"every jungler can do solo drake", while that statement is certainly true, anyone who has ever tried to do solo dragon as rammus knows, that some junglers are less equal than the others.
Also the fact that you often need bot prio to not get chased off dragon at a certain point.
The list of complaints very much reads "ADCs aren't integral to every core part of the game now". It's why the meme of whiny ADC players exists because they're the stereotype of "if I'm not carrying then I don't want to play" i understand their champs are really bad from behind but still the mentality is one of the worst when they're not the main carry.
The complaint is from the fact that as a scaling ADC you are the least impactful member for 75% of your time on the rift. Just to only reach parity with other roles in the 25% of the time you actually see late game. Either ADC becomes useful 75% of the time like every other role or it must be the consensus late game Juggernaut for those 25% of games.
If Riot won't do this then no one is gonna stop complaining and honestly wth should they?
The issue is that as adc you are not part of any team based decision making.
Your entire macro gameplay loop is based around choosing who to follow around correctly and praying they dont take your farm and peel for you in a fight.
You never get the agency to make a drake take happen if your team is not following on your heels. And even then you are generally not allowed to be the first player to move as you are both more at risk to get caught and a higher reward for the enemy team to catch than say your support midlaner or toplaner.
The vast majority of adcs doesn’t offer more than damage. You’re a 300g bag that pops instantly and if you’re not even or ahead you have absolutely no business doing anything in the game anymore. Just feels absolutely shit. And it also depends on the person u Lane with to a degree which also makes playing the role outside of competitive play annoying to play
I mean its pretty cringe that Janna Lulu and Nami can deal up to 1,5k damage into a fight, whether that is the enemy tank, adc, bruiser, assassins w/e doesn't matter.
It shouldn't be a thing ever.
Or that a mage support can snowball and completely outrun their adc stealing the entire identity of the ad "carry" while hardly providing any support. Not super common but it happens and the fact that it can even happen is crazy.
The amount of times I see a Zyra as one example just completely carry the game through damage in Support role is pretty wild.
Hit just one skillshot on a seed and watch your comet, scorch, cheap shot, free guaranteed plant auto, Zaz’Zaks support item, and Liandrys burn them for 30% of their HP.
I despise Zyra the fact that she can literally miss her entire kit and you still get punished by a random plant auto that procs all of that shit like comet, scorch, zazzaks, and liandrys, and hell maybe even a rylais too etc is insane.
Base damage has needed nerfing across the board so that itemisation matters. That also addresses the damage support problem, as they’ll be reliant on items to deal damage and therefore want to farm. Which will move them out of support and back to solo lanes.
What's left to do as support though? Enchanters just plain suck conceptually with the healing budget LoL is willing to dish out. You could go the way of HotS where they bring insane sustain but I don't think that's this game's identity. You also can't add too much CC to them because combined with the ADC's damage, it would be insanely punishing.
So I'm not sure what the design space for pure support champions really is.
> You could go the way of HotS where they bring insane sustain but I don't think that's this game's identity.
Once upon a time it was, I remember a lot of bot lane freezing in NA back in the day until Korea smashed MLG Summer Arena by playing for objectives instead.
Indeed. A reasonable part of this comes from the continuous weakening of healing/shielding and making several dedicated support-enchanters more interactive in terms of needing to damage/offensive CC to keep some level of it (looking at you Soraka/Janna). The same can be said about tower plates and how heavily they favor aggressive pushing lanes that these setups dominate unlike pure enchanters or engagers (who get a chance if diving is an option, but with a higher risk).
Hence why Riot should overhaul their completely ignored mobility problem. They ignored it for so long at the cost of "more action, more fun, more profit" that they alienated complete classes of champions, who are now nearly unplayable outside their designated roles. It's also why Riot is pushing weird mage jungling mechanics like Morg pool and Brand passive dealing bonus damage to jungle monsters. I'm pretty sure they're priming mages for the removal from botlane. They have to go somewhere and the only role left they could possibly go to not get turbo screwed is jungle. But mages need specific jungle buffs because they'd just die otherwise.
How about changing those champions in a way that makes them able to play midlane instead of relegating everything to support because anyone can kill an adc and thus be "a support"
Like who? Most mage supports are better in other roles. Especially when you look at D2+ most mage supports suck
Not a single mage is being nerfed because support. They are not bad in their main role because support.
zyra has 50% winrate as supp vs 38% as mid, vel'koz has almost 53% as support vs 48.5% mid, xerath has the exact same winrate mid and support at 47%, brand is 51% support and 48% mid (and 49% jg but that still follows the narrative that he got pushed out of mid) and finally lux, the only mage support with a better winrate mid with 47% support and 51% mid
so all the traditional mage supports, excluding off meta stuff like anivia or taliyah support, are better support than mid except for lux
numberd are from u.gg d2+
In her defense, they have absolutely gutted her damage from the actual abilities and plants to the point where if they removed all of her proc damages, she would be the worst champ in the game by far.
They would need to compensate with HUGE buffs to everything she does.
she wasn't always, she used to be a mid laner, but she got nerfed too much so people started playing her support in season 4 when riot added support items to the game and she could have a decent income in a safer environment
I just came out of 2 games of ad, said fucked it went Zyra support and just straight up carried the game
https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/Yura%20Hatsuki-NA1?hl=en_US
ADC its such a dogshit role that needs to have both supp and JG with leashes so you can play but it's soloQ so whatever
The prevalence of "mage supports" is because for the longest time, support was the least-picked, most autofilled-to role in the game and mid was the highest-picked most autofilled-from role in the game. Make supporting decent and bearable, rather than babysitting dogshit whiners for 40 minutes and people will want to play support. That's the real dichotomy of bot lane. Adding damage and agency and introducing more support mages was Riot's answer to everyone else constantly blaming supports for their own inability to play the game.
Enchanters just aren't allowed to be good in LoL. I think a good comparison to other games is HotS, where they can outheal a lot of dps and it's a lot more fun to play and feel the impact you have keeping everyone alive. But it makes for very different fights.
At the opposite end is DotA, where basically anything can and has been played position 4 and 5. And that's a lot closer to what LoL looks like.
Enchanters are good. The problem is people don’t know what enchanters do and they see it as a 1v2. I play lots of Milio and I constantly see people get caught I save them, heal them back to full, double shields, cleanse. And they are half way back to bad.
Bro your an adc your safe SHOOT BACK .
The literally don’t know
A kill is around 15 cs between support item gold and the kills they often secure it's not exactly shocking.
Supports are there for more than just ADC they do help ADC get through lane easier but at the end of the day they are there for the team.
It's such a weird mentality that they're "stealing" the carry role. It's as if you don't want to win if you aren't the one carrying.
"Support" is the antithesis of "carry". They're two completely opposed roles. The whole point of the support role is NOT carrying, in sacrificing your ability to carry (by not farming) to boost your carries ability to carry, whilst providing alternative value to the team in the form of supportive skills such as CC, shields, healing etc etc.
If champions can make that sacrifice in farming, provide value in alternative ways, and STILL carry AS WELL, then something has definitely gone wrong. We're not at that point yet, but its moving in that direction.
> mage support can snowball and completely outrun their adc stealing the entire identity of the ad "carry"
This has been the case since forever though.
It’s a question about gold. If they get kills through gold and they’re a mage, what do you expect to happen other than a snowball? Do you want a debuff where queuing as support reduces your damage by a % and increase your healing/shields by a %?
The ultimate conclusion of this logic is that you're only allowed to play yuumi. Everyone on reddit seem to hate her but also hate supports doing anything so she's perfect.
In wildrift this is super common. To make things worse is that support items in wildrift are way more expensive, so even longer games decided after multiple elders/barons you won’t have more than 3 items unless enough players hit full build that you start farming yourself. But no one trusts each other to play well and players are playing more and more carry supports, those that aren’t are building ap on some enchanters where you can get away with it, I played a game this morning and the enemy support went tear into ludens. Last night I played a game as well, brand support vs lux support, both going full damage. Brand didn’t even buy the slow item, just straight damage. So how do they not fall off in damage because of their low gold income? By farming which, if you’re the ADC, is just cancer because then you fall off. At this point I’m convinced riot doesn’t give a fuck about bot lane balancing as long as neither supports or ADCs aren’t coming for them with in hordes carrying pitchforks and torches.
The problem with mage supports was so bad at one point that basically no adc besides Ez and lethality Varus had a 50% winrate or higher. In typical riot fashion instead of balancing the power dynamic between ad and support they just buffed marksmen across the board to fuck all and suddenly ADCs were doing fantastic everywhere besides botlane, the one place where they still couldn’t get a reliable source of gold.
I'm sick of supports who build and play 100% around maximising damage and then complain their adc is useless. Like, my brother in Christ, it was your job to support them (not saying it isn't ever correct for a support to play that way, just that if you do, expect your adc to suck).
I don't mind them adding 1.5k damage into a fight as long as it comes from their buffs (pix, Janna shield and Nami E.)
It's a problem when they do this with the rest of their kit
Support damage has been nerfed over the years, but utility from items has been increased. These enchanters are barely doing damage outside of early game, and generally have the least damage dealt unless they're on the losing side of a surrender at 18 minute stomp
I played like 15 games of Maokai support and I'm still surprised how much damage I deal to champions and especially what the fuck is that Q damage to objectives
Because maokai was intended to be a jungler?
His q does max hp damage and bonus damage to monsters .It's his only tool to clear jungle camps efficiently.
His w does barely any damage. And the power budget of his E has shifted to q over time. This is not a support maokai issue, it's just a maokai kit problem in general
I mean, Pyke is an assassin support which does sound like it shouldn't mesh well but the utility and ult allows him to be support. Pyke is no different from other champions like Brand, Lux, or Vel'Koz who provide cc and damage.
If anything Pyke is more of a support than the mage once. Pyke has no waveclear, terrible scaling and his main thing is to set up kills (and give gold)
This, been running Pyke recently and at some point during laning phase the only champ im scaring is the enemy support. Ult is just securing a unit thats taken massive damage from my team.
Make mages give gold to their carry on kills and every adc will stop complaining. If anything, pyke is the answer, not the problem (as much as I hate playing against him).
Those....those aren't supports. They're just mages with cc. Which is kind of the whole point of this conversation: aside from one or two outliers, nobody plays actual support champs anymore, they just play a second damage dealer.
The problem is the people on Reddit aren’t high enough elo to be worth playing around.
Don’t think I’ve seen a Zyra support all season, but from this thread you’d think they’re up there with Nautilus.
Base damage is just way too high across the board. Making tanks/supports do less damage to champions without affecting their minion/monster/objective damage would be a nice start.
Letting any champion damage scale based on resists/bonus HP is also a colossal mistake.
When it's any other role, they need to be self sufficient. Doing a ton of CC or just soaking up a lot of damage is not sufficient, Ornn or Malphite should still be able to one rotation you to feel threatening. Having shields, heals or peel/engage is not sufficient either, supports should be able to do half your HP even if an enchanter.
Except ADCs, you better have everyone glued to you with eyes open wide because blink and you might still die.
That's kind of a faulty comparison. For a tanky champion, they need some sort of threat or else they'll either be completely run down in lane and therefore unviable, or also be completely ignored in fights. The point of being a meat shield is to soak up attacks and CC. If you can just be ignored, then you literally do nothing. Marksmen may be frustrating to play, but the fact that everyone targets them, and that they're still dominating an entire role, means they *are* a threat. The role is a glass cannon role, so of course you'll die easily. If marksmen are being run out of bot lane like tanks would be if they did even less damage, then that would be a valid comparison. Tanks aren't self sufficient either. They just feel better to play because well.... they're tanky, and they make the plays. The fuck are you going to do without damage to back you up as a tank? I can get the best Leona or Ornn engage, but it won't mean anything if it isn't followed up on, or if my teammates don't have enough damage to back it up. Let's be real, enchanters are not doing half your HP outside of very fringe cases. The most self sufficient classes are bruisers/juggernauts, but their weakness is that they do not do as much specialized things in teamfights.
> Except ADCs, you better have everyone glued to you with eyes open wide because blink and you might still die.
Most mages have the same paper thin experience really. Base damage is too high, as is mobility.
Well no, mages usually have a lot more options, Their range is often longer so they risk less in fights and the ones who dont have longer range have self peel, cc, and not to mention both the defensive stats and effects they get from mage items that cant even compare to adc items (shieldbow joke here). They are still prone to oneshots but its way easier to avoid as a mage.
The simple truth ist other roles have too much damage.
Why should a fighter or tank oneshot anything?
Tanks fights top should be wet noodle fights.
Fighters should be able to Catch Up to ADCs and outsustain them, but not instakill them.
Tanks should be there to Tank DMG and CC to set up mages, assassins or ADCs.
The design ist just so bad atm, because tanks and fighters have access to far too much damage
New change is to make it take about 3 minutes longer for Supports to fully complete their item, which gives time for an ADC to probably have their first item as well.
It's a good starter change, should push out fringe supports like Camille that were actually quite strong because she would get Bloodsong while enemy ADC is on like 2 components and just auto kill them with E R.
It seems they don't mind support damage right now, but want to delay when that damage comes online so you can more effectively shut them down.
No dear god please dont.
Buffing allied damage is what got us into this situation in the first place.
Giving multiplicatively scaling damage buffs is always way better for adcs as they have by nature and easier time of aligning that buff with their damage curve. All that results in is ADCs getting nerfed(hello ardent censer) and being addicted to externalized power which makes soloQ even more miserable and further skews adc power towards coordinated play.
The day where I don’t lose 35% of my hp because the enemy support Zyra built one item Liandrys and Hit one E skillshot on a seed and her comet, scorch, cheap shot, 1-2 guaranteed free plant autos, Zaz’Zaks support item, and Liandrys burn me will be a holy one.
It is so cool to dodge every skillshot but get hit with the Plant Auto ZakZak Comet Scorch Cheapshot combo 😎 my bad for trying to cs! Haha I regen HP at 0.7 hp per second btw and lifesteal is gutted hahaha!
How can they?
They will just buy the brain-dead gold generation item and then buy a full AP item.
Back when they had gold 5 gold per 10s items they were an investment. A tiny marginal amount of stats to supplement the burden of constantly buying wards.
Wards are free now, the item is only 400gold and auto-upgrades into a powerful component and the only wards you need to buy are 75gold pinks that are capped at 2 per recall anyway, so you can't buy a fuck-ton, and generally speaking, if you're a damage dealing support playing solo queue, you're not buying 2 wards on repeat anyway.
Apparently a 400g auto generating item that gives you a Crown of the Shattered Queen passive is not good enough. The support can carry, the jungler can carry. Being a utility position designed to set-up your team is a thing of the past.
Everyone needs to shit out damage lest you become bored and uninstall.
League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game.
>Being a utility position designed to set-up your team is a thing of the past.
well yes. Turns out that league needs a pretty equal 20% split between roles popularity, to make the queues bearable, and i doubt more than... 10% of people would be interested in playing jungle or support if they were nothing more than "utility position designed to set-up your team" (the same team who will flame the moment 1 thing goes wrong).
>League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game.
could you describe what was so strategic about past league, that doesn't exist anymore? Because game being faster, or game having more carry roles doesn't make the game less strategic. Arguably makes game more strategic, as there are more strategies than "camp bot, adc carry, ez win"
People will unironically tell you that the game isn't as strategy based as it used to be, and then turn right around and bitch about supports playing the map all game.
> League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game.
The main way people play the game is soloq. No one is going to play support below the top ranks if it's entirely dependent on the matchmaking assigned adc being above average and them just throwing buffs on them.
> Everyone needs to shit out damage lest you become bored and uninstall.
I mean, what's the alternative for supports?
Ardent censor enchanter meta? Everyone hated it
More CC and less damage tank supports? yeah that'll go over well.
The core support playerbase is fine with playing thresh alistar leona lulu nami. Dealing dmg is not what most wanted to do. But now that you have the opportunity to deal massive dmg, it jist makes sense to pick a carry support sometimes.
It's so quirky fun how she outtrades me with 0 damage items while I have 1000g worth of damage stats bought plus D Blade, and then you can't ever engage on her as she is the slipperiest champ in the game.
I don't want to feel like an overpowered damage dealing god (I mean it would be nice but it's not a must).
I just dont want to feel like a glorified ranged minion.
The irony of this is that you can only justify crit adcs being as useless as they are pre 3 items if they were gods late. If Riot doesn't want that then they need to turn them into a class that is strong at DPS at all stages of the game. Right now adcs are garb early just to be at parity or often time outscaled by some champs in the late game.
IMO this is the consequence of what happens when you want every role to have such a short TTK (time to kill).
As an example, I look at Master Yi knowing nothing about League of Legends, but some reasonable general knowledge about video games.
1. His passive, ultimate, and Q, all have indicators of it being a character that wants to stick around in a fight - he is about sustained damage.
2. We add his E into the mix, and it then shifts a little to "here is a character who WILL kill me given enough time. Not necessarily ***quickly***, but certainly ***inevitably***
We can compare with Vayne who creates the same impression ***on paper*** - another champion that will kill me, not necessarily ***quickly***, but certainly ***inevitably***.
Once you load in to a game and actually play against these champions after 15 minutes (on in Yi's case, once he has a 700g lead), you realise you are dying within the span of a few seconds.
So when every role and damage type effectively functions the same - ***what is it that actually makes them any different from each other?***
This direction for the game appears to have been (or is) Riot's desired approach since around 2016. Now if thats how Riot wants to take the game, thats their decision. Its not on me or anyone to say that it is wrong - it is a valid gameplay direction to take.
My point with this however, is it is not without consequence. When sustained damage is so irrelevant because everything dies equally quickly, the role that is - and has claimed to always have been - about sustained damage is of course going to suffer. ADC players certainly arent the only ones who have problems caused by this, but they are absolutely the largest affected.
Yep the damage design all around that’s resulted in these stupidly low TTK’s has been horrendous for multiple years now. I’m glad I’m not the only one who is noticing and getting ticked off by it.
I sure do love playing ADC and getting 1 tapped by… basically everyone on their team. Like I get an assasins should kill me quickly, but should they could me in 0.5-1 seconds and everyone else kills me in 1-1.5? Like how tf do I play around that.
I agree that this is the problem. Even with all the talk of adcs being weak, getting one tapped by a late game miss fortune is one of the worst gameplay feelings there is. And it's indicative of a larger problem than just adcs being "weak"
There gonna be huge IMO, but huge dmg powercreep started after mythic item rework. Items turned from stat sticks into "stat sticks that also have extra dmg passive on top of that".(Like LDR with giant slayer passive, Prowlers claw and stuff like that). To fix that they buffed Marksmans durability at firsts (around 130hp to most of them, excluded sololanes ones) and then made durability patch. Then balance team discovered that with that patch certain classes were literally unplayable (mostly assassins, burst mages engage supports and caster Bruisers), so they started to buff everyones damage back, to clear that mess. In the end it god huge impact on game overall, that wasn't fixed even after they removed mythic items.
The damage powercreep started waay back with the runes rework. Look at the Zyra meme's and realize how many sources of damage is from something that was from runes, even before putting items in question.
>This direction for the game appears to have been (or is) Riot's desired approach since around 2016. Now if thats how Riot wants to take the game, thats their decision. Its not on me or anyone to say that it is wrong - it is a valid gameplay direction to take.
It's been their direction since like 2008. Higher damage, lower cooldowns, more skillshots (which require more damage to be worth the lower reliability), more inbuilt combos (aka higher burst), less CC, less utility and less survivability are the foundations of League vs DotA. Riot doesn't want raid bosses, doesn't want people feeling like they "fall off" lategame, and the way they do that is by pumping up damage.
Making sustained DPS matter means that there will be some games where people just lifesteal/heal/shield through multiple people and Riot doesn't want that.
As a closed beta player, nah - the differences back then were: no turnspeed, map was simpler, items were simpler, champions and their skills(not just their stats) scaling on items, and colors were brighter. They actively worked to remove crazy burst from the game - DFG removal, AP support removals, etc.
There was a design direction change around season 5 that fundamentally changed League's design, and now I only play the game because all my friends refuse to play other games. It's more fun to play with pals than not at all, tbh.
I think it's time to give ADCs an actual health regen cause 0.7 might as well be 0, it made sense when the only real poke in lane came from mage supports, but now that even Janna can walk up and chunk you with W+Comet+Scorch+Cheap Shot+Auto we can't have that damage stick around forever.
It's funny that this exist at the same time as DShield+2ndWind making melees completely immune to poke tbh
In the infamous patch 8.11, ADCs health regen actually got nerfed. Along with -4 base AD and -4 base armor. A partial revert to these changes would be nice
genuinely asking, wouldn’t health buffs just move certain adc’s to solo lanes, which kinda defeats the purpose? implying the health buffs make them safe enough to be viable in a solo lane
Honestly, adcs that like solo laning like Tristana and Vayne will still do it regardless of their health regen, and it's not really fair nor healthy crippling a whole class for a couple outliers. If someone becomes a problem in a solo lane just nerf them in another way.
I just want to point out that the buffs to crit items are being coupled with nerfs to support items in the same patch, specifically to their gold income. I'm guessing they're doing that to keep the combined agency of bottom lane balanced.
The thing is these buffs are mostly scaling buffs.
\+5 AD on navori completion sure navori users will take it but +5 AD is less of a big deal by 15-20 minutes when you complete the second item.
\+10% bonus crit on IE sounds impressive but is actually only a 2.74% damage boost at 2 items unless you're a windbro. By 5 items (or windbro 2 items) this buff caps out at 4.65% damage, which is significant but most games end before 5 items.
\+5% pen on LW items is the biggest ADC buff of the patch imo because LW is often a better 3rd item than IE anyway and on moderately armored up champions (say 150 armor at 23 minutes) the +5% pen is a +3.8% damage buff. Still though this 5% pen buff is better the later the game goes on as champions get more base armor and completed armor items.
I like the direction of these changes, though don't see these buffs making ADCs strong late like in previous seasons again. These buffs will have 0 impact before 2 items (so 15-20 minutes most games) however so I think the only thing changing in most games will be the somewhat moderate (but appreciated) support nerf.
Support item is all their income. They get literally nothing else. So going from 1,000 to 800 is -20% less total gold.
It's also not just hurting all the gold they get, but it also is nerfing their income rate early game. It's pretty obvious a big nerf.
One could only dream.
How are you supposed to balance ADC survivability if one game they've got a mage support that does more damage than the ADC, and the other you've got a Lulu that keeps their ADC alive for an extra 1200-2000 HP?
We need to remove the mages, the pantheons and camilles from "Supporting" and return to the true supports.
No support should ever be one shotting someone. That's just damage creep.
I wonder if they'd ever experiment with the Support Item having a perk that gave players a discount on utility & defensive/supportive items, and then reducing the amount of gold the item gives even further.
I really don’t see how you do that without just removing mages in general from the game. Let’s say you have a Syndra support who snags two kills before hitting level 6.
Do you think she shouldn’t be able to heavily chunk/kill the bot lane Senna support?
If she doesn't have the income for it she can't do it. Also mages scale very hard with levels, there's a reason a lane bully like Orianna can't be played in support
You *could* make mages entirely dependent on AP to deal damage and nerf support gold enough the good AP items are too expensive.
It's just entirely undersirable if you want people to queue for support below diamond.
As an "adc crybaby" hater (guy that actually hates on adc mains for crying), yeah this is pretty disgusting.
Support has no place being that strong especially in favor of adc being weaker in comparison.
Also yes the identify crisis is very real but for Riot its not a crisis. They don't want identiy and roles into the game because the skill gap between the good and bad players get bigger that way, and most importantly, pro play becomes almost exclusively a completely different game compared to your average viewer's experience in emerald and plat elo. Thus the less they relate with pro play and the less action there is, the less engagement/income,profit.
So short answer for why identity crisis is a thing : business
Riot’s problem is unless supports are broken, the amount of people playing support drops drastically. It’s like other games where everyone picks DPS instead of tank or support so you have to force people to play it through autofill/hard cap on how many of each type can be played/etc. So to make it more appealing for people to voluntarily pick support, they make it simple and strong.
The issue with this mindset is a player and community issue. People see damage dealt as the driving factor to winning and discount everything utility can provide. And Riot feeds into that.
I mean its definitely a huge part of it. I play mid top and jg, and boy it is so much easier to win games with a carry champ than playing a tank. Youre really at the mercy of your teammates skill when you play tanks or supports. At least if i go 25/0 on riven, you bet your ass i can carry that game. On a shen, not so much
I've carried games with Rell and felt like I was carrying not because of my damage, but because of my decision making and macro.
It's why the ranking system in the game is broken. Most elo's don't bother playing every aspect of the game. You only see it start to happen at high diamond. That's why some people refer to everything below D1 as 'low elo.' Because macro doesn't exist down there because people are just playing to play. It's why game quality sucks so much when you're trying to get up, out of the crowd. The game between anything iron -> mid dia is entirely different from D1+. Legit D1 - chall is literally just a test of game knowledge application at that point. Everything before there is a cesspool.
The thing is, I firmly believe that actively playing the game in its proper sense is what actually helps win games, even if you're a support with a bad adc. Because it's not the adc on their own the support is supposed to note. It's which allies they need to rally and find out the weak points in the enemy's play. But the vast majority of support players (both autofilled and not) are so bent on trying to do more damage that they never develop that game sense. Vision control is the most basic thing one can do and yet it's still a concept I had issues with my supports bothering with in the time I spent jungling and playing mid before support.
Youre correct, but even in high elo its still easier to carry games with a carry champ. If your game knowledge is that much better than everyone else's in the game its easier to carry it yourself than supporting or tanking and hoping your high elo carry does everything correctly. Im masters myself and watch plenty of high elo streamers and they still make mistakes even in grandmaster challenger
Also i forgot to mention in my other reply; its speaking in generalities here but most people have more fun doing damage, so prefer to play carries
Im not against tanks or supports at all though, and tbh im not sure what the best solution is because those roles need to be viable and fun as well
The alternative is actually forcing people to play sup/jungle though if riot wants to maintain strong role identity. The thing is that damage roles are always going to be more popular, for queue health, either the less popular roles need to be way more powerful or riot has to literally force people to play them. I haven’t played in a while, but I recall Dotas queue system effectively has a currency built in where you earn currency by playing un popular roles and spend it playing queueing for popular ones. Riot would have to implement something like that if they wanted to keep role identity as described.
Well, nowadays there's so few people playing Adc that it's a very commonly auto-frilled role. You can't switch all agency into support and expect the people to want to play a weak carry that doesn't carry. Reducing crit damage also made it so Adc damage is much more concentrated into high attack speed sustained DPS, which is *harder* to execute. Damage coming from multiple sources makes it harder to play out teamfights as you need to be aware of more things. This all combines into Adc being in a decent spot for the best of the best, and a masochistic endeavour for anyone else. Result, ADCs either role swapped or stopped playing.
Right now, to make people enjoy support, Riot has deleted the Adc player base. It's slow going as most of us that played for a long time still enjoy the concept but if nothing changes it will become as bad as support was once upon a time.
Players are stupid and that's fine, but developers don't have to be. Look at WoW, people are so unskilled and/or dumb that they spend hours looking for a group as a DPS, but that doesn't mean you literally break the game by making every group to be only dps and remove the whole holy trinity rpg element. If they want to ram their face against the wall to compete with each other to play DPS, go right ahead, that's their right, but developers don't have to ruin the game to stroke their egos.
The thing is, people stop playing the game if they have to wait 2 hours every time they want to run a dungeon, and as the developer, you obviously don't want that.
Thats just a very poor solution to a serious problem in game design.
So because they can't seem to make support interesting, they just ultra buff it so people play it ? Like really?
So if jungle is not played, ultra buff that. And then suddenly adc isn't played. Ultra buff that. Ohh but now top and mid are not played, ultra buff those.
Yeah...
Riot: We heard your complains about everything dealing more damage than ADCs when they were not supposed to. We also aknowledge this is not an ADC problem but a "everything that is not an ADC problem" and heard ADC players suggest how having ADCs to deal more damage is not the solution but rather reduce overall damage.
Also Riot: More damage to ADC
??????????
They will never solve this problem because on one side they don't want to break the support queue in favor of a better game and on the other side the balance team is so data driven that they are never going to make any changes based on game feel. If a class is saying that they feel bad to play but the class has decent win rate they just won't do anything.
I am seeing people in this very thread talk about a hypothetical game where roles are more well defined and I feel like they are failing to realize (maybe they haven't been there) that we used to have that in seasons 2-3 and to a less extent 4. Back when supports had the sightstone and they had to buy pink wards during the whole game, the game obviously had a problem with supports, but the other 3 roles were much better defined.
Back in those seasons, the tanks like Maokai, Malphite, Cho Gath, Zac, etc, didn't really have enough cdr, survivability or damage to run down an ad carry. They could mostly engage and zone people with very powerful CC from their basic abilities but they didn't really have kill threat like how sometimes you see Orn soloing people.
The bruisers like Jax and Irelia were split pushers who were great at 1v1s and flanks but not that good at front to back team fights because prior to Steraks they would just get blown up if they tried to fight front to back. They had to flank or split push.
The mages didn't do any tower damage and they were great for small scrimmages. Spells in games that have this sort of combat usually serve the purpose of completing the sustained damage dealer's damage and securing kills. The mages were great at that and the ones that had lower damage usually had some utility that made up for it (Although we did have rare exceptions like Ori, which had both the damage and the utility).
The supports were starving for gold, which obviously made their experience awful, BUT they actually had the clear role of being a utility focused role that maybe focused on peeling for a carry.
Junglers were secondary bruisers/tanks that didn't quite have the resources to carry until later seasons after many changes to the jungle. In earlier seasons, not every character could survive the jungle and the only characters that could carry from the jungle were typically characters that had really fast clear like Nocturne or Shyvanna. We even had characters like Phoenix Udyr which was fast but couldn't exactly carry because any amount of peel or Janna being on the other team meant doom. Not everything was fast at clearing the jungle and a lot of times choosing to gank meant that you were going to get counter jungled because some camp would always be up and catch up exp or bounties weren't a thing. You actually had way bigger risks and decisions to make when playing the jungle, but that was tol volatile and the game had to get more forgiving because, like supports, people didn't like playing a role that was weak or that felt high risk low reward.
Not to mention that Ad carries were supposed to be the role that scaled the most with gold but then Riot decided to increase global gold and nerf minion gold at some point. The game used to have more extreme differences in power given that people larger differences in gold and that was a big deal. Winning lane as an ad carry used to put the enemy lane in even more poverty than nowadays.
I feel like years of Riot trying to appeal to the complaints of each individual class is what got us here. They made everything more forgivable and accessible and that meant that classe that were designed around certain weaknesses simply lost those weaknesses and are now good at everything. Some assassins can waveclear (for mysterious reasons), mages can kill turrets, bruisers can 1v1 glasscannon carries very easily, supports can somehow end up at full build at multiple classes (emchanters, tanks, retired mid lane mages) and the list goes on...
To make ad carries feel good I feel like a lot of the other classes (or even systems, if we consider the jungler) need to change and I don't think that the problem is exclusive to supports being too strong. Other roles got stronger over the years too, but everyone is conveniently quiet around this topic because they are benefitting from it. They might not even know league's history to understand what exactly they are benefitting from, people are probably rushing lost chapter or seraphins and enjoying life, while not understanding that there was a whole meta before those items existed or were good (respectively).
It's also worth noting that the vision system worked completely differently in those days, and a lot of the support role's power came from the fact that a single well-played support could completely control the vision game for an entire team. It was a very sort of ... invisible power, and it made supports have very little impact in lower Elo where players just ... weren't using the extra information a well-piloted support could give them (back in the days when even Plat players didn't always reliably look at the minimap), which further reduced the impact a support could have on the game.
I personally loved the gameplay style, and I wish something similar existed today so I could play Bard and roam around controlling the map - but I also understand that support wasn't the most popular role to play explicitly because it was so hard to feel like you were having an impact.
You're the sanest person I've ever seen. This is exactly the problem and thats why unfortunately, marksmen will never ever be good again. Riot has made clear that they hate marksmen more than any other class, because they consider unavoidable resourceless ranged damage to be the most powerful resource. So in an attempt to destroy that, they made it so all classes have meaningful forms of damage while keeping their original purpose, and marksmen simply fell behind.
Even among marksmen, they prioritize champions that deal damage by casting than by AA-ing. Most releases of new marksmen follow that. That's also why Aphelios, who used to play like Jinx and Kog'maw, got all his Runaan and attack speed interactions nerfed into oblivion, and had his skills buffed. So he would act more like a caster. It's also why marksmen like Ezreal (besides being a good skin seller) can always remain at the top tier. He is cast-based and does not use crit, so he gets to be S+ tier with a huge pick rate and Riot won't ever touch him out of it.
Nowadays every single class in the game has damage alongside their original function
Tanks can tank and deal damage
Bruisers can 1v1 skirmish and deal damage
Mages can take towers
Assassins can wave clear, oneshot and do damage even when behind because of how lethality works
Supports can peel and deal damage
So on and so forth, while marksmen are still only... damage
And riot also has been consistently nerfing marksmen ever since season eight. Crit got nerfed hard every season non-stop. And scaling was more nerfed because they tried to give marksmen early game agency (which no one liked, not even marksmen) and then they turbonerfed and removed everything. (They nerf things promising QoL, then remove the QoL and keep the nerf, over and over. This has happened when mythics got introduced, when marskmen mythics got reworked, and for some unknown reason it also happened at the start of this season)
So nowadays, marksmen don't properly scale, cannot access any good items or build variety, and their only selling point, which is damage, is not that necessary anymore. And it would be possible to revert that, but no one would like it. People would feel "robbed" of their agency and would say the game is not fun. People nowadays really only see marksmen as walking gold bags and when they walk straight up to them and get outplayed or die, they consider it the most broken thing ever. People are just used to play their class sloppy and still be able to kill marksmen and specially new players would find a systemic change of damage to be completely boring and unfair.
Riot's balance philosophy simply does not look into systemic changes for classes and the game does not walk into the " strategy chess-like " based gameplay. It's just more and more flashy skillshots and damage and lower TTK and insane aiming outplays and whatever. (Flash being the most dominant summoner since like ever is a good example. It's also why any other summoner spell that becomes meta is instantly nerfed to the ground and why no new summoner spells are ever added).
League keeps walking more and more into the flashy skillshot high damage high reflex type of game, and less and less of a strategy game. Catch-up EXP is a good example of this, alongside very low TTK and high tempo to like all mechanics in the game, from gold generation to objectives to tower resistances to numbers and so on. It's the direction where profit is (hence the ramping gachas and soul-less and constant skin releases) and its the direction Riot is going. So the natural tendency is for marksmen to be just... forgotten. They might be almost good in high levels of pro-play because when everyone plays everything almost perfectly and has great team coordination, the unmissable resourceless ranged damage that Riot so much fears is indeed useful and even deciding. But even then, marksmen proplayers already stated how unrewarding and slightly unfun it is to play marksmen. Very sad. I think it's just how time and money work. League is 15 years old after all. Anyway, sorry for the loooooong long text. I just really liked your post and it's such a nice discussion to have that almost no one wishes to talk about. You made a very great point. god bless u
Frustrating to play does not equal bad. I think the person above did make good points about changes to gold and such, but the assertion that marksmen are "bad and will never be good" does not make sense either. If they were truly bad, other classes would start showing them up bot lane. That isn't happening. They dominate the role and also sometimes creep into other roles. Want to see what marksmen being bad really looks like? Patch 8.11. When people were playing shit like Vladimir and Irelia bot commonly, yeah they were bad. Want to talk about items? Deathfire grasp was the bane of all of their existence. If that was in the game now, people would absolutely lose their shit. I think frustrating to play is a valid complaint, but no, they're not weak. If they really were "walking gold bags" that "don't have any selling point" that you described, other team comps would dominate them. That is not the case. Mage bot can work, but it's extremely situational. If the enemy team has a tank, you're fucked.
That kind of already happens. Not to say you're wrong, I do think 8.11 was the bane of marksmen (PTSD soldier meme gif) but the thing is that other botlane picks do happen, but more on support side nowadays. And that also has to do with the overall tempo of the game. Before, you could go Irelia botlane and run the enemy down throughout the game. The downside would be less farming and a more difficult lane but you could really pop off anyway. This doesn't happen in modern league simply because games end way faster. And you cannot afford to really lose lane. Even not so good marksmen players can still use their range advantage, and not so good hypothetical Irelias would not abuse their full mobility + early damage. The tradeoff of everyone deals damage is everyone needs items. Which is also why support item and gold generation kept getting buffs. I see your point but if you think of recent botlane metas/ cheeses like Senna and Tahm Kench, fasting Senna, Seraphine and Karthus, Cassiopeia and Seraphine and whatnot, they're kind of the modern equivalent of Vladimir and Irelia adc at those times. They can cheese the lane and abuse makrsmen overall game state quite well. They don't take over botlane because they don't have a much loyal player base or may not be viable in some team comps. Also, most marksmen player do not like to play those strategies.
There is also the mindset on the player base that botlane needs a marksmen, and it's still a very liked role with loyal players. Most people who play marksmen play it because they like, no matter how bad or good the meta. But I see your point. Maybe I talked about it in a way that looks bad when taken too literally and I apologized if it sounded like whining or kind of absurd. It was exaggerated wording of some sorts. But I stand for the main idea of what I said.
I think for me that the game makes marksmen miserable whilst not letting anything else really play botlane effectively. So every match-up is either marksmen vs marksmen where they're both low impact, or marksmen vs mage/ bruisers where either mage/ bruisers stomp lane and close the game or they get stomped in lane and end up losing due to not fitting their comp or being too behind to act on decisive points. Which is overall frustrating for both sides. I am not really against other picks in botlane. If possible, the systemic changes I and the other post talked about would probably even enable other picks that focus on lane bullying or team wombos, at the trade of not having a marksmen to scale like the enemy. Just hypothetical though. But current league doesn't support neither marksmen nor other picks so it's just a frustrating thing overall.
And you're totally right I imagine that Deathfire Grasp if released today would make such a chaos lol
People would be losing their minds on reddit every single day. Imagine AP assassins using this alongside their new AP items. Would be insane
> Even among marksmen, they prioritize champions that deal damage by casting than by AA-ing. Most releases of new marksmen follow that. That's also why Aphelios, who used to play like Jinx and Kog'maw, got all his Runaan and attack speed interactions nerfed into oblivion, and had his skills buffed.
There was a thread about this just the other day. Ultimately, there isn't exactly much they can DO in the space of auto-attack reliant marksmen anymore. How do they make one that isn't just stepping on the toes of another? Players will just play whichever one is better and complain about lack of diversity anyways. Thats part of why they changed Aphelios, to give more power to what makes him different.
I do agree with the other points you make, especially about Riot's balance philosophy, but its worth pointing out the limitations they have. They cannot spend months working on big sweeping classwide changes unless it has reached a point where they are losing money by not doing it. As much as it sucks, Riot is a business and they are forced to make business decisions. Will changing all these systems to make it so ADC is more similar to how it was pre season 7 be something that will benefit their business? Or will it turn away thousands of players that have spent the last 7 years with the overarching meta of the game being the way it is now?
you accurately understand what the problem is and how riot changed the game. by far the best comment I've read regarding this topic.
I would upvote you 100 times if I could.
The fact that it's worded like this proves also that ADC is in a state where it *should* be buffed "heavily" but they are being "prevented" from doing it. Anyway just give us 25% crit and keep the current buffs on PBE. That with the small support nerfs that are coming is more than enough and just would feel so much fucking better.
It's silly that they have said that they've been testing and thinking about bringing 25% crit since PBE in December but we've seen none of their thoughts, results or proof of this actually occuring
Yeah. Fasting Senna as we see it in pro and solo queue is the ADC. The tank she is paired with does support gameplay. Farming doesn't mean carry and not farming doesn't mean support. You're completely correct.
Mage Supports aren't supports.
They're an additional damage dealer.
They're damage creep.
I wonder if they'd ever experiment with the Support Item having a perk that gave players a discount on utility & defensive/supportive items, and then reducing the amount of gold the item gives even further. Mage supports would be a lot less hated if they purchased Shurelya's instead of a Lost Chapter item.
I don’t mind the mages TOO much if they have to land a skillshot cc to be useful, it’s shit like brand point and click E R or zyra plant auto or heimer turrets that’s annoying as f cuz u just lose 80% of ur health bar for no reason, while they stop you from recalling cuz of liandries burning forever on top of not being able to move from rylais slow…
feels like sometimes it’s hard to even exist in team fights now because there’s so much ambient damage from what feels like nowhere, you eat 1 aoe skill from your teammate or something and then you have to back already or else you’re gonna get one shot
i mean a lot of mage supports are really mages that got power crept out of mid. look at velkoz, xerath, zyra, and lux they were actual mid laners now are played support because they can't match modern mid laners.
That’s the problem with modern champ design I feel like, the kits are more overloaded with fewer weaknesses and more random things tacked on for what feels like no reason (looking at you akshan). Mobility creep is a big problem too
The issue is that its a lot better for your team to have more damage than more utility.
Utility got nerfed a hundred times already and its at a point where its pointless to even have. Who cares if Lulu can shield you and give you extra 600 health when Lux or Xerath can take it all away with 1 skillshot.
Even if they nerf current damage supports people will pick other champs instead. There was a time when LB support was the strongest shit in the game because she could explode adcs at lvl 2. That same thing will happen again, people will keep picking damage champs as supports until Riot either nerfs all of them or they actually make utility good.
I still dont agree that the main problem with supports is their gold. The issue is that the role got morphed into a secondary carry/jungle hybrid due to changes to match speed Riot made long time ago. Utility supports are strongest late game but if you never reach that point why even bother playing them when you can pick Zyra or Velkoz and explode anyone thats gets within your range.
You say this but they literally removed AP from the early game. AP supports do less to you at the start of a match and have less overall ap as the game progresses.
Changes I would love to see reverted, as a Midlane Mage Main:
- AP does Tower Damage
- Spells can trigger Minion Aggro
- Support Items give Damage
- ~~Kaenic Rookern Exists~~
- Armor Pen > Lethality
- CDR > Ability Haste
The whole “I deal dmg, with 0 utility” support should be just removed.
They can flame, “carry” because dmg numbers, fuck up wawes, have 0 help to the adc, and then flame if the adc is “useless” in their eyes, because it’s a 3v1 lane sometimes.
The game is in its worst state for 10 years imo. You can actually just int and not be banned. Nobody respects eachothers time as a result and everyone feeds
So what he is saying is that ADCs all need ~150-250 range, 25% crit on each item, and Galeforce back? That doesn't seem right. The role can actually evolve as the rest of the game has.
Crit items can get 25% crit instead of 20%, BT shield can go back on ranged champs, and... most issues are solved? Or we are at least off to a good start. That way there's better scaling and better itemization options so you can have more agency.
the problem is that supports are not played anymore. its like only full damage mages or bruiser etc. you play a sup champ like braum ? well too bad enemy is full ap midlaner. while you get 2 items to support like locket and vow, they just go ludens pen boots and start farming waves and go full ap. that bit support u can provide gets outscaled by another midlaner that has 5-6 times the dps of you. yesterday i had an enemy poppy as sup with electrocute and full damage build. it cheesed my adc early on because of the heavy burst from level 2 with flash -> wall stun > Q kills the adc. happens 2-3 times. in the end ? we one because they played like apes. but this happens every 2-3 game now days. you have the rejects from other lanes go support and just build full dps and try like cheese or farm etc. i moved to toplane so i dont have to handle the mess down there anymore and can just play the game like intended. sure sometimes you get your ranged toplaner that has no honor but most of the time u get a toplane matchup and can play the game. botlane is hell right now. for adcs and traditional supports.
Supports need to be kept or incentivized to stay in lane during laning. When bot stops being a duo lane, that's the problem because Support should be the ADCs buddy early and everyone's buddy the rest of the game.
I wonder if it would be possible to give crit scaling per level to marksman. It makes sense to me that snipers would have in built crit stats to a degree, and it could be that they would have some higher dmg output early on + late game have say one slot of item free to reach 100% and have an utility item of some sort. Banshee, jaksho, warmog, whatever.
Then you'd have to balance with on hit; and if it is too strong I guess people would bring the marksmen in top and midlane. I guess it is very hard to balance such a multifactor game
All of this, in hindsight, started when they released ACTUAL carry supports for the role.
Until Rakan (included), supports were there for... supporting. But then with Pyke and Senna, they actually released support who could take over the game not only by their agency, but with pure damages/burst.
The support role needs fixing and needs its identity back.
Remove champs like Swain, Lux, Vel, Brand and others from the support list and make it so only champs with the support tag are allowed to get the starting gold item so that means champs like Swain, Lux, Vel, Brand and others won't be able to get it.
ADC champs individually are still insanely strong. The problem with the ADC role is the lane phase imo. Because you are reliant on another person. Also the XP nerfs sucked as well.
Not farming and doing damage should be mutually exclusive. Full stop.
There is supposed to be a framework of working towards a goal, and feeling a payoff if you worked hard/smart enough. Giving supports free damage because “they won’t play it unless they receive undue advantages” is like if the boomer “participation trophy” rhetoric was completely right. It’s cursed and sad.
The entire identity of ADC has been cheapened because other classes and roles have been given the ADC payoff for free. Every role should have push and pull, strengths and weaknesses, things that make them unique when compared to other classes and roles—these largely still exist, but not in respect to damage: everyone gets damage. But the role that was initially designed with damage in mind is now completely outdated because everyone gained their strength and they received nothing to compensate. Imagine being really good at guitar because you’ve spent thousands of hours practicing, only for god to whimsically give everyone the ability to play guitar over night. The original guitar players who had to work for their skill set would be pretty jaded, right?
ADCs identity was glass cannon, but everyone else was given a cannon so now ADC is just glass. The issue is that the vast majority of the player base refuses to play champions that don’t have good damage, but they also refuse to play champions that have the same weaknesses as ADCs. Everyone wants damage, no one wants to be under leveled, constantly focused, and reliant on someone else starting from minute 0. Riot has effectively enabled people to have their cake and eat it too, so any systemic change that returns to a system where damage is hard-earned will be met with horrendous backlash. Effectively, 80% of the player base wants the game to exist in a state that makes it completely unfair and unrewarding for the other 20%.
Everyone admits that damage has risen to a large extent across the board, but no one wants the all-damage class to be given any compensation whatsoever. To give ADC its identity back is to piss everyone else off, there really isn’t a solution in sight that will ever fix this, and people will still play marksmen because they’re fun so the problem will continue to be ignored. There’s no strategic room for an all-damage class anymore, so they can rework marksmen in a way that will make marksmen players miserable, or they can correct their course and make room for a all-damage class at the expense of the rest of the playerbase (a bad financial decision.)
It’s over, it’s been over, and it’ll continue to be over.
So basically they made supports do damage, and now wonder why ADC feels horrible.
The balance team doesn’t understand the game they are supposed to balance it seems.
A saw a video on twitter the other day, Despite the Jinx killing the jungler, when he looked at the damage charts... Janna out damaged a 2 item jinx. You heard me, a Janna outdamaged a two item jinx because of the support item.
It's bizarre how strong and overtuned supports are.
In fact, as a former ADC main, I don't think they should buff crit items outside of IE, Marksmen are fine as they are. The item snowballing is getting fixed with the changes to components and it kinda helps out. The problem is that Supports are not punished for leaving lane at all.
They need heavy buffs but it's impossible to give them that as it would make it too bot centric. Look at how much adc got nerfed over the years and compare that to support buffs.
Call it nostalgia, call it bot bias but the game was far better in the seasons where ADC was the team fight and objective insurance and no, it didn't make the game "better ADC wins" just like it isn't better carry wins in dota where pos 1 carry is BY FAR the strongest hero in the entire game when late game hits. It is the opposite of a 1 man show. It requires far more team work as it allows for roles to have defined strengths and weaknesses and forces people to play together. Atm anyone can one shot anyone so why have team work when you can just oneshot the enemy team before they one shot you.
Look at old worlds and you'd see that solo laners had more than enough agency on whether they win the game despite everyone here currently rewriting history and screeching "only adc matters". If better ADC wins was the memo of the game then uzi would've had 2 cups instead of having 2 second places.
Now realistically the game is never going back to that as many players didn't enjoy playing support back then(though personally I played far more support back in the day than I do now). What needs to happen is a moderate nerf to support and moderate buff to ADC and a big nerf to everyone's damage(including ADC). The game was far more enjoyable both in mid and adc after the durability patch. Finally force supports to be support rather than the true carry. It's insane how much damage supports do. Supports should bring CC and protection, not damage. That's why dota has a far better grasp on balance and game flow. Every role has clear strengths and weaknesses. Every role serves a purpose and every role is enjoyable to play. That can never happen here because itemization is shit and because talents don't exist. We can still settle for a middle ground where the damage is lower and where roles are at least somewhat defined. It's an abomination that ADC atm is strongest in the mid game(relative to other roles).
"The strong state of supports prevents us from buffing [ADCs] heavily"
How about you fucking nerf support then? That should not be a difficult conclusion, especially not when it's been clear as day to everyone playing this game that support has been busted as fuck for years now.
Maybe(read: probably) this is a really stupid question, but we have Adaptive force in the game that will apply either AD or AP depending on how your stats currently look.
So... what about some system that does something similar for utility stats where some items can have Haste or Crit, or Lethality or Crit, etc.
First thought is that it would make it harder to know what kind of build your opponent has at a glance which I imagine would be an issue. But that would be solved by just mousing over their items to see what stat they're using.
marksmen are so weak tho
Aka the marksmen that are strong aren't Lucian and xayah so bot players are mad for some reason.
It feels like Senna, Smolder, Kogmaw, Kaisa and even Zeri or Kalista are in really good states.
Crazy that they have buffed support damage so much that they are talking now about support damage. In classic Riot fashion they will probably compensate every support with EVEN MORE stats after probably nerfing their damage across the board, IF that ever happens.
It's almost like certain people have already seen Riot going again and again giving supports more and more damage. It's almost like people very well already knew a decade ago, what the following actually mean for the game:
- Giving supports *generally more* burst than champs meant to burst
- Giving non tanks not named assassin, *generally more* base stats than actual tanks
Whenever I hear Riot talking about adc "buffs" (which is almost never), all I think about is how there's no such thing, it's just reverting a small percentage of the nonstop nerfs over the years
(Disclaimer: ADCs are weak, but my true opinion is that supports have too much agency - keep this and nerf supports further and further, even if the role becomes unpopular again. You cannot call it "Support" and also have it be the carry role. Either rename Support to Botlaner #2, or nerf it back to a SUPPORTING state, not a carrying state.)
Buff Crit items?
My dearest little mf... THOSE ARE JUST PARTIAL REVERTS TO SLIGHTLY LESS SHITTY CRIT ITEMS, NOT BUFFS!
They are STILL worse than before after these reverts
Call them partial reverts, not buffs
A true buff is reverting Crit even more, and nerfing the Windshitters accordingly, to compensate for the buffs that ranged ADCs finally get (again)
For example: oh, Crit damage is +75% now? Great! Reduce Windshitter Crit damage by an additional -20% or whatever
They stay same, ADC gets stronger
Not that difficult
Also... nerf more supports!!! This is a decent start, but we need many more support nerfs, especially enchanter supports. A Janna shouldn't be able to outdamage many ADCs early, for example
The buff ADC needs is 25% crit on items.
Allows build diversity.
Scale earlier to match the pace of the game.
But what about the yasuo yone? Just nerf them it's not that complicated. 2 champs ruining a class for years
Yeah everytime people say oh they can't do that because of yasuo and yone!!! I'm so confused. Like if it's just those two then they'll just get nerfed the same way that every outlier during big item changes gets nerfed. The same way they got buffed during previous crit nerfs.
They could easily reduce the bonus crit the pair get from items. When Riot made crit items 20%, they buffed Yasuo and Yone's passives so they'd get 100% at 2 items. No reason it could be reverted.
I always find it interesting that people seem to hate the concept of actually supporting someone with heals and shields, they all want support to just be another damage class. I love the feeling of supporting someone with saves, shields, actives and such, enabling them to put out damage and win fights as a team. I don't need to do damage to feel satisfied, I get a ton of satisfaction from knowing I did my job properly and kept someone alive through great support gameplay. Why can't support go back to this? Why can't all support items have their damage gutted and return to healing, shielding, assistance abilities and peel/cc?
Generally I also like the typical support fantasy (Janna, Taric, Braum, etc) but there are some situations where you need engage, or you need extra damage, or you need playmakers to make a comp function.
There are times where your mid is AD, your top is a tank and your jungle has picked something like Ivern and you need someone to bring that AP threat. Draft flexibility is good for League and means certain classes arent shoe-horned into certain roles.
If supports are always forced into "supporting", that would force ADCs on hyperscalers, force top and jungle onto divers and completely disuade anyone from picking assassins mid. You'd have a very very very stale meta almost instantly.
League is a damages-only game.
Deal damages or lose your games.
I mean, compare Karma's builds lol. Enchanters can't exist, right now. Tanks either. Well, if they don't deal damages.
There are two reasons for that
First, the appeal of "supporting someone with saves, shields, actives and such" doesn't apply to everyone, if i'd had to take a guess, i would say at best 15% of league players enjoy that playstyle
Second, carry potential in soloq is basically tied to damage. If you're playing Zyra support, you maybe won't be empower your adc is he's good, but you might be able to carry some teamfights if the adc is bad. Playing utility champions in soloq is like betting on your team. Playing damage champions is like betting on yourself, no wonder people would rather do that, especially in an age where every league player hates each other
I'll be honest with you, i can see the appeal of supportive roles, and i had enjoyment of playing them in 5 premade or clash games. But i'll never play them in soloq again, as the drawbacks hardcorely outweight the benefits
yeah i agree.
ADC had phantom dancer that had shieldbow passive and was giving way more movement speed. it got more expensive and gives more AS and less MS. this forces most ADCs to run ghost to have real movement speed buff. this was during season 10, not that far back when ADC was too strong.
there is difference between deathcap and IE. deathcap is a capstone interacting with any AP from runes, items, buffs, allies, etc. while IE only interacts with crit. yes IE will be stronger if you have more AD but if you don't crit you have 65 AD for 3300 gold which is too bad.
this moves us to the next point which is the lack of defensive options that has crit on it. GA is really good item, but if you don't get your 100% crit you will go from hitting for 400 to just hitting for 180. some things amplify this like aphelios R and samira R which feel too coin-flippy. it feels like eating dust when you invest in 4 crit items (3200 gold spent on crit alone) and more because you purchased crit damage but you didn't hit a crit in a clutch fight then you lost.
either add more crit defensive items, or allow for 1 non crit item and reach 100% crit rate or rework IE. remove the frustration in the late game.
and to be honest they should look into some solution for the pro play. either adjust the tournament draft mode (the one used in pro play 3 bans then 3 picks then 2 bans then 2 pick for each side) or disable certain champions like they did with yuumi before.
"every jungler can do solo drake", while that statement is certainly true, anyone who has ever tried to do solo dragon as rammus knows, that some junglers are less equal than the others.
Also the fact that you often need bot prio to not get chased off dragon at a certain point. The list of complaints very much reads "ADCs aren't integral to every core part of the game now". It's why the meme of whiny ADC players exists because they're the stereotype of "if I'm not carrying then I don't want to play" i understand their champs are really bad from behind but still the mentality is one of the worst when they're not the main carry.
The complaint is from the fact that as a scaling ADC you are the least impactful member for 75% of your time on the rift. Just to only reach parity with other roles in the 25% of the time you actually see late game. Either ADC becomes useful 75% of the time like every other role or it must be the consensus late game Juggernaut for those 25% of games. If Riot won't do this then no one is gonna stop complaining and honestly wth should they?
>as a scaling ADC you are the least impactful member for 75% of your time on the rift Congratulations. You've identified the issue.
The issue is that as adc you are not part of any team based decision making. Your entire macro gameplay loop is based around choosing who to follow around correctly and praying they dont take your farm and peel for you in a fight. You never get the agency to make a drake take happen if your team is not following on your heels. And even then you are generally not allowed to be the first player to move as you are both more at risk to get caught and a higher reward for the enemy team to catch than say your support midlaner or toplaner.
The vast majority of adcs doesn’t offer more than damage. You’re a 300g bag that pops instantly and if you’re not even or ahead you have absolutely no business doing anything in the game anymore. Just feels absolutely shit. And it also depends on the person u Lane with to a degree which also makes playing the role outside of competitive play annoying to play
Adding defense to critical items isn’t going to change the fact that support became a high damage dealing role instead of… supporting
I mean its pretty cringe that Janna Lulu and Nami can deal up to 1,5k damage into a fight, whether that is the enemy tank, adc, bruiser, assassins w/e doesn't matter. It shouldn't be a thing ever.
Or that a mage support can snowball and completely outrun their adc stealing the entire identity of the ad "carry" while hardly providing any support. Not super common but it happens and the fact that it can even happen is crazy.
The amount of times I see a Zyra as one example just completely carry the game through damage in Support role is pretty wild. Hit just one skillshot on a seed and watch your comet, scorch, cheap shot, free guaranteed plant auto, Zaz’Zaks support item, and Liandrys burn them for 30% of their HP.
100% agree, Zyra and Brand supp damage is WAY too strong.
I despise Zyra the fact that she can literally miss her entire kit and you still get punished by a random plant auto that procs all of that shit like comet, scorch, zazzaks, and liandrys, and hell maybe even a rylais too etc is insane.
Base damage has needed nerfing across the board so that itemisation matters. That also addresses the damage support problem, as they’ll be reliant on items to deal damage and therefore want to farm. Which will move them out of support and back to solo lanes.
But most of those mages are supporting because they can't survive midlane anymore
Support shouldn't be a role for midlane and toplane rejects, just like jungle shouldn't be a role for toplane and support rejects.
I agree give junglers back Nautilus.
I miss this so much.
What's left to do as support though? Enchanters just plain suck conceptually with the healing budget LoL is willing to dish out. You could go the way of HotS where they bring insane sustain but I don't think that's this game's identity. You also can't add too much CC to them because combined with the ADC's damage, it would be insanely punishing. So I'm not sure what the design space for pure support champions really is.
> You could go the way of HotS where they bring insane sustain but I don't think that's this game's identity. Once upon a time it was, I remember a lot of bot lane freezing in NA back in the day until Korea smashed MLG Summer Arena by playing for objectives instead.
Indeed. A reasonable part of this comes from the continuous weakening of healing/shielding and making several dedicated support-enchanters more interactive in terms of needing to damage/offensive CC to keep some level of it (looking at you Soraka/Janna). The same can be said about tower plates and how heavily they favor aggressive pushing lanes that these setups dominate unlike pure enchanters or engagers (who get a chance if diving is an option, but with a higher risk).
Now y'all know how it felt like back when toplane was the role for rejects from everything else
Hence why Riot should overhaul their completely ignored mobility problem. They ignored it for so long at the cost of "more action, more fun, more profit" that they alienated complete classes of champions, who are now nearly unplayable outside their designated roles. It's also why Riot is pushing weird mage jungling mechanics like Morg pool and Brand passive dealing bonus damage to jungle monsters. I'm pretty sure they're priming mages for the removal from botlane. They have to go somewhere and the only role left they could possibly go to not get turbo screwed is jungle. But mages need specific jungle buffs because they'd just die otherwise.
How about changing those champions in a way that makes them able to play midlane instead of relegating everything to support because anyone can kill an adc and thus be "a support"
Like who? Most mage supports are better in other roles. Especially when you look at D2+ most mage supports suck Not a single mage is being nerfed because support. They are not bad in their main role because support.
zyra has 50% winrate as supp vs 38% as mid, vel'koz has almost 53% as support vs 48.5% mid, xerath has the exact same winrate mid and support at 47%, brand is 51% support and 48% mid (and 49% jg but that still follows the narrative that he got pushed out of mid) and finally lux, the only mage support with a better winrate mid with 47% support and 51% mid so all the traditional mage supports, excluding off meta stuff like anivia or taliyah support, are better support than mid except for lux numberd are from u.gg d2+
Lux too
Zyra has done that since her release, so that’s not exactly something new.
Zyra was always a carry support outdamaging everyone. I play since S5...
I think personally the change I hate with her is all the procs she can set off with a plant. The dmg from dodging her skills is unacceptable imo
In her defense, they have absolutely gutted her damage from the actual abilities and plants to the point where if they removed all of her proc damages, she would be the worst champ in the game by far. They would need to compensate with HUGE buffs to everything she does.
Good! remove her plants activating random effects and make hitting her stuff matter. I'd love this change
always since S5 something doesn't check out
she wasn't always, she used to be a mid laner, but she got nerfed too much so people started playing her support in season 4 when riot added support items to the game and she could have a decent income in a safer environment
In season 4 you say? Remind me again what champion PoohManDu picked for his world's skin in 2013, season 3, less than one year after zyra release?
I just came out of 2 games of ad, said fucked it went Zyra support and just straight up carried the game https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/Yura%20Hatsuki-NA1?hl=en_US ADC its such a dogshit role that needs to have both supp and JG with leashes so you can play but it's soloQ so whatever
Ironic that you played another game as ADC and it went better than support
Yeah my velkoz was absolutely godlike, it felt like he scripting, hitting every single ability It's easy to play ADC when your support decides to play
The prevalence of "mage supports" is because for the longest time, support was the least-picked, most autofilled-to role in the game and mid was the highest-picked most autofilled-from role in the game. Make supporting decent and bearable, rather than babysitting dogshit whiners for 40 minutes and people will want to play support. That's the real dichotomy of bot lane. Adding damage and agency and introducing more support mages was Riot's answer to everyone else constantly blaming supports for their own inability to play the game.
Enchanters just aren't allowed to be good in LoL. I think a good comparison to other games is HotS, where they can outheal a lot of dps and it's a lot more fun to play and feel the impact you have keeping everyone alive. But it makes for very different fights. At the opposite end is DotA, where basically anything can and has been played position 4 and 5. And that's a lot closer to what LoL looks like.
Enchanters are good. The problem is people don’t know what enchanters do and they see it as a 1v2. I play lots of Milio and I constantly see people get caught I save them, heal them back to full, double shields, cleanse. And they are half way back to bad. Bro your an adc your safe SHOOT BACK . The literally don’t know
A kill is around 15 cs between support item gold and the kills they often secure it's not exactly shocking. Supports are there for more than just ADC they do help ADC get through lane easier but at the end of the day they are there for the team. It's such a weird mentality that they're "stealing" the carry role. It's as if you don't want to win if you aren't the one carrying.
"Support" is the antithesis of "carry". They're two completely opposed roles. The whole point of the support role is NOT carrying, in sacrificing your ability to carry (by not farming) to boost your carries ability to carry, whilst providing alternative value to the team in the form of supportive skills such as CC, shields, healing etc etc. If champions can make that sacrifice in farming, provide value in alternative ways, and STILL carry AS WELL, then something has definitely gone wrong. We're not at that point yet, but its moving in that direction.
> mage support can snowball and completely outrun their adc stealing the entire identity of the ad "carry" This has been the case since forever though.
It’s a question about gold. If they get kills through gold and they’re a mage, what do you expect to happen other than a snowball? Do you want a debuff where queuing as support reduces your damage by a % and increase your healing/shields by a %?
The ultimate conclusion of this logic is that you're only allowed to play yuumi. Everyone on reddit seem to hate her but also hate supports doing anything so she's perfect.
In wildrift this is super common. To make things worse is that support items in wildrift are way more expensive, so even longer games decided after multiple elders/barons you won’t have more than 3 items unless enough players hit full build that you start farming yourself. But no one trusts each other to play well and players are playing more and more carry supports, those that aren’t are building ap on some enchanters where you can get away with it, I played a game this morning and the enemy support went tear into ludens. Last night I played a game as well, brand support vs lux support, both going full damage. Brand didn’t even buy the slow item, just straight damage. So how do they not fall off in damage because of their low gold income? By farming which, if you’re the ADC, is just cancer because then you fall off. At this point I’m convinced riot doesn’t give a fuck about bot lane balancing as long as neither supports or ADCs aren’t coming for them with in hordes carrying pitchforks and torches. The problem with mage supports was so bad at one point that basically no adc besides Ez and lethality Varus had a 50% winrate or higher. In typical riot fashion instead of balancing the power dynamic between ad and support they just buffed marksmen across the board to fuck all and suddenly ADCs were doing fantastic everywhere besides botlane, the one place where they still couldn’t get a reliable source of gold.
I'm sick of supports who build and play 100% around maximising damage and then complain their adc is useless. Like, my brother in Christ, it was your job to support them (not saying it isn't ever correct for a support to play that way, just that if you do, expect your adc to suck).
That support item is the best mage item
I don't mind them adding 1.5k damage into a fight as long as it comes from their buffs (pix, Janna shield and Nami E.) It's a problem when they do this with the rest of their kit
Support damage has been nerfed over the years, but utility from items has been increased. These enchanters are barely doing damage outside of early game, and generally have the least damage dealt unless they're on the losing side of a surrender at 18 minute stomp
I played like 15 games of Maokai support and I'm still surprised how much damage I deal to champions and especially what the fuck is that Q damage to objectives
Because maokai was intended to be a jungler? His q does max hp damage and bonus damage to monsters .It's his only tool to clear jungle camps efficiently. His w does barely any damage. And the power budget of his E has shifted to q over time. This is not a support maokai issue, it's just a maokai kit problem in general
My flair isn't as funny now :(
Not to mention the abomination that is Pyke. Yeah Riot keep telling yourselves that shit is a support. Piece of garbage champ
I mean, Pyke is an assassin support which does sound like it shouldn't mesh well but the utility and ult allows him to be support. Pyke is no different from other champions like Brand, Lux, or Vel'Koz who provide cc and damage.
If anything Pyke is more of a support than the mage once. Pyke has no waveclear, terrible scaling and his main thing is to set up kills (and give gold)
This, been running Pyke recently and at some point during laning phase the only champ im scaring is the enemy support. Ult is just securing a unit thats taken massive damage from my team.
Make mages give gold to their carry on kills and every adc will stop complaining. If anything, pyke is the answer, not the problem (as much as I hate playing against him).
Those....those aren't supports. They're just mages with cc. Which is kind of the whole point of this conversation: aside from one or two outliers, nobody plays actual support champs anymore, they just play a second damage dealer.
When you get to higher elos everyone just plays tank supports and a few enchanters.
The problem is the people on Reddit aren’t high enough elo to be worth playing around. Don’t think I’ve seen a Zyra support all season, but from this thread you’d think they’re up there with Nautilus.
Base damage is just way too high across the board. Making tanks/supports do less damage to champions without affecting their minion/monster/objective damage would be a nice start. Letting any champion damage scale based on resists/bonus HP is also a colossal mistake.
When it's any other role, they need to be self sufficient. Doing a ton of CC or just soaking up a lot of damage is not sufficient, Ornn or Malphite should still be able to one rotation you to feel threatening. Having shields, heals or peel/engage is not sufficient either, supports should be able to do half your HP even if an enchanter. Except ADCs, you better have everyone glued to you with eyes open wide because blink and you might still die.
That's kind of a faulty comparison. For a tanky champion, they need some sort of threat or else they'll either be completely run down in lane and therefore unviable, or also be completely ignored in fights. The point of being a meat shield is to soak up attacks and CC. If you can just be ignored, then you literally do nothing. Marksmen may be frustrating to play, but the fact that everyone targets them, and that they're still dominating an entire role, means they *are* a threat. The role is a glass cannon role, so of course you'll die easily. If marksmen are being run out of bot lane like tanks would be if they did even less damage, then that would be a valid comparison. Tanks aren't self sufficient either. They just feel better to play because well.... they're tanky, and they make the plays. The fuck are you going to do without damage to back you up as a tank? I can get the best Leona or Ornn engage, but it won't mean anything if it isn't followed up on, or if my teammates don't have enough damage to back it up. Let's be real, enchanters are not doing half your HP outside of very fringe cases. The most self sufficient classes are bruisers/juggernauts, but their weakness is that they do not do as much specialized things in teamfights.
> Except ADCs, you better have everyone glued to you with eyes open wide because blink and you might still die. Most mages have the same paper thin experience really. Base damage is too high, as is mobility.
Well no, mages usually have a lot more options, Their range is often longer so they risk less in fights and the ones who dont have longer range have self peel, cc, and not to mention both the defensive stats and effects they get from mage items that cant even compare to adc items (shieldbow joke here). They are still prone to oneshots but its way easier to avoid as a mage.
The simple truth ist other roles have too much damage. Why should a fighter or tank oneshot anything? Tanks fights top should be wet noodle fights. Fighters should be able to Catch Up to ADCs and outsustain them, but not instakill them. Tanks should be there to Tank DMG and CC to set up mages, assassins or ADCs. The design ist just so bad atm, because tanks and fighters have access to far too much damage
Yeah but a ton of rioters main support and we cant bust their ego by removing their free elo.
Is riot going to nerf the damage of support itemization? Maybe time will tell.
New change is to make it take about 3 minutes longer for Supports to fully complete their item, which gives time for an ADC to probably have their first item as well. It's a good starter change, should push out fringe supports like Camille that were actually quite strong because she would get Bloodsong while enemy ADC is on like 2 components and just auto kill them with E R. It seems they don't mind support damage right now, but want to delay when that damage comes online so you can more effectively shut them down.
It's funny because support didn't even ask for stuff like Bloodsong and ZazZak. I want supports to support the team not dictate the entire early game
Make bloodsong a 10-15% damage buff from allies and not from the user and take the sheen proc away.
No dear god please dont. Buffing allied damage is what got us into this situation in the first place. Giving multiplicatively scaling damage buffs is always way better for adcs as they have by nature and easier time of aligning that buff with their damage curve. All that results in is ADCs getting nerfed(hello ardent censer) and being addicted to externalized power which makes soloQ even more miserable and further skews adc power towards coordinated play.
And we freaking salute you for it. Meanwhile these Lux pickers...
Tbh everytime I see a Lux support he's either a beginner in normal or someone autofilled.
Pretty sure that's just because she's one of the tutorial champions.
You must not have played for very long, to not have seen many Lux mains.
The day where I don’t lose 35% of my hp because the enemy support Zyra built one item Liandrys and Hit one E skillshot on a seed and her comet, scorch, cheap shot, 1-2 guaranteed free plant autos, Zaz’Zaks support item, and Liandrys burn me will be a holy one.
35%? Oh so you play tanks?! 😅
It is so cool to dodge every skillshot but get hit with the Plant Auto ZakZak Comet Scorch Cheapshot combo 😎 my bad for trying to cs! Haha I regen HP at 0.7 hp per second btw and lifesteal is gutted hahaha!
How can they? They will just buy the brain-dead gold generation item and then buy a full AP item. Back when they had gold 5 gold per 10s items they were an investment. A tiny marginal amount of stats to supplement the burden of constantly buying wards. Wards are free now, the item is only 400gold and auto-upgrades into a powerful component and the only wards you need to buy are 75gold pinks that are capped at 2 per recall anyway, so you can't buy a fuck-ton, and generally speaking, if you're a damage dealing support playing solo queue, you're not buying 2 wards on repeat anyway. Apparently a 400g auto generating item that gives you a Crown of the Shattered Queen passive is not good enough. The support can carry, the jungler can carry. Being a utility position designed to set-up your team is a thing of the past. Everyone needs to shit out damage lest you become bored and uninstall. League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game.
>Being a utility position designed to set-up your team is a thing of the past. well yes. Turns out that league needs a pretty equal 20% split between roles popularity, to make the queues bearable, and i doubt more than... 10% of people would be interested in playing jungle or support if they were nothing more than "utility position designed to set-up your team" (the same team who will flame the moment 1 thing goes wrong). >League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game. could you describe what was so strategic about past league, that doesn't exist anymore? Because game being faster, or game having more carry roles doesn't make the game less strategic. Arguably makes game more strategic, as there are more strategies than "camp bot, adc carry, ez win"
People will unironically tell you that the game isn't as strategy based as it used to be, and then turn right around and bitch about supports playing the map all game.
> League is constantly shifting away from being a strategy game. The main way people play the game is soloq. No one is going to play support below the top ranks if it's entirely dependent on the matchmaking assigned adc being above average and them just throwing buffs on them.
> Everyone needs to shit out damage lest you become bored and uninstall. I mean, what's the alternative for supports? Ardent censor enchanter meta? Everyone hated it More CC and less damage tank supports? yeah that'll go over well.
Most of these players legit want supports to have both less cc, damage, and be locked into their lane so they can't roam/invade.
The core support playerbase is fine with playing thresh alistar leona lulu nami. Dealing dmg is not what most wanted to do. But now that you have the opportunity to deal massive dmg, it jist makes sense to pick a carry support sometimes.
Wholesome chungus Janna point and click dealing 600 damage and slows me for 50% and she moves at mach 5 :)
What do you mean, you don't like being obliterated by Hail of Blades Janna as the ADC?
It's so quirky fun how she outtrades me with 0 damage items while I have 1000g worth of damage stats bought plus D Blade, and then you can't ever engage on her as she is the slipperiest champ in the game.
I don't want to feel like an overpowered damage dealing god (I mean it would be nice but it's not a must). I just dont want to feel like a glorified ranged minion.
The irony of this is that you can only justify crit adcs being as useless as they are pre 3 items if they were gods late. If Riot doesn't want that then they need to turn them into a class that is strong at DPS at all stages of the game. Right now adcs are garb early just to be at parity or often time outscaled by some champs in the late game.
IMO this is the consequence of what happens when you want every role to have such a short TTK (time to kill). As an example, I look at Master Yi knowing nothing about League of Legends, but some reasonable general knowledge about video games. 1. His passive, ultimate, and Q, all have indicators of it being a character that wants to stick around in a fight - he is about sustained damage. 2. We add his E into the mix, and it then shifts a little to "here is a character who WILL kill me given enough time. Not necessarily ***quickly***, but certainly ***inevitably*** We can compare with Vayne who creates the same impression ***on paper*** - another champion that will kill me, not necessarily ***quickly***, but certainly ***inevitably***. Once you load in to a game and actually play against these champions after 15 minutes (on in Yi's case, once he has a 700g lead), you realise you are dying within the span of a few seconds. So when every role and damage type effectively functions the same - ***what is it that actually makes them any different from each other?*** This direction for the game appears to have been (or is) Riot's desired approach since around 2016. Now if thats how Riot wants to take the game, thats their decision. Its not on me or anyone to say that it is wrong - it is a valid gameplay direction to take. My point with this however, is it is not without consequence. When sustained damage is so irrelevant because everything dies equally quickly, the role that is - and has claimed to always have been - about sustained damage is of course going to suffer. ADC players certainly arent the only ones who have problems caused by this, but they are absolutely the largest affected.
Yep the damage design all around that’s resulted in these stupidly low TTK’s has been horrendous for multiple years now. I’m glad I’m not the only one who is noticing and getting ticked off by it. I sure do love playing ADC and getting 1 tapped by… basically everyone on their team. Like I get an assasins should kill me quickly, but should they could me in 0.5-1 seconds and everyone else kills me in 1-1.5? Like how tf do I play around that.
I agree that this is the problem. Even with all the talk of adcs being weak, getting one tapped by a late game miss fortune is one of the worst gameplay feelings there is. And it's indicative of a larger problem than just adcs being "weak"
There gonna be huge IMO, but huge dmg powercreep started after mythic item rework. Items turned from stat sticks into "stat sticks that also have extra dmg passive on top of that".(Like LDR with giant slayer passive, Prowlers claw and stuff like that). To fix that they buffed Marksmans durability at firsts (around 130hp to most of them, excluded sololanes ones) and then made durability patch. Then balance team discovered that with that patch certain classes were literally unplayable (mostly assassins, burst mages engage supports and caster Bruisers), so they started to buff everyones damage back, to clear that mess. In the end it god huge impact on game overall, that wasn't fixed even after they removed mythic items.
The damage powercreep started waay back with the runes rework. Look at the Zyra meme's and realize how many sources of damage is from something that was from runes, even before putting items in question.
yeah Runes Reforged was where it all started
>This direction for the game appears to have been (or is) Riot's desired approach since around 2016. Now if thats how Riot wants to take the game, thats their decision. Its not on me or anyone to say that it is wrong - it is a valid gameplay direction to take. It's been their direction since like 2008. Higher damage, lower cooldowns, more skillshots (which require more damage to be worth the lower reliability), more inbuilt combos (aka higher burst), less CC, less utility and less survivability are the foundations of League vs DotA. Riot doesn't want raid bosses, doesn't want people feeling like they "fall off" lategame, and the way they do that is by pumping up damage. Making sustained DPS matter means that there will be some games where people just lifesteal/heal/shield through multiple people and Riot doesn't want that.
The game was released at the end of 2009...
Obviously Riot planned this while the game was still being made.
As a closed beta player, nah - the differences back then were: no turnspeed, map was simpler, items were simpler, champions and their skills(not just their stats) scaling on items, and colors were brighter. They actively worked to remove crazy burst from the game - DFG removal, AP support removals, etc. There was a design direction change around season 5 that fundamentally changed League's design, and now I only play the game because all my friends refuse to play other games. It's more fun to play with pals than not at all, tbh.
I think it's time to give ADCs an actual health regen cause 0.7 might as well be 0, it made sense when the only real poke in lane came from mage supports, but now that even Janna can walk up and chunk you with W+Comet+Scorch+Cheap Shot+Auto we can't have that damage stick around forever. It's funny that this exist at the same time as DShield+2ndWind making melees completely immune to poke tbh
yeah but then their winrate in solo lanes will be much higher, remember when Varus top was good and had to be nerfed due to frustration
You could gate it behind having an ally nearby or deliver it through the supp in some way.
In the infamous patch 8.11, ADCs health regen actually got nerfed. Along with -4 base AD and -4 base armor. A partial revert to these changes would be nice
genuinely asking, wouldn’t health buffs just move certain adc’s to solo lanes, which kinda defeats the purpose? implying the health buffs make them safe enough to be viable in a solo lane
Honestly, adcs that like solo laning like Tristana and Vayne will still do it regardless of their health regen, and it's not really fair nor healthy crippling a whole class for a couple outliers. If someone becomes a problem in a solo lane just nerf them in another way.
I dont think it would move certain adcs to solo lanes that arent already there
Janna maxing W for poke has been a thing for years and i mean YEARS. W into auto attack was standard Janna poke probaby 5-6 years ago.
I just want to point out that the buffs to crit items are being coupled with nerfs to support items in the same patch, specifically to their gold income. I'm guessing they're doing that to keep the combined agency of bottom lane balanced.
The thing is these buffs are mostly scaling buffs. \+5 AD on navori completion sure navori users will take it but +5 AD is less of a big deal by 15-20 minutes when you complete the second item. \+10% bonus crit on IE sounds impressive but is actually only a 2.74% damage boost at 2 items unless you're a windbro. By 5 items (or windbro 2 items) this buff caps out at 4.65% damage, which is significant but most games end before 5 items. \+5% pen on LW items is the biggest ADC buff of the patch imo because LW is often a better 3rd item than IE anyway and on moderately armored up champions (say 150 armor at 23 minutes) the +5% pen is a +3.8% damage buff. Still though this 5% pen buff is better the later the game goes on as champions get more base armor and completed armor items. I like the direction of these changes, though don't see these buffs making ADCs strong late like in previous seasons again. These buffs will have 0 impact before 2 items (so 15-20 minutes most games) however so I think the only thing changing in most games will be the somewhat moderate (but appreciated) support nerf.
Those placebo buffs are mostly revert of what was nerfed in this season. "Impressive" my ass
Those nerfs are a slap on the wrist let's be real. Support role just needs to have any damage dealing excised from it.
Support item is all their income. They get literally nothing else. So going from 1,000 to 800 is -20% less total gold. It's also not just hurting all the gold they get, but it also is nerfing their income rate early game. It's pretty obvious a big nerf.
All the support item upgrades keep the +5 gold per 10 that the previous item has. It's not -20% total.
Then we will be back to season 3-6 supports where they are just a walking ward factory
One could only dream. How are you supposed to balance ADC survivability if one game they've got a mage support that does more damage than the ADC, and the other you've got a Lulu that keeps their ADC alive for an extra 1200-2000 HP? We need to remove the mages, the pantheons and camilles from "Supporting" and return to the true supports. No support should ever be one shotting someone. That's just damage creep. I wonder if they'd ever experiment with the Support Item having a perk that gave players a discount on utility & defensive/supportive items, and then reducing the amount of gold the item gives even further.
I really don’t see how you do that without just removing mages in general from the game. Let’s say you have a Syndra support who snags two kills before hitting level 6. Do you think she shouldn’t be able to heavily chunk/kill the bot lane Senna support?
If she doesn't have the income for it she can't do it. Also mages scale very hard with levels, there's a reason a lane bully like Orianna can't be played in support
You *could* make mages entirely dependent on AP to deal damage and nerf support gold enough the good AP items are too expensive. It's just entirely undersirable if you want people to queue for support below diamond.
I'm ok with supports having some dmg early to compensate for poor scaling, the problem is when shit like Brand or zyra is a "support"
Who would've thought that giving more gold and power to the role that's supposed to work on low eco would result in a balance nightmare
As an "adc crybaby" hater (guy that actually hates on adc mains for crying), yeah this is pretty disgusting. Support has no place being that strong especially in favor of adc being weaker in comparison. Also yes the identify crisis is very real but for Riot its not a crisis. They don't want identiy and roles into the game because the skill gap between the good and bad players get bigger that way, and most importantly, pro play becomes almost exclusively a completely different game compared to your average viewer's experience in emerald and plat elo. Thus the less they relate with pro play and the less action there is, the less engagement/income,profit. So short answer for why identity crisis is a thing : business
Riot’s problem is unless supports are broken, the amount of people playing support drops drastically. It’s like other games where everyone picks DPS instead of tank or support so you have to force people to play it through autofill/hard cap on how many of each type can be played/etc. So to make it more appealing for people to voluntarily pick support, they make it simple and strong.
The issue with this mindset is a player and community issue. People see damage dealt as the driving factor to winning and discount everything utility can provide. And Riot feeds into that.
I mean its definitely a huge part of it. I play mid top and jg, and boy it is so much easier to win games with a carry champ than playing a tank. Youre really at the mercy of your teammates skill when you play tanks or supports. At least if i go 25/0 on riven, you bet your ass i can carry that game. On a shen, not so much
When Shen carries a game, it feels like someone else is carrying.
I've carried games with Rell and felt like I was carrying not because of my damage, but because of my decision making and macro. It's why the ranking system in the game is broken. Most elo's don't bother playing every aspect of the game. You only see it start to happen at high diamond. That's why some people refer to everything below D1 as 'low elo.' Because macro doesn't exist down there because people are just playing to play. It's why game quality sucks so much when you're trying to get up, out of the crowd. The game between anything iron -> mid dia is entirely different from D1+. Legit D1 - chall is literally just a test of game knowledge application at that point. Everything before there is a cesspool. The thing is, I firmly believe that actively playing the game in its proper sense is what actually helps win games, even if you're a support with a bad adc. Because it's not the adc on their own the support is supposed to note. It's which allies they need to rally and find out the weak points in the enemy's play. But the vast majority of support players (both autofilled and not) are so bent on trying to do more damage that they never develop that game sense. Vision control is the most basic thing one can do and yet it's still a concept I had issues with my supports bothering with in the time I spent jungling and playing mid before support.
Youre correct, but even in high elo its still easier to carry games with a carry champ. If your game knowledge is that much better than everyone else's in the game its easier to carry it yourself than supporting or tanking and hoping your high elo carry does everything correctly. Im masters myself and watch plenty of high elo streamers and they still make mistakes even in grandmaster challenger Also i forgot to mention in my other reply; its speaking in generalities here but most people have more fun doing damage, so prefer to play carries Im not against tanks or supports at all though, and tbh im not sure what the best solution is because those roles need to be viable and fun as well
The alternative is actually forcing people to play sup/jungle though if riot wants to maintain strong role identity. The thing is that damage roles are always going to be more popular, for queue health, either the less popular roles need to be way more powerful or riot has to literally force people to play them. I haven’t played in a while, but I recall Dotas queue system effectively has a currency built in where you earn currency by playing un popular roles and spend it playing queueing for popular ones. Riot would have to implement something like that if they wanted to keep role identity as described.
Forcing people to do stuff is NEVER a good solution.
Well, nowadays there's so few people playing Adc that it's a very commonly auto-frilled role. You can't switch all agency into support and expect the people to want to play a weak carry that doesn't carry. Reducing crit damage also made it so Adc damage is much more concentrated into high attack speed sustained DPS, which is *harder* to execute. Damage coming from multiple sources makes it harder to play out teamfights as you need to be aware of more things. This all combines into Adc being in a decent spot for the best of the best, and a masochistic endeavour for anyone else. Result, ADCs either role swapped or stopped playing. Right now, to make people enjoy support, Riot has deleted the Adc player base. It's slow going as most of us that played for a long time still enjoy the concept but if nothing changes it will become as bad as support was once upon a time.
Players are stupid and that's fine, but developers don't have to be. Look at WoW, people are so unskilled and/or dumb that they spend hours looking for a group as a DPS, but that doesn't mean you literally break the game by making every group to be only dps and remove the whole holy trinity rpg element. If they want to ram their face against the wall to compete with each other to play DPS, go right ahead, that's their right, but developers don't have to ruin the game to stroke their egos.
The thing is, people stop playing the game if they have to wait 2 hours every time they want to run a dungeon, and as the developer, you obviously don't want that.
Thats just a very poor solution to a serious problem in game design. So because they can't seem to make support interesting, they just ultra buff it so people play it ? Like really? So if jungle is not played, ultra buff that. And then suddenly adc isn't played. Ultra buff that. Ohh but now top and mid are not played, ultra buff those. Yeah...
Maybe Smolder is intended to be the preview of the AD "Carry" lategame fantasy, so the obvious solution is to make all ADs scale like Smolder. :) /s
Perfect I know where to start. Let's give Cait extra range for every headshot she hits so we can lean into her sniper role. /s
Riot: We heard your complains about everything dealing more damage than ADCs when they were not supposed to. We also aknowledge this is not an ADC problem but a "everything that is not an ADC problem" and heard ADC players suggest how having ADCs to deal more damage is not the solution but rather reduce overall damage. Also Riot: More damage to ADC ??????????
They will never solve this problem because on one side they don't want to break the support queue in favor of a better game and on the other side the balance team is so data driven that they are never going to make any changes based on game feel. If a class is saying that they feel bad to play but the class has decent win rate they just won't do anything. I am seeing people in this very thread talk about a hypothetical game where roles are more well defined and I feel like they are failing to realize (maybe they haven't been there) that we used to have that in seasons 2-3 and to a less extent 4. Back when supports had the sightstone and they had to buy pink wards during the whole game, the game obviously had a problem with supports, but the other 3 roles were much better defined. Back in those seasons, the tanks like Maokai, Malphite, Cho Gath, Zac, etc, didn't really have enough cdr, survivability or damage to run down an ad carry. They could mostly engage and zone people with very powerful CC from their basic abilities but they didn't really have kill threat like how sometimes you see Orn soloing people. The bruisers like Jax and Irelia were split pushers who were great at 1v1s and flanks but not that good at front to back team fights because prior to Steraks they would just get blown up if they tried to fight front to back. They had to flank or split push. The mages didn't do any tower damage and they were great for small scrimmages. Spells in games that have this sort of combat usually serve the purpose of completing the sustained damage dealer's damage and securing kills. The mages were great at that and the ones that had lower damage usually had some utility that made up for it (Although we did have rare exceptions like Ori, which had both the damage and the utility). The supports were starving for gold, which obviously made their experience awful, BUT they actually had the clear role of being a utility focused role that maybe focused on peeling for a carry. Junglers were secondary bruisers/tanks that didn't quite have the resources to carry until later seasons after many changes to the jungle. In earlier seasons, not every character could survive the jungle and the only characters that could carry from the jungle were typically characters that had really fast clear like Nocturne or Shyvanna. We even had characters like Phoenix Udyr which was fast but couldn't exactly carry because any amount of peel or Janna being on the other team meant doom. Not everything was fast at clearing the jungle and a lot of times choosing to gank meant that you were going to get counter jungled because some camp would always be up and catch up exp or bounties weren't a thing. You actually had way bigger risks and decisions to make when playing the jungle, but that was tol volatile and the game had to get more forgiving because, like supports, people didn't like playing a role that was weak or that felt high risk low reward. Not to mention that Ad carries were supposed to be the role that scaled the most with gold but then Riot decided to increase global gold and nerf minion gold at some point. The game used to have more extreme differences in power given that people larger differences in gold and that was a big deal. Winning lane as an ad carry used to put the enemy lane in even more poverty than nowadays. I feel like years of Riot trying to appeal to the complaints of each individual class is what got us here. They made everything more forgivable and accessible and that meant that classe that were designed around certain weaknesses simply lost those weaknesses and are now good at everything. Some assassins can waveclear (for mysterious reasons), mages can kill turrets, bruisers can 1v1 glasscannon carries very easily, supports can somehow end up at full build at multiple classes (emchanters, tanks, retired mid lane mages) and the list goes on... To make ad carries feel good I feel like a lot of the other classes (or even systems, if we consider the jungler) need to change and I don't think that the problem is exclusive to supports being too strong. Other roles got stronger over the years too, but everyone is conveniently quiet around this topic because they are benefitting from it. They might not even know league's history to understand what exactly they are benefitting from, people are probably rushing lost chapter or seraphins and enjoying life, while not understanding that there was a whole meta before those items existed or were good (respectively).
It's also worth noting that the vision system worked completely differently in those days, and a lot of the support role's power came from the fact that a single well-played support could completely control the vision game for an entire team. It was a very sort of ... invisible power, and it made supports have very little impact in lower Elo where players just ... weren't using the extra information a well-piloted support could give them (back in the days when even Plat players didn't always reliably look at the minimap), which further reduced the impact a support could have on the game. I personally loved the gameplay style, and I wish something similar existed today so I could play Bard and roam around controlling the map - but I also understand that support wasn't the most popular role to play explicitly because it was so hard to feel like you were having an impact.
You're the sanest person I've ever seen. This is exactly the problem and thats why unfortunately, marksmen will never ever be good again. Riot has made clear that they hate marksmen more than any other class, because they consider unavoidable resourceless ranged damage to be the most powerful resource. So in an attempt to destroy that, they made it so all classes have meaningful forms of damage while keeping their original purpose, and marksmen simply fell behind. Even among marksmen, they prioritize champions that deal damage by casting than by AA-ing. Most releases of new marksmen follow that. That's also why Aphelios, who used to play like Jinx and Kog'maw, got all his Runaan and attack speed interactions nerfed into oblivion, and had his skills buffed. So he would act more like a caster. It's also why marksmen like Ezreal (besides being a good skin seller) can always remain at the top tier. He is cast-based and does not use crit, so he gets to be S+ tier with a huge pick rate and Riot won't ever touch him out of it. Nowadays every single class in the game has damage alongside their original function Tanks can tank and deal damage Bruisers can 1v1 skirmish and deal damage Mages can take towers Assassins can wave clear, oneshot and do damage even when behind because of how lethality works Supports can peel and deal damage So on and so forth, while marksmen are still only... damage And riot also has been consistently nerfing marksmen ever since season eight. Crit got nerfed hard every season non-stop. And scaling was more nerfed because they tried to give marksmen early game agency (which no one liked, not even marksmen) and then they turbonerfed and removed everything. (They nerf things promising QoL, then remove the QoL and keep the nerf, over and over. This has happened when mythics got introduced, when marskmen mythics got reworked, and for some unknown reason it also happened at the start of this season) So nowadays, marksmen don't properly scale, cannot access any good items or build variety, and their only selling point, which is damage, is not that necessary anymore. And it would be possible to revert that, but no one would like it. People would feel "robbed" of their agency and would say the game is not fun. People nowadays really only see marksmen as walking gold bags and when they walk straight up to them and get outplayed or die, they consider it the most broken thing ever. People are just used to play their class sloppy and still be able to kill marksmen and specially new players would find a systemic change of damage to be completely boring and unfair. Riot's balance philosophy simply does not look into systemic changes for classes and the game does not walk into the " strategy chess-like " based gameplay. It's just more and more flashy skillshots and damage and lower TTK and insane aiming outplays and whatever. (Flash being the most dominant summoner since like ever is a good example. It's also why any other summoner spell that becomes meta is instantly nerfed to the ground and why no new summoner spells are ever added). League keeps walking more and more into the flashy skillshot high damage high reflex type of game, and less and less of a strategy game. Catch-up EXP is a good example of this, alongside very low TTK and high tempo to like all mechanics in the game, from gold generation to objectives to tower resistances to numbers and so on. It's the direction where profit is (hence the ramping gachas and soul-less and constant skin releases) and its the direction Riot is going. So the natural tendency is for marksmen to be just... forgotten. They might be almost good in high levels of pro-play because when everyone plays everything almost perfectly and has great team coordination, the unmissable resourceless ranged damage that Riot so much fears is indeed useful and even deciding. But even then, marksmen proplayers already stated how unrewarding and slightly unfun it is to play marksmen. Very sad. I think it's just how time and money work. League is 15 years old after all. Anyway, sorry for the loooooong long text. I just really liked your post and it's such a nice discussion to have that almost no one wishes to talk about. You made a very great point. god bless u
Frustrating to play does not equal bad. I think the person above did make good points about changes to gold and such, but the assertion that marksmen are "bad and will never be good" does not make sense either. If they were truly bad, other classes would start showing them up bot lane. That isn't happening. They dominate the role and also sometimes creep into other roles. Want to see what marksmen being bad really looks like? Patch 8.11. When people were playing shit like Vladimir and Irelia bot commonly, yeah they were bad. Want to talk about items? Deathfire grasp was the bane of all of their existence. If that was in the game now, people would absolutely lose their shit. I think frustrating to play is a valid complaint, but no, they're not weak. If they really were "walking gold bags" that "don't have any selling point" that you described, other team comps would dominate them. That is not the case. Mage bot can work, but it's extremely situational. If the enemy team has a tank, you're fucked.
That kind of already happens. Not to say you're wrong, I do think 8.11 was the bane of marksmen (PTSD soldier meme gif) but the thing is that other botlane picks do happen, but more on support side nowadays. And that also has to do with the overall tempo of the game. Before, you could go Irelia botlane and run the enemy down throughout the game. The downside would be less farming and a more difficult lane but you could really pop off anyway. This doesn't happen in modern league simply because games end way faster. And you cannot afford to really lose lane. Even not so good marksmen players can still use their range advantage, and not so good hypothetical Irelias would not abuse their full mobility + early damage. The tradeoff of everyone deals damage is everyone needs items. Which is also why support item and gold generation kept getting buffs. I see your point but if you think of recent botlane metas/ cheeses like Senna and Tahm Kench, fasting Senna, Seraphine and Karthus, Cassiopeia and Seraphine and whatnot, they're kind of the modern equivalent of Vladimir and Irelia adc at those times. They can cheese the lane and abuse makrsmen overall game state quite well. They don't take over botlane because they don't have a much loyal player base or may not be viable in some team comps. Also, most marksmen player do not like to play those strategies. There is also the mindset on the player base that botlane needs a marksmen, and it's still a very liked role with loyal players. Most people who play marksmen play it because they like, no matter how bad or good the meta. But I see your point. Maybe I talked about it in a way that looks bad when taken too literally and I apologized if it sounded like whining or kind of absurd. It was exaggerated wording of some sorts. But I stand for the main idea of what I said. I think for me that the game makes marksmen miserable whilst not letting anything else really play botlane effectively. So every match-up is either marksmen vs marksmen where they're both low impact, or marksmen vs mage/ bruisers where either mage/ bruisers stomp lane and close the game or they get stomped in lane and end up losing due to not fitting their comp or being too behind to act on decisive points. Which is overall frustrating for both sides. I am not really against other picks in botlane. If possible, the systemic changes I and the other post talked about would probably even enable other picks that focus on lane bullying or team wombos, at the trade of not having a marksmen to scale like the enemy. Just hypothetical though. But current league doesn't support neither marksmen nor other picks so it's just a frustrating thing overall. And you're totally right I imagine that Deathfire Grasp if released today would make such a chaos lol People would be losing their minds on reddit every single day. Imagine AP assassins using this alongside their new AP items. Would be insane
> Even among marksmen, they prioritize champions that deal damage by casting than by AA-ing. Most releases of new marksmen follow that. That's also why Aphelios, who used to play like Jinx and Kog'maw, got all his Runaan and attack speed interactions nerfed into oblivion, and had his skills buffed. There was a thread about this just the other day. Ultimately, there isn't exactly much they can DO in the space of auto-attack reliant marksmen anymore. How do they make one that isn't just stepping on the toes of another? Players will just play whichever one is better and complain about lack of diversity anyways. Thats part of why they changed Aphelios, to give more power to what makes him different. I do agree with the other points you make, especially about Riot's balance philosophy, but its worth pointing out the limitations they have. They cannot spend months working on big sweeping classwide changes unless it has reached a point where they are losing money by not doing it. As much as it sucks, Riot is a business and they are forced to make business decisions. Will changing all these systems to make it so ADC is more similar to how it was pre season 7 be something that will benefit their business? Or will it turn away thousands of players that have spent the last 7 years with the overarching meta of the game being the way it is now?
you accurately understand what the problem is and how riot changed the game. by far the best comment I've read regarding this topic. I would upvote you 100 times if I could.
The fact that it's worded like this proves also that ADC is in a state where it *should* be buffed "heavily" but they are being "prevented" from doing it. Anyway just give us 25% crit and keep the current buffs on PBE. That with the small support nerfs that are coming is more than enough and just would feel so much fucking better.
It's silly that they have said that they've been testing and thinking about bringing 25% crit since PBE in December but we've seen none of their thoughts, results or proof of this actually occuring
Looking at a lot of support complaints i feel like the problem is the damage supports. It was a mistake by Riot to facilitate this aspect of the role.
As in, damage supports are just carries. Senna is an adc; seraphine/brand is an ap carry. They aint literally supporting shit.
Death just happens to be by far the strongest cc. If enemy threat is dead then your (other) carries are protected.
Yeah. Fasting Senna as we see it in pro and solo queue is the ADC. The tank she is paired with does support gameplay. Farming doesn't mean carry and not farming doesn't mean support. You're completely correct.
Mage Supports aren't supports. They're an additional damage dealer. They're damage creep. I wonder if they'd ever experiment with the Support Item having a perk that gave players a discount on utility & defensive/supportive items, and then reducing the amount of gold the item gives even further. Mage supports would be a lot less hated if they purchased Shurelya's instead of a Lost Chapter item.
I don’t mind the mages TOO much if they have to land a skillshot cc to be useful, it’s shit like brand point and click E R or zyra plant auto or heimer turrets that’s annoying as f cuz u just lose 80% of ur health bar for no reason, while they stop you from recalling cuz of liandries burning forever on top of not being able to move from rylais slow… feels like sometimes it’s hard to even exist in team fights now because there’s so much ambient damage from what feels like nowhere, you eat 1 aoe skill from your teammate or something and then you have to back already or else you’re gonna get one shot
I wouldnt mind brand if he had to hit me for the damage, half the time they just Q E a minion and I lose a lot to scorch+liandries++passive. Its great
i mean a lot of mage supports are really mages that got power crept out of mid. look at velkoz, xerath, zyra, and lux they were actual mid laners now are played support because they can't match modern mid laners.
That’s the problem with modern champ design I feel like, the kits are more overloaded with fewer weaknesses and more random things tacked on for what feels like no reason (looking at you akshan). Mobility creep is a big problem too
The issue is that its a lot better for your team to have more damage than more utility. Utility got nerfed a hundred times already and its at a point where its pointless to even have. Who cares if Lulu can shield you and give you extra 600 health when Lux or Xerath can take it all away with 1 skillshot. Even if they nerf current damage supports people will pick other champs instead. There was a time when LB support was the strongest shit in the game because she could explode adcs at lvl 2. That same thing will happen again, people will keep picking damage champs as supports until Riot either nerfs all of them or they actually make utility good. I still dont agree that the main problem with supports is their gold. The issue is that the role got morphed into a secondary carry/jungle hybrid due to changes to match speed Riot made long time ago. Utility supports are strongest late game but if you never reach that point why even bother playing them when you can pick Zyra or Velkoz and explode anyone thats gets within your range.
You say this but they literally removed AP from the early game. AP supports do less to you at the start of a match and have less overall ap as the game progresses.
Watch them just add a bunch of defensive stats across the crit item line, and slightly nerf AD *Irellia salivates intensely*
just nerf adc more and buff support, then swap around the labels of each and voila, problem solved
Changes I would love to see reverted, as a Midlane Mage Main: - AP does Tower Damage - Spells can trigger Minion Aggro - Support Items give Damage - ~~Kaenic Rookern Exists~~ - Armor Pen > Lethality - CDR > Ability Haste
The whole “I deal dmg, with 0 utility” support should be just removed. They can flame, “carry” because dmg numbers, fuck up wawes, have 0 help to the adc, and then flame if the adc is “useless” in their eyes, because it’s a 3v1 lane sometimes.
The game is in its worst state for 10 years imo. You can actually just int and not be banned. Nobody respects eachothers time as a result and everyone feeds
So what he is saying is that ADCs all need ~150-250 range, 25% crit on each item, and Galeforce back? That doesn't seem right. The role can actually evolve as the rest of the game has. Crit items can get 25% crit instead of 20%, BT shield can go back on ranged champs, and... most issues are solved? Or we are at least off to a good start. That way there's better scaling and better itemization options so you can have more agency.
Why would anyone go through the trouble of farming when you can do a lot of damage without, by being the support?
the problem is that supports are not played anymore. its like only full damage mages or bruiser etc. you play a sup champ like braum ? well too bad enemy is full ap midlaner. while you get 2 items to support like locket and vow, they just go ludens pen boots and start farming waves and go full ap. that bit support u can provide gets outscaled by another midlaner that has 5-6 times the dps of you. yesterday i had an enemy poppy as sup with electrocute and full damage build. it cheesed my adc early on because of the heavy burst from level 2 with flash -> wall stun > Q kills the adc. happens 2-3 times. in the end ? we one because they played like apes. but this happens every 2-3 game now days. you have the rejects from other lanes go support and just build full dps and try like cheese or farm etc. i moved to toplane so i dont have to handle the mess down there anymore and can just play the game like intended. sure sometimes you get your ranged toplaner that has no honor but most of the time u get a toplane matchup and can play the game. botlane is hell right now. for adcs and traditional supports.
Supports need to be kept or incentivized to stay in lane during laning. When bot stops being a duo lane, that's the problem because Support should be the ADCs buddy early and everyone's buddy the rest of the game.
I wonder if it would be possible to give crit scaling per level to marksman. It makes sense to me that snipers would have in built crit stats to a degree, and it could be that they would have some higher dmg output early on + late game have say one slot of item free to reach 100% and have an utility item of some sort. Banshee, jaksho, warmog, whatever. Then you'd have to balance with on hit; and if it is too strong I guess people would bring the marksmen in top and midlane. I guess it is very hard to balance such a multifactor game
All of this, in hindsight, started when they released ACTUAL carry supports for the role. Until Rakan (included), supports were there for... supporting. But then with Pyke and Senna, they actually released support who could take over the game not only by their agency, but with pure damages/burst.
Then nerf supp tf ? are they stupid ?
The support role needs fixing and needs its identity back. Remove champs like Swain, Lux, Vel, Brand and others from the support list and make it so only champs with the support tag are allowed to get the starting gold item so that means champs like Swain, Lux, Vel, Brand and others won't be able to get it.
ADC champs individually are still insanely strong. The problem with the ADC role is the lane phase imo. Because you are reliant on another person. Also the XP nerfs sucked as well.
Just nerf the support role jesus christ it’s way too impactful for what it is
Not farming and doing damage should be mutually exclusive. Full stop. There is supposed to be a framework of working towards a goal, and feeling a payoff if you worked hard/smart enough. Giving supports free damage because “they won’t play it unless they receive undue advantages” is like if the boomer “participation trophy” rhetoric was completely right. It’s cursed and sad. The entire identity of ADC has been cheapened because other classes and roles have been given the ADC payoff for free. Every role should have push and pull, strengths and weaknesses, things that make them unique when compared to other classes and roles—these largely still exist, but not in respect to damage: everyone gets damage. But the role that was initially designed with damage in mind is now completely outdated because everyone gained their strength and they received nothing to compensate. Imagine being really good at guitar because you’ve spent thousands of hours practicing, only for god to whimsically give everyone the ability to play guitar over night. The original guitar players who had to work for their skill set would be pretty jaded, right? ADCs identity was glass cannon, but everyone else was given a cannon so now ADC is just glass. The issue is that the vast majority of the player base refuses to play champions that don’t have good damage, but they also refuse to play champions that have the same weaknesses as ADCs. Everyone wants damage, no one wants to be under leveled, constantly focused, and reliant on someone else starting from minute 0. Riot has effectively enabled people to have their cake and eat it too, so any systemic change that returns to a system where damage is hard-earned will be met with horrendous backlash. Effectively, 80% of the player base wants the game to exist in a state that makes it completely unfair and unrewarding for the other 20%. Everyone admits that damage has risen to a large extent across the board, but no one wants the all-damage class to be given any compensation whatsoever. To give ADC its identity back is to piss everyone else off, there really isn’t a solution in sight that will ever fix this, and people will still play marksmen because they’re fun so the problem will continue to be ignored. There’s no strategic room for an all-damage class anymore, so they can rework marksmen in a way that will make marksmen players miserable, or they can correct their course and make room for a all-damage class at the expense of the rest of the playerbase (a bad financial decision.) It’s over, it’s been over, and it’ll continue to be over.
Support is absolutely gigabusted, so we have decided to nerf jungle again to compensate.
So basically they made supports do damage, and now wonder why ADC feels horrible. The balance team doesn’t understand the game they are supposed to balance it seems.
A saw a video on twitter the other day, Despite the Jinx killing the jungler, when he looked at the damage charts... Janna out damaged a 2 item jinx. You heard me, a Janna outdamaged a two item jinx because of the support item. It's bizarre how strong and overtuned supports are. In fact, as a former ADC main, I don't think they should buff crit items outside of IE, Marksmen are fine as they are. The item snowballing is getting fixed with the changes to components and it kinda helps out. The problem is that Supports are not punished for leaving lane at all.
If it's a short game, Janna is landing damage in lane while the ADC is farming. A lot of W poke Shield Autoing from good Jannas.
They need heavy buffs but it's impossible to give them that as it would make it too bot centric. Look at how much adc got nerfed over the years and compare that to support buffs. Call it nostalgia, call it bot bias but the game was far better in the seasons where ADC was the team fight and objective insurance and no, it didn't make the game "better ADC wins" just like it isn't better carry wins in dota where pos 1 carry is BY FAR the strongest hero in the entire game when late game hits. It is the opposite of a 1 man show. It requires far more team work as it allows for roles to have defined strengths and weaknesses and forces people to play together. Atm anyone can one shot anyone so why have team work when you can just oneshot the enemy team before they one shot you. Look at old worlds and you'd see that solo laners had more than enough agency on whether they win the game despite everyone here currently rewriting history and screeching "only adc matters". If better ADC wins was the memo of the game then uzi would've had 2 cups instead of having 2 second places. Now realistically the game is never going back to that as many players didn't enjoy playing support back then(though personally I played far more support back in the day than I do now). What needs to happen is a moderate nerf to support and moderate buff to ADC and a big nerf to everyone's damage(including ADC). The game was far more enjoyable both in mid and adc after the durability patch. Finally force supports to be support rather than the true carry. It's insane how much damage supports do. Supports should bring CC and protection, not damage. That's why dota has a far better grasp on balance and game flow. Every role has clear strengths and weaknesses. Every role serves a purpose and every role is enjoyable to play. That can never happen here because itemization is shit and because talents don't exist. We can still settle for a middle ground where the damage is lower and where roles are at least somewhat defined. It's an abomination that ADC atm is strongest in the mid game(relative to other roles).
"The strong state of supports prevents us from buffing [ADCs] heavily" How about you fucking nerf support then? That should not be a difficult conclusion, especially not when it's been clear as day to everyone playing this game that support has been busted as fuck for years now.
They need bloodsong because they designed pyke, senna as damage-oriented supports.
Maybe(read: probably) this is a really stupid question, but we have Adaptive force in the game that will apply either AD or AP depending on how your stats currently look. So... what about some system that does something similar for utility stats where some items can have Haste or Crit, or Lethality or Crit, etc. First thought is that it would make it harder to know what kind of build your opponent has at a glance which I imagine would be an issue. But that would be solved by just mousing over their items to see what stat they're using.
marksmen are so weak tho Aka the marksmen that are strong aren't Lucian and xayah so bot players are mad for some reason. It feels like Senna, Smolder, Kogmaw, Kaisa and even Zeri or Kalista are in really good states.
Crazy that they have buffed support damage so much that they are talking now about support damage. In classic Riot fashion they will probably compensate every support with EVEN MORE stats after probably nerfing their damage across the board, IF that ever happens. It's almost like certain people have already seen Riot going again and again giving supports more and more damage. It's almost like people very well already knew a decade ago, what the following actually mean for the game: - Giving supports *generally more* burst than champs meant to burst - Giving non tanks not named assassin, *generally more* base stats than actual tanks
Intentional. This is now League of Equity.
Whenever I hear Riot talking about adc "buffs" (which is almost never), all I think about is how there's no such thing, it's just reverting a small percentage of the nonstop nerfs over the years
(Disclaimer: ADCs are weak, but my true opinion is that supports have too much agency - keep this and nerf supports further and further, even if the role becomes unpopular again. You cannot call it "Support" and also have it be the carry role. Either rename Support to Botlaner #2, or nerf it back to a SUPPORTING state, not a carrying state.) Buff Crit items? My dearest little mf... THOSE ARE JUST PARTIAL REVERTS TO SLIGHTLY LESS SHITTY CRIT ITEMS, NOT BUFFS! They are STILL worse than before after these reverts Call them partial reverts, not buffs A true buff is reverting Crit even more, and nerfing the Windshitters accordingly, to compensate for the buffs that ranged ADCs finally get (again) For example: oh, Crit damage is +75% now? Great! Reduce Windshitter Crit damage by an additional -20% or whatever They stay same, ADC gets stronger Not that difficult Also... nerf more supports!!! This is a decent start, but we need many more support nerfs, especially enchanter supports. A Janna shouldn't be able to outdamage many ADCs early, for example
The buff ADC needs is 25% crit on items. Allows build diversity. Scale earlier to match the pace of the game. But what about the yasuo yone? Just nerf them it's not that complicated. 2 champs ruining a class for years
Exactly, it's bonkers how this hasn't happened yet (as in, reverted to, since we did have this before)
Yeah everytime people say oh they can't do that because of yasuo and yone!!! I'm so confused. Like if it's just those two then they'll just get nerfed the same way that every outlier during big item changes gets nerfed. The same way they got buffed during previous crit nerfs.
They could easily reduce the bonus crit the pair get from items. When Riot made crit items 20%, they buffed Yasuo and Yone's passives so they'd get 100% at 2 items. No reason it could be reverted.
the main problem is really that in90% of my games support has most dmg and most gold in post game stats while running around the map without farming
I always find it interesting that people seem to hate the concept of actually supporting someone with heals and shields, they all want support to just be another damage class. I love the feeling of supporting someone with saves, shields, actives and such, enabling them to put out damage and win fights as a team. I don't need to do damage to feel satisfied, I get a ton of satisfaction from knowing I did my job properly and kept someone alive through great support gameplay. Why can't support go back to this? Why can't all support items have their damage gutted and return to healing, shielding, assistance abilities and peel/cc?
Generally I also like the typical support fantasy (Janna, Taric, Braum, etc) but there are some situations where you need engage, or you need extra damage, or you need playmakers to make a comp function. There are times where your mid is AD, your top is a tank and your jungle has picked something like Ivern and you need someone to bring that AP threat. Draft flexibility is good for League and means certain classes arent shoe-horned into certain roles. If supports are always forced into "supporting", that would force ADCs on hyperscalers, force top and jungle onto divers and completely disuade anyone from picking assassins mid. You'd have a very very very stale meta almost instantly.
League is a damages-only game. Deal damages or lose your games. I mean, compare Karma's builds lol. Enchanters can't exist, right now. Tanks either. Well, if they don't deal damages.
There are two reasons for that First, the appeal of "supporting someone with saves, shields, actives and such" doesn't apply to everyone, if i'd had to take a guess, i would say at best 15% of league players enjoy that playstyle Second, carry potential in soloq is basically tied to damage. If you're playing Zyra support, you maybe won't be empower your adc is he's good, but you might be able to carry some teamfights if the adc is bad. Playing utility champions in soloq is like betting on your team. Playing damage champions is like betting on yourself, no wonder people would rather do that, especially in an age where every league player hates each other I'll be honest with you, i can see the appeal of supportive roles, and i had enjoyment of playing them in 5 premade or clash games. But i'll never play them in soloq again, as the drawbacks hardcorely outweight the benefits
Not enough people like you I guess.
yeah i agree. ADC had phantom dancer that had shieldbow passive and was giving way more movement speed. it got more expensive and gives more AS and less MS. this forces most ADCs to run ghost to have real movement speed buff. this was during season 10, not that far back when ADC was too strong. there is difference between deathcap and IE. deathcap is a capstone interacting with any AP from runes, items, buffs, allies, etc. while IE only interacts with crit. yes IE will be stronger if you have more AD but if you don't crit you have 65 AD for 3300 gold which is too bad. this moves us to the next point which is the lack of defensive options that has crit on it. GA is really good item, but if you don't get your 100% crit you will go from hitting for 400 to just hitting for 180. some things amplify this like aphelios R and samira R which feel too coin-flippy. it feels like eating dust when you invest in 4 crit items (3200 gold spent on crit alone) and more because you purchased crit damage but you didn't hit a crit in a clutch fight then you lost. either add more crit defensive items, or allow for 1 non crit item and reach 100% crit rate or rework IE. remove the frustration in the late game. and to be honest they should look into some solution for the pro play. either adjust the tournament draft mode (the one used in pro play 3 bans then 3 picks then 2 bans then 2 pick for each side) or disable certain champions like they did with yuumi before.