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I feel like Supports are still unevenly being nerfed

Zoram·11/4/2013, 3:46:45 AM·8 votes·668 views

Copy pasted from my thread on GD...I find more people give real feedback here and can be civil. This thread is my concern, not that I hate riot because yeah, they are trying, but I fear overall like season 3 we will get new items and masteries and then left to rot the rest of the season with periodic nerfs.

I'm going to call it. Sure, shiny new items and a shift from ap scaling from damage to utility sounds amazing, but after that we have what is left to us.

One popular thread that went around was the support no longer had the power to ward, and I honestly thought it wouldn't matter because riot would of course have to buff supports significantly to make up for that...right?

Eh, at best. Vision is now going to make most champions self-sufficient in their needs early and mid game. Only late game will the need for additional wards come into play.

--

The changes overall in items are favorable at first glance. However the glaring issue is that you can only get ONE of these gold generating items...So you lock in your choice and can't turn back. Not sure if this means you literally can't buy the other item, or that the gold gain aspect doesn't work on one. However the fact remains, that this hurts supports and bolsters other roles.

Top and jungle WILL buy some of these items for the sustain and usfulness. Junglers will want the new emblem item because vision changes will make them never want to gank ever again unless they get some other bonus out of it.

I also am sad that philostone building into shurelias was only made even better. So much for choice...could have buffed elise's miracle, ohmwrecker and mikael's crucible, but why do that, when you could nerf those items and buff shurelia's instead. I cannot understand WHY you would do that... As if no one ever bought those items before, why not just remove them from the game? You've locked them in as noob trap build paths for philostone.

the new kage's pick was great, it used to be pretty much an item that all AP champs wanted to build, and supports didn't unless they wanted twin shadows which became an obviously underused due to the ward mule issue. Also thank you for making shard of true ice useful. But still, you've now locked people into only wanting to build that due to the gold costs and gold generation. Twin shadows maybe will still be able to contest, but I'm not sure yet. It is still a good scouting item and does really good for chase/escape scenarios. We will see. But don't expect me to pick up WOTA as a support just because you gave it mana regen. As much as I want it to be a support item, you HAVE TO give hextech revolver another pure AP build path for AP casters so you can really make WOTA a support item instead of a really awkward AP/support hybrid item.

-- masteries

I'm hoping that the changes into the utility tree are enough to make up for things. They seem solid enough. I actually feel really good about this, and numbers can easily be tweaked here to make it right if it isn't at first. Also its cool that these changes(as well as the item passives for supports) can't be abused by other roles(except for the emblem and junglers as stated before).

-- champions

taric- THANK YOU. Taric suffered from scaling off armor, auto attacks for his Q, mana, and AP. It was a mess. Giving him scaling centered on armor and his HP with a small side of AP gives him potential to be a much better tank support. However his stun could use more help, and I think you could have made his AP scaling effect the damage aura instead of just a straight nerf. Now his ult is just about the most mediocre ult on any support. I also think you might want to lower some mana costs for him too. Overall good. I look forward to it.

soraka- I hate soraka. I'm a support main and she is the only one I want to be olaf tier just to never see her. While I'm glad she was made less binary, I still have reservations about her laning phase. Overall she got buffed, but I am disappointed she wasn't reworked entirely.

janna- okay so we keep her high mana costs, and continue to nerf her tornado.... Not liking the changes to zephyr. Still feels like an overall nerf. Eye of the storm doesn't need the buff to make it scale with ap...twice. I think we can all agree she needs more power back into her ult. Larger range for more AP? Give back the movement speed buff while in its area and scale it on AP? Because as it is, I dunno, I still hate Janna's ult in its current state. Thanks for making tailwind useful again. It will have an interesting combo with the captains boot enchantment now at least.

Nami- feels overall just like a power shift, people seem to like nami as is, so I'm not sure if it was wise to do anything so hastily, but I know that you want to give utility scaling, so lets hope it doesn't throw her out of balance.

sona- nerf nerf nerf nerf buff buff nerf nerf nerf. Seriously?

lulu-remove the AP boost? Ok, I guess you REALLY don't like it when a support has any chance to be able to play offensive AP caster, but its still okay for any AP champion to be able to support. Gotta keep up your image of support hate. The MS boost means you need 50 AP to get it back to where the speed boost was, and at least 100 AP for it to be noticeably better in the regard. So yeah, I'll only ever use it on an enemy now. Made her E better defensively than offensively, okay, again, you are making me really want to never use the spell offensively. Could have instead lowered the offensive base damage and it would have been much better. Lets be honest, its the base damage, not the AP scaling that made her early game harass good, and thus, her late game harass nonexistant. Straight up nerf to her ult? Okay, why? WHY? She has already been nerfed non-stop in the past, why is she being nerfed? Items don't justify and of it.

Zilean? What about zilean? Can we see him coming back? His mana costs are insane, his HP and mana pool are tiny, he has no sustain, and his utility is his E and...his E. When I use him I almost never have the mana I need to ult, and If I save that mana for such an occasion, its often better and safer to use E to keep someone out of the danger that using his ult would revive them from death by....ugh. Lower his mana costs, make bombs more utility based, allow him to cast his rewind on an ally maybe? I'm dissapointed that nothing has been done with him yet.

Now these are just concerns I have, and I'm sure within the first couple weeks of this on the PBE things will be adjusted and made better. The structure is here for the right things, I just feel like supports are getting shoved under the rug again...

25 Comments

Cameryn Kyre11/21/2013, 3:31:58 PM3 votes

Sona got too much power removed

Lulu's Q is still a tad to expensive on mana

Taric needs something more tactical in his kit, his straightforwardness will continue to leave him stagnating.

Soraka needs this: http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/c/balance/fH0iAVda-soraka-rework

Nami is fine

Janna is great

Thresh is happy

Leona is grinning

Alistar... tastes good medium well

Zyra is ok

Nunu might make a comeback

Fiddle, Annie, Lux, and Nid are probably going to be better 'cuz monies.

#!@$ Blitz.

As for the items and masteries... I really love the new Utility tree, though Bandit could be tuned better to have the same CD as Pick Pocket (10s) and melee should get something on-hit I feel.

The items are fine. Trinkets rock, Ruby Sight Stone covers your max 3 wards. You can go Totem to start off if you like and rely on Totem for your 3rd ward while you rock the basic Sight Stone for your other 2 Stealth Wards and switch it to Lens after you grab a Ruby. Or you can just go Lens from the get-go for lane control and have maybe 1-2 spare stealth wards along side your Sight Stone. Overall, you have to spend even less gold on wards than you did in S3, other people are actually warding even if just through trinkets, and you have more overall gold without having to half of what you use to in the Philo + Kage's route.

Yes, Talisman on Ranged Support and Face on Melee Support are going to be the more common paths, but they are not set in stone and I personally love Frost Queen's Claim on the right support.

Change is good.

~Cam

Solan Stonewhip11/4/2013, 5:34:36 PM2 votes

i think you're pessimism is unfounded. RIOT's changes are for the greater good. and i think we'll be satisfied with them at the end of the day.

Stealthiness11/4/2013, 10:56:20 PM1 votes

I think you're missing some information. Did you read the original Riot post announcing support changes, and other updates? Junglers can't use the new emblem item because it only works when an ally is nearby. Supports can only get one gold item because it was too strong to have all three, so they prevented buying multiples instead of nerfing each one individually. Items other than Shurelia's, Shard of True Ice and Martyr's Call no longer build out of GP10's, and were buffed or re-purposed to compensate. Also, the vision changes means that supports will have a lot more gold to themselves.

DragonsEyeG11/6/2013, 3:23:34 AM1 votes

Supports are getting the shaft as much as riot thinks that they are helping things, they are not. Limiting the number of wards any one char can put down is a bad thing. Limiting the number of gold items, bad thing. Buffing the champions in some ways is great, but they they are just going to be used to get kills. I liked playing support they way i always have. get the wards cover the map, hit with my CC's and feel like i am really supporting the team. Sure some supports needed a Buff. Like Taric, Alistar, ect. But some really don't and Riot needs to stop and think before they change things so much in bad ways. This is bad changes just like the jungle changes are bad. No one will ever buy the jungle items because the nerfs/"changes", people will just buy normal items like a vamp. scepter. Not to mention riot really needs to give Yi the Olaf treatment and nerf him into the ground.

Eyrgos11/8/2013, 8:15:58 PM1 votes

Why haven't you taken into account the fact that they'll be able to build WAAAY more DPS-friendly items? That's the WHOLE entire point. Also, have you tried the changes out on PBE? This isn't the case at all.

Apollinarius11/12/2013, 9:03:00 PM1 votes

Basically, it's like this: Supports will no longer be able to ward for the whole team come late game.

That is the only change regarding supports.

Since a support is limited to only 3 wards on the map, you will never need anything more than a Sightstone. If your team wants more wards, others will have to buy them. Since you are not buying wards outside of Sightstone, you can buy other items instead. In my games, supports have similar income to junglers right now, it's just that more of their money goes to consumables. After the changes, their consumable expenditure will be capped, and they'll have the same items junglers have now. That means about 5-6k gold worth of offensive or defensive items compared to the 1-2k they are able to get now.

Will those changes make more supports viable? Who knows. What it does mean is that Sona and Janna support will be able to get an Athene's in most games and Leona or Taric will almost always get a Randouin's or a Warmog's.