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RELIC SHIELD feels bad

The Trent·5/30/2019, 3:16:28 PM·2 votes·1,459 views

PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THIS INSTEAD OF COMMENTING WITHOUT READING IT

I have to repost this: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/OAdNAdlh-tank-support-item-feels-bad because no one actually read it. They saw the title, made a comment about all tank items (even though that's not what it was about), and left.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE POWER LEVEL OF RELIC SHIELD, IT'S ABOUT HOW BAD IT FEELS TO USE

Maybe there are a few fans of relic shield and how it works out there, but from my group of friends and basically everyone I've ever met, they hate it. It just feels so bad to use.

Frost Fang feels good because it's rewarding you for hitting people. You can use it to check bushes or tell if your skill shot hit in the fog of war too. It just feels great, I think riot hit the mark on frost fang.

The coin support item feels okay. It's not as fun as frost fang, but it's definitley not as bad as relic, it's just a little boring. That being said, it allows you to play passive and it gives you extra mana and movement speed. So it's not that bad because it's clear that's your support item if you need to play safe. I don't think it's possible to make a safe support item interactive and fun, so that's fine.

Now the when we look at the relic shield... in my opinon, this support item just sucks. I would love tank supports, I really would, if their support item didn't suck so much. Usually I just take the coin support item on tanks, because their support item is trash. I love Braum, I hate his support item. The only reason why I'm not mastery 7 on braum is because of how bad his early game feels to me compared to someone with frost fang. It just isn't fun.

Why it feels bad to me:

You have to put yourself in danger to use it for a small reward. A good enchanter support could easily punish a tank that steps up to get the minion. People often go a tank support when autofilled, they should go lulu. The tank support item is going to get you killed if you're ever autofilled vs a real support.

You can easily miss the minion despite the execution range and it feels clunky. There have been plenty times where I go to last hit that cannon and even though it's at like 30% hp it doesn't get executed and then all the minion's autos reach it and my adc thought I was going to get it so he didn't time his auto right and now it's gone.

Unless you're in a 5 man, you can't cordinate with your team to use it. It's not as simple as pinging the minion, people will take that in a toxic way. It's not as simple as you saying "please let me use my support item," someone will take that in a toxic way. You don't want to have to use chat in league solo que at all. People get tilted off of thin air. You have to go out of your way, wasting your abilities just to get to use your support item sometimes. It's annoying. Every now and then you get that nice adc and mid laner that lets you use your support item, but that's 1/10 games. I'm sure this isn't a problem in the LCS, but for 99% of your players, it is. They'd rather instantly waveclear that wave than wait for you to use your support item. This makes you lose gold compared to frostfang/ coin late game because people just don't care about your support item.

Last hitting minions every few minutes isn't a fun idea. It's just a boring thing to put on a support item.

What do I think they could do to make it better:

This is the one that I really want, but it's understandable that they can't just do this, I want them to rework it. The item is just boring from the core of it, last hitting minions.

Show the execution range on the minion's health bar like Pyke R.

Let your teammates see the execution range if you're near to remind them, oh yeah I should let my support use that.

Allowing exeucting a single minion per spell(so aoe abilities won't be op) with an ability so you don't have to walk up to it all the time. You're already using one of your cds. That means you if you use E on Leo to last hit that minion, the enemy team gets a whole like 10 seconds of not having to be scared of you. It won't be op, I don't understand why this wasn't there from the start. Not to mention a lot of tank supports already have bad wave clear for when they need to shove with their adc, this would help a little.

Ok thanks for actually reading. If you didn't actually read this and commented, I don't like you. You won't even know though because you didn't read this.

Also I'd like to remind you guys of something a rioter said somewhere (this isn't their exact words): ** flash feels good and everyone takes it, so we don't want to nerf flash, we want to make everything feel as good as flash.** Let's do this with relic shield.

7 Comments

Thingamajig5/30/2019, 3:20:51 PM2 votes

relic shield and it's upgrades is the strongest lane control support item your first cannon wave you get a pushing advantage your execution on super creeps is really helpful and accelerates your gold generation by a lot at those dire moments

yes coin and spelltief make more money but arguably relic is the best one in terms of control

i get your pain that people sometimes don't let you use the passive but there is also some skill expression at yoinking those minions yourself

PhearBunny5/30/2019, 3:22:50 PM1 votes

hard to gauge if relic shield sucks, or if it just sucks because tank supports are useless. with the exception of Nautilus(assuming he banned Morgana).

Saezio5/30/2019, 3:41:47 PM1 votes

Relic shield has amazing highs and bad lows. The problem with the item is that it can be great if your ADC knows how to play around it, and the support can rely on his ADC not to lasthit canons. It's also seen in pro a lot because of this.

But you really need an ADC on voice comms to make the most out of the item.

For example, you should never be at full stacks, but at the same time you should also ideally not be at 0 stacks. What you want is to always have the timer ticking to give you the next stack but also have the other(s) availabe to either A) lasthit a canon for multiple gold compared to a melee creep (you should really never proc on ranged unless you really need the heal) B) use the stacks to sustain if you happen to make an unfavourable trade

This is why the item is really efficient for pro games. But in low elo soloq it's kinda trash because for some reason none wants to let you lasthit. Not even if you are at 4 stacks xD

Edit: P.S. Too bad riot didn't apply their flash logic to TP huh? that spell as soon as it became a commonly used Summoner Spell was repeatedly nerfed again and again. So Double Standards at the very least. Same with Exh/ign but I get how combat summoners are more volatile