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@Riot What is with the current theme of denying supports viability in other lanes?

Swerto·10/26/2013, 4:53:07 PM·8 votes·707 views

Remember when Allistar could solo lane or jungle? I do, he was actually fun to play in these roles. This didn't destroy his identity in the duo lane, Lux being able to fill that role, annie or zyra being able to play that role doesn't destroy their identity in mid. But you have recently made a theme of replying to people playing other roles with champions designed to be supports as something you do not want to happen.

Leona being able to burst her own passive? "No, that will let her jungle". How is that a bad thing? Breaking a champion free from the shackles of their only role and allowing them to play others is a good thing. Allistar can't have strong scaling, because then he can jungle again - once again a good thing.

Remember Riot, designing things purely around the 1/1/2/jungle meta is not a goo way to do things, it is short sighted. Especially with your current decisions to change gold inflow likely to destroy that meta once the pro teams figure out a more efficient way to counter that meta. It's only inevitable.

Please stop restricting the players, give TF a viable AD spec back, keep ezrea's AP spec, let supports scale with AP/AD to do something other than sit in lane and be a healbot/stunbot/aurabot.

By all means, keep things balanced and stop these champions from absolutely destroying in anohter role, but if they can play more than one viably, that is a good thing.

10 Comments

Stealthiness10/26/2013, 6:44:36 PM5 votes

This used to frustrate me, but now it makes sense to me and I think it's a good thing. Let me explain.

In order to maintain balance, OP champions need to be nerfed. A champion is OP if they are OP at their best role. Thus, if a champion has multiple roles and one role becomes OP, the champion needs to be nerfed, and the other roles become weak so that the one role can be balanced.

At first glance, it seems like "make all the roles equally strong" is a good answer. After all, there are some champs like Elise who can play multiple, very different roles. However, LOL is constantly changing, both due to patches and the changing meta, and every change has side effects, which always disrupt the balance already in place.

This problem becomes more complex when you consider in-game choices. How can you balance whether Ez will go mid or bot, AND whether he will build blue Ez, TriForce, AP, or a traditional ADC build, AND balance which order he maxes his skills? This balance problem is complex enough that Riot has chosen not to attempt it. Instead, they restrict choices in some areas so that they can preserve the interesting decisions that they feel are most important for each champion.

TaintedTaint10/26/2013, 8:07:24 PM3 votes

The problem is that if they design a champ for support, their abilities are not BUILT for other lanes. If they buff it enough to be viable in other lanes, then their support capabilities can often times become EXTREMELY overpowered.

If Leona could burst her own passive, then her already REALLY strong support skills would now become SUPER powerful. If she Zenith blades, bursts passive, shield slams, bursts passive, eclipse, burst passive, and then ults and bursts passive again... THAT IS A LOT OF DAMAGE.

LycopolisKing10/26/2013, 6:52:12 PM2 votes

I agree, I am concerned about Riot saying supports will have their 'utility' scaled up instead of their damage, which will most likely completely destroy things like AP Janna or AP Sona mid lane, limiting them to be supports only.

We've seen so many supports get nerfed into the floor, and their doesn't seem to be an end in sight... I'm worried some of my support/midlaners like Karma and Lux will be tormented by this one as well. Why is versatility a bad thing?

This keeps up the new meta will be kill lane Toplaner + Adc in the bot lane.

mk DILLY10/26/2013, 9:16:30 PM2 votes

This, this, and incredibly this. I've gotten so frustrated at Riot doing this. They do this with items too. For example, they nerfed Spirit of the Elder Lizard because Ezreal was buying it and he's not a jungler... so what? It really hurt junglers when they did that and it was fun to have an alternate build path for an adc for once! Please Riot, embrace the idea of flexibility. It's still possible to balance the game without locking your champions and items in roles.

Yordle Dragon10/27/2013, 12:13:12 AM1 votes

I think the above posters have all hit the ideas behind certain nerfs right on the head, but I'll also add something: just because a champion isn't seen as "viable" by high-level gamers doesn't mean it can't work, both in certain situations at that high level and as general for-funsies in other games.

Try to jungle Alistair right after reading this: you can still do the things Jungle Alistair always could, you just can't do them so stupidly easily and have to make more impactful choices.

ValorAndGlory10/26/2013, 11:15:20 PM

I have to agree with Stealthiness, I don't think that Riot is limiting just support champions to support, but instead making it so that they just don't roflstomp just because they went jungle instead of bot lane as Sona(who is actually surprisingly good in jungle but just to squishy). Think about it this way, would you rather be able to see a team with three(3) supporty champions (lets use Leona, Lux, and Blitzcrank) and more or less be able to guess where they are going in game, or just be completely confused to where any of them are going.