New support items don't look great

Krupaz·10/23/2019, 10:06:38 PM·2 votes·1,906 views

The new support items are going to make support impossible to play. A maximum of 3 stacks on a recharge timer longer than current relic shield is awful. Makes playing support an "afk until cannon wave" role because using it on another wave is just money down the drain. There not being an over monetary cost to upgrading is "nice" until you realize you're now only getting 1000 gold for free to spend on other stuff and lose any income you have after that point. What was touted by many as an upgrade to support is a hard nerf. The cost to fully upgrade the item itself before was 1400 gold (400 for the starting item and 1400 to get it up to remnant). First, I want to bring up that time component again. Relic shield had a recharge time of 40 seconds with a max of two charges. This new replacement, both the ap and ad variant, have a max of 3 charges with a 45 SECOND recharge time. That's unbearable to wait through, but let's talk gold collection time. Assuming you get to the wave on time and your AD doesn't try to take minions from you actively you can get the first 3 melees and a melee and cannon from the cannon wave. But, if you're getting these off cooldown, you'll only maximally be able to get 1 creep every 2 waves at the best. And even then, wasting your charge when a cannon is coming is bad, so you'll want to save it. With the way it works, I don't see quest completion until probably around 15 mins, probably often later. And that's assuming you don't miss a cannon, either being dead or your ad taking it from you, say in a situation where you want to let it get low instead of insta-executing below 50% because you don't want to push. I'm sure I'm even being generous with the time on that. Before, you could push generation down to 20 seconds a stack. You easily get a cannon+ for every wave. Not to mention it took half the gold to get to your full wards. Second, I want to talk more generally about overall support gold here. Pre 1000 gold changes could be fine if not frustrating, but the post 4-ward changes are awful. No quest leaves supports unable to generate any income of their own volition. A theoretical 2400 gold is nice and all, but it doesn't math out for me. Assuming you JUST get cannons for the rest of the game after getting your Remnant (I'll be pessimistic and say it took you 15 mins for your transform), you have 1 cannon spawning a minute, 2 worth 84, 2 worth 87, and the rest (6 more) worth 90 a pop. I'm going to, in a quick aside, mention that this gold also goes toward whoever's near you, so this is even more wasted gold. After 10 minutes, 2 spawn every minute each worth 90 gold. At this rate it'll take you just about 18 minutes to collect back your 2400. I'm being nice to this and not factoring in the plenty of other minions you're collecting in the meantime. I don't think the extra 1 passive gold every 10 makes up for this. I really hope Riot re-evaluates something about this. This is frustrating as a person who likes support. TL;DR New support items are definitely a nerf.

7 Comments

Kalienor10/23/2019, 10:28:32 PM1 votes

TL;DR New support items are definitely a nerf.

And a very welcomed one. One of the main current botlane issues is Support's income. You can literally spend the entire laning fighting without any consideration for minions and still get similar money as a laner who has to last hit. Support's income falls off later because you can't trade as intensively but during laning, your income is incredibly high for someone not having to care about cs. As a result, you see mage supports who will poke opponents to the extreme then pick up farm where they can to act as a second midlaner. I'm not saying "this is not how supports are supposed to work", if it works it works and that's it. But I think it's a bit unfair for the rest of the team to have someone thriving by messing with their macro. Over time, it went worse on several levels, and now Supports and Junglers are leeching a high amount of ressources from other players instead of trying to cooperate. That's losing the essence of teamplay.

These items make you have to manage your mana again and care about how comfortable you're making the situation for your adc to farm.

For now, Supports will obviously feel a bit underwhelming because riot spent the last year nerfing numbers on enchanters and will have to revert that to some extent. If they continue what they started with Lulu on this patch, it should be okay.

Azure200311/20/2019, 9:01:57 PM1 votes

Too hard

NaughtyWord11/20/2019, 9:06:43 PM1 votes

I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I'm rather optimistic about it.

I can go straight item 3850 into item 3070 on many of the enchanters I play. Don't even have to finish the item 3003 right away, from there go into item 3504 .

I play Janna Karma Kayle support mostly.