Season 4 Changes

[Krill]

Support Orianna is interesting. Sucks against Vayne though. I ended up getting 2K gold more than my ADC, and the ADC was farming fine. I do think that in certain comps some mages can make decent supports.

[Sullla]

Here's a good reddit post breaking down the changes. Most supports overall got buffed.

I have to disagree with you, Terror. I read that Reddit post as well, and the premise behind it is completely incorrect. The poster did all his comparisons with the traditional supports having 200 AP, which is pretty ridiculous since you won't be hitting that mark until roughly the 30 minute mark of a game. Traditional supports won't have those numbers during the laning phase, which means that they are weaker in just about every possible way.

Here's something you probably never expected me to say: Jowy is right. There's essentially no reason to play a traditional support at the moment. Sona needs 200 AP just to reach her old values... so why should I play her when I could play Annie instead, and get tons of damage from building that same AP? Riot has screwed up their balance pretty badly here. All of the traditional supports will be replaced with AP mages who have strong crowd control and utility (see Annie, Fiddlesticks, Zyra, Lux, Morgana, Orianna, Lissandra, etc.) Or alternately you can replace them with a tank/bruiser support that stacks armor and magic resist instead of ability power (see Leona, Taric, Thresh, Nautilis, Jarvan, Cho'gath, etc.) And there's almost no way that Riot can fix this, because there are dozens and dozens of champions who fit these roles. You can't nerf Annie and Zyra because then everyone just swap to other AP mages in the support role. They have thoroughly ruined the traditional supports in this patch, and I don't see a simple way to bring them back to viability.

I expect it will take some time before this is broadly understood in the wider community. In the meantime, I plan on running a lot of Leona and Zyra support and crushing those poor Sona players who think that they were "buffed" in this patch because their abilities do more damage at the 45 minute mark with 300 AP.

[Krill]

Actually you can hit around 200AP by about 20 minutes. 150 AP easy.

[Gustaran]

I think I am missing something here: Why do you think that supports suddenly have tons of gold? If I understand correctly there are two major gold changes:

a) Less money to spend on wards
b) New higher assist gold.

However, since the support still doesn't get any gold through farm, I wonder where all the gold for 2-3 major items is supposed to come from in case you are playing a quiet laning phase with only 1-2 kills? Especially with 3000+ gold items, that's a lot of wards...

[v8mark]

There are lots more passive gold generating effects... one example is that hitting an enemy champ with a spell or auto gives 8g with the new Frost Queen item. Plus less money on wards (which is a HUGE effect) and the assist streaks (unless you're getting kills, in which case you're getting more money because of kills!)

My last game (and my second on the s4 patch) was an AP Janna support (who is now OP as I've been saying for a while!) and the numbers looked like this:

Top: Zenkuo (Lee Sin) 4/3/9, 279cs, 16,385g
Jungle: Blessa (Master Yi) 9/9/6, 266cs, 17,201g
Mid: TalibanBunny (Riven) 2/11/10, 296cs, 15,453g
AD: Dantski (Miss Fortune) 8/5/12, 243cs, 16,447g
Support: Terror Incognita (Janna) 8/4/20, 28cs, 17,195g

I would guesstimate that the new Frost Queen item was a good 2k of that, with the rest coming from passive gold runes/masteries, assists and kills.

My finishing items were: Frost Queen's Claim, Boots of Lucidity (Homeguard), Banner of Command, Rod of Ages, Rabadon's Deathcap, and Lisandry's Torment.

[abuzeus]

I think I am missing something here: Why do you think that supports suddenly have tons of gold? If I understand correctly there are two major gold changes:

a) Less money to spend on wards
b) New higher assist gold.

However, since the support still doesn't get any gold through farm, I wonder where all the gold for 2-3 major items is supposed to come from in case you are playing a quiet laning phase with only 1-2 kills? Especially with 3000+ gold items, that's a lot of wards...

There is new, must buy support items that let you participate in farm. New Philo gives you 2 gold every time a nearby minion dies, new Kages gives you gp/5 and a lot of gold for auto attack harrasing and there is a new item for melee champions that gives health and lets you slip in the occasional last hit at no cost for the ranged AD.

Actually, I had looked very much forward to the new scaling on supports. But the numbers just look so off. I mean, if they needed to nerf all the traditional supports, but the damage-heavy utility mages like Annie, Zyra, Karma and Fiddle and the tanky melee champions like Leona, Blitz and Thresh (not melee, I know) stayed right were they are and get to start with extra health now, does this not mean that the latter must have been severely underpowered before? And I certainly don't feel like this was the case...

[v8mark]

I have to disagree with you, Terror. I read that Reddit post as well, and the premise behind it is completely incorrect. The poster did all his comparisons with the traditional supports having 200 AP, which is pretty ridiculous since you won't be hitting that mark until roughly the 30 minute mark of a game. Traditional supports won't have those numbers during the laning phase, which means that they are weaker in just about every possible way.

Here's something you probably never expected me to say: Jowy is right. There's essentially no reason to play a traditional support at the moment. Sona needs 200 AP just to reach her old values... so why should I play her when I could play Annie instead, and get tons of damage from building that same AP? Riot has screwed up their balance pretty badly here. All of the traditional supports will be replaced with AP mages who have strong crowd control and utility (see Annie, Fiddlesticks, Zyra, Lux, Morgana, Orianna, Lissandra, etc.) Or alternately you can replace them with a tank/bruiser support that stacks armor and magic resist instead of ability power (see Leona, Taric, Thresh, Nautilis, Jarvan, Cho'gath, etc.) And there's almost no way that Riot can fix this, because there are dozens and dozens of champions who fit these roles. You can't nerf Annie and Zyra because then everyone just swap to other AP mages in the support role. They have thoroughly ruined the traditional supports in this patch, and I don't see a simple way to bring them back to viability.

I expect it will take some time before this is broadly understood in the wider community. In the meantime, I plan on running a lot of Leona and Zyra support and crushing those poor Sona players who think that they were "buffed" in this patch because their abilities do more damage at the 45 minute mark with 300 AP.

I don't know, I feel as though you might be right, although I don't think I'd go as far as you have at the moment... it was happening for a while in season 3 that traditional mages were becoming supports because supports overall had been nerfed so hard. But it's still the case that very few traditional mages bring very much utility to the table, and teams will have to have that in their teamcomp somewhere. So it may be that the supporty-mages (Orianna, Morgana, etc) become too strong by comparison, and the traditional supports have to go through another round of buffs to make them viable.

I still think there's an overall place for them in the meta, simply from the amount of utility that such champions bring. I might give Leona a run out to see how she feels by comparison...

[Sullla]

That may be true, and I think that Janna is clearly in the best shape of the traditional supports at the moment. At the same time, a Janna game where she goes 8/4/20 and gets a 6 item build off 17k gold is not really representative of the typical support experience. If supports are frequently getting more gold income than solo laners, then I'll be happy to reevaluate my thoughts.

[v8mark]

That may be true, and I think that Janna is clearly in the best shape of the traditional supports at the moment. At the same time, a Janna game where she goes 8/4/20 and gets a 6 item build off 17k gold is not really representative of the typical support experience. If supports are frequently getting more gold income than solo laners, then I'll be happy to reevaluate my thoughts.

I disagree here; I think it's quite representative. I was getting kills because I was doing damage and had AP, and that was... because I had more gold! I wasn't taking CS other than pushing waves, and the game didn't go massively long (I think it was in the region of 35-40 minutes.. we're certainly not talking about an hour-long epic here!)

[Jowy]

That may be true, and I think that Janna is clearly in the best shape of the traditional supports at the moment. At the same time, a Janna game where she goes 8/4/20 and gets a 6 item build off 17k gold is not really representative of the typical support experience. If supports are frequently getting more gold income than solo laners, then I'll be happy to reevaluate my thoughts.

I disagree here; I think it's quite representative. I was getting kills because I was doing damage and had AP, and that was... because I had more gold! I wasn't taking CS other than pushing waves, and the game didn't go massively long (I think it was in the region of 35-40 minutes.. we're certainly not talking about an hour-long epic here!)

She should really be compared to AP carries though. Think about it.. Janna has seen some play in the mid lane, but never really in a competitive setting because there are a ton of stronger AP carries in the game. Now Janna's already weak AP ratios and base damage were nerfed. Why would she suddenly be so much stronger than AP carries who were kicking her ass last three seasons? She shouldn't, unless there's something major I'm missing. If you are doing a ton of damage, a proper AP carry played in her place should deal that much more.