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SummonersLab, Part 5: Support Role Improvement(1)

Lord Desert··3 votes·685 views

This one is a rather huge topic, so i decided to split it in 2 Parts. This one here will focus manly about vision + itemslots and gold income, while the other one focuses more on the items and role in general.

Currently those are the topics and their (hopefully) release date: SummonersLab, The Introduction Here SummonersLab, Part 1: An additional Crit Item Here SummonersLab, Part 2: Crit Algorithm Improvement Here SummonersLab, Part 3: Tower Changes Here SummonersLab, Part 4: Ohmwrecker Here SummonersLab, Part 5: Support Role Improvement(1) Here SummonersLab, Part 6: Wits End Here SummonersLab, Part 7: Smite Buffs Here SummonersLab, Part 8: Plants Here SummonersLab, Part 9: ** Support Role Improvement (2)** _ Here _ SummonersLab, Part 10: ** General Improvements (1)** Here _ SummonersLab, Part 11: ** General Improvements (2)**_ Here

Ill put links to the posts here, so you can easily view all of them.

First of I need to apologies! I wanted to get this out yesterday already, but even after 7+ total redos i still didnt liked it. Thats why i split it in 2 parts so we can focus more on certain topics!

This one will be more explaining and evaluation certain possibilitys, so no math, or atleast in the vision part no math :P Let get rollin

1. Vision

Vision is extremly powerfull! Way more then you think it is! Vision can increase or lower your chances of winning drasticly, it influences desicion making, provides informations, denies/makes catches possible, safes you from ganks, enables tp flanks etc . Basicly If YOU have vision you can control the game.

Currently Vision is gated by** Sightstone**, Reds(Control Wards) and Trinkets.

Sightstone is an extremely stats and slot inefficent item! But it gives and can store serveral Wards. But it is atleast cheap.

**Trinkets **are balanced around long cooldowns and can be altered to personal favorites/needs.

Reds are very powerfull wards, but currently are limited throu their costs and the need of a free itemslot.

Riot explored, a long time ago, new/alternativ versions of ward vision (like a ward that pings you if an enemy is in its radius, but it does not give vision). Those might be a cool and interesting ideas, but it would drag us a little to far from the current version, but we can discuss ideas in the comments!

Trinkets are in a overall balanced state, every trinket has its strengths and weaknesses, sightstone might be a bit too opressiv as a need-to-rush but its effectivness is decent, reds are powerfull but them blocking a full itemslot makes them unavailabe in the lategame or forces the sup (because normaly the sup is the one that scales the least with having 6 items) to always block 1 slot for the Reds. That is not so nice, especially after sup got some new toyes to play with!

Another node is the overall "vision clearing". Dont know what that means? Well, in short we have a bit to much vision clearing, which leads to rather dark maps and so more catches, flanks, throws etc. This is interesting to watch but rather annyoing to play with/ when you are the guy that tries to get some vision down....

So, what do i want to change?

  1. Making a place for Reds in items or Trinkets, so sups get 6 itemslots
  2. Some balancing with Vision.

A place for Reds

I see 2 possible places for Reds.

  1. Making a trinket for reds
  2. Incooperating them into the sightstone, to be precise the upgraded Sightstone!

Before I go indetail with them, let me explain why i only see those two choices:

Reds are EXTREMELY powerfull! They give Vision, Reveal Traps, Show camoed Enemys, Reveal AND DISABLE near wards, Stay for an infinte amount of time and need 4 hits to be taken down(which can even regenerate)! A normal stealth ward gives only normal vision, and stay for a limited time. I hope that made clear why we cant give Reds out for free to everyone and their accessability needs to be limited. If everybody had access to them Vision would be a total mess, from deleting enemy vision complete to always having 100% vision control. That would eradicate any form of Vision Balance!!!

A "ward/reds only" slot makes Reds to available for everyone, and may also lead to an overloaded inventory loadout. We also cant make every Trinket be able to hold a Red because of the same reasons. We cannot give Reds free to everyone, there always needs to be some form of sacrafice!

What sacrifices would be sufficent?

a) Blocking/"wasting" an Itemslot with Sightstone, b) Giving up the Trinkets to get a rechargable Red.

Those should be good enough to enable including Reds.

The fleshed out versions are:

  1. item 2045 (<- remember only the UPGRADED Sightstone can hold an extra Red!) Extra: Can hold 1 Red Ward Charge max, which can be placed by pressing Shift + RightClick. The Red charge refills at the fontain or the Red needs to be bought. (I lean more towards an automatic refill)

  2. A new Trinket, similar to that one here, if you remember ititem 3362. Holds 1 Charge max. Recharges automatic, but takes quiet a long time (~double item 3340's recharge time) upgradeable to at lvl 9.

If i can only chosse 1, I would prefer number 2. since theres still the danger of overloading vision possiblitys, if a sightstone can hold Normal and Reds + the additional Trinket. But this is limited to the Sightstone so it is limited! But both versions can/should coexist!

This also fixes the Itemslot oproblem for mostly supps too!

Vision Balance

This is more of a speculativ thing, but there always needs to be a balance between getting vision down and clearing/denying vision. Currently the clearing vision is a bit stronger then the getting vision. This balance can be heavily influenced by cds, max charges and ranges/ durations.

Without making this too complicated, the Sweeper is to effectiv/ lasts to long. A small duration nerf would be justificated. Vision Balance will also be a topic with some item changes/new stats which alter vision range/duration, but more of that in the other post. This is more or less the baseline for that.

2. Gold Income

Generating Gold: The sup role has the lowest income of all roles (exept if your lanes are dimwits who miss every cs...). The "Normal" Sup items already generate some gold for sup activites, but even with them we can already see a big problem: As soon as something gold generating gives the possbility to increase the gold income of laners/junglers even by only a tiny amount, they will ALL ab-/use it!

The problem is that sup is not bound to something specific, like a summonerspell or items, not even staying at bot... even stat/slot inefficent items are not the way to go, since laners have more gold and would still buy those to get more gold later.

All in all, the possibilitys to give sups more gold throu items, are extremely limited if not depleted!

But maybe something like a "killing spree" reward. Not for kills in a row, but for Assists in a row might be an option! Masteries that gen gold if behind in exp or staying below a certain cs/min. Im sure that there are alot more ideas out there! If you have some, the comment section is already waiting for you :P

Adjusting prices: But we can also adjust the prices, so the lower income roles still get some use-/meaningfull items! This is pretty tricky since the high income laners also want to get nice items as cheap as possible, and the low priced items look like a sweet nutella pancake freely lying around, ready to be instantly wolfed down by the next bypasser. So those sup items, beeing low in costs, need their stats and possibly slotefficency adjusted accordingly. Which is a pretty rough task... An item that does a nice job of beeing effectiv while having low costs and beeing sup focused is item 3109 for example.

Coupons A possible other idea is to chain certain items together. Reducing the costs of the other item. For example if you have a sup item (item 3301,item 3302,item 3303) and they have atleast generated 20 gold. Then you can buy a sightstone for 200 - 300 less gold! So it cost only 600g/500g!!! But we need to be really carefull with those "chains", or better **"coupons for other items" **, since its hard to make sup exclusiv stuff.

If you wondered about the "atleast generated 20g" part. This is to negate a fast abuse, like buying a supitem, then buying the costreduced Sightstone and then selling the sup item. Already thinking ahead, my friends :P Other coupons could be upgrading the Sightstone gives a small reduction on the next item bought, or having sightstone + tier 2 sup item makes boots upgrade cheaper etc. But we need to be very careful that those filthy rich guys dont take them for themselfs too!

TL;DR:

  • Reds get a new trinket and can be stored in an upgraded Sightstone, helping sup to have 6 itemslots again, and to have Reds in lategame.
  • generating more gold is very tricky, but coupons tailored for sups might help to get sups decent items/their "needed" items faster
  • Vision&Reds are extremely powerfull and need to be handeld with care!
  • I can fill 20+ pages with just explaining stuff in this topic....

Sr for taking so long, this was far more difficult then i expected, I altered and deleted over 20 versions in total, thats why it took so long, apoligies for that! This is more explaining and less math for once, but dont worry math will come back as fast as possible <3 I hope you enjoyed this part! Leave suggestions, ideas, complaints etc. in the comments! I would love to discuss crazy and new stuff with you! Dont be shy, I dont bite! cya in the next one!

6 Comments

DrugsForRobots1 votes

I don't think this fixes any of the problems with the vision game:

* Wards from SS and Yellow Trinket do not have much inherent counterplay or outplay potential. There is a brief moment before they become invisible where you can kill them, and the debris it leaves behind. Otherwise we are required to have one of three(?) specific items just to interact with them? And two of those are hard-counters?

* The vision from SS and Yellow Trinket is too good - it's far too easy and safe. Both cases are a large circular AoE of vision that can be deployed from range at instant speed. This ties into the other issue of wards having counterplay. If wards were fallible or had some blind spot or weakness that opponents could exploit, if they were explicit and overt about how they controlled an area, they would be much more exciting. Players could play around them by virtue of their own skill and timing and strategy. And those wards, because they could be outplayed, could afford to be a lot more powerful and specialized in their effects and FREE.

* SightStone still takes up an item slot, isn't a 'real' item and is a mandatory purchase. The simple solution is to let wards be purchasable items and have them occupy the trinket slot until it is placed (forgoing the use of your trinket until you make the decision of where it will go.)

The Control Wards (what you're calling Reds) are a step in a better direction (I'm still not totally sold on them, since they hard-counter traps). I don't think any real improvement in the vision game will come until we start asking for more unique expressions of vision. More variety in the ways we gain sight and information, not just more sight.

Lord Desert1 votes

First of do i understand you correctly that you think that the balance of vision is currently in favor of getting/maintaining vision, and not in vision denial? Correct?

DrugsForRobots1 votes

I think balance is a tricky term to talk about and your question seems like a loaded one. I think the Sweeper is too good. It does too much and it lasts too long. I agree with you on that. It's irrelevant though, because the larger issue (that few people want addressed, judging by the Board posts) is the way wards work, the way we get information, the way our vision tools manifest themselves.

There are a number of vision denial / ward reveal effects (Sweeper, Control Wards, Duskblade and Scryer's Bloom) and a number of ward-objects (Totem Ward, Farsight Ward, SightStone Ward, and the Control Ward). The existence of the former doesn't mean that the latter is in a good, healthy, or desirable state.

If wards, by their nature and function, could be outplayed without needing the vision denial tools, then we wouldn't need the vision denial tools (although some should still exist as insurance IMO). The only reason we have them in the 1st place is because the most common ward objects (Totem Ward & SightStone Ward) can't be interacted with of their own accord. They're invisible (which is a powerful form of untargetability) with virtually no constraints. Wards aren't revealed to you by proximity, or unit / model collision, or anything. They don't clue you into their location or presence in any way (until you get ambushed and you realize, 'oh, that was warded' or you see the enemy back off and then you have to assume that you were seen and that a ward is nearby.)

I could go on, but I'll wait for your reply.

Lord Desert1 votes

To make it clear so i dont misunderstand something, you think that wards/vision are more powerfull then their counterpart? wards/vision to strong/stronger then vision clearing/denial. That is more or less your main stance right?

DrugsForRobots1 votes

That's not my stance, I think you've misunderstood me. Talking about power is a tricky thing too.

I think both are very powerful in the sense that they'll help win the game if used at all. That's not what I'm talking about though.

I'm talking about how the sources of vision we have don't manifest themselves in ways that allow for organic counterplay by the opposing players. Which is why the vision denial tools exist - its an artificial solution to the problem.

If wards could be easily discovered or revealed to you what area they had sight of - if they didn't require a specific counter-item to interact with - then we wouldn't really need something like the Sweeping Lens except as insurance against champions with invisibility.

Players can't interact with wards the same way that they can interact with item 3092 or Kalista's Sentinels. Those things can be outrun or played around so that they never see you. They change the way players play the game because those players have access to the information needed to outplay them.

We can see what Kalista's Sentinels see - their cone of vision is visible to us. They move slowly and we know their movement pattern. This is very different from the way wards work, since wards don't given any information to you.

Is this making any sense?

Edit: Look at these wards and you'll see what I mean.

Lord Desert1 votes

Ok, lets get going: I personaly think Vision is pretty balanced overall, but currently vision denial/clearing is quiet a bit stronger. Why do i think that? You have 4 "gankpaths" at top: 1 "lane", 1 "river", 2 "jungle". mid has 9 "gankpaths": 1 "Lane", 2 "raptor", 2 "river", 4 "nearRiver" and 4 at bot aswell. At top and mid, your tinket plus an extra Red will not be able to cover everything and ontop you will never be able to set up permanent vision in those areas. The limited charges, the short levelbased duration and the huge rechargetime will leave the map extremely dark! You were able to purchase extra stealth wards 1 or 2 seasons back, so everybody was able to get some vision down. Botlane is a bit diffrent, because we have 2 guys and the sightstone. The thing is you have 4 guys competing over 2-3 vision spots, so the vision is quiet dynamic. Which is good.

You have for free large area vision clearing + the red ward. So you defnitly have cheap vision counters! Even the places where wards are placed are highly limited and very predicatable, so wards have quiet a few counters.

Now the next thing: placing stealth wards is not safe! It is very dangours if you dont have other informations! You will get caugth alot! Thats why the farsight trinket will be bought by adc and midlaner alot. So you basicly lose 2 stealth ward trinkets that could put down 4 wards pretty fast. The farsight only has 1 charge max and will show its placing throu the fog!

To bring it together:

  • you will never be safe! there are alot of ways!
  • you know where wards will be and you can clear them easily/without any costs, only your trinket trading trinket vs trinket.
  • picking up a redtrinket or farsight limited the amount of stealthwards already by alot! Only top and sightstone will have provide stealthwards normaly. all in all means that there are counters, very effectiv counters!, against vision.

Sightstone gives you access to alot of vision. Vision is not an activ combat stat! So to you it may sound useless, only occupying an itemslot, but to me giving up only 1 itemslot for better vision is defnitly worth! and it beeing cheap enough to get as a sup, but not to cheap so others dont try to abuse this vision power.

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