Hate on Control Mage Support

Hazmat769·8/3/2016, 3:41:44 AM·1 votes·1,375 views

control mages, liss, syndra, taliyah, and technicaly xerath, always get hate when they go support. i never really understood why. people always give me stupid reasons like, " they're mid lane not support", or " the ammount of cc doesnt matter they cant support." i find this to be BS. i under stand with xerath, his stun isnt the most reliable, not much range and somewhat difficult to hit when in bot lane, however champs like lissandra has insane utility in every one of her skills and syndra has a W slow a QE stun which is a great stun and her E alone is a basic "get away from my adc" spell.

so why do people hate these supports so much.

I need an intelligent support main to explain why control mages cant be good supports, and if control mages cant be supports than explain mog and lux

3 Comments

TheUltimateSpear8/3/2016, 10:01:37 PM2 votes

Depends. Some control mages are considered competent support picks because of their CC. But lot's of mages have CC. The mages you see bot have CC AND can function with low gold income. has his passive which gives him a lot of damage without having to build AP, Velkoz is the same with his passive too. Zyra does more damage with magic pen then straight AP due to her high base damage and shit scalings.

If you take a Xerath, for example bot, he's not going to do much because he doesn't have the high base damage these other mages do, and she's gold reliant to stay relevant.

Or at least that's the theory. But honestly? Zyra support was a troll pick and unviable until some "pro" did it. Morgana support was a joke until someone did it. Annie and Brand support were jokes until someone started playing them.

For all anybody knows the control mages you listed are just as good as the other "suppport" control mages we see bot lane. So play whoever you want, you might come across something really good. And you can't be punished just for picking something "off-meta"

Apocalypsic8/3/2016, 3:58:29 AM1 votes

Lux usually doesn't work too well as a support. If you want a control mage of their caliber, pick morg. I believe her base damages and CC is greater than lux. Lux has to scale quite heavily unless you happen to maybe get a lead early.

67chrome8/3/2016, 6:48:51 AM1 votes

so why do people hate these supports so much.

Hatred is a pretty subjective thing, which makes it difficult to pin down to any objective reasons. Maybe someone hates such picks because they aren't meta, maybe they hate them because they got food-poisoning while watching a magician and loath mages with every fiber of their being. You never know.

As for the downsides of picking a control mage over a support: most control mages require more gold to function at the same level of efficiency as a true support, and supports gain the least gold/xp of any lane position in the game.

In the case of mages like Annie, Lux, and Xerath this is a result of them having ~half the utility of a support and needing to deal meaningful damage to make up for the difference, and itemizing for meaningful damage is expensive. In the case of mages like Lissandra and Morgana: the utility is on-par with a support, but there's a much greater risk involved in actually using it effectively, and itemizing for solid defenses and survivability is expensive.

Compared to a support like Thresh, Janna, or Alistar: control mages require more gold to do the same thing, which means they do it less efficiently. Not a huge deal in yoloqueue, but when tryhard mode is engaged: efficiency is paramount, being the most efficient player can frequently mean being the best player.