2 myths about starting with Doran's Ring as a support
- Doran's Ring gives higher damage on spells thanks to the superior AP
Actually, thanks to Spellthief's Edge passive, spells do more damage with that item than Doran's Ring, even though Spellthief's Edge has less raw AP. Also, you must consider that most AP-scaling supports do not scale very well with AP. So even though purchasing more AP always translates into doing more damage, this does not mean that there is a significant difference in damage.
Despite Spellthief's Edge passive, laners buy Doran's Ring because a) they can farm, allowing them to generate more gold than with this item's passive |b) they are not constantly harassing the enemy with auto-attacks and spells |c) Doran's Ring gives the champion more mana regeneration, thanks to its passives |d) Laners are usually champions who scale very well with AP, so they scale better with the raw AP that Doran's Ring gives when compared to Spellthief's Edge. It is important to remember that Spellthief's Edge passive is disabled if you farm, which is another reason to why Doran's Ring is superior to Spellthief's Edge if you are allowed to farm, and inferior otherwise.
- Doran's Ring allows you to have a better all-in potential at level 2 thanks to the HP and AP
This is actually false; as explained above, Spellthief's Edge passive allows the user to do more damage with their abilities. The extra HP also hardly makes any difference.
Also, if you plan to all in the enemy at very early levels, it is actually better to not start with Doran's Ring, as you will have to eventually sell this item, so you have technically wasted gold, nullfying the advantages of a level 1-3 cheesing. If you start with Spellthief's Edge, you generate more gold, and you don't have to sell this item later, you can upgrade it to other better items, so you are not wasting anything.
The reason why I am making this thread is because today, on a Facebook group, two guys tried to argue with me, saying that Doran's Ring is a possible situtional purchase for a support, and that because I didn't accepted that, I was "close minded", I was "jackass", and I was incapable of accepting other people's opinion. While I was actually just explaining to them why Doran's Ring is never a good purchase for supports. This is not a matter of being a situtional purchase or not. This is a matter of making a purchase that will always be inferior to other. If an item is situtional, this means that it has a possibility of being a good purchase on some situations, but on most of them, there are better items to purchase. But on the "Doran's Ring x Spellthief's Edge for supports" situation, it is very clear that Spellthief's Edge is a superior purchase on EVERY situation and I can't see why one would disagree with that.