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Item for support gold flow (Eleisa's Compromise?)

Is on ARAMpage·9/25/2013, 9:12:39 PM·10 votes·370 views

The item itself is really simple:

Eleisa's Compromise:

Unique Passive (Taking): When a nearby ally gains gold from killing a minion, you gain the same amount of gold. (This gold is evenly divided when more than one person with Eleisa's Compromise is nearby.)

Unique Passive (Giving): Gain no gold from minion kills. Instead, that gold is divided among nearby allies who do not have Eleisa's Compromise.

So my feeling is that, regardless of what you do with other support items and costs, the core problem is that supports don't have an activity that makes money (reliably). That means that their money is all natural, ambient soak from runes and masteries and gp10 items, which turns them sort of into a courier. When you're doing well you don't really feel like you're doing well. You're also, to an extent, punished for participating in the laning phase. You'll be castigated for taking minions, not because that's intrinsically a bad thing to do for you but because it's economically better for your carry to hoard all the income.

This item tries to fix that. In bot lane, the support gains as much gold as his carry generates from minions. That means that creating a safe lane for your carry, or forcing the enemy back, or executing good trades, actually directly influences your gold income and good play will enable you to do more.

The support won't actually keep up: when they leave to ward, or buy wards, or check in on another lane, they'll lose out on farm (like anyone else would). They'll still, probably, get assists more than kills. And they'll be using an item slot for the capability.

The second passive is to prevent a certain abuse case- you don't want the support and marksman to BOTH buy the item, then shove the lane relentlessly because they are both gaining gold from the lane. The support killing minions should not punish the marksman by depriving them of gold, so it doesn't. Instead, it deprives the support of the gold that he could have gotten by helping his marksman to clear them instead. The support is rewarded/punished for the support's actions, which I think is more psychologically clear anyway.

Part of the item's balance is that it takes a precious item slot from supports. If that's not desirable, there are some solutions to that. I love the idea of doing another Eleisa's passive that melds the item in, but it could also be designed so that upgrades provide something that you could basically guarantee nobody but the support would have. You could upgrade it into an item that gave substantial movement speed, or extended ward range, or into sightstone, or any other stat or boost that would be unbalanced on a carry or mage but fine on a support.

But that's all gravy. The crux of it, to maybe tl;dr, is this:

  • Supports are rewarded with gold for their carry farming well.
  • Carries don't suffer when their support kills minions in a pinch.
  • Because of the two passives, this effect doesn't stack or scale out of control. At most, every minion is worth twice as much gold (split between at least two champions).

I'd love to hear people's thoughts, because this idea has been drilling a hole in my head for weeks!

5 Comments

Zielmann9/25/2013, 11:02:03 PM2 votes

This is a very interesting idea. I've heard random things thrown out now and again about things similar to these two mechanics, but never really put into an item, particularly together.

My initial reaction to it is 'OMG too strong!', but I think tweaking numbers and/or item cost would help with this. Here's some of my reasoning.

For one thing, to get the most out of the item, you have to be able to buy it early. Total cost would probably need to be in the 1200-1500 gold range. And it would need to build from... something. I'm almost wondering if it could be an alternative option to build from mana manipulator plus something else? Regardless, the strength of it with both those passives would make it almost too much value if it is an item you could buy early. From the passives alone, I'd probably give it a value closer to 2k gold, depending on what other stats, if any, it has.

Another thing that bothers me is that I feel like it actually becomes too much gold income. Not every role in the game needs the same amount of gold. That said, I would agree that supports currently operate off too little gold. I would figure it would be better to have it take/give 50% of the minion gold, or some other non-100% value tweaked for a proper balance.

What I fear is making traditional supports obsolete by allowing too much income in that role. Part of what makes support champions good with their role is their ability to make a solid contribution to the team without relying heavily on scaling with items. That's why supports will have heals, shields or buffs (Nami/Sona) to aid/protect their carry, or hard CC/engage/disengage (Leona/Thresh). Basically, with split gold in the lane, I can see less traditional support picks taking over. Double AD bot lanes, or perhaps even mages like Syndra or Lissandra would join the likes of Zyra and Annie in terms of higher-damage supports.

If I were to build an item or items that accomplish what you're talking about, I would probably split it into two items with a new starting-tier item to go with them. I would structure it something like this:

  • One low-cost item, around 400 gold, with fairly basic stats attached. This item builds into two options.

  • Option one upgrades the item for a 'lower' amount of gold. This gives the Giving passive. This also would have a noticeable amount of gp10.

  • Option two upgrades for a 'higher' amount of gold. This gives the Taking passive.

I would not create an item that combines these at all, so I would leave it a one-or-the-other choice based on how the team wants to play.

If you want to play a hard pushing lane, the support can get the cheaper item that allows them to aid in the lane push without stealing minions from their carry. In trade, since the support either doesn't get any gold off those creeps, or perhaps a reduced amount of gold, the item provides the gp10 to boost the support's income.

On the other hand, if you want a longer laning/farming phase where you aren't going to focus on pushing the lane to tower, you can put in a little extra gold as investment, and then you can soak in gold for the rest of the game by being in the lane while your team is killing creeps.

I like giving options that have players make a choice depending on how they want to play, rather than just having one blanket item that becomes practically necessary for all supports to pick up.

Solan Stonewhip9/26/2013, 6:36:54 PM1 votes

like the posts below, my intial thought is OMG too strong. maybe you could find a good balance bring down the percentages. but i think you would have to remove the GP10 items to do it. and this would have to be a required item. i dislike required items. i don't like that sight stone can't really be built into anything else. it's a very limited item path. this doesn't really address that problem in and of itself. you can play support with almost any champion with sufficient sustain or cc. that's more or less the only pre-requisite. what's to stop the jungler from building this item and spending more time helping to push lanes rather than ganking?

if you change the stats a bit then maybe it could work i just don't see riot going for the change.

DragonPandan9/27/2013, 10:00:26 PM1 votes

Hrmm. I think this isn't the way to fix a support's money problems. Sure it gives your ADC and yourself some extra gold. HOWEVER wouldn't that mean that there is more of an emphasis on gold in bot lane? This leaves people in other lanes weak compared to other lanes as it means that bot lane will have double gold. This means that bot lane will be superior to all the other lanes and this leaves the bot lane dominating. This leads to either bot lane being the most important lane even more or perhaps people wanting MORE supports so it becomes a top has support and bot has a support too. Which means that they lose a jungler. This also means that mages become even more weaker as ADCs will scale MUCH more quicker meaning that mages will become even more obselete.

In a nutshell it's this.

-Bot becomes overpowered compared to other lanes -Junglers might be obsolete -Mages become even more obsolete mid game -If bot fails the other lanes have little chance of surviving as the enemy ADC will be pumping gold.