Everyone likes a good Support. No-one wants to be one.

First, credit for this idea goes to Cynicatt. May all of those A+ games be proof that Riot needs to change things.

Ok, so, we've all had that bomb-ass Taric or Karma or Lulu or Thresh take a team or just a single player that was about to be dominated and completely turn things around and pull through with everyone alive, or even a stack of team kills. And we all know that even tho the adc and the mage were pounding away, it was because of the actions of that support that the teamfight actually worked. And yet none of this HUGELY useful play is actually counted by Riot. It's just smooshed into the assists tab, which for all intents and purposes can be achieved by dealing literally 1 damage or healing an ally for 1 hp. And as a result the support can feel momentary satisfaction, but it doesn't last, and when the mastery grading comes out for the game, its lost in a haze of that 25/2/5 Zed getting an S+....again. And getting an A- when you should have easily gotten an S if the game counted these "livesaver" moments. Think of Overwatch when some random gets POTG because of that little "lifesaver" tag coming up when you kill an enemy about to kill an ally at 2 hp. Except its 4 people and u press R on taric.

Anyway. The initial concept is this. Phantom Dancer currently has some sort of code or w/e that will keep a count of how many times you would have died had you not purchased it. And while its sorta off, this is still a super cool stat to have. I can't imagine its much more than simple math and "Would their old hp be negative" or w/e. SO. Why can't this same bit of code be applied every time someone gets shielded or healed right before they were about to die? And why can’t people playing supports get a little buff icon of sorts, similar to how Cait, Jinx, and Vi interact, telling them how many people they’ve saved? And why can’t this little stat be included in the final mastery calculation? The way I see it this solves three problems at once. One: Playing support doesn’t feel…rewarding, most of the time. It’s like tagging along, working at half mast, not getting the full joy of playing and winning. Having even this small thing, and a big “You saved everyone X times” in your buffs bar would be a step towards fixing that. Two: Riot have admitted that support scoring is up and down and they’re trying to fix it so its more standardized. This tied into the above point because again, supports are usually sort of there in the game. And for most people this would be that little push that gets them those sweet S ranks for Mastery 6 and 7 (and maybe more in the future?)

Three: Queue times. Everyone notices it. Everyone doesn’t like it. Everyone knows that support is usually the last spot to fill. If you add incentives to play support more, then queue times for everyone drops. And this can be more than just a lifesaver medal. Let’s say you get, idk, 150 Lives Saved. This would unlock for you a special ward that can’t be bought, to show off your accomplishments. Again, the aim is to reduce queue times and make those playing support happier.

For those of you too lazy to read. Tl;dr – Apply the “Deaths avoided” mechanic from Phantom Dancer to all supports to make the support role more enjoyable and make getting S’s on them a bit better.

Thanks for reading if you read it all again.