League Of Legends

Riot has said they want to not handicap support with the only person buying wards. They also want to teach vision and warding to more people. The only way, I think, they can do this is give people wards. Whether its a summoners or some kind of innate thing, it won't be through the shop.

Just look at some of the recent posts. They don't want supports to be so handicapped with money and order. They recognize that supports, for the most part, are boring because they don't get to build their character. They just have to buy wards. I take that as they probably don't want supports dropping all their gold on wards and sightstones. Combine that with teaching others about vision means everyone will have access to runes.

A cap on the number of wards placed by an individual or, a team ward pool that each player can only buy from x times every 5 minutes or something are the two most likely outcomes imo.

I think a 'ward slot' goes a long way towards teaching people to ward. Handicapping the amount of wards out on the map (beyond a certain point) won't affect the majority of games at all, because it is a rare average-ELO game where there's ward control or ward fights or any of that. JUST limiting wards would just make high ELO games more like low ones in that people are just going to get caught out more or hide their asses back. Giving all players a dedicated ward slot brings the 'hey, everyone can ward!' to the forefront, and then limit/nerf them in other ways to change it from what it is now too.

I just can't see how a support is going to ever be anything more then a ward/aura item underdeveloped team bitch. People play for efficiency and with three lanes and one jungle for your five players the most efficient method of gold acquisition is to link one source of farm to one player for the early game. Riot has been trying off and on for three years to make supporting "fun". Hello GP5 items! Hello Modified utility tree! Hello healing changes! On and on and on. In every case their change has either been twisted (healing nerfs) or backfired (heart of gold on tops/junglers) and has been reverted/scaled back or lead to the deleting of an item from the game. So here we are years after EU first brought the support/carry lane to worlds and supports are still shafted on itemization. All taking wards out of the shop will do is make it so that supports are buying reverie/Locket/Spooky ghosts every game instead (and only one of them unless they get really fed).

If riot really wants to change how fun or varied supporting can be then they either A.) need to introduce a fifth main revenue stream so that supports can get primary gold from it or B.) add items like Force staff/Sheep stick/Mek to the game so that you actually have more to do late game then snare somebody, pop your ult, and drop a ward. Both of these things would take massive shifts in design philosophy from riot though.


edit: Having thought more about this. Are these theoretical changes directed at low/high/pro mmr? Because low mmr supports don't even buy many wards. So just giving a ward summoner slot that may or may not interact with basing/shopping won't do much there. Which is an argument that people are making. At high mmr and up people are still going to make the supports Aura/Clicky/Ward bitches anyway if warding interacts with your gold supply in some way.

Guess I'm in the minority here but I actually like how support plays out at the moment. Even with little to no items you can still make a huge impact in the game, either with wards, oracles, or just how op many support kits actually are. I feel if they gave a way to give supports more cash flow that many of them would have to get nerfed pretty hard.

I also completely disagree with having a ward slot for your inventory.

Support is fine. It attracts different players, it's a different play style for different people. Leave it alone.

Same people saying they want support changed are the ones who talk about how nidalee support is shit for doing all the things they want support to be able to do (farming gold, getting kills, etc).

They've already made some changes to support.

Gold income is way better then before. Mastery's, runes, g/5 items. they way assists work.
Alot of this came from Leona, I think. she was a problem, and I certainly bitched up a storm about here when she was first introduced. I love her. but man, she was kindof broken.
Level 1-6 she was pretty much godmode, if played well, and a teammate that knew what they were doing. if you were on coms, GG.
Fill her up with defense runes, move speed and hp regen. at level 1, she could just face check everyone with W. pop on them. deal big damage, while your Radc tore them up. and it just got stronger as you got your stun. Functionally, she was the first real offensive support. A support champ whose job it was not to help you sustain. but to instead kill secure, and zone. Taric, and blitz are the most similar.
The problem was, this left her in a position to get zero cash, and in melee. Every other support was RANGED. even taric who is sortof melee. has his ranged heal, and ranged stun. It is not Tarics job to run in face first into 5 champions to initiate. it IS leonas. So level 12+ this became a serious problem. leona with 0/3/15, getting all assists even on a good day but few kills, and no farm. would be cash starved. Maybe a shuriela's, and thats about it. And once the lane phase is over, its no longer leona diving onto 1 or 2, in team fights shes diving into 3-5. her late game was severely compromised, due to her being undergeared. (as well has the fact her E doesn't stun anyone, and shes targetable while diving. a smart trist for example can just bustershot her mid flight, and fiddle will fear her.)
Smart leonas would get wits end, or sheen/triforce to crank up the damage, to allow some jungle or lane clearing from time to time, as well as try to get some actually kills themselves. And to stay relevant in terms of damage late game. as just ignoring an ungeared tank leona was also a real option.

so they changed items, masterys, and how assists, etc work. I would suspect this was in tangentially related. Giving gold more universally, allows them to build supports that do have wider functions. offensive, traps? Basically they can make champs outside the ranged sustain support.

ps. pool party leona is amazing.

Breakarms_sl said:

Support is fine. It attracts different players, it's a different play style for different people. Leave it alone.

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This. This so much. If you don't like playing support and get forced into it don't make suggestions to change it. I know a lot of support mains that have 0 issues with ward coverage and still have a lot of fun. Just because you seem to think this game is about being Mr Flashy number one doesn't mean you should submit garbage ideas.

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

I just can't see how a support is going to ever be anything more then a ward/aura item underdeveloped team bitch. People play for efficiency and with three lanes and one jungle for your five players the most efficient method of gold acquisition is to link one source of farm to one player for the early game. Riot has been trying off and on for three years to make supporting "fun". Hello GP5 items! Hello Modified utility tree! Hello healing changes! On and on and on. In every case their change has either been twisted (healing nerfs) or backfired (heart of gold on tops/junglers) and has been reverted/scaled back or lead to the deleting of an item from the game. So here we are years after EU first brought the support/carry lane to worlds and supports are still shafted on itemization. All taking wards out of the shop will do is make it so that supports are buying reverie/Locket/Spooky ghosts every game instead (and only one of them unless they get really fed).

If riot really wants to change how fun or varied supporting can be then they either A.) need to introduce a fifth main revenue stream so that supports can get primary gold from it or B.) add items like Force staff/Sheep stick/Mek to the game so that you actually have more to do late game then snare somebody, pop your ult, and drop a ward. Both of these things would take massive shifts in design philosophy from riot though.


edit: Having thought more about this. Are these theoretical changes directed at low/high/pro mmr? Because low mmr supports don't even buy many wards. So just giving a ward summoner slot that may or may not interact with basing/shopping won't do much there. Which is an argument that people are making. At high mmr and up people are still going to make the supports Aura/Clicky/Ward bitches anyway if warding interacts with your gold supply in some way.

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Riot announced their goals, which are to increase the use of wards to everyone and not be the "sole" responsibility for supports. Give supports different avenues of gold revenue and the ability to alter their late game builds. So they essentially want to not have the support class be the ward bitch who, by the end of the game has only baught boots 1 item and all consumables. To them that's not fun for most players so they are changing that.

The easiest way I see them doing this is making wards a permanent item on a character. But that would fundamentally change the way the game is played at low elos. At the higher end, everyone buys wards anyway for the most part.

buffylol_sl said:

This. This so much. If you don't like playing support and get forced into it don't make suggestions to change it. I know a lot of support mains that have 0 issues with ward coverage and still have a lot of fun. Just because you seem to think this game is about being Mr Flashy number one doesn't mean you should submit garbage ideas.

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I don't really care what they do with support because I don't mind playing one. But you have to look at it from a macro-level point of view from Riot. They see a role people, for the most part, hate playing. They want to make it as enticing to play as any other role. There are a lot of different ways they can improve the interaction of supports in the game from creating shared gold in lane, different item builds, different ways wards can be purchased to masteries.

From what I've read they've always promised this but havn't really hit the mark.

I understand there are people out there that like it the way it is, but Riot sees it differently I guess.

How about this for helping revenue stream for support? Utility tree talent close to the bottom. It reduces gold on kill and CS to 0 but increases assist gold to 4x the amount?

EDIT: I'm also in the opinion that Supports are fine the way they are. Like somebody said above, they made an excellent point of teams will always go for effeciency. Hell, in DOTA there are TWO supports because the map can really only support 3 people farming (well one of the supports is actually expected to get a little more farm then the other).

It would be nice to have some cooler clickies. They need really strong clicky items that give nothing to stats. That way it deters them being a pickup in any other role. Supporting in DOTA I believe it much more fun then LOL because of these items. However, I love the idea what a support is. As a support, your job is to control the map. The protect your carry. And to make plays. Because you don't have to worry about CS or dueling, you can also keep track of other things many people usually can't. Like summoner CDs and ult CDs.

Everyone saying "supports are fine the way they are" needs to start saying "I recognize that I am part of a very small minority who enjoys playing support". Supports are NOT fine the way they are when you look at the community as a whole; people hate playing it.

Eidal_sl said:

Everyone saying "supports are fine the way they are" needs to start saying "I recognize that I am part of a very small minority who enjoys playing support". Supports are NOT fine the way they are when you look at the community as a whole; people hate playing it.

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People hate playing anything that isn't flashy and obviously carrying the team. Sadly because of the design behind most support style champs your impact isn't extremely obvious or flashy. That's why you have people saying if I can't Blitz/Thresh then I can't support. Because even with just a sight stone and boots thresh and blitz are obvious when they make plays, and you can instantly see the impact they bring. By design they are fun champs. Support fiddle is this way as well but he works with a smaller set of laning partners and certain opposition combos just wreck him so he isn't as commonly picked as the other two.

It's not even about carrying so much, Riot was talking about how they want supports to be able to increase in power as the game goes on, i.e. scale like every other role does. How they'll manage that when 90% of a supports' power comes from mechanics is a mystery, but season 3 introduced some new ideas so season 4 probably will as well. They also want to increase jungler's gold income, they want to get away from the idea that 3/5 of the team is actually building up their character. Now at the low end that matters less, you still see supports ending up with at least like 2 items in a medium length game and all kinds of ridiculous junglers are possible in average ranked games compared with Diamond/Challenger/Pro shit. So a lot of these changes are aimed up there but will hopefully still make us peasants happy.

I just don't have faith that riot can tune support play to a point where they aren't kings of the battlefield or the current ward/aura bitch. Supports carry too much CC/utility to allow them to scale hard in to late game as most of them are currently constructed. There is a reason that support is the single most nerfed role outside of possibly junglers over the course of this games life span. Utility + scaling is too much for the other one dimensional characters.

God Damn this video is amazing. I can't wait for worlds to start tomorrow.