League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[v8mark]

IIUC, that's not strictly speaking true - a support doesn't have the same effect on the game as the other roles, if the other players don't make good decisions based on the information that the support provides. So if you are the highest ELO player on the team, playing support, then the other roles are filled by players that have a lower ELO than their opponents so you are more likely to lose.

Conclusion: you can carry out as a support, but it is harder and more dependent on team mates than if you are AP mid or solo top etc.

Of course, the generic reply to this is "over time everything balances"...

I think that if that's true, it's only true to a very limited extent. It's the support's job (as well as the jungle's) to think about the game from a macro perspective and anticipate threats through warding, etc. As Cull said, several high Elo players have risen through the ranks playing almost exclusively supports.

Also, my ranked record as Soraka is 13-5. That's an almighty dose of good luck (although yours is 9-3 as well!)

[Sir Bruce]

Good supports win their lanes. Winning lanes wins games. If you are a better support than the enemy's support then you will win more often than not. Your AD may suck but that is equally likely to be true of the other team.

[Krill]

Yeah, I don't think it's impossible at all to rise in ELO as a support. It's just that there are a fair few minor effects that the different roles and the method of creating solo queue teams have on the ELO rank. On the whole though, ELO works...but I think it's more accurate for representing a player that can play ever role than a player that can only play 1 role (which then opens the philosophical question of what ELO actually represents).

If anyone here can remember World in Conflict, there were 4 different roles, and each had it's own ladder ranking. There was also a combined ranking system for every single player that can changed a couple of times.

[Krill]

Good supports win their lanes. Winning lanes wins games. If you are a better support than the enemy's support then you will win more often than not.

Define winning lanes: most gold on the AD carry? If that's the case, then supports help with that how, when the main method of gaining gold is last hitting which is the sole responsibility of the AD carry.

The support can sustain, can harass the other AD carry, can try to not feed and ward appropriately...and can help get kills, but the AD carry needs to last hit and not feed and be able to get kills as well. Now, the real skill with the support is the harass, but that requires the AD carry to also help with the harass. I'd go so far as to say that the support is less important than the AD carry because the difference between decent support play and great support play is less important to the team than decent AD carry play and great AD carry play. I'm not saying that the support doesn't matter: decent support play is obviously better than crap support play, but that it's not as important as the AD carry.

Your AD may suck but that is equally likely to be true of the other team.

This bit isn't true in this scenario, where the support on one team is the highest ELO on that team. Therefore, the AD carry on that team is likely to be a lower ELO player than the opposing AD carry.

[v8mark]

Define winning lanes: most gold on the AD carry? If that's the case, then supports help with that how, when the main method of gaining gold is last hitting which is the sole responsibility of the AD carry.

Helping your team win the game, however you do it. Most gold on the AD carry is one metric. Being ahead on experience is another... taking turret is another. Not dying to jungle ganks is another. Taking dragons is another (probably the biggest).

[Gustaran]

Good supports win their lanes. Winning lanes wins games. If you are a better support than the enemy's support then you will win more often than not. Your AD may suck but that is equally likely to be true of the other team.

While it is certainly possible to rise through the ranks by purely playing support, I would argue that support is not the best role to achieve a rise in ELO. While at high ELO, a support is as valuable as any other teammember, I don't think that's true at low ELO.

If you are farming twice as much as the other team as an AD carry, there comes a point where you can 1v2 the opponents if you get ahead far enough.
But even as a world class support, if your AD carry can not last hit and is oblivious to the minimap and your wards, the impact is much smaller.

So to put it in one sentence: Being AD carry with bad support is usually much easier to win than playing support with bad AD carry at the ELO we are talking about.

[Sir Bruce]

So to put it in one sentence: Being AD carry with bad support is usually much easier to win than playing support with bad AD carry at the ELO we are talking about.

I'm not sure I agree. If you're a support with a bad AD carry you can help the rest of your team win by good map control, good objective control, good team fighting, or even taking farm yourself and battlemaging it up. If you're a good AD with a bad support you are going to lose your lane (you have a bad support) and then even if you get farm, your entire team is behind because you don't have map control or objective control. You will also lose midgame engagements which puts you further behind.

[Gustaran]

I'm not sure I agree. If you're a support with a bad AD carry you can help the rest of your team win by good map control, good objective control, good team fighting, or even taking farm yourself and battlemaging it up. If you're a good AD with a bad support you are going to lose your lane (you have a bad support) and then even if you get farm, your entire team is behind because you don't have map control or objective control. You will also lose midgame engagements which puts you further behind.

I am talking about a scenario where you are the good player and all other players are equally bad. If you are the only who can last hit and all others are wildly autoattacking, you will not lose the lane no matter what your support does because of vastly superior farm.

And about map control: How do you ensure map or objective control as a support?
In a match where no player except you buys wards, it becomes quite easy to just take dragon by yourself. How are you going to do that with a support Soraka with no farm?
Same with wards: Ever met players who is so overpushed that they are going to die to ganks no matter how many wards you place around them?
I would even argue as AD carry you have more map control, because you can actually afford to buy a few wards here and there whereas a support with no assists it becomes rather difficult.

Of course you can start taking farm yourself, but first of all that defeats the purpose of a support champion pick (yes, you could carry with AP Soraka, but let's face it, it's not exactly convincing) and secondly you would have to give up your support role - showing that indeed it is harder to rise in ELO as a support.

[Sir Bruce]

A few thoughts:

1. If the players are that bad - KILL THEM. Who cares if your AD is good or not. Sona, Lulu, Taric, Leona, Alistair, Janna (all supports besides Soraka i guess ) can all get easy kills on non-farming players that have horrible positioning and map awareness. Remember that the enemy is also composed of all the same idiots that are on your team.

2. You are underrating the importance of map control. Even the most brain-dead teammates will respond (somewhat) to vision and pinging. Call MIAs for all lanes. If someone doesn't react fast enough, place wards further out next time and ping more vigorously.

3. If you think that supports don't work at your level, why on earth would you play them? According to your reasoning, it doesn't help you win and you're not learning or refining your role because of your team's incompetence. There's no reason to play them! Play something that actually wins then! At the very least this suggests playing a super aggressive support that can get kills if you're forced into the role. And then you can carry yourself to the point where the players are good enough to support (supports carry anyway )

[Cull]

I think Bruce is 100% right with his points in regards to all the support mains who are "stuck" in an elo they don't deserve. Another thing, IMO, based on my experience in the 1100-1600 bracket, where I've spent decent time in each individual bracket except below bronze, a 1600 support player would or should have the mechanical skills and game sense to play AP or AD or top lane to a point(1400, 1500?) where the majority of players in AD will have 150-200+ farm at 30 minutes(not good, but passable I would think to most players who claim of being stuck at x elo), where the game is played sufficiently enough that you can carry as support.

Not only that, in my experience, supports actually can carry and make plays quite well. During laning phrase support is probably BETTER in low elo, because the chance to make plays with every support but soraka is HUGE. People overextend, don't ward side brushes, and generally play really dumb sometimes making high elo players call bronze elo "bots". Leona, Ali, Taric, Blitz, Nunu, Lulu can heavily punish this, as they are all highly aggressive supports with some form of CC. If your AD carry is so bad that after you say in chat "at lvl 3 , im going to try to play a play on X" and then ping and say "going very soon", and will not auto, that's just silly honestly, and will rarely occur. Janna and Sona are more reliant on poking and zoning out, as opposed to straight up doing big damage or huge CC early on, and Soraka is Soraka. Sure, mid-late game supports in a higher elo game become more important by the counter warding and oracles rarely seen at lower elo that is almost always done, and sometimes very early by the support and the jungle in higher elo.