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Are there any support changes upcoming?

ratcharmer·2/14/2014, 4:20:23 PM·1 votes·407 views

Hello Riot,

As part of the pre-season changes in October 2013 Riot introduced new income into the role of support, as well as reworking warding and adding in "utility scaling" for many characters traditionally played as supports.

The utility scaling in particular raised a lot of questions among the community as to whether or not this was, in fact, just another support nerf in disguise.

Almost as soon as the changes came out Rioters were posting to re-assure us that they were watching the changes closely and would buff appropriately if support champions were now weak.

Fast forward a month or so. Morello made a post mentioning he thought the itemization on traditional supports is "a bit weak and myopic". Most of the community has decided that the squishy traditional supports all got a major nerf.

Fast forward another month or so. Meddler posts agreeing that many traditional supports are a bit weak and that their AP ratios are too low to make buying AP an attractive option. Meddler also mentioned that Soraka probably will not see buffs before she gets reworked. He says he'll talk to the balance team and get back to us.

Another month or so . . . Meddler never got back to us, but Morello pops up in one of the many threads asking for buffs to support characters. He also acknowledged that many traditional support characters are a bit weak at the moment, and sticks around long enough to chat in a thread discussing options for buffing Janna's Q.

Another month and that brings us to . . . now. It has been four months since the "closely monitored" changes came out, and although there's been a lot of discussion of buffing support champions, there has yet to be any real improvements.

Let's look at the changes to support characters during this timeframe:

  • Taric Nerfed through the floor (I haven't seen him played since)
  • Janna got a buff to the healing on her ult (the vast majority seem to agree this was not an effective buff)
  • Sona nerfs experimented with on PBE, but didn't go live
  • Annie got an early-game stun nerf, but compensation buffs to her Ult
  • Kayle got a massive AP ratio nerf, compensated by buffs to the support-y aspects of her kit (might be a good support now?)
  • Thresh auto-attack range nerfed

Now, that certainly doesn't look like a whole lot of buffs to me.

(Let me know if I missed anything. I don't claim omnipotence)

Main Question: why is it taking so long to buff some support champions (or at least start PBE testing buffs) after Riot has said they need buffs?

1 Comments

ReelBigDan2/14/2014, 8:13:21 PM2 votes

To answer your main question, the support changes have a lot to do with new champion releases: If a new champion is too strong, Riot is wary of making knee-jerk nerfs to appease the "OMG X IS SO OP RITO PLS NERF" crowd. In the same respects, if a new champion is too weak, Riot prefers to wait and see on the data to make sure they really are weak and not just taking time to learn.

Many of the support changes were effective on the champion side, but fell short on the itemization or even the meta. This case is less about certain supports needing buffs and more about certain extreme cases needing changes. Support tanks like Leona and Taric are ridiculous right now because of the effectiveness of item 3302 and its line as well as defense itemization in general. AP carries like Zyra and Annie are breaking into the support lane because of utility needed to survive middle lane, and as such was balanced for solo lanes. The new gold income changes allowed them to bring utility and damage over the support's sole utility. Outliers like Thresh are also still very effective because of free stats and utility that is always viable by design.

It took Riot a while to find solutions for the Season 3 "wardbox syndrome," and I imagine it will take them a bit to make pure utility valued over utility and damage. It's a very thorny subject because Riot needs to find a way to make scaling utility powerful while also not completely edging out alternative supports and tanks(again).

And without looking at the data, it's just as likely that it's a matter of public opinion. It takes a lot to convince players that helping the team is preferrable to helping the team AND doing damage.

As for the list of nerfs you say are indicative of some conspiracy to put supports down again:

  • Taric's pick and win-rate has skyrocketed due to the combination of soft reworks and new tank income. ANd the nerfs to his armor scaling were not even close to "nerfed through the roof." They were more like "nerfs to the fact that Taric buys more armor than before."
  • Janna's win-rate has seen an upturn since the Monsoon changes, iirc.
  • I'd mention Sona, but I am far too biased against her.
  • As I said before, Annie was balanced with solo laning in mind. What's healthy in a solo lane can turn toxic in a duo lane pretty fast.
  • Kayle had ridiculous damage on her Q before, even with little AP itemization. That and her movement speed buff is way under-appreciated.
  • I touched on this already. Thresh has a little too much in his kit to ever not be effective. Free defenses, free damage on a cooldown, the hook, the free ally pseudo-dash, and an area control slow ult. Thresh's gameplay is more about getting in close than poking from afar, so his autoattack range could be shorter.

tl;dr - There were reasons the best supports were nerfed, and the utility support buffs are coming if they're needed.

P.S. The image of utility supports being dead comes from the fact that LCS pros pick what's safest and pubs just copy LCS pros because too few know the inner workings of the game and why things are effective.