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Support isn't a desirable enough position right now

Fisk··146 votes·23,232 views

Right now I don't think support is very desirable as a role at the moment. Just look at the new champ select, if you queue up as "support" or "fill" as your secondary there is a 60% chance you're going to get support. People are "fine with playing it" but nobody REALLY wants it. Before you just write me off with "hey support's fine go away" or "its just a playstyle choice", I am a (last season) D4 Support Main. I as a support main KNOW that it has power as a role at the moment, is capable of making really big plays and is a viable carry position. But that doesn't actually make it a desirable role. More often than not, instead of feeling like a powerhouse savior of the people, you feel like the b**ch having to get vision by your self, being underfed and underleveled virtually every game. Notice in proplay right now supports aren't even getting level 18 in some of the 40-60 minute games that are happening. I feel like support as a role could really use some love :(

Edit- Hey the **support **(get it? :P) here is great and the feedback for both arguments is really good! I've seen a lot of great ideas on here! One was giving the support items/sightstone XP bonuses. What would you guys think of making support items give bonus xp for every minion you DIDN'T last hit? It would allow supports to be more meaningful early game as they could get overleveled/stay even in levels without them getting to strong. And it wouldn't be abusable by solo laners.

Edit 2-

The single most important thing supports could bring to the team was vision. And now with the current changes those 3 wards you drop do not feel as impact-full.

Do people agree with this? Should supports get more chances to ward in order to carry games or other areas need more work?

I will continue to post good ideas with my thoughts to address current issues up here for discussion.

342 Comments

Naramiel25 votes

Yeah, I find it odd that :

  1. Riot said in their initial design "we plan to incentivize support with IP bonuses if necessary"
  2. Picking anything/Fill automatically means you get Support.
  3. They haven't actually experimented with any changes.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/2016-season-update/new-champ-select.html

Retillin4 votes

Didn't they back off on the IP bonus because "people will just queue as a support and play something different, or not as a support"? I thought they said it can only be "fixed" by making support more attractive a role. I don't think Riot has really spent any time looking to improve the support experience. That should be the mid-season update instead of mages.

Remlap122311 votes

Considering how shite mages are right now if your name isn't Anivia, I'd say they need it more.

Supports really just need a way to earn XP without leeching off other lanes.

Pokku2 votes

XP from roaming would be perfect, in my opinion, but I don't know how it could be actually implemented without abuse.

Remlap12238 votes

You don't need to pidgeonhole that. Just give supports XP for doing what they do. Warding could grant XP. Healing an ally could grant XP. Spelltheif's changes could grant XP. Relic Sheild could give the support the full XP like Morde's passive used to do when a charge is used.

It doesn't have to be just XP for roaming. Bard doesn't have XP problems because of his passive. Just give supports XP for doing their job properly, and you'll notice people playing the role more.

IGotScuttleCrabs7 votes

This. Supports need a way to get fed so to speak. They need a way to "snowball" and become scarier. Not just snowballing they're adc.

Aatrox Herself15 votes

I always want support but i hardly ever get it.

Fisk16 votes

You could be the only one with this issue. XD

Zeke Maelstorm11 votes

Support will never be desirable by the mere design of the role.

  1. In laning you are entirely reliant on your ADC not being a potato. If you're ADC is a potato you're fighting a 1v2 lane where the enemy is getting fed (probably resulting in you feeding). As a result of this you will fall even further behind.

  2. An assassin will pretty much always be able to burst you down. Go to ward the wrong bush and you can say good bye to your health bar. This problem is more noticeable with mage supports but a behind tank support can suffer from the same issue.

  3. Most ADC mains are toxic and you tend to take the blunt of the blame, deserved or not. (Shout out to junglers)

  4. Support doesn't get to hard carry by being an unkillable tank, a flashy assassin or the hyper carry (Unless you're a very fed support). As a result the position is undesirable. Nobody wants to be the second fiddle, most would rather be the main character.

  5. Off meta supports are not well liked. Although this applies to a lot of roles support players get to choose between 26 champions (http://champion.gg/statistics/#?sortBy=general.experience&order=descend&roleSort=Support) while most of the other roles get approximately 50. The notable exception being ADC.

  6. You have no 1v1 potential (Outside of being very fed) because of gold and experience disadvantage.

  7. People want to want ranked games and a lot of people consider support to be a role which you cannot carry from and this is true (TO SOME EXTENT) as you far more reliant on your team and hoping they make the right decisions. After all you only have so much CC and peel.

  8. You are obligated to be a ward *****. This is truer at lower elo but the preseason changes didn't help this (Seeing as now laners can only buy pink wards and the blue trinket keeps getting nerfed).

Support is just a role where you feel like someone else's *****. You cannot make plays on your own (Unless you are really fed). Land a Blitz hook, great if other people are there to kill them.

Also Annie is not a support, she is a mage sent bot (http://champion.gg/champion/Annie/Support).

Communist Toast10 votes

I don't mind being support, but the only issue is that support has to relay on someone else (the adc) while the other roles are kind of by themselves. which makes me rather play the other roles instead of supp

Aeolian Melodies19 votes

{quoted}

I don't mind being support, but the only issue is that support has to relay on someone else (the adc) while the other roles are kind of by themselves. which makes me rather play the other roles instead of supp

I find the ADC relies as much if not more on the support than the opposite.

IGotScuttleCrabs13 votes

Yes but th support relies on the adc being competent and doing well. You can play blitz support and literally miss every grab and it won't affect your adc as much because they can safely farm from turret. But if you're blitz and land every grab just to have your adc tower dive and die, you also become useless because your skill is going to waste.

Fisk6 votes

The ADC and mid depending on the champ are VERY reliant on supports to peel/engage/snowball them and make sure they can do their job right now. But, supports just aren't up to par with the power in other roles. They feel relatively weak and sad unless you are very ahead or have a strong carry player. It should be easier to carry weak carry players through making good plays and doing your job well (not LCS well, just above the curve well). Instead, unless you are a very strong support you can't do much about having a bad carry player that's not doing his job simply because you have no way of building a lead on your own to be strong enough to carry.

Satanstein8 votes

Playing support is like being in a Fiora lane. You just sit around waiting for passive gold. You don't really get the opportunity to play League of Legends.

And yes, for the record, I've played Blitz/Taric/Rumble support so I know they can "make plays" but it's still a solid ten-fifteen minutes of fucking waiting until you do.

Aeolian Melodies6 votes

{quoted}

Playing support is like being in a Fiora lane. You just sit around waiting for passive gold. You don't really get the opportunity to play League of Legends.

And yes, for the record, I've played Blitz/Taric/Rumble support so I know they can "make plays" but it's still a solid ten-fifteen minutes of fucking waiting until you do.

Passively waiting for gold, wut item 3302 item 3303 ? Most of the support's income is from assists, which you work for.

Playing LoL isn't just killing champions and creeps. Zoning, poking, creating opportunities, denying them, controlling team fights, that's also playing the game.

Silver Fluffenbu15 votes

Most of the support's income is from assists, which you work for.

Ezreal is about to ult across the map for a kill.
Janna time to shield for that free assist!

TeCoolMage8 votes

Well it DOES give AD to Ezreal for more damage, so she DID assist, especially if minions stole dem damages.

Soraka autos are where REAL assists come from.

Unless you have the 1% crit rune... Then that'll translate into 6 kills somehow.

Satanstein6 votes

you can have five assists and still not have enough gold to buy your core item/s.

DeynaTaggerung7 votes

I think it's because there's nothing flashy about getting assists. There's no recognition by the game when you make an amazing support play. You know, and your teammates might know, but when you save everyone's life and set up the kill on the enemy's carry in a teamfight there's no "pentassist". I'm not sure how it would be implemented well but if people got some positive feedback when they play well as a support I think that'd go a long way to making it desirable.

Retillin6 votes

The single most important thing supports could bring to the team was vision. And now with the current changes those 3 wards you drop do not feel as impact-full. This mean Riot needed something else to make players feel they could really contribute to the game. But for whatever reason support, as a role, has been over looked in the past year/two years.

Solerian5 votes

I don't understand the point of this post.

Support is and always has been and always will be a niche role that only a few of us like to take on. You can make characters like Bard or TahmKench that help bring in some of the anti-Supporters, but ultimately the core gameplay behind support is what's not appealing and no unique champion design can fix that.

I also don't think there needs to be a macro update to the game dynamics just to bring in a few people who want to support. It's something everyone should accept. It's just like on MMOs where healers are arguably the least played role. Folks like to damage more than they do help.

Fisk8 votes

The entire point is that it is considered a "niche role". Seriously its one of the 5 main roles in the game how can it just be written off as a niche role? My issue is that the core gameplay behind support (as a support main) simply isn't meaningful enough without enormous knowledge and skill. Support is fine right now but as a support you rarely actually feel like a powerful member of the team. You mostly are a cc/vision bot. Supports fantasy of being a powerful savior of the team that makes allies meaningfully more useful isn't as good as it could be. I have level 5 mastery on both bard and kench and experience on pretty much every popular support. I know how strong support can be. I know how it can carry. But I think support needs to FEEL more important and meaningful to play. Not just the "niche role" where you carry from the shadows. I'm not saying it needs to be glamorous but you should feel important as a member of the team.

Mandang05 votes

IMO it's because riot's afraid to let support's power curve ever be strong. Sure, it probably shouldn't be strong late - that's when carries should shine, but when Riot also makes carries' laning relatively strong, it really shuts things like supports out from having meaningful fantasies. ADC should be weak in lane, not gifted easy sustain and strong skills. Lane bully tops and mids should pay for that strength lategame (and lategame should actually happen once in a blue moon). Supports should be the opposite, in both cases, while obviously not being as strong as either in their strongest phases.

Also, more interesting itemization would go a long way. Just look at the utility active items available in Dota. Those exact items would be broken in LOL, but should serve as a guide for itemization that's more interesting than gp10...sightstone...boots...yaaaaawn.

ADepressedLeona4 votes

Yeah, Supports are power houses, but they don't feel like them. They can make plays they can win games, but they don't have any flashy numbers to go with them. Not only that, but supports cannot carry, you can set your team up for success all day long but if your team falls flat on their face, all your efforts just go right out the window.

Also I mentioned numbers, and just going by numbers, they don't really shine at all. I play a lot of Leona support, and there were many times I'd look at my stats after the match, and unless I simply crushed my lane, I'd have the lowest damage dealt, and even the lowest damage tanked (compared to Top and Jungle), despite being in the middle of every team fight.

Not only that, but assists just aren't praised that much by the game. When someone gets a kill, they see a big box with their picture and sword smacking the other guy, and the assist just gets this tiny little box next to it. All in all, support can feel very unrewarding to play at times, and I think there can be something done to help with that

Pokku6 votes

To help wih numbers, Riot should implement Damage shielded. Unfortunately that wouldn't help Leona, though.

WinBoat3 votes

Wait til the next support champion to be released. Eventually there is going to be a support champion that is hella fun to play, and you will see a ton of people playing support.

BastionKross56 votes

Thresh

Edit: Bard

Masterkerfuffle15 votes

{quoted}

Thresh

Edit: Bard

This. So much this. Bard is love, Bard is life.

Bard

Fisk11 votes

#I'mabardmain

RiotRiotRepertoir70 votes

Hopefully Taric soon :)

Earl Eulrich36 votes

unfortunatly the problems lie within the underlying gamesystems, not with supports being unfun to play...games get deceided way too early for a support to start having an impact on the map, as in SoloQ he has to stick to his carry during laning most of the time (in proplay it´s less problematic as they just laneswap and carries can farm sidelanes on their own relativly save early on). Also, vision had been the primary reason to play support up until now - but with the changes you can´t roam around enough to make it stick, so junglers are now the primary agents for setting up vision, leaving support as a hollow being that just walks around with their carry to protect him from hurting himself. Not to mention that vision snowballs way too much still with pinks/blues getting cleared easily by the winning team, so you can´t even stall out games with good vision anymore.

all in all the game lost a lot of strategic depth this preseason and it´s mostly hurting supports, as they were the most strategic role.

RiotRiotRepertoir23 votes

all in all the game lost a lot of strategic depth this preseason and it´s mostly hurting supports, as they were the most strategic role.

Not sure I agree with that statement entirely, but as it pertains to supports and their role in the vision game, that may certainly be true.

Earl Eulrich22 votes

well to maybe illuminate that a bit more:

LoL has always had two rather different SRs:

  • 5v5/professional LoL: here the games are still pretty strategic, though right now you also see that games turn into "lategame" at min 20already if teams make a single wrong step along the way - it´s just so much more punishing than last seasons, and therefor shotcalling from behind (which always has been hard) gets almost impossible...leaving only the winning team with strategic options for the most part.

  • SoloQ: games here are mostly won in Champselect atm, and they snowball out of control insanly fast as you donßt have the coordination to shut down hypermobile threats at any point. Also - many times the jungler will refuse to go wardstone/trinket and sometimes even the support will do so, leaving you absolutly blind and robbing the game of all strategy except outguessing your opponents. EDIT: to elaborate it a tad more - the prvious seasons support had been my go-to if i really wanted to win, as usually it´s farily easy to carry the laning-phase and then setting up vison to control the rest of the map and make sure your team can savly close out the game. Now even if i win the lane rather hard i struggle controlling even just vison around the bottom of the map - compared to playing jungle, were i just have a lot more options to set deepwards early on and move the wards around the map as the pressure shifts.. though if you ever fall behind none of the roles will provide nearly enough vision to make the game feel even remotly under control anymore.

main Reasons for this development from my PoV:

  • items are too expensive/to reliant on scaling, so if you fall behind you will take longer to reach your core-gear to at least have a decent chance of making a play of your opponents mistakes.
  • vision just snowballs more as there are less greenwards and pinks/blues can be cleared out with ease by the team in control, sort of as with S2 oracles - winning teams have it easier to defend their oracles and to kill the oracles of their opponents (a good sign of how broken vision is atm is that about any midlaner in proplay will still go spooky-ghosts to make sure the team has an option to avoid facechecking later on)
  • some champdesign is still really far off regarding to offering any counterplay (e.g. fiora 1v1) or regarding to risk/reward (e.g. ecco with a very feast or famine pattern depending on how good he is landing his sorta broken AoE-stun or not).
FrozenMistninja4 votes

{quoted}

Not sure I agree with that statement entirely, but as it pertains to supports and their role in the vision game, that may certainly be true.

When games end in 20 mins, how is that not losing strategic depth? You no longer have an objective thats worth dying for, and before you think Im attacking League, Im not. I still love this game, but it doesnt feel nearly as close to the chess match it used to be. I feel like Riot gives us "new and cool" strategic options all the time, through items and other means, but It also feels that every time a new option comes 2 were taken in its spot. In season 1 you were called a troll if you tried to support without CV as your summoner spell. THe new blue trinket is cool because it gives a cv that doesnt go away until its cleared, but in some situations like an attempt on a baron steal, that blue trinket is useless, where at least cv couldnt instantly get cleared. Im not even trying to argue the viability of CV, im just saying if you give us all of the strategic peices at the same time, maybe their wouldnt always feel like there was a lack of strategic diversity.

Solidair31 votes

Question: do reworks count as a release for a class?

What I mean is, typically you guys don't release two of the same class right in a row (with some exceptions obviously) so poppy was released as a tank/fighter. Taric is a support, so do you guys try to not release another support around the same time or do champUP and champion not communicate like that?

RiotRiotRepertoir6 votes

I think generally we try not to release champions or champion updates of the same class repeatedly, but there's no real rule against it. There's more just a general understanding that it sucks for some groups of players if all we do is release the same type of champion over and over again.

Fisk6 votes

Hey Repertoir thanks for the red post! If you ever are working on support updates with like items I'd love a PM and I'd love to help you get ideas for them. Any thoughts on XP on support items or just support as a role at the moment? I'd love to have a discussion with you about this at some point but I know your busy. Thanks again!

RiotRiotRepertoir8 votes

Honestly, I'm pretty knee-deep in mages stuff at the moment, so I'll be honest and say I'm not as informed as others around here about the support role and its state in the game. I would probably only have a player perspective on that.

HayRoss10 votes

{quoted}

Hopefully Taric soon :)

Taric will still be able to go top lane, right?

Please, I will cry for 10 years straight if top lane will be devoid of some truly outrageous fabulousness

RiotRiotRepertoir47 votes

There is no movement restriction in the upcoming Taric update that prevents him from running to top lane.

AATTRROOXX1 votes

Any possible release month? [zombie-nunu-hearts]

RiotRiotRepertoir28 votes

LOTS of possible release months. The possibilities are endless!

B1naryB0t4 votes

To be fair, there's only 12 possible release months, so not quite endless.

Emperor Time3 votes

Dude i wonder why support items don't give bonus xp, like sightstone.

Penguin Eclipse6 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dark Chronicle 2,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=n8ZzIElu,comment-id=000c,timestamp=2016-02-06T17:49:37.031+0000)

Dude i wonder why support items don't give bonus xp, like sightstone.

Because other lanes will abuse the items. And Riot isn't creative enough to figure out how to fix the problem without gutting the item. Like they are actively doing with the frost queen.

Emperor Time8 votes

You know i kinda feel like they wont ever be able to fix supports unless they specifically make support items only work with support champions.

Satanstein3 votes

That still means these guys are spending 800+ gold on a +hp item in a solo lane.

SoMNia3 votes

Bring back the Inspiration mastery, so supports can catch up on experience after roaming. They already added Assassin in the Cunning tree, and are bringing back Expose Weakness in Ferocity. The same spot in Resolve could hold Inspiration, and it would be a huge help (as well as balancing the mastery trees).

Otherwise, maybe if support gold items gave more assist gold, and other support itemization was given a slight bump in price and stats, it might help.

Aeolian Melodies5 votes

{quoted}

Bring back the Inspiration mastery, so supports can catch up on experience after roaming. They already added Assassin in the Cunning tree, and are bringing back Expose Weakness in Ferocity. The same spot in Resolve could hold Inspiration, and it would be a huge help (as well as balancing the mastery trees).

Otherwise, maybe if support gold items gave more assist gold, and other assist itemization was given a slight bump in price and stats, it might help.

They removed assist streaks, that's something I miss. Inspiration, however, I don't miss. I didn't even pack it because it did not make a difference at all, and supports are not level dependent anyway.

SoMNia8 votes

[{quoted}](name=Aeolian Melodies,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=n8ZzIElu,comment-id=00250000,timestamp=2016-02-06T23:21:10.374+0000)

supports are not level dependent

What? Of course they are. It's not like they can afford to buy the stats they need to not die. Perhaps more importantly, the faster they rank up their abilities and gain access to their ult, the better they are at making plays. Lower cooldowns, longer durations, stronger slows, bigger shields/heals, all dependent on level. And up to 120 extra experience per minute did make a difference. Of course it didn't do anything if you didn't even use it!

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