Please increase utility scaling on Supports!

Silent Reaper·Mar 22, 2016·2 votes·366 views

In Patch 3.14 Riot introduced a new scaling for support champions by introducing Utility scaling. Right now we are introducing a Mage Rework. In essence, the main difference between a Mage and a Support is that a Support shouldn't do damage.

With the mage rework, why not do the favor of lower damage scaling off Supports and increase their utility scaling? (through Ap, or other means)

Ex: Don't "give more damage scaling" , give better utility scaling.

14 Comments

JRobin31Mar 22, 20163 votes

Supports, in general, don't scale well on AP because AP requires items and items require gold. That means that any champion that gets AP scaling on damage or utility or whatever you can imagine ends up becoming a less useful support and more useful as a carry who gets substantial gold income from lane. As a player who enjoys supporting (as long as it's not support all the time), I definitely do not want to see utility become dependent on AP scaling.

Silent ReaperMar 22, 20161 votes

Would you rather have a new system of stats that provides better utility effects for players that are optimal to use on supports?

Elite4RunnerMar 22, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Supports, in general, don't scale well on AP because AP requires items and items require gold. That means that any champion that gets AP scaling on damage or utility or whatever you can imagine ends up becoming a less useful support and more useful as a carry who gets substantial gold income from lane. As a player who enjoys supporting (as long as it's not support all the time), I definitely do not want to see utility become dependent on AP scaling.

Your point actually explains why having the utility scale at a larger % would be so important. The little bit of AP that a support will be able to afford would need to be more effective. A 20% scale factor means next to nothing when you will be lucky to get 50 AP by the end of the game (obviously this depends on exactly what is being scaled and how, but you see what I am saying).

It is very difficult for me to be on either side of this however, because I know that if the utility can be exploited in a non-support way, these support champions will find themselves becoming mages. I like the idea of having these stats scale on something other than AP for this reason. How about Mana, Health, Armor, Magic Resist, Movement Speed, CDR, ... I think there also needs to be utilities that utilize things like time spent in and/or out of combat, mobility (like item 3087 ), proximity to an allied/bound champion (like item 3050 ) ... There are definitely ways to make this work without making supports into just another AP mage.

Silent ReaperMar 23, 20161 votes

If Supports got utility scaling while removing their damage scaling they could become obsolete as Solo Laners since they wouldn't have the damage to farm, or kill champions by themselves...

Elite4RunnerMar 23, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Silent Reaper,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=nYaVBVh0,comment-id=000300010000,timestamp=2016-03-23T00:07:18.522+0000)

If Supports got utility scaling while removing their damage scaling they could become obsolete as Solo Laners since they wouldn't have the damage to farm, or kill champions by themselves...

I don't think anyone is suggests that their damage be removed completely, but they don't need abilities that have as strong stat scaling. Instead, we would be willing to accept a reduction of these stats in order to get an increase in utility scaling.

Not to mention that all champions will need to have some form of auto attack, so farming will still be possible.

67chromeMar 22, 20161 votes

Riot introduced a new scaling for support champions by introducing Utility scaling.

And that was the moment were mages used as a support Annie Zyra Morgana became legitimatly better supports than actual support champions like Sona Nami Lulu . That change also generally solidified Lulu as a solo-lane champion rather than a support.

For a champion to be a respectable support, you have 2 main jobs.

Strong early-game presence. With a strong early-game you offset the weak early of many marksman, making a marksman+support combo make a wide range of marksman feel like extremely strong early-game champions.

One thing that really helps a strong early game is good bases, or rather: if you're looking at champions with strong bases and weak scaling vs. weak bases and strong scaling, the strong bases and weak scaling is exactly what helps here (exact opposite of a carry).

Respectable late-game presence while being significantly behind in levels and items compared to everyone else.

One thing that really helps here is having...strong bases and poor scaling.

In both cases: having utility-heavy things like a 1.5 second stun be a 1.5 second stun regardless of what you itemize for and what level you are is really what makes a champion a good support.

The entire reason supports are high utility rolls ATM is also due in large part to most utility just not scaling with much of anything.

Add scaling to support champions: and because of balance, you're left with supports giving up early power for essentially nothing in return outside of a slightly stronger late-game if they're played in a solo lane. And I mean: I like AD sona and AD Janna every now and then, but if you gate a lot of their power with items - the thing supports have less of than anyone else - those will be the only ways to reliably play such champions.

TLDR: making supports have good late-game scaling makes them poor choices to play as a support.

Silent ReaperMar 22, 20161 votes

It's not about sacrificing early game power, its about removing unnecessary power that is not useful on a Support role (e.g. Damage) and allocating it into utility -> CC, Healing, Displacement Effects

The point is so that late game, instead of having 400 more damage on spells, you have stronger heals and stuns. Which makes sense for what supports late game should have.

Big LincolnMar 22, 20161 votes

but damage is useful on supports...

Silent ReaperMar 22, 20161 votes

You mean things like support Leblanc Annie ? The entire point of REAL supports is to provide utility, not damage.

Big LincolnMar 23, 20161 votes

okay, so you just don't understand game design at all.

Bard would not even EXIST in lane without damage, and would be fucking garbage out of lane too. Is a "real support"

Karma needs damage, is a support/mage

Nami Janna Sona provide damage in their kits. real supports.

TahmKench needs to have relevant damage otherwise he'd lose his decision-making.

what are you talking about when you say supports don't need damage? Having damage or providing it to other people is part of the reason they ever get picked.

Elite4RunnerMar 22, 20161 votes

I completely agree! I would really like to see more burst mage scaling numbers on utility abilities. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with this as well. In most cases supports have utility spells that buff carries or debuff enemies. When carries are already fairly strong and a strong utility is added or a strong debuff is placed on an enemy the balance kinda goes out the window. It would be great to have awesome utility to make supports feel significantly more relevant but most likely any utility spells that would receive this kind of buff would be limited to self buffing utilities, which I would be okay with. Now that said, I don't claim to know every possibility and I will say that I genuinely hope that I am wrong about how unlikely something like what you suppose is to happen.

Silent ReaperMar 22, 20161 votes

Well, just like damage spells, it's always a Base Stats vs. Scaling Stats. If you are ahead, having ratio's "gets you ahead" technically.

I'm not saying make Supports CC gods, but I don't want them to be "ignorable members" in teamfights. A good example is CC-god-Thresh. Thresh Late game, thresh has so much presence in teamfights that he feels important.

I want supports with items to scale late game to feel important in the game (with Utility)

EcchiOtakuTMMar 22, 20161 votes

I'll only agree to non-cc utility scaling increases, CC-wise no, everything else that isn't CC yes.

Silent ReaperMar 22, 20161 votes

What is exactly wrong with CC scaling increased? I'm not saying mages should be allowed to access it, but have supports with POOR damage to have access to it.