8 supports are played in 70% of high tier ranked games

TotalJerk·Aug 8, 2015·72 votes·7,068 views

Also Thresh is almost twice as popular as the second most picked support

http://champion.gg/statistics/#?roleSort=Support&sortBy=general.playPercent&order=descend

EDIT: Let me be clear: this isn't a call to nerf Thresh, it's a call to promote more diversity in the role.

135 Comments

yamimoshAug 8, 201542 votes

thresh will never not be a pick/ban. you could make his damage non existent, .05 ratios on everything, 20 base damages on all abilities, hell you could remove his AA modifier and hed still be picked because of the insane amount of utility his kit brings.

the problem isnt thresh though and alot of people dont understand that. thresh doesnt need to be brought down to the tier of other supports, other supports need to be brought up to the tier thresh is at.

A Miss FortuneAug 9, 201517 votes

I don't think that's fair.

Thresh is one of the most popular champions in the game because he can fit well into and against any team comp. He works well with pretty much every ADC since he has so much disengage, engage, and peel, and even if he or his team is behind he has enough utility to remain extremely relevant. Even if you dodge all of his hooks, the one time your carry doesn't, they can instantly die.

Supports like Sona, Nami, Zilean, and Bard may need buffs, but they should not be as overloaded as Thresh is. He may not be the most overpowered champion in the game, but is definitely overloaded and needs a thing or two from his kit removed even if It's just nerfing his damage, which he actually does have a lot of as well.

Aeolian MelodiesAug 9, 20159 votes

[{quoted}](name=A Miss Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=nxbMm4UT,comment-id=00040000,timestamp=2015-08-09T00:52:20.780+0000)

I don't think that's fair.

Thresh is one of the most popular champions in the game because he can fit well into and against any team comp. He works well with pretty much every ADC since he has so much disengage, engage, and peel, and even if he or his team is behind he has enough utility to remain extremely relevant. Even if you dodge all of his hooks, the one time your carry doesn't, they can instantly die.

Remember in season 2 when Sona was in that spot?

The nerfbat remembers.

Slushi SimcambiAug 9, 201510 votes

The nerfbat never forgets.

manbearswineAug 8, 201527 votes

Are you saying that thresh is op?

What could possibly make you say something like that?

Thresh is 100% totally legit,not overloaded out of his ass and definitely not favored by riot.

TotalJerkAug 8, 201519 votes

I'm not saying Thresh is OP. I'm saying that the support role is severely lacking diversity.

JefftiffyAug 9, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Are you saying that thresh is op?

What could possibly make you say something like that?

Thresh is 100% totally legit,not overloaded out of his ass and definitely not favored by riot.

Yet he got heavy nerfs over and over again. His hook damage went down along with the flay active damage and AD ratio on his flay AA. His mana costs went up. His lantern shield got about a 10% increase but made only work on 2 people. His ult went from 1 wall 100% damage and 4 walls 50% damage to 1 wall 100% damage. Talk about favored by Riot am i rite? They have even said his problem is he has massive utility to bring to the table and the only way you can remove that is by completely reworking him and guess what that means. He will just turn up stronger because his ult is in a really bad state against most champs (99% slow is nice and all but most champs use dashes and such now.

But oh its perfectly okay to have Morgana or Leona in bot lane being almost nearly as bad as him because they aren't Thresh. Leona is the reason Thresh is allowed to be as strong as he is. She has so much stupid stick potential that people like Thresh have to be able to peel and infinite CC (honestly her ult range needs to be dropped, its a fucking sniper CC ability with low CD on a tank meant to stick to people for years). And Morgana just does well because she has a 100% ratio on her Q which also roots for 3s and a spell shield that you can't break as long as you don't have significant magic damage. Braum I am fine with being strong because he has his risks and they keep purposely making him weaker at engaging (because he is meant to peel) and often dies for saving his team due to the CC absorption.

And no I do not hate any of these champs. But when people start and try and complain about their supports not being viable I have to be honest and point out where the problems stem from. I do not hate any of these champs, but they all pose problems to balance save Braum (he does his role and he does it well and doesn't do other roles that well).

The Yetii RiderAug 9, 201521 votes

Blitzcrank has a 54% winrate. What a shock.

Spizzle9000Aug 9, 20154 votes

{quoted}

Blitzcrank has a 54% winrate. What a shock.

+1 for the pun.

WinteraEvanzAug 9, 20156 votes

{quoted}

Blitzcrank has a 54% winrate. What a shock.

"l2p bronzie and learn to dodge" as the cancercrank runs straight at you with his 59108324% MS steroid and knocks you up and chain ccs you for 5 seconds and watches as his adc enjoys easy food.

CatAndBookTailsAug 9, 20152 votes

What. a. Shock. throws upvotes

magic poleAug 8, 201511 votes

flat 50%. the most balanced champ of all time Zilean

ViashinoWizardAug 9, 201511 votes

"of all time"

Ahhhhhhh

Fashion MageAug 9, 20151 votes

Actually, his win rate is 47.4~%, and he has the second worst popularity in the game. #BuffZilean

magic poleAug 12, 20151 votes

i agree, i love zil but haven't played him as much recently. The Q change i could take, but W doesn't reduce R cool down!> WTF !!!

anyways, this stat changes multiple times daily. When i posted this, it was in fact at 50.00%. kinda funny

TrebbiAug 9, 201511 votes

8 supports being played in 70% of matches is pretty decent diversity compared to other roles.

ZephyrDrakeAug 9, 20152 votes

{quoted}

8 supports being played in 70% of matches is pretty decent diversity compared to other roles.

it would be until you see that 6/8 of them are engage supports, while the other two are Janna and Morgana and only because they counter engage successfully

PengrinAug 9, 20153 votes

That's just sad that this people can/would say this.

Not making fun of you/bashing you in any way, but that number is just plain minuscule with the number of champs this game has/

TrebbiAug 9, 20156 votes

I understand your sentiment and I to would love for them to all be viable at the same time.

However I am trying to be realistic about it. Just think about it, regardless of how balanced the game might be our idealogy as human beings is to classify, judge and label everything we meet and experience.

This is mostly why we create tier lists and such. This is also why riot is constantly changing the game to ensure that the meta changes to avoid stagnation and to keep us on our toes.

The reason we complain is that we want change of pace and not necessarily balance, but we want underdog surprises and we want the top dogs to be pegged down when they have been dominate for so long.

Rock, Paper and Scissor is a near perfect balanced game from a pure design standpoint, but your have outward bias such as inexperienced males always throwing rock first for instance.

So I guess Paper has a high winrate, but it doesn't make Paper overpowered does it?

Earl EulrichAug 9, 20152 votes

Not making fun of you/bashing you in any way, but that number is just plain minuscule with the number of champs this game has/

this is just the same for any given role...only that for most roles it actually comes down to 3-5picks that are really "meta"/popular. The pool of viable supports is pretty much gigantic..heck, i love countering thresh with support mundo and so far haven´t lost that matchup once (sooo easy to harass that slow moving huge hitbox out of lane).

Ariel the CruelAug 9, 20151 votes

Another thing to keep in mind: the champion pool for each role. Supports have a smaller total pool than other lanes. Which means their diversity % is also notable greater.

Earl EulrichAug 9, 20151 votes

no? you can play almost anything as a support if you know how to do it...heck even kennen support had been meta for the pros once.

Ariel the CruelAug 10, 20151 votes

Kennen was played for the same reason as Annie: He had easy access to a spamable stun and good early game damage output.

ZephyrDrakeAug 8, 20155 votes

and most of those in the top are tanky/engage supports

67chromeAug 8, 20155 votes

That probably has more to do with there only being ~14 primary-supports in a game nearing 130 champions (126) over anything else.

There just aren't a lot of supports in LoL, it's by far the weakest lanning position in terms of champion diversity. Viable diversity is a little different as supports tend to be relevent in face of larger nerfs than other lane positions, but the total support pool is not large. Especially with the heavy emphasis on late-game scaling LoL places on pretty much everyone, not many champions get by with solid bases and utilities alone.

Hard4HamstersAug 9, 20155 votes

Another thing that's fun to note. Do you know what the champion with the Highest KDA in the game is?

Janna

Rito plz Nerf.

SwapShadowsAug 9, 20153 votes

Thresh is the best support but only if played by someone who is actually good at him.

I would rather face a skilled thresh than a faceroll blitzcrank or soraka that mash their keys and call "outplays"

TotalJerkAug 9, 201547 votes

You seriously think Soraka is faceroll?

HadesBladesAug 9, 201539 votes

I think soraka is hilarious when i can heal my minions to fuck up the other adc's farm pattern kek

A Miss FortuneAug 9, 20155 votes

High elo Soraka players do it a lot, It's really effective because of how your ADC is able to get a gold lead without directly even touching the enemy ADC.

Aeolian MelodiesAug 9, 201517 votes

[{quoted}](name=A Miss Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=nxbMm4UT,comment-id=0008000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-09T00:56:36.524+0000)

High elo Soraka players do it a lot, It's really effective because of how your ADC is able to get a gold lead without directly even touching the enemy ADC.

well high elo Soraks players don't have a lane partner that's like "hurdur got a healer time to forget how to properly trade and dodge shit"

A Miss FortuneAug 9, 201515 votes

nah man, ADCs can all 1v5 at level 1 just ask Xx_VayneMaster15_XxxX

Mayor StubbsAug 10, 20152 votes

Soraka becomes faceroll because apparently it's a secret to everyone that at bot lane you have to focus soraka first, not the adc in 2v2's.

TotalJerkAug 10, 20151 votes

I've had melee ADCs just mindlessly dive into 1v4s and SURVIVE just because people would let me stand there and spam heals while they kill everything.

Mayor StubbsAug 10, 20151 votes

Yea it's kinda ridiculous, like I thought it was common knowledge at this point but I think a lot of people don't actually know how she works since her rework yet.

Aeolian MelodiesAug 9, 201515 votes

{quoted}

Thresh is the best support but only if played by someone who is actually good at him.

I would rather face a skilled thresh than a faceroll blitzcrank or soraka that mash their keys and call "outplays"

Okay, wait.

How can it be that Thresh take someone who's actually good at him, but Blitz is faceroll?

5000000000000000Aug 9, 201511 votes

Because Thresh has spells that have multiple uses. As Blitzcrank, you W (speedboost to reposition), Q (pull), E (knock-up), R (AoE Silence). There's only one possible combo.

As Thresh, when you hook someone, you have to make a choice whether to go in or not. If you choose to go in, you can either Flay the target towards your team and/or box the enemy. You can spam his ult because it's on an actual cooldown. You can flay for engage and disengage, you can use lantern to engage or disengage, and you can use the box to engage or disengage. His kit is more complex than Blitzcrank.

(tbh, anyone's kit is more complex than blitzcrank)

Mistress MadokaAug 9, 20159 votes

No, you could also W(Charge into the Enemy) E, R, And then Q them as they try to run away

Mandang0Aug 9, 20156 votes

Big difference between low complexity and faceroll.

You can focus on the lack of decision points in Blitz's kit, but you can also turn it around and point out how Thresh has more fallback options, how it might be "faceroll" because Thresh can choose not to take a hook, where Blitz doesn't get that choice.

UltraSceptileAug 9, 20153 votes

people play thresh because he's fun as hell and can make plays. Same reason people enjoy playing riven, or yasuo, or lee sin, or zed. They're popular simply because the champion developers did a great job making the champ seem appealing to the majority of the player base (unless you main faceroll mages that you wish could never get killed by anything).

SunriseSkaterKidAug 9, 20153 votes

TBH for a role that doesnt have a huge cast to chose from 8 is actually a pretty good number. A lot of those champions just aren't viable currently. Ik you want diversity but this happens all the time for every lane at one point or another. The only mids i see now are Azir, Ahri, Orianna, and sometimes yas lol. Top lane is pretty diverse, jungle is so boring. Shyv,FIzz,Xin,Yi,Lee, sometimes Elise. IMO this season lacks a lot of diversity when it comes to in meta picks.

BrothaAug 9, 20153 votes

I remember when Nautilus was my main support and I used to get raged at throughout champ select.

Puri Puri TaricAug 8, 20152 votes

but favored by most the players meaning you face a thresh most of the time

DraginathAug 9, 20152 votes

Support definitely is the role that I feel needs the most attention yet seems to fly under the radar as to the core issues. Riot has made some strides to help with some issues (gold income, item choices), but have missed the biggest issue, lack of diversity in play style. Not much lack of diversity but the role is restrictive in allowing those champions to really push their kits to the level.

What makes it worse is that some supports clearly have so much more to offer to the role than others. That's the problem. How the role is played and what is expected of it needs some consideration. We need to ask ourselves what does it actually mean to be "Support"? Until we revise that, there will never be much room for diversity in it.

Lv16 FlaaffyAug 9, 20152 votes

Thresh/Janna are like chosen 80% in all LCS games. And the typical tops and mids and jgs too. LCS isn't even creative with their picks.

DownfallAug 9, 20152 votes

Went to champions, sorted by support, only 12 supports, so 66% of supports are played frequently. Could be worse.

Nick ValentineAug 9, 20152 votes

Here is the problem.

Thresh is an overloaded support with many different functions. Thresh can be used to engage or to peel and CC.

Other supports like Janna, Leona or Annie excel greatly at one of these areas.

So if you're considering playing a support, Thresh fits more categories, so he's "picked" more. It's like he can be picked twice, by peelers and engagers.