Why Brand does well as support but not mid.

I originally posted this to a question about Brand's punishing bot lane where a Rioter responded by saying that they're trying to increase Brand's mid potential while slowly getting him out of the support role. Here is my response.

In my personal opinion as a "high elo" Brand main, playing mid as Brand is generally under-performing because of both his waveclear and his ability to take on other mid laners in a 1v1. In team fights he is surely a threat to be reckoned with, but by playing him mid you have to sacrafice some lane control vs most match ups and you can't stand toe to toe with other mid laners, namely AP and AD assassins. Due to his low mobility, assassins can win vs Brand quite easily, and it's difficult to consistently land a full Brand combo on agile enemies. Not only that, but most other mid laners can offer a lot more pressure in the early stages of the game to other lanes due to their mobility and ability to target out the heavy hitter (such as getting to bot lane in twice the speed and taking out the adc while you're left either scrounging for some cs or trying to chase after with futility).

So now that Brand is already behind in the early stages, you'd think he would excel late game. He can, especially if the enemy is grouped and build a lot of HP, but Brand's AP scaling is very poor compared to other mages and he offers little to no CC which is vital for the late game (i.e. Viegar has the best stun in the game and best ap scaling in the game, so naturally he is poor early game but strong late game). That, and Brand can be caught out more easily than even most adc's because of his severe lack of mobility in a meta where mobility is reigning king. Brand is strong, but it still feels lack luster compared to other mid titans. Playing him as a support means that you're not the main focus and you still have a powerful AD/ AP assassin or strong mid laner to help carry you through the game. Also, since Brand is immobile, it would be a good idea to pick up TP on him, except for the fact that after landing a full combo and some other spells will still leave the enemy able to escape (compounded HEAVILY if they take nullifying orb or buy a hexdrinker), so most Brand's will opt to take ignite to have more lane pressure (otherwise it's almost a guaranteed loss unless your primary focus is farm AND the rest of your team doesn't need your help).

There really is so easy solution to fixing Brand mid and he seems to be tricky to balance. Some general ideas would be to give him mobility, or more kill pressure in 1v1's while not making it overwhelming, or even the idea of TP scrolls like DoTa 2 has to make it so that immobile champs can have more pressure to outside lanes. Perhaps making his E do more damage for a balanced wave clear or even extending the range of his E so that he offer more kill pressure to those pesky assassins. But of course, doing the latter would make him that much more stronger as a support. Making the passive scale with AP or even magic pen would be a cool idea, as it would make his late game stronger, but early game he would suffer that much more. Maybe making the passive do more damage depending on how much AD or AP the enemy has will make it a better ability in this damage heavy meta, but that would take away his lure in doing heavy damage to the tanks.

My best suggestion: Perhaps making it so that each of his 3 abilities does a different type of passive scaling damage could be the answer. Example:

• His E would do passive damage that scales with the enemy's max HP like it already does (Basically unchanged).
• His W would do more passive damage scaling with the enemy's AD.
• His Q would do more passive damage scaling with the enemy's AP.
• His R would do more passive damage with their highest adaptive stat.
• Landing a full combo would double these effects, won't apply all 3 scalings at once, but rather the one that is more applicable, such as tanks receiving the max HP passive damage and AD's receiving the passive AD scaling. . .

• Lastly, this passive damage would also scale off of Brand's AP. That means that if Brand wants to build pure magic pen to punish botlane squishys with his abilities alone, he wouldn't do as much passive damage thus hindering his late game. In addition, his early game pressure as a support with his passive ability would go down, but he would also deal more damage to enemies who are doing exceedingly well since he could dish out more passive damage depending on how strong they get. This could also be a counter to the current snowballing meta we have now while also making the Brand support less of a threat early game.

I know these ideas aren't perfect and most of the Gameplay Board hates Brand as it is, but I think these are steps in the right direction for a confused champion to find his place in meta.

What are your thoughts?