Originally Posted by Bu773rd0g

Okay, so my observation is this. Supports have gotten the most reworks and fixes out of all the team roles since I've started.

I think that is why it's so infuriating for support players. I didn't pitch a fit when Volibear was changed, and he is my favorite champion. I do have a problem with feeling like I can't bother to learn a support champ, because they will be so vastly different or weaker in a few months, that it is no longer the same champion I fell in love with.

I suppose all I really want is for supports to get a little more attention, not only in more releases, but in more careful planning so they aren't jostled around so much.

Is that understandable?

Originally Posted by Morello

Healers will be balanced to not negate all damage infinitely, yes. That design is an expectation, unfortunately, because it make the healer fun, but the cost of the game flow is simply not worth it. The direction is to at least make sure that they can clutch save people (Monsoon, Wish, Crescendo) but not have them undo non-burst damage easily.

Healing needs to be weaker than damage, over time, but can have strong bursts. Summoner Heal/Wish Baits are good examples of healthy heals, because you're not going to be topping off Graves with that, but you can save him if he almost dies - the healer feels epic, the benefactor is grateful, and the enemies can capitalize on the long cooldown/opportunity cost.

Right now, Soraka does both of these. We're going to make it so eventually, she can run out of mana and the enemy can seize the advantage. Sona's problem is actually not really her heal right now (that's about as balanced as it can be on that character).

This is the core design problem with not heal spells, but dedicated healers. If someone's only job is to heal, it will ruin the game if it's really satisfying. Instead, in most cases, support characters can heal if they can also do other things, and they're not only about red bars going up.

Originally Posted by Frejas

Because, especially in solo queue where you can't guarantee how good your partner is or coordinate well with them, a support with sustain can be useful in any situation. The biggest problem with no sustain supports is that if they ever get behind, they can't be aggressive, and they can't do much of anything. This is especially true of melee tank characters- if you're playing Leona and you're behind in the lane, and don't have items because you're giving the CS to your carry, initiating a fight just exposes you and will probably get you killed.

Nerfing characters with any sort of sustain won't actually change the situation, until they've been hit so hard they aren't worth playing. Soraka is really the only support that has very good sustain currently, which is due to her infinite mana from infuse. Sona is strong for her harass and her ult, and movement buff. Her heal is negligible- she has to spend almost her entire mana pool to equal the healing from a potion early-game, and it doesn't scale well, especially with the increased mana cost at higher ranks and the negligible AP ratio.

In essence, the issue isn't as much that supports are overly strong, but that the options are worse due to less flexibility. If you're losing your lane, initiating a fight with a character with no items is generally suicide unless you've got your jungler or mid there to help gank. At least if you've got a character with heals, you can stay in the back and keep your carry alive through harass so they can stay in lane and keep farming until your team has a chance to make something happen.

Originally Posted by Bu773rd0g

I think that is why it's so infuriating for support players. I didn't pitch a fit when Volibear was changed, and he is my favorite champion. I do have a problem with feeling like I can't bother to learn a support champ, because they will be so vastly different or weaker in a few months, that it is no longer the same champion I fell in love with.

Originally Posted by Morello

The direction is to at least make sure that they can clutch save people (Monsoon, Wish, Crescendo) but not have them undo non-burst damage easily.

Originally Posted by scfs123

/Gonna take this seriously, since i have been playing support jarvan in ranked solo Q whenever i see Ashe/Sivir picked on enemy team before i get to pick.(So its me on J4+some random AD carry. Did it quite a few times in normals against a wide variety of AD champs before i started doing it in ranked.)

You need to get kills for kill lanes to be effective, and majority of AD champs can stop your attempts at killing them, then you get support CC+Heals on top of that. It becomes very risky to attempt.

All these pretty much just lol@my kill laning with J4.
Caitlyn - Traps/E
Corki - Valkyrie
Ezreal - Flashthingy
Graves - Dash+Slow
Tristana - Jump/Knockback
Vayne - Tumble(stealthed sometimes.) / Knockback

I don't see how you can kill lane these effectively. They just wait for their escape to come off CD, then CS, you go in to harass, they escape to freedom, and pretty much the best you can accomplish is denying them a little CS.

Sona/Soraka really don't deter kill lanes at all, they are actually perfect for it, they have so little CC you are pretty much free to stomp their carry all day.

Then you get Sivir/Ashe, are pretty much just dead without a CC support to back them up against a kill lane. Janna has no healing, but she hard counters kill lanes. Alistair /taric make the kill lane quite entertaining since it becomes a battle of who can CC the hardest while also providing light sustain.


Long story short.
I'm not really sure healers are to blame for the lack of kill laning as much as most AD carries being able to escape kill attempts with ease via short CD's.


Editwow this threads gone crazy xD

Originally Posted by Morello

This is a much more cogent complaint, thanks!

This is valid. To be frank, this is us paying some "oops!" design debt from when we didn't see these effects on the game. The reason we want to be more aggressive here (especially on the sustain part) is to stabilize this and then understand how to inject it, even possibly in new characters.

We're not going to rip healing out of the game (or we would have already), but the opportunity cost and resource drain on the healer just has to be present. It balances the game better and increases strategic decision-making. I do understand the desire to see stability - the faster we get there, the less we have to mess with this

Originally Posted by Morello

This is the core design problem with not heal spells, but dedicated healers. If someone's only job is to heal, it will ruin the game if it's really satisfying. Instead, in most cases, support characters can heal if they can also do other things, and they're not only about red bars going up. There's still no team-based PvP game I can think of where this is not true.

Originally Posted by Vycoss

They need these escapes to the way they are designed to teamfight. Ad bot lane is in the typical meta game is supposed to carry the game 30+ minutes, because at that point, they can do so much sustained dmg while being able to kite they mass gap closers that everyteam has nowadays. Without any escapes, ashe would go back to being god, because shes the only one who could even try to teamfight once that 30 minutes+ irelia decided to jump on her. Ad carries are squishy. And also they are the #1 kill focus of any decent team once real teamfighting starts, baring them being completely starved and the ap carry or something being stupid fed.