gold issues on supports

vasheenomed·Oct 17, 2013·5 votes·425 views

I think the big way to make supports more powerful is by putting their power into somewhere that other classes won't get... so either assists, gp5 items, masteries, or a combination of them

imagine there is a mastery that makes gp5 items give way more gp5 and then they lower the base for them and gut the stats on them

imagine they make a talent that gives you 10x your gp5 for 10 seconds (to make beating your opponent grant you gold)

an alternative would be to have assists give a support 100-200 extra gold

another possibility is to give either static or scaled gp5 after so long of not killing a minion creep (still not matching lane csing though or else supports would never want to cs)

I think the fact that supports use gp5 runes and masteries, mostly go for assists, and use support masteries, those would be the best places to put their gold. putting them anywhere else makes no sense. but overall I don't see any major changes needing to be made to how the game plays, just minor adjustments to how things that normally don't give much gold affect supports...

p.s. the most important thing is to make sure the gold you get as a support is acheived from good play, and is NOT given for free

tl;dr- put extra gold in either assists or masteries and possibly that scale with passive gp5 so that suports with their support masteries and gp5 runes can take best advantage of them.

8 Comments

TimmyWimmyWooWooOct 17, 20132 votes

My biggest problem with supporting is limited item choices (locket change) & general disrespect for the role.

IE Gold is fine.

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

Actually, the support problem only arises at very high level or competitive play where supports buy mostly only wards.

As long as you play solo queue and aren't top of the ladder, you can get away with only a few dozen wards and even reach at least triforce+gunblade in most games...

djumpOct 17, 20131 votes

you build triforce+gunblade on supports?

I lol'd

It's true though, the most serious issue with support gold is at the high level of play. Most pro tournaments the supports are lucky to have one other item or finished boots in addition to sightstone. I'm sure it's similar at high levels of ranked as well.

but even at low elo, supports are still gp10 reliant and don't really have an income or get to buy items quite like other players. They are in the process of changing this though (i.e.-see season 4)

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

Well, even high level isn't that harsh, and yes, I do build Triforce on some supports ({{Champion:59}}{{Champion:78}}, sometimes {{Champion:12}}), and gunblade only on {{Champion:78}}.

But overall that wasn't the point, you can replace all that by {{Item:3026}}{{Item:3143}} or {{Item:3116}}{{Item:3151}}... None of those are a particularily "Carry build" but should still be affordable for everyone...

As for low ELO farm, I usually tend to end up splitpushing if I am on a tankier support, if I have a somewhat ok push, they will have to send someone to stop me, and I'm usually able to 1v1 their support, and they can usually 4v4 when the tank or a carry is gone...

RiotRiot LilyHazeOct 17, 20132 votes

The problem with your suggestion is that it too easily puts money back into the hands of Junglers like existed in Season 2 when all junglers built Heart of Gold. If you want gold easily attainable, people will find a way to sacrifice a few stats (masteries) to easily get them on non-support roles.

And without a new system added, how would you propose to give supports additional gold for assists without giving all champions assist gold? If you put it in the support mastery tree, I fear this too easily gives way to assassin mids taking it and then roaming to get even more gold than they already do while also more easily feeding other lanes by giving them kills more often.

Mindworm JimOct 18, 20131 votes

This is the crux of the problem. How do you give more gold to support (and jungle) players so that they can reasonably compete with lane farmers, without simply giving more gold to everyone (thus solving nothing)?

The only quick solutions I have been able to come up with also present the problem of lane farmers simply using the mechanic to acquire gold from complete safety. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it has the potential to create undesirable outcomes.

djumpOct 17, 20131 votes

You guys should just wait a few weeks(maybe few months?). It's been stated that one of the big changes for season 4 that they have/are working out is gold flow changes for junglers and support.

so not to dismiss your good suggestions, but they have already done a TON of work on this problem and will be implementing what I'm sure are well developed solutions as soon as season 4 hits

I know there are more detailed discussions than this, but here's the most recent reference from morello talking about how they're buffing support gold soon.