Dynamic queue and the support problem
I want to share my thoughts about supports, and why fewer people like this role.
First off is what player think support is and should do, support is saw as a weaker champion, with less levels, golds and thus damage, tankiness, ... he's stuck with a warding role and sacrificial lamb for his team.
Why support his saw as such ? Cause he effectively have less gold, the game itself purposely offer him to buy more wards and there's only 4 effective way to have gold and experience through the rift (3 lanes, 1 jungle). There's 3 set of items addressed to compensate the lack of gold he may have, but due to possible abuse in other lanes, those items only compensate a few.
I won't put my opinion if it's right or not right to have this role in the game, here I'll tell what are my thoughts an how to make support more appealing and maybe less "support" as player see it right now (aka weak low gold warding)
First thing : Support can be support without having to ward.
Braum, Janna, Thresh for instances are all good support through their kit, they can initiate a fight or cancel one, protect a buddy, etc... This is what a support should look like, chose for his ability to help a teamate. Warding support your team, yes, but it doesn't have to do with the current abilities of said support.
What could be great, is to remove completely any warding items, those were introduced to reduce how gold of support sink into a 3minutes consumable ages ago, nowadays it feels kind of clunky. With those warding items removed, it'll make place for stronger trinkets, which would result in the same amount of ward, but with 1600/800 more gold for the support role.
Second thing : Support item should be unique to support, like jungle items.
Support had a golden age, were they had as much gold as other role through support item that granted a lot of gold, but that didn't last long cause those said item were balanced for support, but broken for other role, and this goes for even for the old gold/10 mechanics.
Since 4 of 5 role get enough gold with their own farm, here what I thought for an item :
3 starter item (350~~400 gold) effect : stat (health maybe ? an AD/AP variant or health/mana regen like current items)
Active : Link yourself with a nearly allied champion. (120 seconds cooldown) Passive : When the linked allied champion kill a lane minions, you gain as much as gold as him (~1000 range), you don't gain gold from minions kill and jungle monster kill anymore, this item can be bought only by one champion per team.
Upgrade into 3~4 different items (good/normal stat and an active effect) like current face of the mountain, frost claim queen and ascended talisman.
Share your thought about it and don't hesitate to ask me if you don't understand, English isn't my first language.
Kyunsei
