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Supporting the Support Role

Deianira Daray·6/2/2016, 3:21:32 PM·2 votes·521 views

Supports aren't played often because they aren't rewarding. Making them do more damage, making them heal more, and making them shield more isn't going to fix this. The other roles have clear-cut options in game to do /things/. Junglers have their buffs/objectives and ganking. Mid and top both get to duel 1v1 and push down their lane - when they make a kill it's CLEAR that they were the ones doing that and they had no help. Even when it comes to bottom lane, just seeing the assist picture next to a 2v2 kill doesn't do much - a lot of players have the mind set that assists aren't important but kills are.

Especially in low-elo, where you hear scores thrown about as "3/0." No one mentions assists because they don't see them as important. Why would I want to get assists when no one even thinks about them? It wouldn't make sense. Meanwhile, the announcer shouts "Penta-kill!"

Why not swap the position of assists and kills on the display? Or make it go "assists/kills/deaths" instead? That small change would be enough to bring forward the idea that assists are important and it would feel more rewarding.

A more dramatic approach would be to have the announcer shout out assist-sprees. After 5 assists without any deaths, you would get an assist spree every 3-5 assists?

It would help make the role more appealing if supports were actually recognized by the game as a real role. As it stands, the game itself almost actively rejects the support role.

11 Comments

Çhåryzård6/2/2016, 3:34:10 PM2 votes

I play support because I find it highly rewarding, because I just feel really happy when I help my adc or team in general. Like when I get that save or keep my teammates alive during teamfights or land all my bubbles it just makes me feel really happy, even if I don't get a "gj" or "nice!"

What I feel needs a work is mastery ranking for supports. It isn't consistent, and I get my adc's so fed that they get S's themselves but since I'm not really supposed to get kills, I don't get any S ranks because assists aren't worth as much as kills. The time the game lasted also doesn't seem to be taken into account when grading.

Last time I got an S I was playing Nami, the game went on for a long time, and I had 40 assists.

It kinda sucks that the system looks at kda, yet support is really the only role that focuses on getting assists rather than kills and assists aren't worth as much

Dehitay6/2/2016, 3:44:16 PM2 votes

Riot just needs to have an open discussion with the playerbase about supporting like they did with the mage rework. There are so many valid ideas.

Give supports more gold for assists and less for kills (supports can be identified by possession of a support item) Allow support items to have small scaling off of assists (+10 max health/+1 AP/+5 max mana per assist or something like that) Let destroying a ward add a ward stock to sightstone items Give support runes the major buffs that are LONG overdue for them Add end game statistics that supports can feel proud of looking at

Praetor Notorias6/2/2016, 4:05:18 PM2 votes

I could totally get into a PENTASSIST! announcement or even a TeamKill if more than one person gets a pentassist.

Fondling Gems6/2/2016, 3:27:38 PM1 votes

Teamfight turns into pentakill. For the next 3 minutes the announcer is all "Pentakill" "A is legendary" "B is on an assist spree" "C is on an assist spree" "D is on an assist spree" "E is on an assist spree" "Ace"

LickMyMuffin6/2/2016, 3:48:56 PM1 votes

I main support, you've not seen my carry!

ZT Xperimentor6/2/2016, 4:38:06 PM1 votes

There used to be assist sprees & a mastery to give exp if you're lower level than your teammates; until riot decided supports have it too easy, then wanted teams entirely composed of carries & assassins.