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Lets have a serious discussion about supports.

apunasatapulobin·8/7/2015, 5:44:36 PM·4 votes·1,036 views

Because it seems to me that the support role is the least balanced of any role in LoL right now.

I mostly want to talk about 2 specific champions but I'll probably mention a couple others as well. The 2 champions I want to highlight are Blitzcrank and Sona.

First lets talk about Blitz. Hes a one-trick pony if I've ever seen one. He either lands a grab on a high priority target and automatically wins the team fight for his team or he misses and puts his team on the back-foot for the next 12-18 seconds. Or alternatively, he grabs a tank on accident which may or may not work out in his teams favor.

In lane, he if he grabs the enemy ADC even once you've pretty much lost lane. Almost 100% guaranteed both summoners are going to get burned which gives his lane a huge advantage and if he lands another grab within the next 5 minutes until flash is up again its pretty much a 100% guaranteed kill.

Now, maybe in Gold+ Elo Blitzcrank has some counterplay. People know how to work around his grab and use minions for cover; everyone is more aware of positioning and know how high the threat of a single grab actually is. But in Bronze/Silver elo, a good Blitz can literally solo carry insanely hard. I've noticed this mostly in mid-high Silver where I'm at (Silver II). Blitzcrank is an incredible threat with very few weaknesses. His grab comes out extremely fast, its on a fairly low CD (especially if you build CDR), and its honestly not that hard to land (especially early game against an immobile ADC like Jinx or Varus), hes naturally fairly tanky, hes fast, he has a knockup for extra CC and an AOE silence?! Lets compare him to Thresh (and yes I am aware how strong Thresh is in the support role, but hear me out). Early game Thresh and Blitz have the same cooldown on their Q but Blitzcranks Q is much more punishing; especially early. Later Thresh will have a lower CD, however, Thresh's hook (although punishing) is not a 100% guaranteed kill on any target, or an automatic win in any teamfight. His hooks have a windup, he's slower and has no MS steroid, and his hook comes out slower so its easier to avoid. Thresh is not naturally tanky, he has lower mobility unless he is skilled enough/lucky enough to find a way to use his hook to escape sticky situations. Thresh has a stronger ult than Blitz, but it has a delay on activation and is on a much higher cooldown. I would I would argue that Blitzcrank's ult is better at stopping a grabbed carry from escaping and Blitzcrank is substantially better overall at picking off a single target than Thresh. And he requires much less skill to play. His pick potential is simply too high and players that can't work around it (which isn't easy) are royally boned.

That being said, he hardly offers anything else to his team besides pick potential which is kind of stupid. Like I said, hes a one-trick pony and the only counterplay I can think of is to be good at dodging his grab and spell shields. I personally think his entire design is toxic and only fun for the person playing Blitzcrank and his team that gets a free win in every fight if hes good.

Now, on to Sona. She is garbage. There is literally no reason to pick Sona. Ever. Anything Sona can do, someone else can do better. She has good poke damage but so does Karma, Soraka, Nami, Lulu, Zyra, and Zilian. Her heal is garbage, her MS buff is garbage, and her ult, although useful, is still underwhelming. Any CC hits her and shes dead, which means roaming to ward is even more dangerous than it already is. I think her kit is actually quite fitting but she needs an overall boost to her numbers because she gets outclassed in every way except maybe poke damage but that's irrelevant when Leona E's onto her and she dies instantly or Blitz grabs her and she dies instantly, or Thresh hooks her ADC and she can't do anything to help unless shes 6 in which case she has to burn her ult.

She either needs to be reworked into something useful or get a huge buff to numbers. I'd argue she needs a major buff to her heal and her MS boost and she needs a minor buff to her ult (maybe give the stun a wider cast radius).

I'd like to have an intelligent discussion about these 2 champions and the Support role in general. Please feel free to disagree with anything I've said in a respectful and intelligent manner. I'd like to hear what changes people would like to see and if I'm alone in my line of thinking.

Thanks for reading.

21 Comments

Doc Robot8/7/2015, 5:56:12 PM2 votes

Blitz doesn't even necessarily have to land a hook to start an engagement, he just needs to catch someone out of position. Should he be changed? Absolutely not, IMHO. I think more supports should bring this level of stomp, actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtNOonQ1oE0

TraakSC8/7/2015, 5:58:22 PM1 votes

If you think every Bronze/Silver lands a grab... lol not even gonna waste time here. See ya nerd.

Lugg8/7/2015, 7:43:54 PM1 votes

Blitz's grab is a pretty toxic ability, but it's high risk/high reward. When you play Blitz you always have the chance to grab the wrong champion and that can lose a fight for your team. I also have to disagree that he is a 1 trick pony. His speed boost and knockup are very effective, not to mention the AoE silence and damage on his ult. The last nerf they did on him adding the slow helped balance him out pretty good. While he is strong, I'm not sure he is OP.

On Sona, some of the things I think she needs is for her heal aura to be bigger; and her MS aura bigger and longer lasting. Her poke is still very good and she can bully people in lane if you play her right. As for the ult, I agree that it wouldn't hurt for the width to be a little bigger.

As for the other supports: Bard ult cast time needs to be faster. It takes way too long to cast for an ability that is tough to use correctly in the first place. Either that, or let it finish casting once he starts even if he dies. Otherwise he is good.

Braum is in a good place now that they buffed his poke.

Janna probably needs a slight nerf. She is the strongest support because she can literally erase mistakes her team makes. Slight nerfs to her W speed and a slight nerf to her AD bonus on the shield would balance her out.

Lulu is very strong. The fact that you can play her in any lane supports that. She may actually need nerfs, but she is on the line.

The Nami buffs on the PBE right now are just what she needs. She will be solid.

Soraka is situational. Sometimes she is good, sometimes she is meh.

Tahm needs nerfs for his support role. If he uses Devour on an ally, the CD should be doubled. It is pretty much impossible to kill the ADC with a good Tahm support. His slow might be a little too OP as well.

Taric isn't necessarily bad, he is just not as viable as the other supports. He needs buffs/rework to be more impactful.

Thresh needs his damage nerfed for sure. He has WAY too much in his kit to justify having that high of damage as well.

Zilean needs the length of his E increased. It's too short to be that valuable. A lot of people didn't like his rework, but the zoning and stun were great additions IMHO.

Nautilus is strong, but his last nerf probably keeps him from being OP now.

Leona might need a slight nerf due to the huge amount of CC she has.

Alistar is strong but not OP.

Morgana is fine.

I think that covers the majority. Sorry for the wall of text, lots of viable supports right now.

Ravenhale8/7/2015, 7:56:06 PM1 votes

I'm sitting 5/9 with Sona presently (which is the most Normal games I have played with any champion). I compare that to 7/4 with Janna and 3/3 with Leona.

My Janna is fairly untouchable. Her Q is better for disengage than poke and the passive on her W is more valuable than the tiny poke she can get with it. Since she can't poke, she hangs back and spams E and Q as required.

Leona is an all-in sort that has the health, shield and stun to back living dangerously.

Sona... well... I like playing her but she has a rough kit to work with. Her E is fun to use returning to lane and placing wards. It can be used after her ult for a disengage, assuming she isn't already dead. It works a little like Sivir's Ult, so I don't have a whole lot of complaints about it. Her W is very weak. It's best use is in a group where she can shield multiple allies, since the heal by itself is not worth the mana. Sure, the heal is boosted by % missing health, but it just doesn't compare to Soraka healing. If they aren't in Aura range, it's a waste.

I guess my big problem is Sona's Q encourages poke. This would not be a big deal if Sona could actually break even on trades. She doesn't. I honestly feel like it takes champions longer to kill siege minions than it does to kill Sona. I know it's all about proper positioning, but there is almost zero wiggle room for error when poking with Sona. And if you neglect your poke, you should have picked Soraka or Janna.

I don't know how Sona can be buffed though. I fear if you help out her poke, she might be viable for mid (Q already prioritizes champions at 800 range which could easily become worse than Annie's point and click Q). If you buff her heal, you have a mid with decent sustain. If you buff her MS, you have another high mobility mid like Ahri.

I'm just chalking it up to a need to get better with her and that there's nothing wrong with her kit.

A Wild AP Sona8/7/2015, 8:41:23 PM1 votes

I have a better idea how about we unnerf some of her 32 consecutive nerfs that happened while she has 40% win rate in real elo/0% ban rate/0% pick rate in lcs?

her passive that was nerfed from 100% to 40% on a fucking whim becasue a silver rioter cant trade vs a champion that gets 1 shotted if you right click on her in silver elo?

how about having her q do more than 33 damage vs ppl at level 1? when blitzcrank does about 300-400 + burn flash if he grabs someone lvl 1?

lol @ sona being "overwhelming" when you can literally flash on her when she has 90% hp and kill her as some supports or adcs

how about dat 180-200hp poke from brand at lvl 1 because his passive? why the fuck you worried about sonas old 50 damage poke at lvl 1?

riot games can go eat a dick for buffing gamebreaking thresh/leona/blitz/naut that basically autowin lane vs anybody and give no compensation buffs for sona at same time

these 4 champion are fucking invincible the first 15 minutes of the game if you run defense masteries with armor marks/quints (63 armor level 1 with 700+ hp) why the fuck are we giving them MORE armor?

Penguin Eclipse8/8/2015, 1:43:19 AM1 votes

Riot has done a good job basically killing traditional healing supports in bottom lane. None of the sustain supports are in that good of shape right now with the exception of Alistar. And it's not because of his sustain.

Why play Soraka or Sona when you can play a tanky support who can heal for free (using relic shield) and has far more useful stats/abilities in the current meta? There are very few cases where they are better for your team than Thresh, Braum, Leona, or Naut.

And before someone says Nami is strong, no, she's really not. She does not work near as well in the current meta as some of her support peers.

Zmuecat8/8/2015, 2:28:51 AM1 votes

The support role is divided into three sub-roles. Sustain, poke, and tank which operate in a rock, paper, scissors system (in general, sustain beats poke, poke beats tank, and tank beats sustain at least in the laning phase). The big thing about supports is that they ones designed to be there all a solid base amount of CC and damage without scaling great. I bring that up because the support role right now has a huge favoring towards the tank line up, which gives us problems which a lot of people bring up frequently on the forums. I believe that after the introduction of the gold generation items, as well as utility scaling, caused this problem, moreso the utility scaling that was introduced way back when.

Utility scaling offered supports who were given a new source of gold a means of scaling, at the cost of lowered bases for their utility. This is great on paper because when this was introduced, supports were spending money pretty much only wards, but after the introduction of Sightstone and the implementation of three greens, one pink per player, supports were now rolling in all the gold (compared to before at least). In practice, it didn't work out.

Utility scaling operated on AP and only AP. This was, and still is, a problem. Why? Because the ratios given to the abilities with utility scaling were either too low to invest AP into, or too high and could see more distance with the support going to mid lane or top lane. When Sona, Soraka, Lulu, and other sustain/poke supports left bottom lane to take advantage of this, they were nerfed soon after because of how they worked in lane.

They had a strong lane phase, and their scalings meant that, while they didn't deal massive damage, they still contributed a lot to the game. In lane they were easily able to poke and out sustain most champions while keeping up and eventually surpassing their opposition, shutting a lot of people out of lane. Riot deemed this toxic, and hit the sustain/poke supports with reworks and/or nerfs to various parts of their kits. Some champions suffered damage nerfs, how their spells works (Lulu shielding minions), scaling, or all of them.

Meanwhile, tank supports operated like tanks, and because tanks don't really need huge amounts of gold and their items are solid, they performed their role very well in bot lane. Outside of item changes, most tank supports (I believe) were barely touched, at least in comparison to poke/sustain supports. Once poke/sustain supports were either nerfed to get out of lane or just pressured out due to a different meta, they all returned to bot lane. By this time, utility mages from mid started coming down to bot lane. The real supports never left completely, but now they were pretty much forced back into the lane outside of neat picks versus certain champs.

Because they came back nerfed and they came back playing against mages that had higher burst and damage scaling, while having utility that was still impactful enough, as well as tanks who were able to do initiate on them no problem due to not only their squishyness but also less powerful poke/spells. They could still function, but they were at a disadvantage, especially with champions like Thresh coming in with strong kits. Mages have been changed slightly so they aren't as powerful in bot lane, but they are still there.

Why did I type that all out? Because I feel like utility scaling needs to be removed from supports. Things like movement speed and slows scaling from AP makes it so any support who can invest AP into that a utility scaling will always be either too strong which translates to them going to other lanes where they can get more gold and more AP, or too weak which translates into them going full support, not taking any (or not aiming to take any) AP because there's not point into investing into it, which means they are weaker.

Pretty much, utility ratios need to go or reworked. If Riot removed these ratios, they would be able to change sustain/poke supports so that they can be more effective bot lane without them going to a solo lane. They would have set utilities that would allow for proper changes which could end the staleness that is bot lane (it's pretty much all tanks, Janna and Morg)

If poke supports become strong enough to start pushing out tanks more frequently, you'll start seeing more sustain supports taken to heal/prevent the damage poke supports do. If poke supports become stronger, Sona can start to shine because of how her kit works (heavy poke, some health sustain, poor mana sustain). If poke supports became stronger, Janna gets pushed out because she is played a lot when there's tanks everywhere to counter engage.

And if poke supports become strong, you'll start to see sustain supports start to appear more to counter them. If then sustain is too strong, tanks come back because they can just initiate on them because they can't sustain while they are dieing (unless overtuned).

TL;DR: Utility scaling sucks, get rid of all of it and rebalance poke and sustain supports properly.

Just Blame Jenny8/8/2015, 10:29:26 AM1 votes

Am I missing something? Sure, I'm not the most experienced player here, but I play Sona a lot and feel she's in a fine spot. Most of the players I see doing badly with her either seem not to understand her role as a lane bully, or fail at bullying due to poor positioning.

Here is my presonal 13 step guide to winning lane as Sona. Yes, that's a lot of steps. Yes, most of this is just LoL 101 type stuff. But it's the people that don't grasp the basics that seem to fail hard as Sona, in my experience.

  1. Always enter your lane with a power chord lined up. Hit the enemy ADC with it early to secure the advantage.
  2. Do start with spellthief's edge. Yes. It's worth it. No, it doesn't scale as well as ancient coin does late game, but your goal as Sona is to secure the early game, not the late game. (Caveat: if you're up against a long-ranged ADC with trading potential, such as Caitlyn, or a hard-engage support, such as Leona, you may wish to take the coin instead.)
  3. Because of #2, Sona loves hyper carries. I find she works reasonably well with most ADCs, but she really loves hypercarries. I've had a lot of success with Vayne/Sona bot lane.
  4. Don't try to poke unless the enemy ADC is going for a minion. You don't want to trade damage for damage. You want to trade cs for damage. (Caveat #1: if you're noteably ahead in lane, then go ahead; you can trade damage for damage.) (Caveat #2: if you've a minion wave to hide behind, and your opponent can only trade back with an AA, then feel free to trade all day and hard. Make him miserable.)
  5. Remember that your q increases the damage of you and your allies as well. Always follow up your q with an AA. If you and your ADC are both planning to trade, ensure your q precedes their AA as well.
  6. Against an engage comp, always hide behind your minions. The minions are your allies. When you have a lot of minions on your side, poke aggressively. When you don't, play defensively; the enemy only wins engages if he engages you when you've no minions to back you up.
  7. If the enemy does engage when you've plenty of minions on your side, fight him. Even if you die, you'll probably secure your ADC at least one kill. At worst, you'll likely go even. At best, you'll come out ahead. Either way, it's important to establish yourself as an actual threat to the enemy team. Remember, you are the lane bully. You shouldn't fear the enemy team. They should fear you.
  8. If the enemy engages you when you're in a bad position, don't be a pussy! Hit them back at least once. Even if just with an AA.
  9. If the enemy hits your ADC, hit the enemy ADC. No, don't target the bloody support. You want to force the ADC to back, not the enemy support.
  10. Your w sustain is great early game. Use it. Just don't overuse it; it's expensive. Ideally, use it as the enemy is trying to trade, not before or after. It's far more efficient to take advantage of the shield as well.
  11. Your power chord stacatto is great, but did you know your w and e skills have power chord procs as well? I say this tongue in cheek, but really, a lot of players seem to underuse them. W can significantly mitigate an enemy's burst. E can do wonders to peel, which is a godsend when an enemy is trying to gank.
  12. Speaking of power chords, remember how I said always to enter lane with it queued up? Always have it queued when the enemy seems to be planning an engage as well. Feel free to "waste" a w cast for a flat heal to ramp your chord quickly, if you have to. Occasionally, I also do this with e, though that's certainly a less ideal case.
  13. Once you hit level six, you are a god in your lane. Crescendo will single-handedly win you fights. Moreover, no, flash-crescendo is not quite as scary as, say, a flash-tibbers, but it comes pretty close when your ADC is prepared to follow up.

In short: I find that a decent Sona has plenty of tools to win her lane. No, she doesn't excel in any one area, but her kit is flexible enough to handle almost any situation. Which leaves the question, "what should I do mid to late game?"

I've seen a lot of discussion as to whether Sona should build pure utility, or pure AP. As for myself, where do I fall? Honestly, it depends.

If you're fed (and you often will be), then build pure AP and win your lane hard. Buy boots of mobility (or swiftness -- against some comps), roam, and snowball other lanes. Crescendo is great for ganking. You know what else is surprisingly good for ganking? Power chord e. Just ensure your ally engages first. You want to bait the enemy into a vulnerable position and ensure he sticks there. Yes, this does take more communication than, say, q-e'ing your gank target as Leona, but it works every bit as well.

If you're not fed, go pure utility -- but also ensure you've maximized your CDR. You want to proc your auras and, even more importantly, your crescendos as much as possible. As Sona, a good crescendo will flat out win you a team fight with decent followup. You don't have to also do damage to win! Damage is, honestly, only icing on the cake.