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On Supports and Why Riot Hates Them: A Complaint

BonLeBoneBone··3 votes·1,332 views
Riot Games Support

Dear Developers of League of Legends: I am being actively punished for playing support. In the attempt to quell funneling strategies (which I am completely on-board with), Riot has coincidentally and decidedly nerfed supports into the ground. The gold reduction strategy is fantastic for stopping people from getting too much money at every stage in the game. The problem is that it means that supports can either:

  1. focus solely on trading, which is a great way to get called a feeder if your lane goes poorly, surrendering all pressure if your ADC can't back you up, or (if the trading and poking goes well) get a proportionately small amount of gold
  2. farm, but only when somebody else is nearby and not too much, lest you lose the ability to gain any gold from minion kills
  3. not get a sight stone, thus lose a pretty big chunk of your usefulness to the team The reason I limit the options to these is that I cannot farm to get gold, or else I start to get diminishing returns for killing minions, which is fine and all, but not when it's 32 minutes into the game and I need to catch up to my team, so I go farm a wave and get the value of picking a Cheeto off the floor when I'm starving. If I can't get gold with my item once it reaches level three, and I can't farm at that point without getting 8 gold per cannon kill, then how am I supposed to get gold? This is especially problematic when I play tank supports because I'm expected to buy items like warmogs, randuins, abyssal mask, spirit visage, thornmail, frozen heart, and warmogs armor (to mention a few) on the effective budget of three gold, a paperclip, and some pocket lint. I'm not asking to remove the funneling prevention technique, I'm just asking that you don't strangle the supports in the process. Maybe bring back buyable green wards or adapt the yellow trinket after the early game to lessen the need for a dedicated sacrificial goat to starve, or (and this would be greatly preferred) let the gold income items do what they were designed to do, make supports not have to steal farm. TL;DR: If I can no longer gain gold from a support item, then why in Nagakabouros' name does it still reduce the gold that I can get from other sources? Regards from a disgruntled support player, -BonLeBoneBone

6 Comments

WTBeGirl100EUhr2 votes

I don't like the support items giving so little gold at tier 3. I don't like the minion reduction at tier 3.

But this post is absurd. You're not supposed to catch up on gold (support items are cheaper for this reason) you're not supposed to buy any of the items you mentioned very often, it's not your only gold income so you don't have a budget of "3 gold". Adding buyable green wards is going to make your problems way, WAY worse by making you spend more money on green wards, yellow trinket is "fine" it's just that your team also needs red trinkets. You're usually having 1-2 yellow trinkets throughout the whole game (on solo lanes, with mid laners sometimes going for both other options depending on champion) and it isn't like blue trinket doesn't give vision.

BonLeBoneBone

If you don't mind my asking, what gold income sources can supports reliably control after they lose all gold income from their gold income item at tier three? Team objectives, sure; towers, sure; kills, sure; but those all require your team's assistance unless you're going damage, in which case (unless you're playing the two supports that definitely aren't supports) you're headed towards some nasty words from your allies and a healthy dose of reports. The only 100% guaranteed source of income is farm, and if nobody else is claiming it, the supports should be able to pick up some of the scraps that are falling through their team's fingers without getting less gold than they already do. I understand that support items are cheaper, but if they have no %health damage, a warmogs is SUPER good on any tank, if you hit that health threshold. If they have no magic damage, you bet I'm going to build thornmail. I'm not saying I'm going to build full tank and not try to get, say, a knight's vow, but Randuins is a super good item that is basically inaccessible to the threshes, alistars, and leonas that would benefit so much from it. Those items are cherry-picked not just for their high price, they're picked for the items that I have, in-game, opted to not get in lieu of something less beneficial to my team at the time due to its cost. 3 gold, in case you didn't catch it, was an exaggeration for comedic effect, I get more than that when I play c: I never said to remove the already present warding options, so it isn't like we're regressing to s2 when the only things that supports spent money on were wards, I'm just saying that if I could sell my detrimental support item to start soaking side lanes while still having an option to provide vision for my team, I definitely would. Please note, at this juncture, I'm not saying that I want supports to outscale ADC's and Mages and tanks -- quite the opposite; I want to be able to have flexible enough budget to be able to adapt my build on the fly during games, and if that means that I NEED a zhonyas on my Janna before I get ardent, then I'm going to start sinking gold into a zhonyas. That's what I mean by I need more gold. My Top laner is already full build and I have two items. I'm not saying I need six, but at least three or four would be nice. That's what I mean by I need more gold. I'm not trying to revolutionize the support role here, merely saying that the impact supports can have on the game is still, albeit less so, dependant on gold income, which is being taken from us with these new options. Riot added the new items to diversify the pool of champions that could support, but if Senna doesn't get her attack damage, she isn't doing anyone any favors; if enchanters can't build both an ardent and a mikaels, then we're having to choose between buffing our adc more efficiently with our heals and buffing their damage output and being able to get them out of a bind when team fights come around. This is a really hard decision to make, and it's one that can lead to you winning or losing a game, a decision which is very difficult for support players to make when they also have to plan ahead, focus on map control, manage invades and roams, and help their team succeed. Supports do a ton of work when played correctly, but even the slightest mishap can cost your team the entire game, especially if you have to choose which item will save your carry the next team fight. I'm sorry that you thought that my post was absurd, but thank you for agreeing with the general premise of it and giving it critique c:

WTBeGirl100EUhr3 votes

So the old gold income items were only some 10% of your income. It was rare to get more than 2k gold off of them and you spent 950 of that on the item and 1100g is about 10% of a support's full build. You got most of the value from it in lane and it fell off as the game went by. Whilst the gold income feels a lot worse because it objectively gets lower when you finish the quest and because you lose agency on the gold income, it's not that dissimilar to before the changes. Besides that, in terms of actual profit on your support item it would only ever be some 10-12% of your total gold income. The rest of the gold comes from global gold, passive gold, kill/assist gold, turret gold, etc. The reality is that even for laners farm gold is often around 25% of their total gold income or less. Minions are only worth some 22g on average, meaning a laner with 300 farm earned a 6.6k from minions a little over 1/3 of a top laner's full build but most solo queue games do not involve people reaching 300 farm even when full build.

The loss of gold does come from farming penalties - obviously - but there shouldn't be that many scenarios where your team is inting picking up so many waves that you as the support are spending enough time to pick up 3 straight waves without missing any and not one person comes to take the farm.

I didn't mean to suggest that you were saying to remove the current warding items. If you could have a sightstone and also buy stealth wards then people would do exactly that as a support. The ability to quickly and freely move vision to where you need it is important and the 3-4 wards you get on the sightstone items isn't really sufficient.

I don't remember the last time as a support where my top laner was full build and I was 2 items as a support unless I was some 0/8/0. It's not that unusual to hit full build only a few minutes after everyone else. Supports coming out of winning bot lanes often hit full build before junglers and losing laners and tanks because their builds are so much cheaper. The average support build costs some 11k gold and the average top lane build costs some 16k gold. The "supports who definitely aren't supports" (I presume we're discussing Zyra/Brand and ilk, it's more than 2) tend to have more expensive builds but pick up more kills.

Sicefer1 votes

Alsop both EUW and NA servers are down. So far an hour

LeonardjRtG1 votes

Its the biggest carry role in the game...

BonLeBoneBone1 votes

haha, it's a role that you never notice when it's done well, but you sure as heck notice when it's done poorly.

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