Concerns from a Support main
Okay so, first, I'm not entirely certain this post should go in this sub-community as this is my first time posting on the forums. Second, I just want to warn that this post is likely to be disjointed and rambling. Third, I have never and will never play ranked as I have absolutely no interest in it and I know that will make some people ignore or flame this post. Preface done, here we go.
As a person who primarily plays support I was shocked by the 4.5 patch but what made me speechless was the complete lack of response from anyone else about it. (I have now seen two related to the Locket while typing this out.) I'm not sure if other people just don't play like I do or if they haven't realized it yet but the complete removal of armor in Iron Locket of Solari and the reduction in other items seems more of a harm than anything else. The added damage on some 'support' items was nice but I can at least speak for myself when I say that I enjoyed being utility driven over damage. The reason I picked up the support role when it became a serious thing was that it was a role that functioned on basically nothing. No gold from farm, none from kills, yet if you played well you could assist and be a huge contribution to the team. I am very dismayed by this new set of changes, Riot, and I'm not sure I understand why. The update says Riot wanted to continue helping supports and give them more itemization paths but all I can see is all of the new items are for damage and I'm having issues understanding how that isn't just bringing mid champions down bot. My biggest issue is with the Iron Locket of Solari change. Why does it no longer give armor? In fact, there is now no aura that gives armor. In a bot lane you normally see a marksman and they're heavy on AD, so why take something from the squishy support that helped their survivability and was also a nice item to help the whole team rather than just themselves? I'm sorry, I feel like I'm just complaining now but I'm trying to understand these changes. Perhaps I'm really the only one but I loved being able to build full utility and support my team, I had no interest in doing damage and no need to. Just for the record, I tried to make the slightly buffed armor runes make up for the deficit and it's not even close to the same. If Locket really was a problem could there be a new support item added? Something with an armor aura would be preferred. I'd really like to be able to have some hope of countering the enemy bot lane other than going an AP carry and building 'support' or playing a support with a good AP ratio and building wards but mostly damage that has a bit of utility.
If you took the time to read all that, thank you. If not, enjoy the TL;DR below.
TL;DR Why are supports being forced to go damage to be useful and why take armor out of a bot lane where it's necessary? Please change Iron Locket of the Solari back or bring out a new armor aura item.
