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"Conduit" Support Items

Aletheiacracy··4 votes·5,033 views

Hi everyone, just had an idea for Support Items. I guess the current issues with support items heavily depend on your ELO, but certain choices seem to stack better than the others. I would say each item has a different skill level.

  • item 3301 lowest skill level, 2Gold every 10 seconds, all other income is passive
  • item 3303 2nd highest skill level, 2Gold every 10 seconds, all other income earned from damaging champions/turrets
  • item 3302 highest skill level, 1Gold every 10 seconds, all other income earned from executing minions

The "difficulty", more or less, depends on your cooperation with allies. Coin requires simply being around, Spellthief's depends on being able to position yourself to strike the enemy, Relic depends on being able to take the minion before your ally. Also, consider Relic has a lower passive income.

The game shouldn't favor itemization for one support over another, so I thought a new approach at Support items could help. So how would "conduit" help? Well, we give all Supports the same income mechanic.

The "CONDUIT" would earn the Support a % of the income that their bound ally recieves from minions. The items would also have equal passive gold incomes to compensate for the income gaps.

The conduit would give each side the same standard of "teamwork" needed to earn Gold, which is already the ADC's standard: the ability to get your CS in lane.

If we change the income, then the items lose their unique utility. Coin wouldn't provide the Mana drop, Relic wouldn't heal by killing a minion, Spellthief wouldn't add bonus damage.. So what else could we do to keep these items really different from each other, other than different stat buffs?

I had a couple ideas.

  • Maybe each item can produce a unique type of ward, each with unique benefits for the team. This might require A LOT of work on Riot's part, there would be a lot of programming needed, but this approach might be worth it, and add a stunning element to the role of Support.
  • An easier approach, but lacking the flare in my opinion, is granting some form of passive rewards as nearby minions are killed. Each item would grant some kind of unique bonus to nearby Allies, or the bound Ally, after every X minion kills. Basically this would be like giving Alistar a Second Passive if Relic kept its healing function.

Those are my ideas, anyways. I'd like to hear what everyone thinks about the idea of CONDUIT especially. But also any comments about the role of Support, and Support Items in general would really help push this idea forward.

10 Comments

Zlera1 votes

I think if this were to go through, it would be likely supports and ADCs would both build support items, like what used to happen, while a fantastic idea, it can be easily abused

Aletheiacracy1 votes

It's just as likely for both of them to get support items now. Especially if you have a support with Relic Shield, Ancient Coin procs really well because tribute minions weren't killed by you they have a chance to drop additional gold, and cannons will always drop a coin so you have a 50% chance of a cannon being worth over 100 Gold if you let the support execute.

flibitydoo1 votes

I feel like that issue though, is a simple fix;make it so if someone last hits with the conduit item, other players with the conduit item don't share the gold

Bugog1 votes

My success is currently linked to how potato my laning partner is. If this happened, I would be further punished if they were a potato at last hitting.

Aletheiacracy1 votes

You get high performances by trolling your ADC. You must play Lux.

Tealtigers1 votes

the difficulty of the items is also balanced out by the fact that they have other effects. While coin is the easiest/safest one, it doesnt give as much stats as the other. ST gives ap, mana regen, and on hit magic dmg on towers and champions. Relic shield gives health, health regen, and the healing from it IMO is underated. The downsides though of relic is that it is a little bit more difficult to proc it after laning phase and sometimes your adc is stupid and doesnt even try to let you get cannons.

Bugog1 votes

The way I look at them:

Relic shield: gives the most health, but can be annoying to keep money rolling in. A lot of the time with randoms you will be picking off caster minions for procs mid game. Only really works well with melee champions, which means tanks for the most part. Your team/partner can screw you if they're not letting you get cannons. This is the most expensive one because you have to fully level it to get the most gold.

Spellthiefs: If you can proc it reliably it is good, but on many supports it becomes a feast or famine item once laning ends. The extra damage is nice during laning phase, but the ap is minor, and the mp regen is nice-ish. Most of the champs that can use this will end up with a lot of extra mp regen anyway. You only need this upgraded to level 2 to get max income.

Coin: This protects you from getting shut out of gold mid game, and is much safer when fighting hyper agro/cancer lanes. It also helps with champions that use a lot of mp, such as taric. Permanent movement speed is always nice, hp regen is ok early but quickly goes to meh. Only need level 2 to get max income, and is the cheapest to get to 4 wards. The downside is your entire team will blame you for taking this item instead of the recommended if they go 0/8 in lane.

I have started to take coin more often than not, unless I'm playing some very specific support choices, such as morgana or some long range off meta picks.

Aletheiacracy1 votes

Relic Shield is a Melee item only now. I play Alistar and the biggest issue is his Attack Speed being so naturally low that when mid-game rolls around you're not even able to land an attack before the entire wave is cleared. It's frustrating when you have to waste your CC just to secure some Gold.

guygoestothestor1 votes

Idk sounds like it would be a problem unless in order to use it you had to be near an ally cuz then you could just slap it on your mid and get gold fast

Aletheiacracy1 votes

Well yeah, that's usually how "conduits" work in the game.

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