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I'm Not Happy About Support Items and Here's Why

Mandaari·2/28/2014, 1:41:30 AM·2 votes·419 views

Cross posted from GD.

Let me preface this with saying I'm happier with the state of supports than I was before the recent changes, but I think trying to solve support gold and scaling the way Riot did created more problems.

First off, I'm going to just talk about the gold generation lines of items and sightstone. These items were really nice when they were introduced. Sightstone was nice because supports didn't have to sink money into consumables. They could use one bulk purchase and for the most part not have to worry sinking anything else into wards. The gold generation items were a strong boost of gold income and provided nice effects to go with it. Great! Supports can now get a lot of gold and use items for great effects!

But I've had a taste of what a real support is. One that doesn't need to build specific items to get gold. One that doesn't need to buy wards. One that's feared for its kit and scalings. I want more. I want ARAM supports. But Mandaari, ARAM supports are just strong because healing is OP in ARAM. Well... yes and no. Playing ARAM at ~2300 people generally get annoyed at healers, but they can deal with it. Supports like Janna, Lulu, and Leona, who for the most part don't have heals, can be absolutely terrifying to deal with when they have gold. Look at Lulu in LCS recently. Imagine that, but that's your normal support. That's what I expect from a support - a Janna who can stop any dive on your carry, a Leona that can CC train your team without fear of being bursted, a Lulu that lets you jump on a carry being protected by the former.

The support items don't let you do that. First off, look at the item slots taken up by by the support items. You want wards? That's an item slot. You want your gold? That's an item slot. Imagine another role where you can only buy 4 item slot instead of 6. Think of how frustrated you are when you want to buy an item on Viktor, but can't because your augment is taking up a slot. Yes, supports get rewarded for buying those items. However, those items aren't cohesive. They're a hodgepodge of band-aids that have to be applied before the support can proceed the rest of their build.

There are two problems here. The first is that warding is supposed to be everybody's job, yet the burden still falls on supports. I'll get to this a little further on. The second is that supports are required to fix their gold problem with an item instead of just fixing the cause of the problem. Supports didn't get gold because they weren't the ones last hitting minions. Riot could have just split gold upon last hitting like experience is split, maybe around 70%/70%. That wouldn't require supports to build gold generation items in the first place because they wouldn't have a gold problem. Now your support Janna can go straight for the item she really wanted rather than take a necessary detour. Recently Xypherous mentioned that the reason movement speed was buffed across the board was that the game was too slow at 300MS. Everyone had to build boots as a first buy just to function. I fail to see how gold generation items are any different.

My second problem is with vision. Between trinkets and sightstone supports aren't quite the ward bitches that they were in season 3. Riot made it clear; vision is everybody's job. So they why isn't everybody buying a sightstone? Why is it just the support? It's an optimization. Supports tend to have kits that suffer the least by going out of their way to buy items like sightstone. Thus they're the ones that have to deal with it. Any class that is least penalized for a necessary action is going to be forced into taking that penalty. Again, this is a fundamental problem which trinkets helped with. The money was taken out of the equation. I'm not saying that vision should be free... well I half am. Vision can be financially free without being economically free. Vision - note I said vision, not wards - can be objective based. Trinkets are enough to supply lane vision. Past that if you want vision you and (part of) your team need to go for some objective with a little risk, analogous to a mini-dragon. I should clarify that this is just a quick solution which may or may not work, but I firmly believe that any vision system where there's a financial burden will put the burden on one person.

My last issue with support items is with active effects. I hate items like coin, sightstone, and locket with a passion. But why? They all make supports so much more effective. Look at all these dive comps in LCS that work because of coin. My issue is that it's not the support that's more effective; it's the item effects that people care about. I could play a purple caster minion and get the same output from active effects. This is why I was so happy to see support scalings get implemented. A few weeks ago Morello said he's not happy with actives for the same reason. The support scalings are definitely a step forward as well. I'm glad Riot's concerned as well and I look forward to seeing how the issue is followed up.

If these issues get addressed properly I believe supports will be feared and appreciated like they are in ARAM. To reiterate (TD;DR):

  • Items should not be band-aids for fundamental issues in game mechanics.
  • As long as vision is financially based it will penalize the least affected teammate.
  • Active effects make your choice in support less impactful because you get the same effects regardless of who you're playing.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully it was an interesting enough read that you stuck though it until the end.

@Xypherous @Xelnath @Morello @Meddler @CertainlyT @Scarizard

2 Comments

hawkbandit2/28/2014, 4:48:25 AM1 votes

I think it would be better to add diversity to the support items because right now they are almost all defensive based support items. Sightstone just gives hp, aegis just gives defensive stats, 2 of the 3 new gold items for support are defensive. The dagger was a step in the right direction, and since there really are not any ad supports its ok that there wasn't an ad gold item added. I think sightstone should be similar in that there should be an ad and ap version of it too. This way more champions would be inclined to use them it since they can fit into more builds.

I think part of the problem is supports don't have as great of scaling as others because they are supports (which has improved a little since the support changes) therefore offensive items are not as appealing.It's almost a no brainer since defensive stats are for the most part the same no matter who you are playing.

I almost feel like there should be a new stat for supports which would affect buffs/debuffs, wards and trinkets by either increasing their duration, potency, or both. this way they can either focus on damage or buffs. Like Nami for example, she has terrible scaling because of her great cc. If there were a new support stat, they could lower cc effectiveness across the board, up supports scaling ability, and then she could choose to either build items that give her more damage/healing, or she can build more support and have her movespeed buffs / stuns last longer (or maybe healing can even be part of the support stat instead of ap). This would make the game a lot more complicated and harder to balance but i think it would open up the support role to a lot more champions.