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Death of the Tank Support

Master Dellow··1 votes·1,082 views

I usually keep my head buried in the thickets of the Treeline however, Rito recently burnt down my home so I had to move back to the same ol' boring Rift. What is all of this new stuff?!?! Maybe it isn't the "same ol' boring Rift"! Alright then, lets get into it. 50 some games later....

It is obvious to anyone that there is an overwhelming amount of poke supports being played, what might not be so obvious is WHY. In fact in a broader scope we can see that this season is more about massive damage and far less about defense, sustain, and utility. Albeit with a caveat of massive damage that can provide solid sustain... which really only useful against trading massive damage. I am going to break this down into 3 parts, tanks, supports, and the combination of.

With the new additions of Lethality any High Dmg champ can effectively negate at least 1 item of armor (if not 1.5 items) so, tanks can take a nice beating and actually die. I understand this was the intended effect of dumping so much lethality into the game. However, champs without armor now spontaneously explode... oh wait no that was an assassin's attack. Well... I am happy that there was at least... a single second granted to react to that massive FACEMELT.

Supports... you poor sobs. Supports are behind 1-3 Levels throughout the game and 1-3k gold. Assassin's could fairly easily kill them before... now supports are just meals with legs. FACEMELT! So your best option with a support is to stay out of range where you won't die (as much) however you will need a ranged support to contribute any sort of damage or CC... which makes half the supports useless AF.

What about the tanky supports? While Thresh and Leo are some of my favorite champs, they feel far more useless this season than ever before. Those kit's are designed around landing hooks and moving in for some serious CC. In the past players would run from Leo and Thresh dodging and weaving potential hook paths... now they step into them so the support can move in close to receive a double adc poke fest. Not only is the tanky support down an item but it is down level which means HP, Armor, MR, and items that scale on LV are less effective, such as the lockets hp shield. Now lets put Lethality in the mix. You are down 2 items worth of armor(one from lethality shred, the other from just being a poor, broke joke, support), and all the HP,armor lv scale mentioned before. FACEMELT. This makes the concept of a tanky support pretty dang laughable... or if you are someone dumb enough to play one(like me) you might not be laughing... you might just be crying.

As a tanky support I have to wait for ganks or fights under my tower to win an exchange, even with well placed hooks or other CC. As a poke support i can remain useful all game, dealing a medium amount of damage with high range. In fact, these supports are buying damage items not support items. So they are almost like a 2ndary adc whos job is to hyper boost the primary adc by bullying lane and softening the opponents for the primary adc to kill. Most of these supports have some minimal amount of CC but it can be used at a med-long range. Where as the tanky supports need to be toe to toe. FACEMELT.

In conclusion, I feel that the experience/gold cuts on supports cut the pocket of a tanky support too deeply and thus favor a poke support who can get more literal bang for the buck and/or gold funnel like gimmicks/"tactics" that can be used as loopholes to the deficient gold supply the support earns...

I am curious to hear the rest of the communities thoughts as well.

13 Comments

Death by Glamour3 votes

Nauti and leona are likely 2 of the strongest supports right now

things might change with the changes to the gold items

KlydeFrog1 votes

They are behind alistar

Cind3rkick3 votes

Nautilus, Leona and Thresh are some of the most dominant supports atm so idk what youre doing.

They can steamroll a lane with the smallest lead and become unkillable.

Drezden2 votes

Idk naut is considered one of the strongest supports atm. Leona is pretty strong too... Thresh has high pressure.

People play poke supports because...well they FEEL safer...

Addressing your statements....

As for lethality, they are specifically designed to hurt champs that DON'T build armor, rather than do. Black cleaver/Last Whisper are for beating on people who do build armor since its % based, but lethality is basically flat pen, which when you have 300 armor who cares about 40 flat pen...

Thresh is a high utility support that still sees a lot of play. It can save allies, make plays, he is technically safe since he engages on his term, can both engage and disengage, etc. Much better imo than leona, which is basically (aside from ulty) a "lockdown one target" type support. She has to choose (and commit) to engages or peeling, doesn't have disengage, or gets to change their mind after throwing out a grab like thresh can.

The weakness of poke supports IS engage tank supports, as long as its a smart engage with follow up from adc. That is why they feel bad imo and why people prefer poke. Poke champs don't rely on your adc near as much as tank does. Tank requires synergy, but if it works out, it works well. The fact is, people don't like relying on others :D However if a naut for example lands that anchor on the poking brand, he will then smash half his hp himself while taking very little damage, and if the adc follows up its a guarantee kill due to a lack of escape options poke champs have.

Honestly a lot of poke supports are getting the relic shield type item more, due to the fact if they are playing SUPER safe pokers (zyra, caitlyn combo for example) you will never get gold with the poke item.

As for remaining useful all game, if the poke champ doesn't snowball their lane, they usually end up less effective than a tanky one. Back to thresh example, he can peel that fed assassin midlaner of the adc, with his flay and hook combo, he has options. If the poke mage is behind he will just easily get killed by others and be ... kinda useless.

It is a interesting discussion though :)

Master Dellow2 votes

Obviously I disagree with any tank being a "strong support" right now. I think out of those games I saw a single leo and a single naut. While the opinion on this post(at this moment) seems to be popular that they are strong, based on what I have experienced, the opinion of support players in league appears to be different. I would love to see some actual status instead of tossing around opinions with you all. This is just my personal observation and it could be vastly different in your set of "50 some games".

I still play a ton of Thresh, yes he has a ton of utility beyond his CC. The mobility to go up and over walls and bring a friend is very useful in itself, let alone his other aspects. But his primary mechanic, the hook and his primary combo hook + ult + flay... doesn't win exchanges as often as it used to. At that you have to avoid a barrage of poke attacks for several minutes, to save your HP to make such a play and limp away alive. I wouldn't really call it a "weakness" of a poke support, as they still do just fine in such an exchange. Heck... they can still get hooked and win the trade. They are building damage while you are building armor. That would be effective if they had to focus you and not your adc... who also had to dodge a barrage of pokes to have enough hp for the exchange. But they focus the adc down with double the damage while you scratch at them with a toothpick. Point being poke champs are not just a "safe" selection, they are more rewarding... which makes them a superior selection because they have low risk and high reward. Some of these champs aren't even trading off utility for this extra damage... because their utility skills are nukes.

But the "gripe" here isn't that poke supports win lane over tanky supports, it is that poke supports continue to contribute damage mid--end game, while tank champs get shredded because they can't tank effectively with the lv and gp nerf. Stack the lethality items against an already poor scenario and you get FACEMELT.

While on the topic of Lethality, it was meant for assassins to "not fall off by end game", this is achieved by granting them more damage to all players, armored or not. That might not have been instadeath for a tank support if it didn't already have so much working against it. I am also curious why it doesn't scale off level if they wanted them to be stronk end game and not change the early -mid game.

Drezden1 votes

Atm stat wise Thresh has the highest support play rate, with a 50% win rate, 14.2% play rate Second is Senna has 13.91% play rate, with 51% win rate (cause shes new, lots are playing her) Third is Naut at 52.5% win rate, and 7.4% play rate Pyke is forth at 47% win rate and 7.25% play rate Leona is 5th at 52.33% win rate with 6.84% play rate Blitz is 6th at 51.75% win rate and 5.85% play rate after ths is the usual morg, nami, rakan, janna, lux, lulu, raka supports Next tank would be Swain, at 16th with 50% win rate, Alistar at 20th with 47% win rate, and Braum at 22 with 46% win rate, then Taric at rank 33 with 51.77% win rate (.85% play rate) Galio rank 36 49% win rate Malphite 37 with a whopping 54% win rate Shen with a 50% at 39...

and that covers most of the true tank supports bot..I guess Tahm would be last at 45.73% and rank 49, and the rest are really nitch tank supports (like..singed or volibear)

Master Dellow1 votes

Where can you get those stats at?

Drezden1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Master Dellow,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=yy9BaBUo,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2019-12-17T23:57:40.776+0000)

Obviously I disagree with any tank being a "strong support" right now. I think out of those games I saw a single leo and a single naut. While the opinion on this post(at this moment) seems to be popular that they are strong, based on what I have experienced, the opinion of support players in league appears to be different. I would love to see some actual status instead of tossing around opinions with you all. This is just my personal observation and it could be vastly different in your set of "50 some games".

I still play a ton of Thresh, yes he has a ton of utility beyond his CC. The mobility to go up and over walls and bring a friend is very useful in itself, let alone his other aspects. But his primary mechanic, the hook and his primary combo hook + ult + flay... doesn't win exchanges as often as it used to. At that you have to avoid a barrage of poke attacks for several minutes, to save your HP to make such a play and limp away alive. I wouldn't really call it a "weakness" of a poke support, as they still do just fine in such an exchange. Heck... they can still get hooked and win the trade. They are building damage while you are building armor. That would be effective if they had to focus you and not your adc... who also had to dodge a barrage of pokes to have enough hp for the exchange. But they focus the adc down with double the damage while you scratch at them with a toothpick. Point being poke champs are not just a "safe" selection, they are more rewarding... which makes them a superior selection because they have low risk and high reward. Some of these champs aren't even trading off utility for this extra damage... because their utility skills are nukes.

But the "gripe" here isn't that poke supports win lane over tanky supports, it is that poke supports continue to contribute damage mid--end game, while tank champs get shredded because they can't tank effectively with the lv and gp nerf. Stack the lethality items against an already poor scenario and you get FACEMELT.

While on the topic of Lethality, it was meant for assassins to "not fall off by end game", this is achieved by granting them more damage to all players, armored or not. That might not have been instadeath for a tank support if it didn't already have so much working against it. I am also curious why it doesn't scale off level if they wanted them to be stronk end game and not change the early -mid game.

Also to address the Lethality thing. Lethality is flat armorpen, that makes you have MORE pen if you are ahead in levels, and LESS if you are behind in levels, but it is still a flat amount. It was made to help snowbally assassins...snowball vs non armored target by essentially making them cause true damage if you don't build tank, and force assassins to have to build them IF they want to assassinate, because bruiser building assassins were becoming a huge issue.

Master Dellow1 votes

You have lost me in your explanation. Flat != more or less. Flat == static.

The only thing that changes is your opponents armor (via lv scale). So it gradually becomes less effective as the game goes on, as all champions gain armor just by leveling.

The intention of lethality was to avoid fall off... not offer more early game damage. It should scale with level but the scale should outscale most common champs armor scale. WTF is it Flat?

I think they tried to do this by introducing the set bonus thing? Not sure.

Drezden1 votes

champion.gg

Master Dellow1 votes

Well another 50 some games gone by... 2 or 3 leos, 1 thresh (which is biased since i pick him often), maybe 3 nauts. ..and the same BC twice.

Mostly pykes, lux, brand, karma, vel kos... and the like. I am telling you, most everyone is playing poke support.

I still notice even when we are winning dragons, or I help gank a lane. As a tank support I can't farm cs for crap... where a poke support can clean up easily while adc ganks or backs.

Basically the poke support is a 2ndary dmg champ... and they literally build just damage items. I don't think this is because support items are worthless but because supports can no longer tank. I also notice that poke supports are further along in their gp item quest than a tank support. Further crippling the concept.

So I just got off a game with ol bardo... and dang was it ever time to chime. I had the gold to keep building items, stole a few kills from my lane and jungle (entirely on accident)... and was able to CS some here and there. I had more gold than mid, so I built high damage ...and high damage won our lane fights... which their bot also took a poke support but it didn't pan out due to better plays on our behalf, which is totally legit.

However, it goes to show that the possibility of a support becoming a primary damage champ is there... yet a support becoming a primary tank is still laughable. Maybe I will feel differently at a higher elo? When players follow through on thresh hooks? But at a lower rank I think switching to a poke support and potentially carrying the game is a smarter bet than building a tank who can't take damage... 3vs and 3k behind mid lane.

Master Dellow1 votes

I would also like to point out that chamion.gg stats change dramatically all the time.

Thresh now has a 48% win rate... in fact other than kled(if you consider him a tank) you won't see a tank in the top 15 Win Ratio.

Oops Never mind... Naut just kicked bard out of 15.

o.O yeah these stats are wonky. Yummi has one of the best assist scores out of 70 some supports... yet the lowest win ratio! I am assuming that means Yummi is great at supporting but without the damage or tank... a straight utility champ falls off mid to late game.

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