League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Tyrmith]

The gameplay of sitting in a bush, just shielding or healing another player, and not even killing minions, is a bit dull.

Remember though that the support champ though, because they don't kill minions (and because xp is not nearly as much a big deal), is able to play a much more strategic role during the laneing phase. It's your responsibility to use your CV to track their jungler, it's your responsibility to place wards around the map, and if you're someone like Taric or Alistair, it's often your responsibility to initiate fights/ganks, both at bottom lane, and 3 or 4 man ganks on other lanes. It isn't all about just healing.

[sunrise089]

I kinda hope they would nerf supports to the ground. The pure supports anyway. I'd personally find it much more fun if the supports are gone from the meta and replaced with, say, niche champs like Poppy or Blitz, or perhaps hybrids like Morgana.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with this statement. First, enough of this "pure support" stuff. There is a spectrum for all champs, and I don't think at all there is a bright line from when you list Soraka, Sona, Janna, Taric, Morgana, Karma, and Zilean.

Second, way to kill the uniqueness of the champ Riot. I get they wanted to make her more damage and less healing, but then why do you have 80 champs in this game?

Finally I like playing supports, and if you like carries you should like killing me since I'm so squishy. Why is it such a bad thing I'm having fun in my unique strategic role?

[Enoch]

I'm the first to admit my lack of skill and knowledge of LoL, but the AD carry + support bot lane thats emerged over the last few months seems very suspect to a strong duo such as Garen + Taric (unfortunately Garen isn't good enough past level 10 or so) or just about anything + Alistar.

There have been attempts to counter the ad + support lane post dream hack. American strategies for it have included things like Alistar + Blitzcrank or lane combos using Poppy. The problem with these are that they are very high risk, either you win the lane and crush the opposition or you fail because if it turns into a farm off then your champions don't scale as well (except for poppy obviously).

More recent attempts have centered around Taric + someone else. In America Taric + Brand is the combo of choice but I don't think it has been used in competitive play. However in Europe the combo is Taric + Cassiopiea and this has been used by strong competitive teams. Against a stationary target Cass has some of the highest damage numbers in the game so her laning with Taric generates a huge amount of threat. Plus she scales with farm really well.

Clg also recently ran Jax + Soraka but I don't think that will work with new Soraka sadly.

The main thing that surprises me is that they decided to make these changes when they did. The first big multi country tournament since dreamhack is this weekend and we will find out if teams have worked out new metas to counter the current one.

Also I like playing supports as well but I do miss the days when it was worth building ap on Sona.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

A typical Riot reaction. "Supports are too strong so now we will nerf them into oblivion."

I'm still unclear on whether they have a specific goal in mind, or if constant change is the goal.

[ssmagus]

I just treat it as a huge buff to Janna.

[Sullla]

There are a lot of issues with League of Legends as currently constituted, but supports are not one of them. There are currently 5 supports viable for competitive play, all with different roles to play:

- Alistar (chain CC, "tanky" with ultimate)
- Janna (knockup, slow, shield, heal on ultimate)
- Sona (sustain heal, strong harass in lane, AEO stun ult)
- Soraka (burst heal, global heal, zero offense)
- Taric (aura support, single target stun, very strong in lane)

Their gameplay actually works quite well, and each of them plays differently. In my opinion, Riot needs to tweak a few other champions to make them viable support picks as well (looking at Kayle and Karma for sure, along with possibly champs like Lux and Morgana) to add more different options. Riot seems to have this ridiculous opinion that supports are "boring", despite the fact that a huge swath of their player base enjoys them and doesn't want them to change. Furthermore, why is having a pure support champion bad in a team-based game? Look at Soraka, she does absolutely no damage whatsoever. You need strong team play to take advantage of her strengths. That's a *GOOD* thing, not a bad thing. Why would we want all 80 champs to be the same?

I also don't buy the argument that AD/Support is too strong, or has too much sustain, or anything like that. Enoch already explained that there are champion lineups to counter that setup, usually with double stun bottom lane. You also can't throw just any combination out there; try running Ashe/Soraka, it's far too weak in lane and can get absolutely crushed against skilled players. And if supports provide "too much sustain", then what about champions like Mordekaiser with spell vamp, or Udyr with Wriggles, or two dozen other tanky DPS champs that can lifesteal/spell vamp indefinitely? Honestly, you're going to tell me that's OK but supports need to be nerfed into the ground?

Riot is 100% wrong on this one. I just hope they realize it before enacting these proposed changes.

[Dantski]

Their gameplay actually works quite well, and each of them plays differently. In my opinion, Riot needs to tweak a few other champions to make them viable support picks as well (looking at Kayle and Karma for sure, along with possibly champs like Lux and Morgana)

Well judging by Kayle's recent changes, Riot doesn't see Kayle really filling a support role. The heal was nerfed into the ground (honestly was pretty poor before) but Kayle is a greater threat in lane.

I can see Karma being buffed significantly in the next few months and then being considered OP. Her heal isn't good enough at present, her speed up or slow isn't awful on its own, but considering Karma only has 3 skills it has to be improved IMO. Her shield/AOE is a nice skill but if you build support on Karma its relatively useless, she doesn't do enough damage with her spells to justify prioritizing AP in her build.

Lux is in a fairly decent place right now, her shield could be a little stronger maybe and if Riot wants her to be a serious AP carry option her spells need small buffs.

Morgana just needs more damage or AP ratios on her spells, adding a couple of seconds to black shield duration wouldn't hurt either. Didn't they knock over 5 secs off the shields duration when they nerfed her? Madness really, she was strong no question about that (I remember she was almost universally banned in WCG) but couldn't Riot just tone her down instead of going over the top?

[Deceptus]

Caitlyn/Soraka seems to be the biggest cause of the commotion.

The sustain is just really strong in that lane, it's like the magic in the young Twilight Sparkle. It really is mostly a pain in normal games where you might just get shoehorned into being completely counterpicked in Blind Pick (Ashe/Janna is going to get completely owned by a competent Caitlyn/Soraka duo). In ranked, you can counter it more reliably. Everypony can just put the jungler on the "babysit the bottom lane" duty, but this causes the always present "noob jungler y u no gank top" issue. Or you can just sacrifice the tower and farm at the second tower, because against infinite sustain and harass, the tower will eventually fall. Sure, they get an advantage. But Soraka is a great laner, yet doesn't bring the utility of, say, Alistar or Janna into teamfights. And dies much, much more easily than the aforementioned.

I think they just don't really have a clue on how to achieve their idea of supports not just spamming heal in lane. The armor buff to Astral Blessing hints that they want the skill to be much like a Janna shield... but then, they should drop the base values and raise the AP ratios, since it will still be used as a heal.

But yeah, what Sullla said. Nopony wants to play support in solo queue and risk a loss because your mane goal of farming the carry has been foregone just because your carry doesn't know how to last hit or otherwise is a few apples away from a bushel. And Soraka is a fragile champion who can only wave her hooves around in a self-defense attempt if things go dicey for her team. But I actually like the support champion playstyle. Support Janna is fun when you have 20+ armor from runes alone and can trade harass with anypony you want. Except Caitlyn/Soraka, lol.

MathMage has some ideas that on paper look better.

Oh, also Karthus is going to be one happy pony.

Also, Janna is hot.

[Sir Bruce]

Classick, a Riot dev and high ELO player, posted this about the Soraka changes:

It seems like there is a lot confusion about the upcoming sustain changes, so I'll try to clarify what we are doing with my own opinion of the upcoming changes.

Currently there are aggressive supports and there are passive supports, aggressive supports are characters such as Alistar and Taric. Meanwhile there are the passive supports such as Soraka and Sona. The thing is these passive supports have some good offensive attributes on them, and some of them are not even being used. For instance, I can't remember the last time I've seen Soraka cast a Starcall, that to me is just silly. Soraka can still fulfill her support role with these changes, it's just slightly different. For instance, instead of supporting your lane by sitting in a brush and holding down W/E on your lane partner you can go out and be aggressive to protect your lane partner, using Starcall on your opponents as well as silencing them when they try to retaliate and quickly casting your heal early on whomever your opponents choose to attack. This is similar to Alistar, who has one of the weaker sustain abilities in the game but can win his lane by being extremely aggressive. Zoning off his opponents away from his partner in lane and protecting them with his powerful CC abilities.

This to me is not only significantly more healthy for the game, but it also will create more action packed lanes, making aggressiveness optimal instead of passivity. With the significantly longer cooldowns on heals, your options on how to approach a fight is being increased greatly, you have more opportunities to strike your opponents while their heal is on cooldown. You will have a much more heavy incentive to be aggressive and apply pressure because the support you are fighting cannot just top off the damage you have done within 30 seconds.

For those of you who think that these changes will lower the amount of choices to play as a support, I think this will broaden the spectrum of choices you have as a support player. Currently the optimal supports to be played are ones that can constantly provide sustenance in lane, which has greatly lowered the amount extremely powerful supports such as Janna as a choice. It's not only Sona and Soraka who received some changes to their sustain, other characters in their league of sustain such as Taric have had some tweaks made as well. How great would it be if you could lane versus a good Soraka as a character without any sustain such as Lux and actually win beyond level 5!

tl;dr The most powerful supports currently are the ones who can infinitely sustain their lane and play passively while allowing their partner to farm. This role should stay intact, but through the means of aggressiveness and confronting their opponents as opposed to playing passive. Reducing the dependency on sustenance will help broaden the spectrum of viable supports in lane, and make the lane and those characters more fun/active!

I very much agree that it's an issue that Soraka has no reason to ever level Starcall until forced to. I'm not sure that these changes will entirely fix that instead of just dumping her in the usless-after-nerf bin.

[sunrise089]

Classick, a Riot dev and high ELO player, posted this about the Soraka changes:



I very much agree that it's an issue that Soraka has no reason to ever level Starcall until forced to. I'm not sure that these changes will entirely fix that instead of just dumping her in the usless-after-nerf bin.

Ok....but it isn't, at all, like no other champs have either an ability you don't need to use at all, or an ability you want at most 1 point in. But buff starcall if they want, and nerf some ratios to compensate. Don't kill the entire playstyle of the champ - sure you sit in the bush, but it's 1 champ out of 80!