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Riot: Support Itemization is Terrible and Fixable

Goumindong·6/19/2014, 10:09:54 PM·35 votes·1,963 views

Preface

In the last patch, Riot did a once over on AD itemization and they did some pretty interesting and valuable things for AD's. And at the same time they did a pretty bad thing for supports. In this thread i want to talk about why that is and about how Riot needs to think about itemization, and support itemization in particular, in the future. This is aimed at you @Riotwhomevertheheckdoesitemdesignandbalance and @Xypherous

Generally we can think that there are three types of efficiency a) gold efficiency b) slot efficiency and c) build efficiency. Efficiency is a statistic which is relative, defined not by absolute values, but by the relative value compared to other items. Typically we want to think about stats like health, resistances, ability power, and attack damage as more valuable than things like HP/5 and MP/5 because sustain items aren't valuable now. After all if you spend a lot of gold and slots on MP/5 and HP/5 someone who has only a handful of immediate power will out fight you and be able to use that advantage to snowball

  1. Gold efficiency: Raw Power per point of gold. Items which are very gold efficient are things like Doran's items. Things that are very inefficient are things like Ardent Coin, or Tear of the Goddess.
  2. Slot efficiency: Raw power per point of slot. Items which are very slot efficient are things like Triforce, Infinity Edge, Mercurial Scimitar, Bloodthirster, Deathcap, DFG... Pretty much most big completed items and the more expensive it is the more slot efficient it is. Items which are very slot inefficient are things like Rejuv beads.
  3. Build Efficiency: This one is a bit harder to define. It is basically the amount of deadspace in the build leading up to the item. This comes in two ways, slot and gold. An item which uses up more slots before its purchased is build inefficient and an item which costs large amounts of gold between value is build inefficient

A great example of an item which is build efficient is Twin Shadows. It takes up at most two items in your inventory at any time in its build path and the largest price jump is 630 gold. Which means that if you ever have to go back with >630 gold you can progress towards the item so long as you have the slots.

A good example of an item which is slot build inefficient is Warmog's Armor. Warmog's armor takes up at most 4 slots of space and its highest component cost is 1050 gold (1410 if you don't purchase the very slot inefficient rejuv beads). A good example of an item which is gold build inefficient is Deathcap. The smallest portion is 840 gold and the largest is 1600.

Obviously different efficiencies matter more at different points in the game. Gold efficiency matters most early when you have a bunch of open slots. Build efficiency matters more in the mid game where you have to balance your ability to build into an item with gold and slot considerations both about equally important. And of course slot efficiency matters most in the end game when you're finalizing builds.

Similarly different champion types have different efficiency concerns at all points in the game. Carries are most concerned with slot efficiency, because they're concerned mainly about purchasing multiplicative stats (E.G. AP, Mpen, DFG Active, Deathcap Bonus Scaling damage) for the end of the game. Because they get the most gold on average due to farm priority they're less concerned with having to wait for a big item. Supports are more concerned with gold and build efficiency similarly, because they never have all that much gold and waiting for a big purchase leaves a very large hole in your power.

Additionally some item types have systematic efficiencies which represent this. AP and AD damage items are the highest slot efficiency items in the game. While there do not exist particularly any slot efficient tank items. The most expensive pure tank item in the game costs 3000 gold (Randuin's Omen) while the most efficient pure damage items cost upwards of 3830 gold. Due to this at the end of the game when slots matter most an AD carry can hold upwards of 3000 extra gold worth of items. That is pretty big, and part of that was accomplished by making Scimitar and BT partially defensive while still being good AD items so that an AD can forgo a traditional 6th defensive item in favor of a mixed option.

The Point

OK so what does this have to do with Supports? Well if you have three kinds of item efficiency and efficiency is a relative stat then some obvious structure about how items should be balanced should appear. The problem is that support items do not conform to this structure and the needs of support champions

  • An item which is slot efficient, build efficient, and gold efficient will be overly strong. After all it has no downsides at any point in its build path. You can buy it early, without sacrificing potions and wards, and then end up with an item which you never need to get rid of, which never has any lulls in power. Because its gold efficient and build efficient you don't suffer at all for having a superior 6 item build. More or less everyone who can make use of an item like this will buy it early
  • An item which is slot inefficient, build inefficient, and gold inefficient will be terrible. After all it has no upsides at any point. You can't buy it early without sacrificing potions and wards, there are long periods with no power increases and when you do get power increases they're weak.
  • An item which has only one efficiency has to have it in spades and so two is the gold standard of efficiencies for most items. Items should be slot efficient and gold efficient, but not build efficient. Good examples of these are the big AD/AP carry items, all of which have significant build lulls due to the 1500-1600 per unit cost of BF Sword and NLR.

So while ADC's need items which are gold efficient and slot efficient. Supports need items which are gold efficient and build efficient. Slot efficiency doesn't much matter because you're almost never going to fill up. For this reason the change to Mikaels was terrible. While it used to be gold efficient and build efficient and very slot inefficient (because it only had some MR and MP/5 on it besides the active) now its gold inefficient (more MP/5 than you could possibly use filled with other items which give MP/5, CDR which caps, and ok some MR that isn't too bad) and almost build inefficient as well (870 to upgrade). Maybe the active still makes it worth it, its a pretty good one. But in terms of our structure of items the exact opposite of what we would want happen to items happened to Crucible.

So why don't support items fit this mold? Besides specific problems with specific items the answer comes down largely to Cooldown Reduction and MP/5. A significant chunk of the gold efficiency of every support item is tied up in CDR and many have MP/5. Support masteries emphasize CDR. Oh and of course there is a hard CDR and effective MP/5 cap. So all the items which supports should consider building, that is the build and gold efficient items which end up being slot efficient, that is items which a carry or tank would not consider past the very early game are suddenly gold inefficient as well. And 1 out of 3 isn't good enough unless the 1 is amazing. The only way to make a really good build efficient item given that its gold inefficient and slot inefficient is if it builds yourself in your inventory as you gain gold, letting you effectively shop from the middle of the lane.

Clearly that isn't going to happen. And because of it, the support items need a complete redesign: But that is OK. We can rebuild it, we have the technology.

  1. There can only be a few support oriented items which have high amounts of CDR on them. Maybe they can be, more or less, mutually exclusive items that you would not tend or want to buy together because their only stat is CDR and they don't build into anything but 20% CDR and an active for 1000 gold.
  2. There can only be a few support oriented items which have high amounts of mana sustain on them. They need to be more or less mutually exclusive with each other so that you probably aren't going to stack them
  3. Other items need to not have CDR or sustain and provide immediate "now" stats. Sustain stats for supports should not be smattered around on all of the items, because when this happens the gold you're paying for the sustain rapidly becomes as worthless as gold you're paying for CDR when you're capped.
  4. All of these items need to be gold efficient and build efficient but not slot efficient.

An Example

item 3050 There is a 1700 gold gulf between the valuable part of Zeke's Herald and the finished item. A finished item which offers a decent amount of team power but holy lord when are you going to have the time to wait on a 1700 gold item on a support with zero farm priority? And holy lord how do you use the massive 20% CDR on it without capping later in the game? The supports who would use this most would probably have Talisman due to how the stats work which means they're now capped at 40% CDR with two items not counting and 2 other slots worth of support items which have CDR which they're probably going to build and the fact that they also are probably strongest with CDR boots because they don't get much out of the other options. If they have 0% CDR in masteries the items this type of support would otherwise want to build at 6 items would give them between 75% and 95% CDR which is a whole mess of wasted stats

Continued Thoughts and Discussion

item 3222 Lets ask a question. Why was Pre-path Mikael's purchased so often? Was it because it was OP? Maybe. But potentially not, after all, no one else purchased the item; only supports. Its a completed item for 1600 gold which has only mana and MR. The MR is good and the mana is "complete and singular" in that you don't really need another mana sustain item if you get it, but the mana isn't particularly "now". Its about 100% gold efficient even then. I suggest that the reason that Mikael's was purchased so often was not that it was so strong, but that there were no other comparable items to purchase.

For "around" the 1600 gold price point you basically had three options. Ohmwrecker (2000 gold), finish your gold generation item (1335), or Mikaels (1600).

Ohmwrecker is more expensive and has a worse build path (as it requires two items or a very large break gold break point but is otherwise not bad in terms of gold efficiency and its active is undervalued in the lategame (especially for teams which have bad siege.

Finishing your gold generation item isn't all that bad. FotM provides 325 HP, 10% CDR, and 12 HP/5 which would be decently good if the HP/5 were particularly valuable and you weren't going to cap CDR anyawy(though this is less likely on tanky supports who buy it). But its active isn't that powerful(especially compared to mikaels) until your AD has lots of damage. Talisman follows the same mold, with the exception that more of the stats land in sustain and are less immediately useful. Frost Queen probably has the best combination of power and active (that slow makes it really easy to catch people) despite again, the problems with CDR.

If you choose to upgrade your Gold Generation item to its final form first then you're out of options for 1600 total gold. Your next item, if you're looking for immediate power has to mikaels. There are no other immediate priced items to buy. Especially for a support that is defined by their utility rather than their power.

21 Comments

Manchette6/20/2014, 12:44:25 AM6 votes

This deserves attention. Such a well thought out explanation and presentation for the issue is hard to come by.

Tulare6/19/2014, 11:23:33 PM2 votes

In fact, for this very reason, I've tried to eliminated CDR from my support mastery and rune pages. I noticed that I was capping and exceeding cap with items alone. It has actually pushed me toward supports that can better take advantage of other stats in the mid- and late-games so that I don't get stuck with so much excess CDR.

Penguin Eclipse6/21/2014, 9:23:37 PM2 votes

I've never actually liked to idea of support items. They usually have weak stats I don't want for a passive/active I do. I'd much rather all support items (minus sightstone, which I consider a general vision item) be deleted entirely. Something would have to be done for gold items, but that could be figured out. From there, create some more general AP and tank items. This would benefit everyone, as mid lane mages and tanky tops/junglers could build them.

Then, offer enchantments on top of select completed items. For example, have the ardent censer passive as an enchantment, twin shadows ghosts as an enchantment, Mikael's active as an enchantment (but not self-castable), etc. Limit the number of enchantments per champion and which items can be enchanted as needed for balancing. There would be some things to iron out to prevent tops/mids from abusing enchantments, but it is possible.

Glum Reaper6/20/2014, 6:12:08 AM2 votes

I really like all of your points, but I think your discussion delves a bit too deeply into efficiency. It becomes a bit of a red herring for the real issue: too m any support items offer un-useable stats, and many others offer too m any of the same stats.

You mentioned a lot of this with your discussion on Zeke's... why on Earth would a support item need to have lifesteal? Although the attack-buff aura is really cool (and something I could see being a fun addition to the m eta), there's no secret why nobody ever gets Zeke's.

Your point on CDR being so ubiquitous was also spot-on. Almost all support items give CDR, which means at best, you can only really get 2 support items... else your gold is being wasted on a stat that doesn't increase. Honestly, making some cool support items that do not give CDR would be pretty nice to see. It just seems that Riot keeps going, "Hmm, I want to make a new support item that does [insert utility here]. I know! Let's give it some MP5 and CDR!"

One of my favorite items to use as a model is Aegis of the Legion. Even though Aegis is not a "final" item in its buildpath, it does offer a significantly important aura that can let the gold-starved supports still have a slot-efficient item. It can also be upgraded further for added utility (AOE shield/CDR are the most important for a support).

Some brainstorming...

• Perhaps the GP5 items can be given such late-game upgrades? (The reason for these items in particular is so that the slot-effective items doesn't top the bruisers out of control, since a lot of support items overlap with bruiser items.)

• To prevent out-of-control snowballing, maybe have these have a minimum level and/or time requirement (e.g., can't upgrade FotM until you are level 12)

• Auras are one of my favorite things, and passive auras (such as Aegis/Zeke's) should be added to these final-tier support items.

Inciflahrdus6/20/2014, 9:27:07 PM1 votes

Awesome post! I agree with all points.
I sometimes want to build that damned Zeke but overlapping CDR discourage me to do so. After tier 2 gold item, sightstone and boots, what good mid-tier items are to be chosen (for AP support)?

Aether wisp? Sounds good. But it builds into Lichbane, that from supports only Sona can use efficiently (and costs tons of gold), Twin shadows - it has nice active but without it isn't gold efficient and grants that 10% CDR. And overpriced Censer (you pay 550g for +2 MP5, +3% MS and passive).

Forbidden Idol? - Manasustain. Ok, verybody needs some, it is desired on healers. Builds into 3 items with nice passives/actives (Censer, Crucible, Talisman) but are either overpriced or have too much gold value in per5 stats. There is also Morellonomicon, very cost efficient and with passive that can be sometimes useful, but hi again 20% CDR.

There is Chalice, but builds into Crucible that now have 1200gold placed in mana regen. +10% CDR for 300g.

Banner of Command and Ohmwrecker both have bad buildpaths and are barely cost efficient without passive/actives, and Banner gives once again 20% CDR.

Tanky supports have better options in general, as most tanky items are both cost- and build- efficient, but costs some gold. Also most of them gives CDR (FH - 20%; IBG, SV, Locket - 10%).
And buildpath of Aegis, one of the most common support-tank items, seems unoptimal. It takes 3 item spots for components, and if you wants to omit the Bead, you need to gather over 700g twice (for negatron and finishing). I miss Emblem of Valor...

KSHarrison6/21/2014, 3:14:43 PM1 votes

Mikhael's was nerfed because it was OP. The problem with modeling based on gold/slot efficiency is that you can't place a price on unique passives/actives. It turns out that the utility of deleting CC is exceedingly powerful.

Other roles didn't buy it because they need combat stats. Combat stats not only synergize with each other, but they need to be upgraded regularly throughout a game to stay relevant.

A support cannot afford to build damage and hope to stay relevant with the power curve of the game; their ratios also do not allow it.

Utility however does not have a power curve. It's always useful and doesn't require synergistic scaling.

In the realm of utility, Mikael's was OP for 1600 gold. Comparing around a price point of 1600 gold is an arbitrary standard. That's like comparing BotRK to IE. IE is built now despite few price changes and it being much more expensive than BotRK. The reason it wasn't built before and BotRK was had nothing to do with a "price point."

I agree that Zeke's is too expensive. If it were reduced in price, the 20% CDR that caps might become an issue. One of the issues with supports is you want to offer them a variety of build paths that scale into the game, but unlike other stats, MP5 and % CDR reach a cap on being useful. I'm not sure how significant a problem this is with support itemization. I think %CDR is still ok, not sure about MP5. The %CDR should probably be streamlined to 10%, which I think it already is except Zeke's.

Whuppinya6/21/2014, 4:47:42 PM1 votes

A lot of this explanation is really great, though I don't know if I would call the itemization terrible. I can agree that it is super super easy to hit or go over 40% cdr on supports, esp AP ones like Janna and Sona. Personally, I also really like the Intelligence mastery which gives 5% cdr (10% for activated items), but this just makes it even easier to go over the 40% cap.

Jethzk6/22/2014, 10:53:59 AM1 votes

I've never liked the idea of forcing supports to build certain items, it really limits build diversity. In particular I feel like AP supports really fall off late game if they don't have at least 1 AP item. Take janna for example. She scales quite well with AP. Her bonus damage while shielded does not apply if the shield breaks on the first auto, so it's a good idea to stack AP. However many of the support items don't offer much for decent AP. Mikael's will always be a requirement because it's the ONLY item in the game that can remove CC on someone else. Add Ardent Censer, Boots, sightstone and GP10 item. There's only 1 slot left which should honestly be kept for a pink as long as possible. It doesn't leave much room to actually build AP.

The real kicker is that a lot of supports took a base ability hit at the beginning of season 3 on the basis that they would have more gold and scale better with AP. While they might scale better, they simply can't afford the slots because certain use items or auras are too valuable to give up.

I love the play of nami early game, but I can't stand her late game. It feels like her heal becomes non-existent. There are a lot of supports in this situation. The lack of actual combat stats on support items, in favor of things like CDR, make some skills useless. It becomes either, build support and help the team with items, or build stats and help the team with skills. If we look at the current trend it's pretty obvious that support items win out.

Junglers are also in a similar boat with their new jungle items. I used to love playing shaco jungle, grabbing a dorans blade and fighting their jungler at 2nd buff. Sadly starts like that actually put the jungler behind because they aren't building towards their core gold item, so they have to be extremely successful at ganks for it to pay off.

I would actually like to see less emphasis put on active items, or more variants of the same items with actives available.

Wolfeur6/19/2014, 11:02:43 PM1 votes

The problem with build efficiency is that you have to choose between slot and gold, except if you upgrade a unique item over and over. If not, you are either combining (many slots used) or directly upgrading (high price jumps). As a support, since you have to constantly buy consumables, you take slots AND you decrease your gold, making build efficiency twice more important.

If consumables took another place in inventory (like trinkets), it would be easier to build build-inefficient items but it is complicated to change.

Sneak Dog6/22/2014, 12:15:00 PM1 votes

Is it possible that these items have cdr which is capped so suddenly because they don't want you to stack them too much? I could see how stacking all the supportive items could lead to some previous season things where supports are required to only build items that benefit the team directly, instead of building ap/tankiness to use their own scaling to benefit the team.

PacificStar6/20/2014, 3:04:08 AM1 votes

Goumindong, why are you so smart while I am so dumb? Comprehensive and accessible.

Nortwin6/20/2014, 10:24:00 AM1 votes

Zeke is amazing on Jarvan IV, Shen and most of junglers, if you want to save a slot for your team.

xThaydx6/20/2014, 4:15:20 PM1 votes

Sooooo much this, RIOT please take note! The over-abundance of CDR is particularly noteworthy, because many "core" support items take you to 40% all by themselves, making many of the "situational" items gold-inefficient. As a support, my ability to tailor my late-game items to the threats of that match is severely hampered.