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

Myrkrvaldyr·3/24/2016, 12:54:36 AM·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 Stubbs3/24/2016, 1:39:17 AM2 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

Valexfor3/24/2016, 1:48:39 AM2 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.

RocketRelm3/24/2016, 5:54:15 AM1 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.

Fempto3/24/2016, 10:16:58 AM1 votes

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

Hellpyre3/24/2016, 10:57:32 AM1 votes

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

sheldonbunny3/24/2016, 1:16:05 AM1 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.

Lovely Pants3/24/2016, 3:36:59 PM1 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.

Leanus Crain3/24/2016, 1:41:51 AM1 votes

Soraka Looks at base damage compared to heals