@Meddler If you want to improve the Support Role, give us a Control Ward Trinket!

Lord Desert·Nov 14, 2016·7 votes·539 views

Having all these new and cheap items to play with is nice, but if you only have 5 slots and with the needed sightstone and boots we are down to 3 "free" slots(or 2 if we pick the Supitem and not the combined Sightstone) and that is not good! So granting us the blessing of having 6 itemsslots like every other class would be wonderfull!

And we are alot of guys/girls, so if you want some new/crazy ideas, just ask! Im always happy to help to improve LoL.

20 Comments

theArtifactsNov 14, 20161 votes

Not sure I support a control ward trinket cause that essentially removes the need for a sweeper however an item slot for a control ward would be great cause you can still purchase them late game.

Lord DesertNov 14, 20161 votes

The Control Ward is only stationary, and the area you can clear with sweeper is pretty huge! So it should be a worthy trade off. And the Control Ward Trinket should have a realy long recharge time and can only store 1 Ward at the time!

There was a pinkt ward trinket in season 5, but i never understood why they removed that : / This one here: item 3362 (search for trinket in the item icon tab)

DolasaurNov 15, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord Desert,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=tM9Wszus,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-11-14T20:58:04.626+0000)

There was a pinkt ward trinket in season 5, but i never understood why they removed that : / This one here: (search for trinket in the item icon tab)

Riot paraphrase: "It sucks that you can hard counter invisibility with a trinket. So we're removing that, and seeing how it affects Akali and Vayne and Twitch. Right now, we gave them extra power because we have to balance around the assumption that they'll get pink warded most of the time." Same thing with the Oracle's Lens no longer making stealthed champs targetable.

Now that they've done their stealth revision, I could potentially see this coming back. But... it would come with massive Teemo buffs ;)

Lord DesertNov 15, 20161 votes

The Control Ward cannot detect teemo, you know :D So hopefully we can get the current version of that trinket!

DolasaurNov 15, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord Desert,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=tM9Wszus,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2016-11-15T00:26:03.974+0000)

The Control Ward cannot detect teemo, you know :D So hopefully we can get the current version of that trinket!

It can't detect Teemo. But it does deactivate his shrooms (as part of the invisible trap and ward disabling), I think. It won't be as painful as oracle's in ARAM, but it would still hurt a lot.

Honestly, if the enemy team found invisible Teemo with a pink ward in previous seasons, props to them. I probably deserved to die anyway, lol.

Lord DesertNov 15, 20161 votes

But it has a pretty high cooldown and you only can store 1 ward at the time, so i dont think its that bad. Sweeper on the othersite is mobile and deactivates them in a huge area! If i would look for shrooms i would pick sweeper over the control trinket xD So i dont think teemo is in for a buff with the trinket, sorry :D

AptestNov 14, 20161 votes

The core problem of the support role is that is lacks agency.

Specifically, there is a lot of "power" that is gated behind the willing and skillful participation of another player. I.e. the other player makes the decisions. Additionally, while there are a bunch of fun things to do each game, a lot of them take a back seat to the need of protecting a team mate.

the agency of a support player is lacking because the awesome things he can do can't be realized without the other players, he lacks awesome things to do without the other player, and the opportunities to do awesome things are locked behind the need to be with the other player.

also, item actives are boring. Shield, heal, shield and heal, remove CC (for another player). Where's the really cool stuff?

Lord DesertNov 14, 20161 votes

The thing is, what is the most cool stuff? Blowing up everything, 1v5ing, outplaying etc. The sup role is there to mainly sup the team, not to blow everything up. So we need to make the "teamsupporting" more impactfull!

Items can help, but if we give items to much power, laners will use them. So those items need to be restricted (like item 3109 ) but its pretty hard to make it feel impactfull and balanced. The other thing are champion kits, like braum or tahm, who have abilitys which do an excellent job at supporting.

If the Champion, who is played as Sup, can do everything on their own, then why is he not played on a solo lane? if a sup kench can 1v5, why not play him top and carry 1v9?

So if you have an idea for "cool stuff" which doesnt make a high income guy OP, but is still "cool" on a low income sup, then feel free to tell me!

AptestNov 14, 20161 votes

So we need to make the "teamsupporting" more impactfull!

no. this is another form of "power with no agency". Which is bad. Power gated by the other players is bad, because you have to get it but the game becomes less fun when you do.

the job of the guy with no gold should not always be "to support". lets start with that. if we need to change the name of the role, that's fine. we don't have to call the 5th role "support". We can call it "poor guy" instead.

So if you have an idea for "cool stuff" which doesnt make a high income guy OP

i can take any of the cool items in the game and make them into items which suck for high income guy. All I have to do is delete the stats from the item.

for instance: support version of Protobelt: 100 HP, 10 AP. no missile nova on the active. Pure mobility item with zero stats. who buys it now?

but, let's play along a little bit:

Draftsman's scimitar: 10 AD, 10 AP. active: draw a line (vector cast). After a brief 1 second delay, no champion may dash through the line. Champions with movement speed buffs have them removed for 1 second.

Lord DesertNov 14, 20161 votes

If i get you right, you would rather have impactfull item activs instead of slotefficency, right? Lets keep the flat stats out for now, because they can always be tweaked.

I like your idea, but we need to keep in mind that those items are more specific vs certain Champs/mechanics and riot doesnt like that so much(Qss etc.). So we need to make them rather general, but keeping the impact still relevant to justify the lost slotefficeny. Puh thats a dance on the edge of a blade, my friend. oh and we cant have to many Combat Item Actives, because the keys are limited. (From expirence, you should never have to keep more then 2 (max 3.) "combat" item activs in mind/need to use, because then the complexity skyrockets! Especialy in a moba/high reaction game)

AptestNov 15, 20161 votes

impactful is not enough. it is important that the power is not gated by your allies. I.E.

not a shield not a heal not a buff not a save

Lord DesertNov 15, 20161 votes

ok, so those items should be utility/play making focused, but not just a simple stats boost to allies(heal etc) rather then an extra ability for yourself? Does that sound better to you as a definition of our goal? maybe you can come up with a better definition

An extra ability on an item, wit low stats/low costs, that should not directly influence allies, is even more troublesome in terms of balance xD Alot of champions would happily sacrefice an item slot to counter their kits weaknesses!

AptestNov 15, 20161 votes

Alot of champions would happily sacrefice an item slot to counter their kits weaknesses!

Lets do a small thought experiment.

popular item today: item 3152

it has 300 HP 60 AP 10 CDR the missile nova, and the dash.

let's make it 150 HP 10 AP 0 CDR no nova only dash.

Do you think Annie still wants it?

Lord DesertNov 15, 20161 votes

depends on the dash range, but i would say no for annie in this case(if the range stays about the same). But Juggernauts like darius, garen, mordekaiser would love this item if it cost less then 1000 gold or so. They will later sell that and get a real item, but in the meantime they fixed their inital Kit problem and will must likely abuse that so they get kills easier for example. That is my concern.

if its to cheap, the Activ can not be impactfull, but if we give it to many stats and thus increase the price the supps might not be able to affort that. I think Items with actives should be atleast around 1500G to 2000G, anything lower than that is to cheap for a meaningfull activ :/

Lord DesertNov 18, 20161 votes

I have got some new infos that migth affect this: Deathfire touch was only used by 1% of those who bougth it.

So InCombat Actives are even more trickier, but making the items basicly a total waste of gold should force them to use them more. OutOfCombat Actives and ability altering stuff (like relais) are not so "complete waste of gold, cause i forgot to us them".

And do you have some other ideas too? can be crazy as hell and we can then tone it to a balanced state :P

AptestNov 19, 20161 votes

I've seen this number. frankly I find it highly suspicious. Someone pulled it out of ass and it definitely did not come from the game.

however Face of mountain and locket of iron solari actives is only used by about 30% of purchasers. I very rarely see them popped in high bronze -

but in mid silver we observe constant usage.

Having played in the DFG era my "small sample observation" is telling me DFG active was used by 60-70% of the players that purchased it. This is in high bronze.

DoomyousNov 14, 20161 votes

i think theres a lot of cool stuff already out there! But it mostly depends on the champion not on the items! Like TahmKench , Bard , Blitzcrank , Braum , Karma , Lulu and many more! [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

AptestNov 15, 20161 votes

[zombie-brand-facepalm] well.

here are facts: too many people dislike playing the role. To such an extent that queues are taking too long (from riot's perspective).

the idea that everything is fine and dandy does not settle with the situation on the ground.

FourVsFiveNov 14, 20161 votes

What if upgraded sightstone gave a special slot for control wards? Would it be too good that others would be doing it on team? Unless you limit it to only 1 person on team can own a sight stone, but lee sin ward hoping may want one.

Lord DesertNov 14, 20161 votes

Do you mean, that you get an extra slot for Control Wards only, if you upgrade a sightstone?