Enchanter Support scaling, The Ultimate conundrum and how it can be fixed.
Back in Season 4, changes were made to make it so supports were more than just glorified ward bots and made them feel like they progressed and were rewarded for playing well as the game went on.
Among these was supports getting gold items suited to their playstyle and of the addition utility scaling on Enchanter Support spells.
's W speed boost for example scales with AP.
's E bonus AD scales with AP,
's Passive speed boost scaled with AP
etc.
This caused 2 problems tho.
-
with the increase in gold flow in the support role, midlaners and mages (and other roles) became more popular in the support role because they could easily abuse the income . crowding out actual supports. This was adjusted later tho by lowering the roles income.
-
Enchanter Supports became more item dependent, wanting huge amounts of AP that they couldn't access via normal means in the support role and thus also started becoming abuse cases in OTHER lanes where their kits were very toxic.
Enchanters had their kits and ratios nerfed into the ground , some even completely reworked 
several times 
to deal with the issues.
For a long period, excluding 
, the meta was ruled by tank supports as they didn't have this issue (exclusive 
who is more of an (Enchanter/Tank hybrid and also got hit hard very early in S4 and simply never saw play at all after.) (and don't get me wrong, Tank supports have a whole slew of issues themselves.)
The issue lies as such: The utility scaling is a good idea but it can't be balanced in it's current state because:
-Enchanters Need AP to scale, but don't have the gold to by expensive AP items. -Giving them more cheap AP would just make the items abusable by Mages.
And as such, they kinda just fell into an awkward state where they could never really scale properly.
Since these changes tho, Riot has made steps to help Enchanters .
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/0/03/Windspeaker's_Blessing_mastery_2016.png/revision/latest?cb=20151103094744 Windspeaker's Blessing while also giving them a minor damage reduction helps buff the Healing and Shielding of these supports without just giving them AP.
The addition of 
, which adds an Attack Speed buff when healing/ Shielding Teammates also directly helps this too.
And since then, Riot has added % healing ans shielding Power to items like 
and the items that i builds into.
This is great because it directly benefits these champs in a way that the Midlaners will not really abuse it, as they have to give up on a lot of AP to get these.
However the issue becomes now that these champions have AP scalings for no reason, as they aren't even being properly utilized, but avoided, and whats more, champions with utility that isn't just Healing and Shielding are left for a loop. % Healing/Shielding won't help 
's E for example.
I have a potential solution for this. Originally, I had proposed making a separate "utility Stat" like UP or something all together (and in a way Riot technically has with the % healing Shielding) but with the recent Mage Update changes to Mana Regen and Mana, I don't think ti is fully necessary.
With the Mage changes, Riot has gone ON RECORD, saying that they are gearing Mages towards flat amounts of mana and Supports towards Mana Regen, ans they have.
and all their build paths all being items supports of this class Build are not only filled to the brim with Mana Regen, but CDR, to the point where it is honestly just becoming a bunch of wasted stats.
These champions are overcapping on CDR all the time just by getting there items, and Getting Mana Regen to the point where it isn't really contributing to their overall gold>stat efficiency quota.
Riot have recently proposed a change to Passive to partially remedy this by making it give HP regen for Mana Regen so the stat feels like ti is contributing something.
Which gave me the idea. ** If Mana Regen is supposed to be a Support-centric stat anyway, why not replace or at least add/re balance the utility scaling with Mana Regen?**Maybe even CDR?
Now not only does this render the Mana Regen stacking useful, but it also circumvents the issue of abuse by Midlane mages and other AP Stackers. Every bird killed with one stone.
Thoughts?
Later I will be tackling the issue with Tank Supports as well.