|
GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
On October 26 2017 05:02 Alaric wrote:GI's post is pretty indicative of what made supports more interesting in S2/3 compared to now, though. Show nested quote +Warding is not some measure of profound skill. There is no such thing as an MLG Warding Montage, because there is no skill involved in dropping wards everywhere. You are limited only by how much money you have and how much of a bitch you were willing to be. Timing and placement are very important things. There's no such thing as "dropping wards everywhere", unless you want to squander every last bit of gold you get (and then whine about being unable to afford more than boots1). Knowing how many wards to use, when, where, and especially when you can afford not to ward (in general or at specific places) and save gold for items are important skills. Some very simple things: - knowing usual gank timings depending on routes, especially in lower leagues (my Elo was never above Plat III and until toward the last third of S3 was only high Gold) where people use cookie-cutter builds and paths. Not needing to ward until after these timing if you could control the wave, or convince your laner to play more defensively. On the contrary, making sure to put a ward there and still playing forward to bait him could allow your solo lanes to feel safer if the jungler does come and you make him hope for an opportunity (that super aggressive Xin top? Your 75 gold make sure he doesn't give up 600 for fb+assist if you see the jungler, or ping his river otherwise). - people said dragon was super influential. Against a Fiddlestick, WW, Pantheon or other good solo dragon champ, knowing the spots and timings to keep drake lit as well as at least one entrance so you don't use an additional ward made sure you wouldn't get cheesed, or could ambush him. - warding for mid. A support with no presence, items or not, wouldn't be able to create windows for their laner to safely 1v2. And mid used to expect jungle/support to ward both sides for them (hence my dumping my gold lead into wards giving me an edge at the time), so knowing how to manipulate the wave and the gank timings and likeliness of a jungler being on the other side would let you walk up to mid and ward it (even gank if on an initiator and bot is safe even if they see you're elsewhere, not just hiding in a bush) then come back without getting your laner zoned or killed. You expect people to be ward bitches and poor as heck because you believe supporting was all about being a ward bitch and lighting up the map. Ideally you'd get total vision, sure. But being a good support was about getting as close to total vision as possible in terms of information while cutting as many corners as possible to maximise lane presence, gold and experience. A mediocre support would spam wards as a way to cover their inability to infer information and act on it, and be poor as result, while a better one would dump less resources and have more items. A bad support would just spam wards because he's been thought that's what he's supposed to do (and frankly, that's exactly what you're exhibiting here). And I haven't even mentioned lane presence, aggressiveness, how to play around the opponent's vision, ward timings, and all these thing connected to vision and warding too. Scarcity is a thing and it creates tension—another word Riot loves to spew in regard to their kits but that doesn't have much value (especially when they remove point'n'click abilities all the time and thus remove one of their biggest points of tension).
So, I said, warding does not take a lot of skill, and you responded with the following counterexamples of how warding required skill:
1) You need to know that junglers tend to gank after their first buff, and also after their second buff;
2) You need to ward dragon against junglers that do dragon;
3) You need to ward, in addition to your own lane, MID LANE too, and you should do that when your mid laner is pushing and not die to the other jungler while warding.
I'm going to stick by my argument that warding does not take a lot of skill. You could learn all of that in like, half an hour. Heck you could probably even learn it from LS, it's so straightforward.
Your points that it takes skill to create presence in lane so you can go off and ward is well-taken. But the actual act of warding itself is not the skillful part, it was your play in lane that allowed you to go off and perform your chores. That was the skill involved.
More generally every single one of your examples, and indeed your whole argument, is that good supports do more with fewer wards than bad supports do with more. Yeah, which is why when you give every support unlimited wards, it dumbs down the game.
|
I think warding is easy, but warding well isn't. Mainly because so many people, myself included, still fuck it up a lot.
The main issue I have with your argument is that you say that the role has become more skill-intensive after they removed the S2-3 vision system. Both back then and right now people still just play their champs, they just have less warding to do. I don't really see too much added skill from the new support items either. When I see stuff like Redemption, Mikael's etc I don't see it as that much more skill-involved than spamming wards.
On the topic of Ardent being OP for so long, I think you're kinda rewriting history there. Yes, it was strong after 6.13 or whatever patch they overbuffed it, but most of the period after that patch was still Jhin Varus lethality meta, which was even stronger than Ardent. People already played Kog+Lulu back then as well, but that was mostly boosters/scripters because it was really pubstompy, while at the same time tanks were even stronger back then, plus the added utility from the ADC/support role meant it was harder to stay alive as well.
|
GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
It's not that Ardent wasn't popular. It's that it was literally never even built, even when supporting non-lethality champions. Ashe, Caitlyn, and Sivir were all popular late season 6 - early season 7; in fact Ashe was even more popular than Varus. And yet no one built it, ever, even though Karma and Lulu were meta.
We obviously don't know what would have happened in a parallel timeline, but I would bet that a hypercarry Ardent meta was perfectly viable back in the day. It's just that no one thought to do it, or wanted to try it, or realized the implication of this item.
The fact that we went from "no one builds this joke item, ever" to "you're trolling if you don't start relic shield on Kog'Maw so your support can get Censer faster" kind of demonstrates that the playerbase kind of missed something along the way. Like, there's obviously some middle ground there, and we just skipped right past it once people finally realized how good this item was.
|
United States37500 Posts
I think between PX's warding arguments and Grinq's, I side with the latter. Warding is not skill intensive but it does require a certain amount of replay analysis outside the game and timing/warding location during the game. It's not a practiced skill but still requires a certain amount of knowledge to have it done properly.
Frankly, most Support players/champions are not very skill intensive and I'm ok with that. Not every position in League needs to have highlight reel potential.
Edit: Censer such a silly item but wasn't realized until much after the fact. That amuses me a little.
Edit2: imagine if you could bounce wards off each other like you can Teemo shrooms. :D
|
Don't say that too loud, next they'll make wards skillshots instead of point and click.
|
You're just spamming "you need" and grossly oversimplifying what I say in order to undermine it.
Is that really how we're going to have an argument?
Dropping a ward in front of dragon makes sure you won't get cheesed, but that's an additional ward if you don't know when to place it, and a lot of gold if you keep it up all the time.
Knowing when to have it up, and the places to put it (also counts because Fiddle and J4 don't solo dragon with the same routes and timings for example) is a thing, and if you're keeping a 3rd ward in the bottom river up at all times obviously you're going to have less gold than the one who knows how to do it.
Having a rough idea of jungle gank timings, and checking where the jungler starts and solo lanes' situation (that super-aggro Fizz mid is more likely to get ganked post-buff than your Cait-Janna lane) also plays a role. Laning phase also lasts longer than just the jungler's first clear: being able to estimate his recall timings, and timing when buffs are taken (before it was gifted to you), which side he's in, and evaluating when he's hitting level 6 are all important, notably to know when you can afford to go and deep ward without going face-to-face with him.
I said I wasn't going into details because it'd get even longer, are you really going to make me spell it all out?
You treat warding as "the act of clicking a button then clicking the ground, regardless of place, time or game state." Aside from being in bad faith, obviously you're going to miss all the ways to do it properly and get edges.
My issue with vision is more about how much of it is free now, and the high baseline that prevents one from willingly investing more into it to create an edge (which requires skill, because it's more than placing a ward, it's using that 75 gold well and also the intention behind it of getting something out—it's not placing a ward mechanically-speaking, sure, but the whole planning is made around the act of placing an additional ward, so that's part of "warding.")
|
I really don't understand how you can think building an item like frozen heart or censer is more skillful than placing wards. Also even in S2/3 you still needed to buy wards for money it's not like at every point in the game you could place wards everywhere.
|
As someone who has mained support since s2 I am definitely gonna remember this one. Almost as good as "you can't tell the difference between 40 and 80 ping".
Hardest support meta was s3 with annie/leona/zyra/thresh and assassin mid.
|
I mean, I don't understand why the S3 thing was all bad, and supports having items is. It was legitimately unfun in sub-plat leagues to play support because even if you warded well, no one really knew what to do with that and you would get blown up (on the other hand, you could just ward less and actually build Shurelias, which was a better support item than any support item currently in the game). Thus, the passive gold change was a positive for soloq. Combine that with eliminating the gold sink that was oracles, and IMO supports were in a healthy gold state.
However, the current vision environment in pro play sucks. Teams play like pussies because they don't have the right vision. Its not possible to control vision around baron without giving up a sneak dragon, that's dumb. Its really hard to actually siege without baron even at T2 turrets because you can't properly control flanks. That's why every game feels like it turns on a chaotic teamfight or a throw. There is a balance to be struck, particularly in the lategame.
|
I don't think it's a balance problem, I just think the endgame of strategic play is to play cautiously
|
On October 26 2017 06:21 cLutZ wrote:
I mean, I don't understand why the S3 thing was all bad, and supports having items is. It was legitimately unfun in sub-plat leagues to play support because even if you warded well, no one really knew what to do with that and you would get blown up (on the other hand, you could just ward less and actually build Shurelias, which was a better support item than any support item currently in the game). Thus, the passive gold change was a positive for soloq. Combine that with eliminating the gold sink that was oracles, and IMO supports were in a healthy gold state.
However, the current vision environment in pro play sucks. Teams play like pussies because they don't have the right vision. Its not possible to control vision around baron without giving up a sneak dragon, that's dumb. Its really hard to actually siege without baron even at T2 turrets because you can't properly control flanks. That's why every game feels like it turns on a chaotic teamfight or a throw. There is a balance to be struck, particularly in the lategame.
Idk, support sub plat used to have much more laning power to carry.
Now you need to buy SS, upgrade your gold item, and hard rush ardent. Even ignoring ardent, S2 support getting fed meant you could buy 3 DBlades and 1v2 the lane while your ad free farmed. Getting to buy as a support and picking up a dorans with wards could win you the lane. Doing so now and delaying income upgrades or sight stone can just lose you the game. Used to be sacrificing a few wards for aggression and lane control, now it's an all in.
Granted I was a much better player then so maybe I'm just an awful support now. Haha.
|
from what I observed, its not that warding is a concept that is difficult to grasp. The difficult part for many players is remembering what they know in game and having the discipline to apply what they know about warding in game.
I've played with so many people who know how to ward but always seem to 'forget' to do so in game. I mean I guarantee if we all posted replays of our games here it would be fairly easy to point out a lot of our shitty ward habits or a time we fucked up some type of warding. Warding is one of the easiest ways I can tell who actually has some discipline when they play.
so yes while warding is not 'hard' it is at the same time, apparently hard.
On October 26 2017 06:02 nafta wrote:
As someone who has mained support since s2 I am definitely gonna remember this one. Almost as good as "you can't tell the difference between 40 and 80 ping".
Hardest support meta was s3 with annie/leona/zyra/thresh and assassin mid.
gotta love it when the entire team relies on your warding and you just bought oracles but they have a zed or some shit you don't see on the map and you're some squishy like zyra.
|
Did riot even playtest Galio? Lol.
Man he's silly right now.
|
I actually think it can work if he's forced to build AP. Will be a bit of a throwback to AP Gragas and Karthus (both of whom i'd love to see back).
|
|
|
On October 26 2017 05:32 NeoIllusions wrote:
I think between PX's warding arguments and Grinq's, I side with the latter. Warding is not skill intensive but it does require a certain amount of replay analysis outside the game and timing/warding location during the game. It's not a practiced skill but still requires a certain amount of knowledge to have it done properly.
You do realize That my argument about support in S2/3 pretty much never warding as the primary skill.
that was 100% Grand making a strawman to argue against.
Because what i did say was, good supports get items, because they are efficient and get their team kills. bad supports, get stuck warding an tryin gto play from behind, and if they struggle at warding just INT all game, like tabe did in the link, where he burned his flash at lvl 1 by facechecking vs a leona without his team. and then proceeded to lose all lane control because leona e kept him so scared he couldnt push up, and when he did, he died because he misplayed both the fights and his positioning. Meanwhile leona threw a couple thousand into items because leona kept control of the map with fewer wards, and did better at every stage of the game.
The good support won the game, and had everything they needed. the bad support. looked bad. played bad, and struggled to do anything because they were not as good.
Wardings always important, warding when it costs somehting to ward, and not just 30 seconds to recall and walk back, means it has more skill than now. but you become a ward bot at a support, only if you sucked at it in s2/s3. or at the very least, sucked more than your opponent. now. if im the better support by a mile, my adc has ~400 more gold, and I have my ardent 1 minute sooner. rather than having my ruby, boots and resists/cdr over my opponent. and the opposing support being beaten down by his poor play.
That losing all that ability to show how much better you were at the role isn't good for the role. An that its turned into a carry me role, rather than a role where you carried your team, albeit not in the way most people view. Good supports were impressive to watch in S2/S3. Now the only support play people can remember from worlds this year is Misfits vs SKT. and thats because they deliberately put their censor away from support, specifically in order to let the support stand out.
Every single other games support vs support matchup is actually one homogeneous blur with no one standing out skillfully. meanwhile how many supports made their name in S2/S3, Mata, Cain, Madlife, poohmandu's thresh, Swordart got popular back then in part for zyra.
I havent seen a single interview where a pro support player likes this meta, and also thinks themselves a top support. because it doesnt matter if you are better than your opponent. all that makes is neither of you are trash. The most memorable games this year have been misfits vs SKT and its in part because the supports got to play league of legends and not press shield simulator. the most impactful play outside of that game i can remember from supports is seeing (NAME A SUPPORT) use janna ult to top off the team after a skirmish and proceed to win fight -> take baron -> win game. but there isn't really a support above platinum that couldnt do the exact same thing as any support at worlds in that play. Supports used to be banned out because X players Y support was too much of a monster (or they were banning sona to ban sona) but now the only reason you ban a support (outside of SKT misfits which was a return to skillful supports), is because you want to force the other team into the next censor support down the line, so you can snag a certain matchup in another lane.
playing support as a filled player is infinitely better than being forced into support from S2/S3. but like. thats because you actually had to have skill to play support then. You can take a high gold player and get them to diamond by ensuring they janna every game. but in S2/S3 that high gold player who swaps to support is gonna plummet until they learn how to play the role, because it was so dramatically different from the others.
The closest thing we have now is like Jungler? someone who never junglers being put in the jungle tanks the team, the way that a non support playing support tanked the team in S2/S3.
|
well I never got to see Galio, already perma banned by the time I got home
|
On October 26 2017 08:54 iCanada wrote:
Did riot even playtest Galio? Lol.
Man he's silly right now.
I'd put money on them Playtesting him with RoA -> Tank and full tank at most.
|
This Galio change is legit garbage, really can't believe Rito let through such an absurd oversight.
That losing all that ability to show how much better you were at the role isn't good for the role. An that its turned into a carry me role, rather than a role where you carried your team, albeit not in the way most people view. Good supports were impressive to watch in S2/S3. Now the only support play people can remember from worlds this year is Misfits vs SKT. and thats because they deliberately put their censor away from support, specifically in order to let the support stand out.
Once the Ardent meta falls out again, I think we'll start seeing playmaking supports again. Hopefully Riot will also finally address Janna and rework her into something more engaging. Sona and Lulu are decently balanced, instead of nerfing them Rito could just buff engage supports more. Ignar also reminded me that watching a good Leona is incredibly fun, maybe Riot will buff her a bit to get her seeing more competitive play.
Maybe Riot should just remove Ardent altogether, if it's a weak item then no one will buy it all and it'll turn into another Ohmwrecker.
|
Janna isn't a problem. If she was a problem she would have been a problem since S2.
The problem is lack of in-client voice chat which fundamentally breaks soloQ and pro play when it comes to champ select.
Soon enough in spring Janna will probably be meaningless in pro play, while sporting a 55%+ winrate in diamond+, and it will all be because of lack of coordination, aka voice chat.
Why do we not have voice chat when Xbox has had it for 10 years? IDK, but my suspicion is because Riot prefers to police text chat with tribunal instead.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
