But am I the only one who thinks playing against the supports lately is incredibly frustrating...? Like laneing vs a nami or a blitz OR a thresh just makes me want to cry the entire time i'm in lane. Idk it's probably just me..what do you guys think?
pretty hurts6 votesbetter nerf sona
AMYS GRAVE2 votes#BetterNerfSona
Poptart Evelynn4 votesSoraka and Sona are my main two hated champs.
"Omg we totally outplayed them." Dropped them to 40% health on an outplay trade.
Sike, full health after about 2 seconds.
Tsunday2 votesSoraka is pretty easy if you focus her. If she gets nuked she can't heal her carry and it's risky to try and heal herself. As for Sona, Sona is so mana hungry it's a worthy trade off if she has to heal up from 40% HP because then next in she has no mana and it's essentially a 2v1
Terff1 votesAnd she cant heal herself anymore...
Tsunday1 votes-_- lol wtf yes she can? her Q heals her per champion hit. She just can't reliably heal herself the way she could before.
Terff1 votesyeah but its a pretty lame heal compared to before
Tsunday1 votesExcept not really unless you suck at skill shots. Using her heal on herself before was not only selfish and unsupportive, but it was wasting a 20 second base CD. Her heal can be just as strong as before in teamfights because you can hit a 3-4 person Q and if you're low that pretty much heals all of your HP. Her heals are stronger than before because you can heal your allies ever 2 seconds practically which means instead of committing one huge heal to one member of the team and hoping they're useful for the next 10 seconds, you can spread them out. You do more healing to yourself than you did prerework and you do more healing than you did to other people prerework.
disregardable1 votesYeah, supports are supports because they are useful without needing gold. Throwing a ton of farm at them just makes them insane.
Tsunday2 votesExcept a lot of supports can't thrive is 1v1 situations, so not really. Also they don't often scale too well with gold, which is why a lot of support items are active based. A lot of supports (Leona and Soraka to name 2) have abilities/passives that require a teammate which isn't beneficial for the first 20 minutes without being in botlane. A lot of supports also don't have good scalings. The ones that do well in a solo lane get nerfed hard.
disregardable2 votesYou've really never seen Leo top or Raka mid? Lol
Tsunday1 votesHi I mained Soraka from level 7-30. I played Raka for about 5-7 hours a day pretty much every day for months on end. I played Soraka top I played Soraka mid, I played Soraka support, I played Soraka ADC, and I tried Soraka jungle a few times. Pre-rework I played Soraka top all the time. I own every Soraka skin and she's still one of my most played champions today.
post-rework you don't want to play her in a solo lane. I absolutely love her rework. I miss old Soraka but I love her rework. Soraka's Q has a 35% scaling ATM and her E has a 40% scaling (80% if they don't leave the E and get hit by both the cast and the snare) max level the base damage on both is 230. Her W active does not work anymore without an ally you can't have OP Raka top with a free 400hp heal that gave you 200 armor like you could pre-rework. Her passive only applies to allies too. Soraka mid is outdamaged by any other midlaner. Solo lane Soraka would be crushed by other solo lane supports like Lulu or Sona. Her healing is unreliable in a solo lane. Her wave clear denies her the ability to heal, her E doesn't apply damage to minions. I've seen a lot of Soraka mid, but I know if I play Soraka botlane I don't have to rely on the slowest bananas in the game to farm and I'll end up with more assists and more gold as a support Soraka than I will as a midlane Soraka. I could put a Brand mid and go support and my team will do so much better.
As for Leona, Leona is a secondary support. She was meant to be a toplaner, she's a primary tank. The only people who play Leona top/jungle are people who main Leona and pretty much solo play Leona top/jungle up from Bronze to Diamond. Everyone else plays her as a support because you can't use her passive otherwise. Someone like Braum can actually use his passive and the extra damage it gives without needing a lane partner, in my experience from playing Leona top, it's a lot of fun but your still not going to be as beneficial as an actual toplaner most of the time. Not when a Leona support lane should easily turn into a kill lane.
We could also mention other supports like Nami who the OP mentioned. When Nami first appeared mid they nerfed her waveclear because she pretty much had it all down in midlane. Nami's waveclear is pretty shitty now, her W can't hit 3 bounces without a gank from either side, she has a lot of pretty mediocre/low scalings.
Janna has a few okay scalings but her damage output is low and her damage output is a big buff on AD which makes no sense if you're playing her as a mage. As soon as Taric steps up toplane they nerf his pretty in pink self back down to unplayable as even a support.
You're B3 aka anything is viable. The amount of success I've had as Ashe supp with a Lulu adc (post the Lulu nerfs) in B3 is comical. There's still a lot of stupid stuff that's viable in low silver, but someone who is bad enough to lose to the new Soraka top/mid (if you've ever read the tips Riot posts for playing against Soraka the answer is 'focus her if she gets into range') should be streaming because they'd be top of the line B5 stream material.
Supports fall off super hard in solo lanes normally because they don't have the same DPS/Burst that is expected of a midlaner and your teamfight damage output is significantly lowered.
disregardable1 votesbut someone who is bad enough to lose to the new Soraka top/mid should be streaming because they'd be top of the line B5 stream material
I will dig into my match history, find them, and tell them you said that. :P Admit, it's been a while since I've seen them (mostly saw them recently after the rework). I still see Leo tops/jungles though. I not too long ago had a sona mid that went like 18/7/20. Still won that game because they didn't close early enough. Actually I won another game where I had an Ori with the same score for the same reason. B3 is a fun place lol.
I mean the crux of your argument is that efficiency is equivalent to level of viability, and that just isn't true in any division outside Diamond. Maybe you'd be better practiced if you climbed to Diamond with one of the 20 real champions, but you can climb with anything as long as you beat your opponent.
Tsunday1 votesLeona top/jungle really isn't that popular. I played Leona top 2 times in bronze (I remember those because both times I picked before my opponent and I got stuck with a Singed in one and then a Heimerdinger in the other and was just like adlkfhuejvdle wtf is this?) and I've never actually seen anyone else do it. In fact I got yelled at both times I did it. I just know that my baby is in G2 and has a lot of friends from Gold-Diamond who played pretty much only Leona and didn't play Leona support.
I'm not saying that efficiency is exactly equivalent to viability, but you have to remember where efficiency is key in Diamond games, Bronze games are the kings of drawing a game out forever. In Bronze people chase for solo kills all day and it's a lot harder to get people to group. It's not the case every game, but it's a big part of the 'bronze mentality' that you don't group, you don't have vision, you throw games because you don't end them. Off meta midlane picks that happen to branch from supports like Lulu or Sona are super cool early game when Lulu bullies you until you cry and Sona half hits you. They end up pretty similar to LeBlanc in theory. You don't build MR against LB because she really like MPen. Instead you just build a little bit of extra health and her damage falls off late game. When LeBlanc gets to late game she stops hyper carrying, her combo doesn't quite finish someone off and then she gets locked down and dies. Sona has 1 damage ability (and her ult), Soraka has 2 but one is on a learge CD and is meant more for the silence than the damage. Neither of them have particularly good scalings on their damage abilities and once they max that out their damage falls off. Sona and Soraka will almost always be out damaged by the enemy midlaner come teamfights. On top of that come teamfights Sona/Soraka will pretty much only have a maxed out damage ability and they will only have items that further their damage. A Soraka support will often max their W first meaning she's spending less HP to keep an entire team full, whereas a Soraka mid will have a maxed Q which will do negligible amounts of damage. Neither of them will have a sightstone or a Mikaels or an Aegis which are all items that make them useful when you start mid game. They end up outclassed by their laner when it comes to teamfight presence because an APC/Assassin will basically 100-0 somebody and once they've taken a target out and everything is on CD they're not much use for the rest of the fight anyway. A support mid will end up dwindling someone down but won't often have the points in their utility or the damage to be as helpful as the dedicated support or the enemy mid. Any points put into utility such as shields/heals are often used on themselves because mid Sona/Soraka is squishier than support Sona/Soraka.
By the time you hit late game you actually have 2 champions who do negligable damage (the midlaner and the support) you probably have 2-3 because you should have a tank in either the jungle or the toplane. Having an extra support can work but it relies on an ADC/APC that does a lot of damage that you can peel for really well.
More than inefficient it's that you're going to cripple your team late game when your 'full AP Soraka' doesn't do any damage, gets bursted down by the enemy tank of all people, and you're left 4v5 champion wise. Supports are 'insane when you give them gold' but they're insane midgame, they also often hit full build pretty fast. Support items are so much cheaper and when your kit is made to protect (and not only that but a lot of those items give decent AP) you add a DCap and you call it a day without having to shovel on tons of gold on somebody who doesn't use it. Remember that while they started adding scalings to a lot of support utility a lot of that utility still doesn't scale or at least scale well. Which sucks for long bronze games.
Leaf of the lake1 votesMore than inefficient it's that you're going to cripple your team late game when your 'full AP Soraka' doesn't do any damage, gets bursted down by the enemy tank of all people, and you're left 4v5 champion wise. Supports are 'insane when you give them gold' but they're insane midgame, they also often hit full build pretty fast. Support items are so much cheaper and when your kit is made to protect (and not only that but a lot of those items give decent AP) you add a DCap and you call it a day without having to shovel on tons of gold on somebody who doesn't use it. Remember that while they started adding scalings to a lot of support utility a lot of that utility still doesn't scale or at least scale well. Which sucks for long bronze games.
While I agree raka should never be in a solo lane, her heal actually scales incredibly well with AP. It has a 60% ratio on a 1.4s CD (with max CDR, which you should easily be able to attain). By endgame, she's burst healing people, and if she hits even three people with a Q, she recovers her entire health bar. I usually build her AP in the support position (after SS); it's not uncommon to heal more damage over the course of a game than any individual champion on the enemy team dealt.
Tsunday1 votesI've been a Soraka main for a year know, I know she heals a ton, in fact I get pretty upset if I didn't do more healing than the highest damage dealer in game. You still don't put her in a solo lane to get AP for heals. Riot has tooltips for every champion in game. The tip for playing against Soraka has pretty much always been 'She's squishy as balls if she gets in range, focus her'. When she takes a solo lane position she's ruining her own chances of survival.
When she takes midlane away from an assassin/apc she's lowering the damage capacity of her team. She can heal all day long but if her team doesn't do any damage they aren't going to be able to win the teamfight. Not only that but it's the midlaner who has the job of instantly bursting down one of the high priority enemy targets, like that Fizz who is gonna go straight for you because he's sick of putting up with your heals. The Syndra or Orianna or LeBlanc that would ave been on your team would have assassinated either the Fizz or their ADC giving you less chances of being instantly bursted down.
When she takes midlane away from a bruiser/tank she has less of a frontline to keep people from instagibbing her. She also has less peel available on her team once somebody jumps on her. Not only that but she puts her midlaner/adc in a position where they don't have a big enough frontline to protect them and you're drastically lowering the initiation potential in your team. You might have a tanky support or jungler who can initiate, but that's a lot to ask for in SoloQ especially when those are the two roles that get the least gold and will be the least tanky mid game when they need to jump into all of the enemies to start off the fight.
When I played old Soraka I always went bruiser. I would go 600AP 400hp W heal with 200 armor boost, 2.8k or more HP, a heal that did about 3.5k global healing. I would have Liandrys and Rylais and literally sit in the middle of a teamfight spamming Q between all of the enemies to create the largest HP difference between the two teams I possibly could.
Nowadays I max W first, half of the time I start mobis with homeguard (if you've never tried it let me just put it this way, it gets you into passive range, and then boosts you up so fast nobody ever dies) and then when people all chat 'worth Soraka got the kill' I come back with a DCap and make my team a living horror for them. On top of AP though Mikael's is always going to be a good item, better than Athene's on her, sometimes it's pretty selfish but that instant heal on yourself can often give you the HP you need to heal an ally and get into the position to lay down your Q without dying. I say I start with mobis half of the time, because I also really like a Tear start. She has low enough CDs to stack it and Seraph's is one of the highest AP items in the game. She's one of the few supports I just buy a few wards for and put off SS on, but I often find it worth it because she doesn't gain much from the bonus health early on.
Leaf of the lake1 votesI've been a Soraka main for a year know, I know she heals a ton, in fact I get pretty upset if I didn't do more healing than the highest damage dealer in game. You still don't put her in a solo lane to get AP for heals. Riot has tooltips for every champion in game. The tip for playing against Soraka has pretty much always been 'She's squishy as balls if she gets in range, focus her'. When she takes a solo lane position she's ruining her own chances of survival.
Saw this was a reply to my post and got incredibly confused, considering I prefaced it with
While I agree raka should never be in a solo lane
You seemed to be implying AP raka was worthless as a team member when I made my post.
mikemil2231 votesidk why riot makes supports so freakin strong. raka isnt really strong but sona is freakin op. and you dont even have to be good with her. just get sheen and q auto u do major dmg. i think sona and leona mainly need dmg nerfs. especially early game leo just goes all in at lvl 3 and can get adc to half hp without them being able to fight back. then just builds tanky and u cant touch her
Renkai Noctis1 votesThe big thing you gotta understand is... Assasins have 1 cc. DEATH.
Nami and the others? They just don't let you play the game 
asktiks1 voteswhat I hate about supports is.....that its pretty much a NEED in the current meta, gone are the old days of 212 or bruiser and adc bott, nuker mid and jungler ganking top lane as usual if it wasn't 212 on the other lane
its either you pick one cuz the enemy team IS getting one, or play blind pick and pray the other team doesn't, cuz in team builder people WILL skip your Q for anything less than a dream team comp
Anidan1 votesAssassins are annoying and everything.. but a well-played Vi feels straight-up overbearing. Not saying she needs a nerf or anything, but damn it can be miserable playing against Vi.
