Poor supports have no farm to fall back on when behind and really suffer from a bad early game way more than assassins in my opinion, and that just seems wrong.
Its a shame this game is on season 6 but the support role(once again imo) is still so disadvantaged compared to the others.
chipndip134 votesNo one really cares about supports on these boards if we're being honest, outside of other supports.
Linna Excel12 votesIn overwatch, the support players tend to get the most <3 from their teammates.
R FLASH XD29 votesWe are not in overwatch
DarkRitual11 votesWe're all Soldiers now.
manbearswine1 votes[{quoted}](name=Linna Excel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pbix6i7k,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-06-15T04:30:02.526+0000)
In overwatch, the support players tend to get the most <3 from their teammates.
. .. ...
They are overpowered aren't they? God damn it blizzard, can't you learn anything from the miserable failure that are hots supports?
DarkRitual3 votesThey're hardly overpowered, they just have very useful ults. All 4 supports have ults that can easily benefit the entire team.
manbearswine1 votesThey're hardly overpowered, they just have very useful ults. All 4 supports have ults that can easily benefit the entire team.
I don't believe you.
DarkRitual2 votesLucio is the best all-around support, due to his aura effects. His damage is not amazing, but he gives good cover fire and he has extra utility in his knockback.
Mercy is the standard healer. Weak personally, but provides healing and extra utility. Her pistol barely tickles, she has no secondary skill (E), but her Ult is a game changer.
Zenyatta recently got proxy buffed, by not being instakilled by Widowmaker's charged body shots. He provides single-target healing like mercy, and a damage amp debuff, with both being LoS based (falls off after 3 seconds once LoS is broken). His ult is an AoE heal where he is invulnerable.
Symmetra sets up the best deathtraps, but they are easily dealt with once the surprise factor is out (unlike Garen's bushtraps). She provides a small shield to allies, and her ult is a teleporter from the spawn room (the value of which varies widly based on map and current objective).
Lucio is the closest to overpowered, but that's not from sheer power, moreso raw utility.
NineTailedMystic2 votesMercy's pistol actually does some decent damage. It's not as good as Dva's pistol but she can handle herself if she plays and aims well.
Oleandervine8 votes[{quoted}](name=Linna Excel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pbix6i7k,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-06-15T04:30:02.526+0000)
In overwatch, the support players tend to get the most <3 from their teammates.
Overwatch is an utterly different animal. There is no scaling or gold, and supports can be just as viably offensive as the snipers or defenders. Take my OW main Symmetra for example. Technically a support, but Heimerdinger on FPS roids. There is no comparison between League supports, who exist in a strategy game where you require gold, items, and power scaling, and Overwatch supports who have nothing but their kits to sustain them in a team FPS. The games are as different as fish and kittens.
doombotMECHA1 votesin overwatch, supports actually mean something lategame
Best princess EU10 votesBack then in season 1/2 supports where balanced around having no items.
after season 3 they started to TRY to give gold to supports and they nuked their utility while adding utility ratio. Look at season 4 sona and taric changes, they were reworked to rely more on items.
In my opinion this is extremely a bad decision, but people were complained about supports only buying wards.
KONO RUBICK DA4 votesi enjoyed playing supports, i didn't need items only wards.
but non support players didn't like it and said that support role sucked and that's why riot changed it.
Ariel the Cruel3 votesPersonally, I prefer being able to buy items over the boots+6million wards meta. Note that buying items =/= scaling. Also, boots need an active. It's ever so disappointing when I have an item button I can't use. XD
Ahristocats1 votesyea no
if i can still kill the carry with old ali damage without items i'm fine with it.
Ariel the Cruel2 votesItems =/= scaling.
Ghosts, ZZ'Rot, Banner, Crucible, Locket, Shurelia, Censor, etc. I like being able to buy items. It is a fundamental component of the game. I never asked for the scaling catastrophe they implemented.
KONO RUBICK DA1 votesthen all you had to do is to put support dedicated items like in dota 2, where its price is reduced to hell, for example you could make shurelia costs 1000 gold, gut its stats and keep the active
same for the other items.
Ariel the Cruel2 votesYou couldn't do that in the warding meta though. You ONLY built boots and wards; with the rare exception when you completely stomped the other team (then you might buy Shurilia's).
I'm all for support items with shit stats. But they wouldn't have made a difference back then.
KONO RUBICK DA1 votesyou couldn't do that because the items were too expensive, you could buy items that cost 1000 gold easily like heart of gold or P-stone.
none would get it because of the shit stats, and supports didn't need stats, what you're saying is that you like supports now because they have active items.
beside, when a game lasted 50 min, i often had supports with omen or stark's fervor. It's really sad that riot didn't take this way, balancing supports around having no items was better, One of the complain that sona's player are making is that you need a lot of AP to be good.
Ariel the Cruel1 votesnone would get it because of the shit stats, and supports didn't need stats, what you're saying is that you like supports now because they have active items.
You didn't generally buy items because warding took all of your gold and item slots. No matter how long the game took, warding and de-warding consumed all your gold income. The exception being when you stomped the other team and they weren't able to de-ward. That's what I don't miss. Having a flexible inventory of items I can pull from beyond "ward bitch" is a good thing and improved the roll overall.
However, I have long called "support scaling" a miserable failure.
One of the complain that sona's player are making is that you need a lot of AP to be good.
Even before they made that change, support scaling was a problem. But there was a brief period where support scaling did work. Right after the conversion, when all the support items had only moderately sub-par stats. Except then mages used them, and completely banished all supports from existence (excluding Janna - resilient bastard that she is XD ).
What Riot really needs to do is reevaluate the support dynamic as a whole. But that would require very significant changes and likely couldn't be done outside of pre-season (if at all).
Best princess EU1 votes[{quoted}](name=Ariel the Cruel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pbix6i7k,comment-id=000900000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-16T17:08:38.134+0000)
You didn't generally buy items because warding took all of your gold and item slots. No matter how long the game took, warding and de-warding consumed all your gold income. The exception being when you stomped the other team and they weren't able to de-ward. That's what I don't miss. Having a flexible inventory of items I can pull from beyond "ward bitch" is a good thing and improved the roll overall.
However, I have long called "support scaling" a miserable failure.
warding took all your slots? where you buying 50 wards or what? you generally bought 3 wards per back and 10 wards used to take 1 slot, that didn't prevented you to buy gp10 items and some cheap items.
in fact, he was right, if the game was going to have a long duration with your gp10 items and normal income you would ended buying items anyway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWtm0de-7Pg look at 53.15 morgana items
don't forget that in high elo players where helping supports by buying 1 ward which made 5 wards on the map.
[{quoted}](name=Ariel the Cruel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pbix6i7k,comment-id=000900000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-16T17:08:38.134+0000)
Even before they made that change, support scaling was a problem. But there was a brief period where support scaling did work. Right after the conversion, when all the support items had only moderately sub-par stats. Except then mages used them, and completely banished all supports from existence (excluding Janna - resilient bastard that she is XD ).
What Riot really needs to do is reevaluate the support dynamic as a whole. But that would require very significant changes and likely couldn't be done outside of pre-season (if at all).
so you realised why supports can't scale? unless riot massively gives supports gold (like making their income as much as a carry or mid laner) their items will always be abused.
Knoyle7 votesRelevant or useless fits better.
Hahahahyena7 votesfamine or had a snack (they never really feast)
Linna Excel6 votesWhich support are you talking about? Some like Annie always stay relevant. You could also have a blitz feed 12 times in laning but make a clutch pull to win you a team fight 30 minutes in.
Hahahahyena6 votesmostly ally utility/tank supports such as 
(there are more but these ones come to mind) as soon as they start to fall behind in either gold or exp they start to famine because they just turn into easy prime targets to kill since their whole nature is to either be full utility or be tanky and if they start to famine their tankiness falls short and their utility becomes lack luster and both their team and themselves feel the pain
flibitydoo22 votesalistar will always be tanky with his ult (in fact that's kinda the reason he still sees competitive play). And his cc is pretty valuable and will be the same regardless of "fed".
bard ult (and stun) is a gamechanger and is valuable regardless of how far ahead/behind he is.
braum is probably a bit squishier if behind, but he still get's good damage mitigation (I think it's 30%?) with unbreakable (and of course the 100% immunity on the first hit), and his peel with ult/q/wall is pretty solid regardless of "how fed"
janna is at never going to exceed more than 150 ap even when ahead, and getting that much ap is not mandatory. The worst you can be "behind" by with this champ is not having an aegis (which is a dirt cheap 1500 gold item). This champion is going to "win for her team" the same if she's ahead or not.
Leona has 3 excellent cc effects that don't scale at all (and are the whole reason you play her), the only way she falls behind is in tankiness, but even then, the idea is you stun the squishies and they die, if the squishy is still alive at the end of the cc chain, it's your carry's fault for not doing damage
Taric could literally have his q and E deleted from the game (not replaced, but just straight up "gone", unusable) and he would still swing teamfights with W and ult.
tahm is picked because his W is insane at saving lives. And he's up there with braum/alistar for just having strong inherent tankiness that isn't item-dependant. His W makes him a unique pick and again, just like bard ult, is completely non-level/item dependant.
Sona is probably the only support where being behind feels useless. Her best build (according to champion.gg) is actually an offensive harass build with little utility (with item's like luden's/lichbane). But that's because her rework sucks and also because her design as a champion (namely the mechanics of Q and how it harasses people pre-heimerdinger-rework with the rockets) makes her kit a lot more gimped than what it should be (and this terrible kit gimping exists in other places too, like in Olaf and with his ult). She still has an aoe stun which can swing games.
Soraka , just like Janna doesn't need ap to be good. Her most popular build on champion.gg is the really dumb warmogs tank build (which has NO ap), but if you build her as a dedicated support (aka just follow the recommended build guide, which just like janna, doesn't exceed about 100 ap, and again having ap isn't mandatory), at no point does your healing really suck if you play her well (as in not-dying every teamfight).
Thresh is in the same spot Leona/tahm is in; dark passage is unique and will always keep him relevant the same way tahm kench devour is unique, his engage is probably the best out of all supports too (although one could argue bard ult is superior as initiation).
and even though you didn't list'em
Nami, is actually pretty cc heavy if you look at her. Aqua prison, tidal wave and tidecaller's blessing are all cc effects that are valued for their cc. Her heal is the only thing that scales (haha pun), and for the most part, it's not super important beyond pushing a carry just out of lethal range from an exhausted assassin before you cc them
Lulu ult and w are why she sees so much play at the competitive level, the importance of these abiltiies doesn't change with gold
Zyra, Brand, Vel'koz and Annie are champs I'm clumping together- they're all picked for base damage, they can all 100-0 without items. That's why they see support play in the first place. Because they don't need items, or levels.
Karma is a bit more item dependant than most supports, but quite often the winning move is spamming inspire on your carry for the movespeed/shields than mantra-soul flaring the enemy.
Morgana binding and blackshield are why she is picked, binding is all about the 3 second root, blackshield for the cc immunity. Having more ap might help blackshield, but typically the shield is used to counter enemy support cc which won't pop the blackshield.
nunu isn't really balanced by Riot as a true support, neither is poppy or shen or Taliyah or Sion or Teemo or Heimerdinger or Nidalee. I wouldn't really put any of them in the traditional support list.
nautilus is picked for his cc. even when behind his ult is still "guaranteed knock up on adc for 1 second", and he's got pretty reliable engage thanks to the wideness of his hook. Also not really a sponsored support champ afaik.
Zilean has a huge aoe stun (which is the glorious part of picking him support nowadays), and the base value on chronoshift is huge and will practically always revive the player with more health than guardian angel.
I haven't really seen much of veigar support, or his new kit so I can't comment on it. I will say however, his stun is pretty strong (even when not support), in that, the ring lasts for 3 seconds which means you can't walk forward for 3 seconds (or get stunned) which is a very big deal in teamfights. And again, he's not really a traditional support, I'd clump him with poppy/nunu.
Of course if your teammates are behind, typically you will also feel behind as a support. But the issue there is perhaps your carry or assassin not dealing enough damage (since you aren't expected to carry the fight). But supports themselves are designed to be fairly item and level independent. It's why they don't last hit in the laning phase. It's why they have to split xp with the adc (or roam, which is very bad for leveling up). It's why they are often expected to give kills to teammates. You can do all of that as a support and still swing teamfights. It's just how their kits work. I honestly think OP is saying the most dumbest thing as pretty much all supports can be relevant even when behind, since it has kind of their design to work well without gold/levels (and it's also why I love playing supports, cause it's actually really easy to stay relevant; all you need to do is make good plays in the moment). Out of all 5 champion roles, they are hands down the least feast or famine role there is, the only time they are irrelevant is if their teammates are immensely behind or just plain dead.
Pika Fox9 votesId love to see a leona without HP do anything in a teamfight, other than E in and die. Hell, likely even die before E lands, because the enemy ADC with armor shred out the ass started smacking her, negating her W, and the ADC's team zoned the leona off.
Yes, you will always have your utility as a support, but most supports when truly behind dont get real access to their utility due to not being able to survive long enough to use it. Also, if the support is behind, the ADC is generally behind, and often the team as well, making the issue far worse than just "woe is me, im a support without items".
ImmortalBloodCY1 votesYou dont much about Support role do you?
Pika Fox1 votesI mained support before i swapped to top (because everyone i know plays support -.-)
Leo has inbuild armor, but lacks HP to back it up. Resistances are only so effective. If you have 500 AR, but only 1500 HP, youre going to die, and fast.
While leona may get free armor, shes behind, which means (generally) the enemy ADC is ahead. Which means, generally, your biggest threat in a teamfight is better able to kill you before you or your team can do anything about it.
Leona's best job is as an initiator. When behind, you cant really go on the enemy ADC (assuming they dont misposition horribly), as youll be outside team support range and deep within the enemy team. If you dont CC the ADC though, you will die before you are of much use to your team.
Someone whos job it is to soak damage and supply CC dying in seconds simply isnt able to do much for their team.
ImmortalBloodCY2 votesEven if the supports are behind in terms of gold/items they are by no means useless.
Even if the Leona dives in and CC's the enemy as long as their ally keep staying far away she will die. You cant just dive in as a Leona as you want when your allies are always far away (yes they are not always right next to you).
Pika Fox1 votesEven if they are right next to you, you cant dive in if youre behind is the point. E puts you out of range for support, and you need to CC the ADC when youre behind if you want to initiate at all, because youll instantly die if you dont, and the rest of the enemy team is likely to not die before you.
macromite1 votesso, what that means is you may understand support, but you don't understand tanking at all. you don't know what is needed, what things need to be achieved, what targets you are trying to aim cc at, how to protect backline, or even how to initiate. with all your posts, you could not have made that clearer.
Please, go back to playing fighters or whatever you like, you clearly don't have the mindset for tanks.
Pika Fox1 votesI know exactly how tanks work; you dont comprehend that an MF/Lucian with youmuus/cleaver is going to kill you in under 5 seconds in a teamfight if you dont have the HP to back it up.
So if you dont initiate on them, youre dead before you get your combo off. If you do initiate on them, you get peeled and die. And its not like your team is magically going to have someone to initiate when you have an irelia top and xin jungle; neither are tanky enough to really initiate.
macromite1 votesyup, this post here exemplifies your stupidity. not even gonna try to explain, you probably need more time to figure it out on your own.
I'm done here. Come back when you've realized your major flaw in reasoning.
macromite2 votesi mean, leo doesn't need a lot of hp. just the sightstone is enough to survive to a full combo do to the nature of her resistance steroid.
she just needs to not be the only tank, and then she's golden.
Pika Fox2 votesADCs have been building cleaver/youmuus lately. Resist steroids dont hold up without HP to go with them, especially when dealing with shred.
And this isnt an issue of what ADCs are building, the build path is fine, the issue is a support that is slightly behind often falls much farther behind due to lack of gold options.
Especially the AP support item, since last i checked it doesnt even generate passive gold, and if youre behind you cant really play offensive to get the gold access.
macromite1 votessightstone gives hp, the support item gives hp.
and with leo only needing to get in for a short time to pull a full combo, it's not super hard to do with just that by teamfight.
I think you're over thinking bad things a bit. leo even when behind has enough opportunities to generate gold, this is because she does infact have a way to hit them at range, though it's inefficient, but it means there is a fallback pattern.
and also like my main point, leo isn't a main tank. she is a secondary initiator, that is the nature of her combo and her role, she goes in after a main initiate, because she won't ever have enough gold to be the primary initiate.
so long as you utilize her properly, just a few items is enough. hence why she is categorized as a support, she can work off of nearly 0 gold.
Mig893 votesIf you are that gold starved and dont have a single item of course you will die. theres a different between "feast or famine" and your team just fed to all hell and the enemy team is just outplaying you non stop
Pika Fox2 votesFamine means you are pretty gold starved. If you cannot afford to continue your build path, then you will fall off heavily as most supports. Even if you have utility, many supports, like leona, dont have true access to their utility, often because youre too squishy to do anything or to at least properly engage for your team.
doombotMECHA1 votesalso gold famine affects supports worst because they are the lowest farm priority and they don't start getting items for them until @ least a thousand+ gold
CppL1 votes[{quoted}](name=Pika Fox,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pbix6i7k,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2016-06-15T11:28:16.561+0000)
Id love to see a leona without HP do anything in a teamfight, other than E in and die. Hell, likely even die before E lands, because the enemy ADC with armor shred out the ass started smacking her, negating her W, and the ADC's team zoned the leona off.
Yes, you will always have your utility as a support, but most supports when truly behind dont get real access to their utility due to not being able to survive long enough to use it. Also, if the support is behind, the ADC is generally behind, and often the team as well, making the issue far worse than just "woe is me, im a support without items".
Well if support is behind and adc is behind ,it means they lost their lane ,and thats their problem.
Pika Fox3 votesADCs have the ability to get back into the game through farm, a lot of supports dont.
zlumpy1 votesSoraka , just like Janna doesn't need ap to be good. Her most popular build on champion.gg is the really dumb warmogs tank build (which has NO ap), but if you build her as a dedicated support (aka just follow the recommended build guide, which just like janna, doesn't exceed about 100 ap, and again having ap isn't mandatory), at no point does your healing really suck if you play her well
soraka warmogs is so she can walk out of a fight for 8 seconds and passive full heal. Then she comes back and spams more heals.
Supreme Senpai693 votesYou can just stay in the backline and spam heals. You don't have to walk away. You'll run out of mana before you run out of HP.
But your heals suck and you WILL run out of mana pretty quickly.
Wyrmblade5 votesIn my experience supports are famine or famine. Level 13 while everyone else is 16
Br4ndon4 votesOoh yeah definitely. Its one of the reasons ive stopped being a support main. When you have a bad match up, some bad luck or the bot lane is just better than you that means youre going to be 4-5k lower than the enemies support.
Swaid3 votesWhen I support, I usually run gold runes (Seals and Quintessences) on top of my support item to make sure I got some elbow room if things don't go well. With that, I can usually afford one major item and the Ward Stone all you ADCs are so anal about.
Micbran1 votesYou make it sound like wards aren't important. ;)
Swaid4 votesBack in my day, we didn't have no stinkin' wards to hold our hands; either you had an out, took a risk, or just said 'fuck it' and went ham anyway. We could get vision from runes in the river, but that was a random buff and out of them the sight one was the lamest. Not saying I don't use wards, but in the days of Warcraft 3, we didn't get much in terms of vision.
CasterGilgamesh1 votesinstead of 
why not 
and the putting gold in the support runes....idk why i didnt think of that
