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How viable would it be to make a support with no damage abilities?

Myrkrvaldyr··6 votes·807 views

The support role is one that doesn't get as much love as some would like, one of the reasons being that people find the role 'boring'.

So I was wondering, how viable would it be to make a support with zero damage abilities that only offers utility and is also kind of mechanically complex so that it offers great rewards if used well (kind of like Lee Sin but exclusively support)? If such a champ were to be made, would its mere concept be considered OP? Every ability offers utility, buffs, debuffs, including his passive.

In addition, if such thing were to be made, it'd be interesting to make its base ad and ap 0 or extremely low, otherwise, people could build it with attack speed and so much utility it'd be OP, or perhaps make it part of its passive that it cannot get any ad and ap scaling, forcing him into the position of supp but a very useful one.

Such a champ could prove interesting for organized teams, a hard to master support that can offer a lot of help and even win a game all by themself with well placed buffs and debuffs so that its team can win the fights.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, guys.

15 Comments

Mayor Stubbs2 votes

I could see this being viable and balanced - but I feel like if it were to sway one way or the other it would have a higher chance to be OP

Valexfor2 votes

The concept is not bad, but the sheer amount of utility he would need for having even the lower stats in the game would be so high that the champ be unplayable since it would be so hard to play and so conditional that even a world player wouldn't be able to play him at the best of his possibilities most of the times else it would just be so overbearing (especially in the hands of a pro player) that even a bad player would singlehandedly win games with him since he should be able to cc lock a whole team for at least 10 seconds by himself as a reward for not having damage (and no matter how bad you are, if the enemy team stays still for 10 seconds you can't possibly lose the fight). Not a bad concept per se mind you, but a concept we can't have in league thanks to the balance of power budget. A champ need to bring either damage, strong utility (so cc/heals/shields something like that), tankyness or outplay potential (aka playmaking champs). If a champ lacks one or more of these things, he needs the others to be incredibly strong to balance out his power else he would be just useless. Anyway there are some champion who already fit this concept in some ways: Thresh and Soraka are good examples, they bring almost no damage to a team (especially later on) but they have so much utility that people complain about them beying op, why is that? Since they have no damage themselves, they need to have such strong utility that they can enable someone else to do the damage for them while they save his ass/ensure the enemy can't escape. There are others like that right now, but I'm too sleepy to think about it, hope my post made some light on why this concept can't exist in league in the form you expained it, but I would actually love another support like thresh.

Myrkrvaldyr1 votes

That's why I said it had to be mechanically complex, because if we just give him sheer utility every noob can use him. I was thinking of something like timing and rhythm with his kills. You can't apply all buff and debuffs at once, some buffs can only be applied after another buff is applied and something along the lines. This will force some things, your allies need to know your champ and need to know what buffs they just got, and what debuffs the enemies got, they need to know when to do X and Y according to your buffs, when it's safe to engage, when it's safe to poke or disengage. Knowing what buff or debuff to hit and when would be key to this champ. I'm thinking something like a support that needs to combo his utility to be effective. It'll make him hard to use, but rewarding as hell when you pull it off.

Valexfor1 votes

And like I said: he would be far too complex if you go that route. Basrd is a good example here even though he's got damage: bard is considered a troll pick, but looking at his kit, he's actually pretty strong and has a lot of utility right? But like I said he's considered a troll pick since he's so hard that most of the times even good bards will screw up. Alistar was the same before they changed his combo: playing alistar was considered troll by a lot of people in ranked since his combo was just THAT hard to pull off. I do like complex champions (as long as they don't get far too much to compensate a bit of complexity), but this champion would be just unplayable and impossible to enjoy for most of the community, but since his utility would be just that strong in pro play he would be literally a perma ban: teams would ban him so that the other team couldn't pick him so he would never be played. Again it's a nice concept, but that's just not possible to have, no matter what he would be op in pro play so he would need nerfs, but in normal play he would be useless, so he would need buffs, but since you can't touch his numbers (since they should be extremely low) they should touch his utility (which they couldn't since it would be his selling point), makin it far less rewarding to actually pull off.

sheldonbunny1 votes

The concept is interesting until you mention no base stats. You would criple it's ability to keep minions off a tower when holding a lane. Short of tanking the minions themselves pinging for someone to come. Plus it would mean the support could do no trades at all in lane putting more stress on the marksman to put out damage.

It's a niche concept, but as a support main who has had moments such as getting a double kill on two tanks diving me under tower when I was Nami, not really interested. I like utility and damage available.

Myrkrvaldyr1 votes

Not necessarily, part of his the passive could be little damage to champions but normal or even above average damage to minions. Heck, one of the skills could even have a unique stat to minions, a new effect called confusion (taken from Pokémon) where minions will attack each other and don't move, you can create plenty of things to hold or freeze a lane without damaging champions per se.

sheldonbunny1 votes

{quoted}

Not necessarily, part of his the passive could be little damage to champions but normal or even above average damage to minions. Heck, one of the skills could even have a unique stat to minions, a new effect called confusion (taken from Pokémon) where minions will attack each other and don't move, you can create plenty of things to hold or freeze a lane without damaging champions per se.

Ok, with that sort of conditional in place, I could see it as being potentially viable. I like the idea, just balancing it properly would be the issue.

Leanus Crain1 votes

Soraka Looks at base damage compared to heals

RocketRelm1 votes

Bard

This is about as close as you can get to a 'damage-less' support, and rito had to buff his damage and capacities several times before he rose up enough to be usable.

charcharmunro1 votes

Zilean, too.

Fempto1 votes

I have got to admit, I would love to see a skill-shot heal.

Hellpyre1 votes

Theoretically, very viable. But Riot has shown time and again that they prefer supports to show some aggression.

Lovely Pants1 votes

A support that is completely reliant on an ally to do damage would have the following things involved with them:

-Unable to dictate any sort of lane pressure in unorganized play -Inability to secure kills -Can't help push waves -Very little ability to counteract solo split pushers

It's pretty common for poorly-scaling utility supports to spec into AD or hybrid penetration runes to provide some minimal amount of early pressure. The support's ability to do some base damage keeps the carry from being focused and entirely locked out of trading in lane.

Might be possible to be strong in organized play. Would pretty much be the opposite of what you're looking for if you think support is unappealing as a role. Team dependency is the greatest complaint that I hear from anyone on that subject.

Not to say I wouldn't find such an experiment interesting personally. Just that it's not a solution to the problem you're saying exists.

Myrkrvaldyr1 votes

It wouldn't have inability to secure kills as he would have spells that stun, slow, silence, root, etc (unless you mean he finishes them off himself). Making it pretty hard for the enemy to escape if you combo well.

Lovely Pants1 votes

Finishing them off is what I mean.

We have lots of supports that can create excellent kill combos when used in tandem with a capable ally. Even high utility-sustain supports like Soraka and Janna, however, can pick up the occasional finisher in a fight which comes down to the wire between carries where yours is either killed or in some other way unable to safely finish off an enemy with a sliver of health.

I think all of the things I've mentioned can be successfully mitigated by some form of ally-boosting power or utility, but again what people tend to say is boring about the support role is that they don't feel they have as much agency in securing objectives and advantages. Having some flexibility to follow up on your own has a lot of impact on the player's perceptions of a champion's contributions, regardless of their actual power. Some self-sufficiency also adds more reliability to power, which is important to how much power you have to funnel into an ability before it feels good to use.

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