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PSA to Riot. Items are not supports.

NavyDivea·10/14/2017, 10:40:07 PM·207 votes·6,640 views

Riot has taken a dangerous development path, many in fact, but lets deal with this one for the moment. The fact that the items a support buys has become more important than the support them selves.

Does anyone remember when a support was chosen because of what they brought to the team? Because they filled a important role that the rest of the comp simply lacked? Be it a tank, a controller, or an enchanter they brought something unique to the team that felt impactful in a very upfront way.

Now it's " can X items be used most effectively on Y champions" . Don't get me wrong, supports are still capable of turning a game around in the right hands but why do I need to pass an item Litmus test before I consider said support? Why are X items MANDATORY in nearly every single game?

Riot got rid of old items such as old herald and aegis because they said you couldn't visually see the buff, feel the impact in a visceral way but what did we get instead? Catchall items that took meaningful choice out of the equation. Pure healing, shielding, and redirection. The utility a support was meant to bring to a team. No items that helped your team based on the situation so you only needed 1 maybe 2 pure support items. Now it's 4 slots of extra abilities too use, basically another champion in item form.

When did we decide we need a champion inside a champion? Why did we need active effects stronger than most abilities and as effective as some ultimates?

I don't have a real end to this little rant and highly doubt Riot will even pay attention to it but I have to ask.

When did the Items I buy become more important than the champion I play?

121 Comments

Tails901610/14/2017, 11:49:58 PM58 votes

Items are not supports

Roit:https://i.imgur.com/OLkWw6Z.jpg[/img]

Teridax6810/15/2017, 3:53:22 AM35 votes

To start, I do think Riot set out with good intentions on this, even if the results were less than great: this season really did feature buffs to supports, and Riot expressly wanted to give them items that could create moments of high impact. Trouble is, making a small set of support items with crap stats and amazing actives just means every support ends up playing the same way. Accompanying that, Riot did want to make items enhance the power of supports, but for some reason didn't really focus on anything except healing and shielding power, which obviously led to the dominance of enchanters, to the detriment of any other support focused on CC, offensive utility, buffs, debuffs, vision and so on.

I think part of the problem right now is that Riot may not really know how to make supports scale: I felt Preseason 4 had set some good groundwork with AP scalings to certain utility and CC effects, but that never quite succeeded because AP is generally too expensive for supports to build it reliably. When Riot also decided to give supports "alternative means of scaling" via item quests, that particularly annoyed me, because it isolated them even further, limiting their variety of power expression and cutting them off from AP even further. On top of it all, the focus on supports has been extremely one-sided this season, focusing almost exclusively on defensive and protective effects (e.g. Ardent Censer, Redemption, Locket, etc.) and practically not at all on offensive power, culminating in an enchanter+marksman-centric meta that the devs themselves claimed to have balanced towards, purely because they were afraid marksmen would otherwise die too quickly in coordinated play (i.e. when focused by the entire enemy team all at once). It's this kind of tunnel-vision design that has ended up botching what could have been a fantastic set of improvements to supports and their enjoyment.

What I'm afraid of now is that Riot might simply interpret these results the wrong way: what I'd like them to acknowledge is that they should continue to improve support income and itemization, but should also not dump all of their power into protection, as that has made them too good at pocket-healing the marksman. Additionally, I also think they should take greater care to nerf support bases when making them scale, as otherwise the class would legitimately become overpowered. What I don't want Riot to do is simply say that supports are OP right now, nerf them to some mediocre state and then forget about making them scale for a few more seasons. Yes, some supports right now are both overpowered and unhealthy, and that needs to change. That should require changes to support itemization so that their power is spread away from defensive effects, and targeted changes to some kits that actually affect what's toxic about them, instead of redistributing their power in ways that don't make sense (namely the Janna rework, which for some reason gave her on-hit damage but didn't address her instant knockups, point-and-click slow or marksman-centric shield/steroid).

PhDs Nuts10/14/2017, 11:52:34 PM21 votes

"We want supports to have more agency, so we're going to make one class of supports vastly superior and force them to build and play the exact same way."

Dasdi9610/15/2017, 1:05:44 AM14 votes

The reason why I stopped playing support at all. It has degraded into playing a bunch of items and not an actual champion. I can miss all my skillshots but it won't matter as long as I clicked my shield on the adc. Season 4/5 supporting was much more fun despite having less gold.

ModCaptainMårvelous10/15/2017, 6:09:58 AM14 votes

It should be fifty-fifty.

In a perfect world, champions are chosen for their strengths but items also allow champions to circumvent weaknesses (But not completely) or boost their strengths. Items like Redemption, Ardent, etc are good because...

They don't help EVERY SINGLE SUPPORT (Braum with ardent gigalul)
They are itemized to help certain supports.
They expand a champion's strength (Healing/shielding) or help minimize a weakness (Knight's vow helping to circumvent cheaper support builds)

The problem is that these items are overtuned...but is the item itself a bad thing? Not really. In a perfect world, Ardent is something you can take if you have a rapid-fire ADC while boosting your shielding. In lieu of that, you could take redemption to help your team survive longer or chalice if you deal more damage. Again, this is an ideal world where everything is balanced.

Are these items out of line? Yes. Is it because they purely exist? IMO, no.

Niaphim10/15/2017, 12:39:24 AM12 votes

Riot got rid of old items such as old herald and aegis because they said you couldn't visually see the buff

This made me laugh actually. I remember they used almost exactly this very phrase to justify removing auras. But then we get PD, DD and Knight's Vow. Then also the keystone that redirects damage (forgot how it's called). Totally different and much more visible effects (/s), I see what you did there, Riot.

YambrinZ10/15/2017, 10:11:21 AM9 votes

Riot decided to enforce a meta. This is what results when they enforce a meta. I remember when the game was fun when the meta was whatever the hell you wanted it to be....that was back in season 2 though.

SpongebobIsLife10/15/2017, 8:05:22 PM7 votes

Legit. During the casting of one of the worlds games, one of the supports died, and deficio (i think) said oh ardent censor is down baron should be pretty free now. -_- They legit said ardent censor...not the champ's name...just ardent censor is down...Let that sink in.

Miku Append10/15/2017, 1:11:25 AM5 votes

Supports just aren't allowed to carry, that's all.

General Esdeath 10/15/2017, 4:56:17 AM5 votes

My question is why does Riot insist on making the "META" thing so OP it's not even funny? I remember at some point they said that Malph top Yasuo mid was meta because it was simply unstoppable at the time due to 5 man pushing pressure. But you could still beat it. Now? Can't really beat meta strats unless the enemy goofs.

Fairyfleur10/15/2017, 2:37:36 AM5 votes

It feels as if I get a bad item 3107 or item 3190 half my power goes down the drain.

Bolganone10/15/2017, 8:43:46 AM4 votes

This season has honestly been a fucking joke when it comes to support balance. First half of the season building redemption + locket on every single support regardless of whether you were a tank or a squishy mage, because those 2 items were just that absurd. Second half of the season abusing ardent censer as much as possible because the item itself is more important than the champion you play, and it's pretty obvious this is indeed the case because the worse your champion is at abusing it, the worse it performs (just compare nami's stats to other healers/shielders).

The Archive10/15/2017, 4:43:24 AM3 votes

To some degree supports have always been items; it's not a new thing. Just look back before trinkets. Supports were warding bots. Mobos and wards.

Thilmer10/15/2017, 2:48:59 PM3 votes

I have stopped playeing support completely because rigth now playing as a support is: "Pick and enchanter, buy ardent censer and spam heals or shields".

I feel a bot could do the support job better tan a human rigth now, and that's sooo boring.

Paletongue10/15/2017, 8:03:18 PM3 votes

Does anyone remember when a support was chosen because of what they brought to the team?

No, all i remember is when supports were picked because _someone _ needed to to ward everything

2Behold10/15/2017, 12:37:25 PM2 votes

Im pretty low elo but like I find in all my support games unless im playing support like Rakan Soraka Nami I only build the gold item and item 2049 item. So maybe im lower because I dont build all the op support items but at least in my elo i find I can support just fine without them.

bleufromage10/15/2017, 4:19:11 AM2 votes

I get what you mean but if you think about it supports are there for thier utility. It doesn't matter if you taking Braum for his tank and peel or sona for her dmg and heals their job is to provide utility. So since they aren't inherently full of stats they get items with powerful utilities (some active some passive). What good will items that give stats be to supports? They will be carries with utility kits.