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The Split Between Carries, Tanks, and Supports

Dale Wardark·4/14/2017, 11:58:42 PM·13 votes·1,089 views

I know I'm harping on a rather burnt out subject, but there is a huge rift (Pun intended) between Carries, (E.G.:Ekko Ahri Caitlyn Tristana ) Supports, (Soraka Blitzcrank Bard ) and Tanks. (Garen Maokai Chogath ) For future reference, I am well aware that Juggernauts are not "real" tanks, but they are tanky and for the purposes of this discussion, such champions will be referred to as Tanks.

When I talk about "a rift"I don't mean mechanically, because that's a given. When you play a carry your job is to deal damage. Sounds simple right? Wrong. Knowing when to disengage a fight and turn your attention to towers, rift herald, baron, or dragon can mean the difference between winning the game, and throwing because you decided to chase a kill.

When I play a tank, my job is to become powerful enough to sufficiently defend my team by soaking skill shots, providing interference in team fights, and being enough of a hastle for the enemy team to notice me. With a champion as binary as Garen, it's as simple as charging in, focusing on the closest carry, and hoping my team does enough damage to start dropping the damage away from me in time that I don't die. With a Juggernaut, like Garen, Darius, or Volibear, disruption is the name of the game, focusing almost solely on dealing damage and providing moderate CC. With someone like Nautilus, guarding allies is the best course of action.

When playing a support, most of your job is to either keep your ADC or team alive, or disrupt the enemy team with heavy CC. It's a job that can entail both sides of the carry and tank role.

Now why is this guy harping on basic principles of League? Because these basic principles created this rift. The rift that Carries are somehow better and more impactful than tanks or supports. When you see that big "Double kill" flash up on the screen when the friendly carry makes a nice play and out alive, that feels pretty powerful, right? Then why doesn't it feel as powerful when a Sejuani makes five assists with the kills scattered around the mid, jungle, and adc? Part of it is the human feeling that there is a reward for succeeding, and even it's as small as a big badge and an announcer screaming "PENTAKILL" in everyone's ears.

I'm not arguing that pentakills are bad and that carries aren't incredibly important to the game (can anyone say wet noodle fight?). I'm arguing that there isn't enough credit given where credit is due. Too much focus is put into kills and not enough into objectives, saving a friendly champion's life, and setting up huge kill chains. The new updates that are going to ship with the mid-season tank update are a start, but not enough. Some real change would be really nice.

15 Comments

ZT Xperimentor4/15/2017, 12:12:10 AM9 votes

Probably from riot bending their own rules; giving carries self peel, boosting damage across the board, mobility creep, ext. But also because riot removed assist sprees while raising gold gain for killing monsters & minions, so supports are back to being gold starved; and inadvertently returning the 'strive only for the kill' mentality.

mrgiraffeweevil4/15/2017, 7:51:44 PM4 votes

Personally, I get a sense of satisfaction from playing a tank when none of the enemy team can make a dent in me and I cockblock them from my carries, but I do see your point. I'd say it stands out in support more than tanks though.

Teridax684/15/2017, 2:44:33 AM3 votes

I think one of the larger issues behind this rift is that League is still too focused on last-hitting: when a champion takedown happens, the majority of the gold and the global kill announcement only go to whoever dealt the last bit of lethal damage to a target, which means a) only one player gets credit for what is often a team effort, and b) you end up with some really bizarre situations where players are expected to hold back on securing a kill and stop attacking at the last moment, just because doing so would otherwise direct precious gold away from an ally. It's this prioritization that I think is in part responsible for the player bias towards damage-focused champions, and against tanks and supports. To answer this, Riot needs to readjust rewards, both gold- and credit-based, to give tanks and supports much better representation.

I think one way to address this issue is to make kill announcements player-agnostic: if an enemy player dies, it should just announce "an enemy has been slain"/"double/triple/quadra/pentakill", as per normal, but without specifying who landed the killing blow, though it should display all the players who participated in the takedown. Similarly, the kill reward should be split equally, without any sort of bias towards the last-hitter, which should eliminate counter-intuitive KS scenarios and implicitly enable assist sprees for tanks and supports. Minion and monster kills shouldn't have to change, but considering how player takedowns are already being led away from kill/assist separations on kits and items, generalizing those mechanics could do a world of good towards better valuing the contributions of supports and tanks.

6Sfool4/15/2017, 8:46:48 PM1 votes

I personally don't mind how credit is split. When I land a 5 man gnar ult from FOW, it doesn't matter if someone got a pentakill, I won that fight. Trying to find a way to give due credit would lead to some weird nuances.

DemainaNyx4/20/2017, 5:36:27 PM1 votes

Yeah, I kinda like how Overwatch does their system cause it's enemies eliminated. Not necessarily that you were the final blow, but that you helped get rid of that person in one way or another.

I had a game where our ADC for whatever reason was split pushing bot inhib while the enemy team was 5 man trying to take mid inner and mid inhib towers. I died since I didn't expect them to dive past 2 towers to kill the support, but they did that away and continued trying to take towers. Enemy Darius backed out of vision for a bit, so I dropped my redemption and happened to clip him in his recall. We were able to trade inhibs with the few extra seconds I gave our ADC and he was able to recall in time safely.

Was I personally involved in dealing damage to that inhib? No. Did I help my team get that inhib? Yes. It would be hard pressed to try to come up with a system to prove I helped there, but in certain instances, it would be nice for some appreciation.

I mean, I've flashed into bushes that I know the enemy is in as Soraka, dropped all the spells and autos I could to stop backs so my team could rush killing the enemy nexus and I die for it. Again, good luck coming up with a system to prove I was actually part of the reason we won in instances like that, but if I play Lulu and flash ult our low health Kog'Maw who then gets a Pentakill, I'm pretty sure I'm at least part of the reason he got it.