so many variations that can turn the entire game upside down. You can only pray you don't have to face a mage when your botlane carry is an traditional marksmen because things are going to be rough.

An second reason why supports are how they are right now is like mentioned in the first reason: Support need to be stronger for a longer duration than before. If you need to support a marksmen you need to be capable of building him up to 3 items so he can take over the carry position. Something like that is to risky and almost impossible towards a guy you don't known if he's even skilled enouge to carry that game.

An than the last one: The risk of falling behind. Every role has so it's risk of falling behind. But falling behind as a support means you have no vision. You can't stackup your sightstone quest anymore and you start to lose out more & more parts of the map. Now junglers now longer have vision and besides trinket and spending gold on item 2055 you don't have your are pretty much stuck.

Morgana UltimaJul 21, 20181 votes

{quoted}

So I keep seeing people claiming supports are overpowered. Personally, I think they're wrong, but what I want to know is what sort of data does Riot look at when judging such matters? When they suspected junglers may be having too much impact on the game, what data did they look at to determine how much? Is there some statistical tool that can quantify "better jungler wins"-ness?

Would love to be able to cite an actual statistic at the next post that claims that my preferred role is somehow secretly carrying matches. At the same time, if the stats say support IS the most impactful role, then that would stroke my ego too because it would mean I can credit myself more for my teams' wins.

Well there are two things: solo queue and LCS/5v5 competitive. I'll speak about solo queue here since that's all I've played.

There is an actual reason that nobody in the history of this game climbs from bronze V to challenger as a Janna one trick. Period. So let's just dispel the illusion that support is a carry role. It isn't.

However, there are a lot of supports right now that aren't supports. Morgana is tuned to be a mage not a support. Annie is tuned to be a mage not a support. Brand is tuned to be a mage not a support. And so forth

The reason these characters make good supports is that their base damage is very high. You don't need any items to instantly kill most people as Annie.
The same is true, to a lesser extent, for Morgana. Although, Morgana's damage is far less consistent since she has a very unreliable skill shot and unreliable ult.

I can't tell you how many games I play support (its one of my main roles) and I'm the top damage in the game as Morgana. Largely this is because I'm a significantly better player than my opponents and allies, but alas I still won't win many games because support is not a carry. If I want to climb I have to go mid. No, my vision score that is 3-4x my allie's vision score doesn't matter when kids in gold/plat haven't discovered that there's a mini-map anyway.

I would definitely think the best metric for support is relative damage. The fact some supports are easily topping the damage charts seems absurd to me. Or maybe I'm just significantly better than everyone in gold/plat. I doubt that's the case.

I'd like to see the game move back to traditional supports like Nami, Lulu, Alistars, etc. Putting a mid laner as support bot lane just seems like stupid game design imo.

LordGeovanniJul 21, 20181 votes

The amount of adc/ mage mains on reddit complainging of course espeically when its only op when helping adcs and you never see an example where supports help A fighter

HayaishiJul 22, 20181 votes

From an ADC perspective i think MAGES support are.

They get to buy items without really needing to farm, they are not the main target focused in teamfights either so the role that has the least gold income is still having a huge impact in fights damage wise