To all supports on Teambuilder

GanksLikeGast0n·Sep 23, 2014·19 votes·2,247 views

First I want to thank you all for constant contributions to the success of your team.

However, please, for the love of Runeterra start using the "support" role category. By Graggy's glorious beard it is irritating having to search "bot lane: any" because individuals insist on choosing "tank" or "mage" instead of "support". I assure you, we will use logic (the rarest candy of all) and figure out what kind of support you are based on your champ. So I implore you, correctly use the system Riot has so graciously provided to us so we can all enjoy a more streamlined play experience. Thank you for your continued support.

26 Comments

BowlboSep 23, 20145 votes

As a support main I totally agree with you. The odd time I have played alternate roles I have felt the pain of waiting long item 3157 amounts of time for that bot lane. It seems like an obvious (and valid) suggestion on your part, but my best guess would be players hunting for the remaining summoner icons while still playing support.

MrBuffingtonSep 23, 20141 votes

^ I typically list myself as a support, but I have been known to list myself as "tank" for the remaining summoner icon. Honestly though, I'd say this occurs in the minority; I don't see why it's an issue, just search for "bot lane: support" if you're really bent on finding a support, the people playing tanks bot lane will just find another role they can tank in (like jungle, another sorely needed role). The only reason I bothered listing myself as a tank bot lane (only once, by the way) is because I know people just search "bot lane: any" and I can get in those teams. That I had a longer queue time just means that not many people list "bot lane: any", suggesting that it's actually not that common a problem. If anything, OP could have just said for people to start looking for "bot lane: support" and those minority players will naturally find that their queue times are shorter if they just list themselves as support.

I'd say the majority of support players list themselves as such; if it annoys you so much just search for a support, those players are in the majority. Better yet, you know the player you find is going to play as a support; they're not going Zed bot lane because they know they can get away with it.

GanksLikeGast0nSep 23, 20142 votes

Welcome to the thread, I've tracked a number of your comments in other threads in the past and I definitely respect you as a poster for your consistently helpful and well thought out responses and suggestions.

I have experienced a noticeable difference in time between "any" and "support" and felt that as a community we should work on addressing this.

The reason I targeted this post at the player base I did is that I find support players tend to be more considerate and helpful than the average players of other roles. With that in mind I felt that it would be received better to say "I've noticed this trend working against an effective system, would you please help me to correct this by properly using the system" than to say "hey everyone, these people aren't playing by the rules, let's all ignore them until they figure it out on their own."

MrBuffingtonSep 23, 20142 votes

lol you're giving me way too much credit, I'm just a guy who likes to run his mouth a bit more than he should :P. Also I'm a bit hypersensitive to tone, and your original post came off a bit more annoyed/frustrated than your comments (which have been very controlled and well thought out), so forgive me if I came off a bit too confrontational in that first comment.

I guess too if you want to be really precise about it, "support" is both a role and a type of champion. In team builder, you only specify your location (ie. Top, Jungle, etc.) and your type of champion (ie. Marksman, Assassin, etc), not your role in the meta (ie. ADC, Support, etc). It's a bit confusing since the word "support" has two meanings in LoL, one where it describes the role in the meta (ie. a Support goes bot lane with an ADC), and also a type of champion (ie. Soraka is a Support/Mage, Ashe is a Marksman/Support). There's always been a conflict with Riot's categorization of champions and the champions' role in the meta, largely because the two are trying to accomplish different goals (for example, Marksman and ADC aren't truly synonymous; Master Yi is technically an Attack Damage Carry, but not a Marksman, because he has no ranged attacks, even though he is a carry champion that's based on attack damage. On the flipside, Teemo is listed as a Marksman, but deals mostly magic damage and usually builds AP, and so is typically not considered an ADC). Riot is creating categories that are meant to help players understand the general playstyle of certain champions as they are designed, where as the meta game is more meant to figure out how those champions can actually fit into a team and what their role in that team is. This is why you have champions like Annie, who Riot lists only as a Mage, being played in the Support role. Since the parameters that Riot has built into team builder only specify the type of champion, technically listing Annie bot as a Support is incorrect, since she's a Mage champion.

Where this gets confusing is that you can mix a "role of a champion" with the "type of a champion"; Riot doesn't believe that their labeling system is gospel for how a champion should be played, only as general guidelines on how the champion is generally played or what playstyle their kit supports, which is why they give you the ability to specify the type of champion you're playing in order to allow flexibility in trying new playstyles; in that way, the designation of "marksman" or "support" isn't truly a description of the champion you're playing as per Riot's labels, more how you're playing them (which makes it sound a lot more like the role you're playing them in). In a way, the "support" role is a bit more flexible than the other categories (you can't play Garen as a marksman, it just doesn't make sense since he's not ranged) since there are a lot of ways a non-support champion as per Riot (like Annie) can function in the role of a support in the larger metagame.

Long story short, listing Annie as a bot lane mage isn't technically incorrect; there are about three types of champions that are typically played in the support role: a mage (like Annie), a tank (like Alistar), and a support (like Soraka). I think your frustration results from an equivocation between the role of support and the champion type of support, the latter of which is actually what Riot makes available in the champion search terms.

Realistically, most players (including myself) generally make these equivocations simply for ease of use, but I think they're important distinctions to keep in the back of your mind.

GanksLikeGast0nSep 23, 20143 votes

Terribly sorry if I came off frustrated or annoyed, 'twas not my intention.

While I agree that there is a difference between a support champion and the support role, I also believe that teambuilder exists to establish roles on the team by identifying lane and position on the team. This is most relevant to bot lane where instead of "ADC" riot gave us the option for "Marksman", which, as you established are not entirely synonymous. In the bot lane they also gave us the option for support, which implies role and general build path and play style rather than type of champion. A good exemple of this would be Alistair, or shen. While both of these champions are tanks and in the top lane may build a sunfire cape, it is unlikely they would do so in the support role. As a tanky support it is your job instead to pick up aura or team centric items such as sightstone and locket of the iron solari, or on the tankier end randuin's omen for the active. While there are tankier, more aggressive tank items, it is more important for the bot lane support to pick up items that benefit the team as a whole. Hence the difference between "tank" and "support". The same can be said for support mage, with items like athenes vs. crucible. The champion themselves will dictate to your team how you intend to play your role, "support" is more your itemization and in game actions. And since team builder is focused around allowing a captain to form a team of champions in specific roles, I am far more interested in finding a Braum "support" than a Braum "tank", we already know that Braum is a tank.

MrBuffingtonSep 24, 20141 votes

Small tid-bit; Braum is actually listed primarily as a Support, and secondarily as a Tank. Alistar, before his buffs, was typically only played in the Support role, but he isn't even listed as a Support champion by Riot, only a Tank.

In any case, I still think we're bumping into an equivocation between champion classes and roles in the metagame. You bring up a good point with itemization, however it is not uncommon for a utility jungler like Maokai or Amumu to buy a more supportive jungle item like Locket, especially vs. heavy AoE AP teams, which would seem to suggest that a "jungle, support" label on these champions would be appropriate in certain situations (heck, you see Lee Sins pick up Lockets in competitive play; it isn't uncommon).

The difficulty here is that Riot does not make a game to abide to a particular meta; for example, Relic Shield is typically an item for the support role, however when it was first introduced, it was horribly overpowered, leading top laners not only to buy the item, but certain teams would forgo a jungler to have two top laners, each with a relic shield, since at the time that was more gold efficient. For that brief moment, that was an established meta-game strategy (which fell off when Relic Shield was nerfed) which had a duo top lane buying a typically support item.

Riot had the difficult task of creating a mode that would outlast any changes in the meta; the confusion is that when Riot lists "Support" as an option in team builder, they aren't referring to the meta role of support; they're referring more (I believe) to their own champion category "Support". This way, they won't run into a problem if or when a metagame becomes obsolete, and also this allows for more flexibility in the types of team compositions and strategies a captain can try. I know Riot understands that this isn't a perfect solution, but it's better than them locking team builder into a certain metagame; after all teambuilder was created to help people create and experiment with new team compositions and strategies as well as simply securing your preferred role.

BoswickSep 23, 20144 votes

Captains put "any" for one of the bot lane spots and you just end up with endless double marksmen. So annoying.

GanksLikeGast0nSep 23, 20142 votes

Exactly. Unfortunately if you put "support" you miss out on every "tank" Leona/braum and "mage" nami/sona/janna. :/

The MormonatorSep 23, 20143 votes

People still want the icons and have to list themselves as other roles and in some cases people are actually looking for a tank support or a mage support because of an ad mid laner or lack of tanks

GanksLikeGast0nSep 23, 20141 votes

While you are correct and the icons are understandably part of the issue, this has unfortunately been going on since teambuilder went live. It really is a rather perplexing occurrence to me given the clearly defined nature of teambuilder. Looking for specific types of supports does make a certain amount of sense however.

ValyrianBladeSep 23, 20142 votes

Not sure why you're getting downvotes, I completely think this is a reasonable ask (and I up voted). Would be nice if these people would explain why they must specify... perhaps riot needs to make a bot Lane not adc option, so a support can specify what they are? In some cases a team has no tank/initiator and needs that kind of support to work with their team composition.

GanksLikeGast0nSep 23, 20141 votes

Thank you for the reply (and the upvote of course). The downvotes confused me as well, I and would have been happy to hear there opinion as well as an explanation on their thoughts on the issue. While I like the idea you proposed, I'm not certain how well an additional subcategory for just the support role would work.

HimedereQueenSep 23, 20142 votes

This annoys me as well. I main support but every now and then i want to make sure i'm not totally forgetting how to ADC. I occasionally play ADC so i know how i need to advise my ADC when supporting, as well as what items are best suited to go with their build on my end, or how to counter build the other ADC so they don't demolish me. So it does get annoying when i end up with someone who wasn't even aiming for support.

KeysheSep 24, 20142 votes

I have always use 'support' role category (well except that onetime I was trying to get the icons lol, but that was a friend as captain and bot was covered by him and me so, I'm still good :D), I didn't know others aren't that explains why so many use 'any' for bot lane XD. I had been wondering about that.

ParinoidPandaSep 23, 20141 votes

Yeah, I figured this one out myself. Made queue times a lot faster. :D

JinotadSep 23, 20141 votes

I agree with this, an alternative that I would love to see is a "not" search function. We have an AD mid, so I want a Any, not AD, top. Or in this case, any, not marksman, bot lane.

This would help out with the 10 minutes of "oh you need any bot lane, OK here is this marksmen. What you didn't want that marksmen, OK, here is another marksmen. No? Why are yo being so picky, I'm giving you what you want?"

TenSlashTenSep 24, 20141 votes

you're welcome would you like leb nid or katarina support? :D

GanksLikeGast0nSep 24, 20141 votes

I prefer my 'sin supports to be Kha'zix flavored. :P

The best CC is death. Khazix

Thunder DreamssSep 24, 20141 votes

So I implore you, correctly use the system Riot has so graciously provided to us so we can all enjoy a more streamlined play experience.

Lets say I'm going to be playing Volibear in bot lane . What role would be the correct one to pick?

Well Riot defines the "Support" role as "Supports make plays by enabling their allies through buffs and heals, or by disrupting enemy lines through crowd control." Now I will be using some crowd control in the form of my toss and slow but I won't be healing or buffing my team.

Is there perhaps a role that fits what I will be doing better? According to Riot a "Tank" is a champion who "Tanks are durable, front-line champions that help lock down enemies and start fights.... protect their more fragile teammates by stunning or pushing around dangerous foes." Well now, this sounds like exactly like what Voli will be doing bot lane with an adc. He'll be soaking damage, starting fights, and tossing people away from the carry.

So, explain to me how choosing the "Support" role for "support voli" is using Riot's system correctly?

GanksLikeGast0nSep 24, 20141 votes

Certainly. Please scroll though the comments and read the conversation between MrBuffington and myself, in which we discuss the difference between champion types and roles on the team. Tanks especially are discussed. If you still have questions after that I would be happy to answer them.

Thunder DreamssSep 24, 20141 votes

I don't really have any question, I just find it annoying that you're advocating for using the team builder system wrong. You don't seem to understand the difference between role (how you play) and your position (place in the meta).

Your post is like insisting that anyone going mid select mage as their role. If you select Riven Mage then we know you'll be playing her differently than a Syndra Mage or LeBlanc Mage.

Meanwhile the vast majority of players I have seen in team-builder already follow your advice making it very difficult to actually specify the team you want. If I want a highly aggressive bot lane with a tank to engage and soak damage for the adc I don't want to be forced to specify "Support" and reject a bunch of supports and mages until I get the tank I want.

Duke AnaxSep 24, 20141 votes

That's actually the exactly wrong way to go about it.

Things would work so much better if people stopped using the definition of "support" as "any champ standing next to the ADC"

GanksLikeGast0nSep 24, 20141 votes

I disagree, "support" for the purposes of teambuilder is your position on the team, not the type of champion you are playing. In other words, it is the job you do, not how you do it.