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An Avenue to Adjust Supports: Utility Power

Deedaw··6 votes·5,726 views

I know there is a lot of changes that have happened to the game lately, and while I think a lot of these changes are happening too fast and the balance team needs to be focused on getting the current game state under control before they add more items and features and what not, my friend and I were thinking about ways the game could be better nonetheless. We both agree that caster supports feel busted and in the current meta there is a very heavy slant towards bullying in the bot lane which invites a lot of AP supports, which can be taken either way as a good thing or a bad thing. I used to support main three to four years ago and did it for a good while, then have since switched to ADC and Mid as my main roles, so while I haven't played support as a main role for a while I know what it feels like in a nutshell (been playing since 2011).

My thoughts on support right now is that things like Soraka and Janna are super busted, and the meta is currently going towards picks like Annie and Brand given their strong pressure in lane and their synergy with bully ADC picks, while it feels like good Thresh play and others like him haven't really seen the limelight in quite a while. It seems like it is very easy for their to be an iteration of the game where AP heavy support picks can really dominate the position leaving the other supports in the dust.

Now this is based off of our league experience and our feelings towards the game so maybe this is just us), but we think that maybe there should be a third stat in the game that is different from AP or AD, rather it is a utility stat, lets call it Utility Power as a placeholder, or UP. So the essence of utility power is that it would be a support oriented stat, like faith or intelligence in an RPG, which could enhance utility specific moves like shields and CC. I know I said CC and I DO NOT want this game to be Dota 2 with 5 second stun times, but it is an interesting thought experiment to think of scaling a lets say Alistar Q to do less of a knockup in the early game and while he builds up more Utility Power he will get a stronger knockup to a point (this will need proper balancing of course) that sets a clear goal in mind for a stat rather than feeling like just another tank who has to only build health and resistances. Another application of Utility Power could be shifting something like Janna shield to scale with it instead of Ability Power so instead of just building ability power items she would have to choose whether she would want to play a more Utility centered Janna or a more AP centric Janna, or maybe a bit of both, and with the proper balancing I think this could be quite healthy instead of making a one-size-fits-all AP scale for her kit. My friend also brought up the fact that something like Lux support could benefit from this as well, building more UP for snare time and slow on her E to make her more support and utility oriented, but if she wanted to build some AP to do damage she could take that route instead, but be more mid oriented.

Now I think there are some holes in this stat like how would this affect things like a Lux shield? How would this affect CC in lanes other than support?

I think to combat these problems you could make some abilities double scale off of UP and AP (in the case of someone like Lux who is viable in mid and support), which would take effort, but I think is doable.

In the case of other lanes CC/ shields I think is a bit harder. If you make the Utility Power items very cheap it is easier for supports to buy them and utilize them, but then other lanes may be able to abuse them. This is the crux of the stat and in my opinion would come down to executive decisions on what specific abilities scale with the Utility Power stat, the price of the items, whether or not to make said items role specific (possibly making the support feel more special). We even tossed around the idea of giving supports role specific gold items so that they could scale into these items better, and these could possibly also give the Utility Power stat to boot, something which I think is really intriguing (though would be harder to implement in modes like blind pick and ARAM). These are all just super basic ideas, but maybe some of them would work.

(As an aside to the statement above, I think there should be incentives for supports to be picking these items over AP items to just do damage, thats a really tough thing to figure out and how to exactly incentivize that would probably have to do with a discrepancy in gold values as the point wouldn't be to just give AP supports a cheaper way to get AP items through support specific gold items like brand is doing now. This is probably the biggest unsolved aspect about a Utility Power stat at least from my perspective, and would need further looking into).

Additionally I think if you wanted to take something like a Lulu support solo mid you could and then build a mix of AP and UP if you're looking to survive in lane as well as transition into the secondary support role you maybe wanted to fill. The same idea would go for Ivern, and maybe there could be a jungle specific UP item for jungles that are looking to fill a more supportive role.

As an additional aside this stat could be used to complement the Inspiration rune tree, and could possibly give bonuses to Utility Power users in cool ways rather than be a machine for free boots and minion dematerializer, a proposition which I didn't even think of when first creating this stat, but one that my friend brought up and I think would be awesome!

I know this was a long post and I don't think these ideas are perfect and probably need some tweaking, but I think there could be something truly good here, something that could make supports actually feel like they are worth something rather than just boosting their gold income to just buy budget AP items (a la Brand) or making their shields and heals OP with items like Ardent Censor and the likes (Janna and Such). I know I'm not a support main, but I think giving them more of an identity rather than ward machine and sacrificial lamb would get people playing the role more.

Anyways I'd love to hear your guys' ideas, thanks for hearing me out! :^)

(Also thank you to BUTTNUTTS for helping me brainstorm this stat!)

11 Comments

Automated Riven3 votes

First off, we should call it IP for influence points so we can have those back.

Secondly I have said this for years so I agree with you.

MooooooooreDakka2 votes

First, there already is a % bonus to heals and shields though making it a stat wouldn't be a bad idea. Second, I like the idea of having something like that for cc to let supports choose to prioritize certain parts of their kit but it has a few problems. Tanks would probably abuse it since bonus cc duration is good for them and even if you combine it with the heal and shield boosting stat they can still benefit from that affecting many of their defensive abilities. Also, if a champion's cc duration needs to be balanced around the stat then that makes them a lot less useful when they're behind and don't have items or aren't playing support and need stats from other items. Finally, as can be seen with the current state of tenacity, there's a lot of cc out there that can't have it's duration changed. I guess they could code it to suspend them in the air for longer for abilities that knock the target airborne but don't displace them but that still wouldn't work for a lot of abilities like blitz pull.

IamURHERO3 votes

The problem with % heal and shields is that it is really hard to balance. Some supports can abuse that stat in one patch while other time it is not helping other support. With a specific stat for utility you can tune the ratio for each champion so that it works out for that specific champion. I remember the time when lulu would go Top lane and because of that she would get constant nerf over and over again. The reason why, is that in top lane lulu could get AP faster than support lane and during that time she had a lot more utility scaling back then too. Due to that she would have increase damage and increase utility with time, making her really strong against to fight. So riot would just nerf and nerf. I remember writing on the boards that time saying she needs a separate stat for utility. I remember playing another moba back then that was related to the DC universe. It got cancel though. I remember in that game they scale the utility of champions with mana and damage of the champion with AP. It was so cool. You could go more support role or more damage role. There was a champion that felt very similar to lulu. I wish riot would implement this, but they would never.

MooooooooreDakka1 votes

Okay, first I think I misunderstood what you were suggesting. I was thinking of something like lethality but making it a while new stat like ap or ad and making abilities scale off it would probably work better and avoid tanks abusing it. The problems that still stand though are cc needing to be balanced around this stat hurting off builds and many utility spells not being able to scale with anything outside of cool down reduction.

FrijolesSucios2 votes

Honestly I think that obviously new tenacity items would probably need to be released alongside but I think this would provide Riot with a ton of new potential items that wouldn’t make bruisers unkillable butchers.

I also believe with things like blitz pull this Utility stat could potentially increase the range, the width of the pull by a small, or speed at which his hand travels. Obviously at some point with abilities like blitz hook for example would need some specific tuning to make sure this capped (we don’t want undodgable full map hooks flying at lightspeed) but I think the capping could work much like cooldown works. Granted that’s a half baked idea but it is also something that shluld be kept in mind.

As for tank tops. Take away their fucking percent health damages. Give them some Utility power scaling for CC reliant tops or spam abilities like Mundo cleaver. I think this would provide for more of utility/tank tops and bruiser tops that could make counter picks and team comps more important.

I know I may have rambled a bit throughout this and by no means am I discrediting what you had to say because you make some very valid points but I also think there is potential to fix those issues as well. :-)

MooooooooreDakka1 votes

Good idea with improving abilities like blitz q in other ways but making values like it's range and width variable would probably make it more annoying both to use and dodge. As for tank tops, giving them utility scaling could be cool but it would probably feel pretty bad to build since depending on the stats you're either buying an item that doesn't make you any tankier and doesn't help you waveclear or if they do help with those then supports would probably become really annoying to kill. I like the idea of having tanks be able to choose to focus more on cc but it seems like it would be hard to fit into builds and in a lot of cases probably abandoning the spirit of utility power.

y0r1ck1 votes

Why not just make utility scale with levels? Shen taunt, morg q, yorick wall all get better with more levels and are arguably some of the best cc. Don't get me wrong, I like your idea but we could just skip it and tweak the scaling with levels for problematic abilities. It'll accomplish the same thing without item bloat.

Also what you're suggesting is basically the ancient coin line of items. It offers little to nothing for combat, but it's powerful because it allows supports to scale their heals, shields, and cc(lets be honest only traditional supports take coin because ap supports want damage and tanks want hp). They get faster gold and can buy the stats they need to increase their utility.

Another way introducing level scaling would be better is that it'll reduce the dominance of supports at levels 1 2 and 3. Honestly I just don't think it's healthy how much impact a support has early on in bottom lane. At my elo it's way too easy to kill people at level 1 just because they're not respecting aftershock ignite and two champions' damage.

I just want to clarify something, utility isn't just limited to cc or shields. Utility is anything that a champion can use to affect the game. Pretty broad right? But that's ok imo. Some champions will start with lots of utility and some will start with less. On the other hand some champions like vayne will end with lots of utility while a renekton won't end up with much. Different champions that go support have different kinds of utility. Brand and zyra bring a lot of zone control and damage early on while sona soraka bring some poke and heals early on. There are already different build paths for different supports.

KSYN1 votes

Can we just have cc scale off ap?

ZephyrDrake1 votes

Cool... insert a stat that will just unbalance everything even more and make things more frustrating to deal with.

Deedaw1 votes

{quoted}

Cool... insert a stat that will just unbalance everything even more and make things more frustrating to deal with.

like I said at the beginning of of the post I don't like the changes in the past couple months either, but there is an obvious problem with supports as is. My "solution" isn't perfect but I think it's an interesting way to look at the game and a possible solution to the way support functions right now. Ideally this type of change would be implemented at the start of the season when things weren't as fucked as they are right now, but what can you do.

ZephyrDrake2 votes

{quoted}

like I said at the beginning of of the post I don't like the changes in the past couple months either, but there is an obvious problem with supports as is. My "solution" isn't perfect but I think it's an interesting way to look at the game and a possible solution to the way support functions right now. Ideally this type of change would be implemented at the start of the season when things weren't as fucked as they are right now, but what can you do.

I don't see any problems with supports. I love that the instant supports aren't just ward bots there is instantly a "problem" with them and instantly the need to have a dumb stat that does nothing but unbalance the game even more. CC should not be increased whatsoever with any stat at all, since you either would have to make CC so weak without that stat to the point that as soon as a support falls behind they would be completely and utterly useless or you have the CC scale so poorly with the stat to the point nobody would care for it. The same can be said about heals and shields. Supports scale with mana regen and CDR. Mana regen is what Riot has already said that they want it to be more of a support stat than a mage one which is why you don't see mana regen in mage items

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