There is a huge discussion around the new support items. Some claim its a huge buff, others say its the complete opposite. So what is it? Lets check the changes and the facts! (There is a TL;DR: at the end...)

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                               #**Arguments:**

Pros:

• save 1400g because of the free upgrade
• 1st item earlier

Cons:

• worse overall stats
• weaker early
• loss of passive
• complete loss of goldincome after Tier3 upgrade
• worse gold generation

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Item stat changes

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Lets look at the stat changes in detail:

#Tier 1 Relic line: /

• raw stats 50g more gold efficent
• loss of shared passive heal (5-30HP)
• gp10 aprox the same

Spellthief line: /

• raw stats 140g less gold efficent, no manaregen
• loss of dmg passive
• max of +4gp10 possible

Sidenote: The relic heal passiv could be compensated by a dorans shield, and the spellthief passive roughly by a ~20 Ap increase (if we approximate ~70%Ap scalings). Meaning both items lost ~+400 gold with their passives. This is especially important for the Tier 2 items! To off set the missing manaregen on the Spellthief linie you would also need another 150g.

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#Conclusion Tier 1: The support items are clearly nerfed at the start of the game, especially the spellthief line. But the loss of the healing on the relic line is also pretty bad, because this might cause worse gold effiency, since you might not want to share a minion, because of the dmg you will receive in return.

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#Tier 2

Relic line:/

• 450g upgrade costs safed
• stats have the same cost efficency, but are arguably worse (+10 AP/ +6 AD vs 25 HP and 50% HpReg (which is very important in the laning phase))
• much worse gold generation. (old 30s recharge vs 45s recharge; The +1gp10 doesnt help to reduce the offset)
• loss of passive heal (10-60HP)

Spellthief line: /

• 450g upgrade cost safed
• loss of 440g worth of stats, (especially 10%cdr and 50% manaReg)
• loss of passive dmg
• loss of up to 6gp10

Sidenote: The shared heal on the relic line doubled to 10-60HP (based on missing HP), so a Dorans is still needed to compensate this. The passive dmg on the spellthief line increased so we would need approx 25 AP to compensate this. And the free upgrade will not happen with your 1st Back, the upgrade will be around the 10min mark earliest.

#Conclusion Tier 2: If you want to have the same early as with the old relic line, you are forced to buy a dorans. Meaning you have not saved any gold and have worse gold generation. If you want to trade a much worse early for an earlier 1st item, that is possible, but you will not be ahead by 450g because of the worse gold gen. And you will receive the "free" bonus stats only after the upgrade, meaning around the 10-12 min or 20-24min mark.

It is even worse for the spellthief line, because your 450g "saved" is technically completely eaten up by the lost stats. Ontop losing the passive dmg and worse gold generation.

In both cases you can ether try to have the same early as before, but you will have worse gold generation overall and even less gold in the spellthief line, or you go for an eariler 1st item spike, which is not a pure 450g earlier, its a bit less, and the spike itself will be a bit weaker. Only after you get the free upgrades things even out somewhat, except for the lower gold generation.

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Tier 3:

Relic line: /

• 1400g cost saved
• loss of a total of 170g worth of stats( ontop lossing 200% hpreg and 10%cdr)
• catastrophic gold generation_ (old: 4 stacks/20s recharge (= max 33.5gp10) + 1gp10 VS 3gp10)_ = loss of up to 189g per minute, once Tier is reached.
• loss of shared passive heal (15-90HP)

Spellthief line: /

• 1400g cost saved
• loss of a total of 106g worth of stats (ontop not having CDR or manareg)
• abyssmal gold generation (old: 3 stacks/ 22g/ 10s recharge = max 22gp10 + 2gp10 VS 3gp10) = loss of up to 126g per minute, once Tier 3 is reached.
• loss of dmg passive (same dmg & gold as tier 2 btw)

Sidenote: The 1400g is technically only 1230g and 1294g saved from the raw stats, but this is even less since we have worse gold generation before the final upgrade. By rough approximation you should have about 200-300g less gold once you hit the final upgrade(20-24min). Meaning you save only 1000g and have now virtually no more gold income, but technically you are missing stats which you had before and need to invest gold again to get them back (like 10%cdr= 266g, 200% hpReg = 600g, 50% mana reg = 250g).

Thus the 1000g saved, is in reality partly a shifted towards other stats, and not just purely saved 1000g, keep that in mind.

Another important note is, that often you didnt upgrade the frostfang, and to a much lesser degree targons, because the upgrade doesnt bring you much. You would rather have your first item 1000g sooner! So you didnt save 1400g on your first item, you only save 450g! And as mentioned, the old tier 2 upgrade was much better and had better gold generation, so it is not even 450g that you save.

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#Conclusion Tier 3:

You only get the big free upgrade very late into the game, around the 20- 24min mark. Meaning you dont actually benefit from the free stats until then. Ontop it is not 1400g, it is only 1230g/ 1294g respectively that you "save" compared to the old items (ignoring the worse gold gen for now). But in there is also a major stat shift, so you need to buy the missing stats, if their absent doesnt bother you, reducing the actual "free" gold amount even more.

A very big problem is the loss of the income passives once you hit the Tier 3 upgrade. You lose up to 189g/min and 126g/min, starting aprox. at min 25. This means in a 40min game you have up to 2.835 gold less now than before! And we are talking about the support role, which has already 3000+ less gold at the end of the game comparded to very other role! Lets assume the free upgrade minus the worse gold gen, is just a clean 1000g buff, once you hit the Tier 3 upgarde. In less then 8 mins, this will be a flat out nerf to the support role.

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TL;DR:

Arguments: Pros:

- save 1400g because of the free upgrade Nope, its a 1000g save at best, once you hit Tier 3

• 1st item earlier Yes, technically, BUT: its only, at best, 450g earlier and you have a much weaker early, which could then delay you again.

Cons:

• worse overall stats Yes
• weaker early Yes
• loss of passive Yes
• complete loss of goldincome after Tier3 upgrade Yes,Yes,Yes
• worse gold generation Yes

Overall:

1. The supp items are nerfed at the start of the game (especially the loss of the passive heal on the relic line)

2. 1st buy: Worse gold generation, worse stats/weaker overall. Ether the freed up gold could be used to balance the early game out, resulting in the roughly the same early, or be used to get the 1st item approx <450g earlier, at the cost of a much weaker early.

3. The midgame is the same, because the loss of the passives and lower gold generation balance out the free upgrade stats and a potential bit ealier 1st item. (Or overall weaker, if you bought things to help out your early game)

4. Once you complete your Tier 3 upgrade (~20-24min mark) you have a small power spike,

5. But this powerspike drops hard every minute afterwards, nullifing it 6 to 12min later.

6. The late game (30min+) is completely trashed, because of the removal of the gold income, and supports were already extremely behind in the lategame.

Verdict: The support item change is clearly a nerf.

• A much weaker start/early,
• at best, the same midgame,
• a minor powerspike at the end of the midgame,
• and an utterely trashed lategame, where supports are already behind

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Edit: I have purposely avoided the Anti-Poaching for now, until I know for sure if there is any special interaction with the CS you get from/because of the relic line passive! (Riots wording is a bit unclear to me, especially the 50 CS line (is it flat 50 cs or 50cs/5minute = 10cs/minute(aka perfect cs-ing? Need to test that first): "EAT THE RICH_ Farming more than 20 CS per 5 minutes (3 out of 10 waves) reduces gold from minions by 50%. The penalty increases with further CS to a max of 80% reduction at 50 minions._ **MATH **_Once the penalty kicks in, your CS gold is reduced to (70 - CS within 5 minutes)% _")

But I can say 3 things already:

1. The idea is very good and needed to prevent sololaners from abuseing the gold items!
2. You still get some gold, its not completely taken away, keep that in mind, but there are a lot of cases where this wouldnt make any sense/be justified anymore. (Like the lategame wave setup, home base defence etc.)
3. We would need to go through all of the scenarios first (also the bad ones, where the supp purposely takes all the farm, which he shouldnt have to resort to, because we got the gold income items ;D), before we can make a clear verdict about this! But so far the removal of the Anti-Poaching on the Tier 3 upgrade (and keeping the goldincome passive) is a very good idea, and I havnt found cases where this is bad, YET! :D (But once again, we will need to run some numbers on the anti-poach penalty (if solo laners could abuse it especially))

P.S. Im sorry for all the spelling and grammar mistakes, Im not a native speaker. If you find anymore, please let me know! I have made a comment down below, where you can give me feedback about mistakes I have made, to keep this feedback seperate from the other disucssions :D