I see this has turned into more of a League debate than a meta topic. While we're on the subject of supports, however, what kind of support should the role be able to give to a team to be viable? Beyond the standard CC/Heal ability combo, what abilities and options give the support role a far more vital position?
In response to Kats
Kats wrote:
I see this has turned into more of a League debate than a meta topic. While we're on the subject of supports, however, what kind of support should the role be able to give to a team to be viable? Beyond the standard CC/Heal ability combo, what abilities and options give the support role a far more vital position?

A support is anyone who makes it easier for their team to win. This is most commonly done by making it easier for their team to score objectives, which a lot of the time is getting kills.

What abilities a support gets would naturally depend entirely on the genre of game. But the basic idea is always the same, they make it easier for their team (and harder for the enemy team) to win.
To return to the original topic: the metagame need not be introduced, as it is a natural consequence of the game itself. If you are given a set of rules and a win condition, a natural question is, "How can I minimize my steps taken to win?" or, "How can I maximize my likelihood of winning?"

For games with simple rules, fewer numbers of players, and simple win conditions the answers are easier. For example, you can prove that there is a strategy in tic-tac-toe that will always result in either a win or a draw. More complex games and games with a larger number of possible games (i.e., sequences of valid moves from), such as Chess and Go, are harder to analyze mathematically, but you can nevertheless prove some things about them.

Metagaming, when used in this sense as it is being used here, is essentially just laymen's game theory.
I'm aware of their differences.

The point is, Riot stated that they don't want assassins being able to do what I described: assassinate and soak damage. Which makes sense, an assassin shouldn't be able to 100-0 something in 2 seconds and then shift mid-fight into a meatshield for the rest of his team. I mean, we don't see LeBlanc and Zed doing that, do we? Even when they are fed they aren't going to take CC and 2 ults to the face and live to tell about it. If Jax is listed as an assassin, and Riot stated that they don't want assassins being able to do this, then this champion is a contradiction to their design goals.

Jax is just another champion that Riot just doesn't know what they want to do with similar to other champs that are anxiously awaiting a rework, so that's why he makes no sense.

For one there's the fact it's a massive gold or white circle.

Has literally nothing to do with anything. Ahri's Charm is a pink heart for crying out loud - it still causes you to die 9 times out of 10 when she lands it on you if you're not a tank. When you first saw Ahri's charm, did you intentionally run into it because it wasn't "negatively colored" and thought she was just giving you a buff?

The idea that someone can attack you, becomes untargetable and stuck to you

I have no idea what this means. Like, go read Bloodseeker's kit and then come back and explain to me where you're getting "untargetable" and "stuck to" from. I've never faced an untargetable Bloodseeker so maybe they just released a patch I don't know about.

but then continues to do more damage when you OBVIOUSLY try to run is just fucking savage.

Exactly - that's like, the greatest reason why Bloodseeker's ult can be a thing: the counter-play to it is simply not needing to run. Teleport scrolls, being near a teammate, becoming invulnerable, stunning BS as he's running toward you, going invisible, the list of things that render Bloodseeker's ultimate useless is massive. The only time Bloodseeker's ultimate is useful is when he uses it on a person that has to run away. In other words, people who are out of position. This is the only reason people get salty over Bloodseeker: because his entire kit is designed to screw you over when you're not where you're supposed to be. Junglers who are sitting at the neutral camp with 100 HP - he punishes that. Supports who are casually walking alone through the river to drop some wards - he punishes that. Enemies who are clumped up together instead of spread out: he punishes that. And once again, his entire kit is so easy to counter it's not even funny. His passive is countered by not sitting in lane with low HP. His ultimate is countered by a teleport scroll that almost everyone walks around with anyway. His W gives everyone more than enough time to run out of it and only works if the enemies are stupid enough to ignore it or if AoE CC is applied to those enemies to keep them in the affected area. They also just nerfed his sustain.

And yes, if you just started like, 5 minutes ago, you won't know what to do. But that's literally the same case with everything in League. You think you can take someone who has never played League, throw them into the jungle and they'll know what the hell is going on? Is our end goal for MOBAs now to make them so that no one has to actually learn how to play? Are we going to continuously water down one of the most difficult genre of games so the scrubbiest of scrublords can feel like they're good at an online game? I thought that was Strife's job. The "not knowing what to do" is not something exclusive to Bloodseeker in Dota 2 - that's something all MOBAs share. Not knowing what heroes can do. Not knowing what items to buy. Not knowing when and how to go for an objective. These are all these you have to learn through playing, making mistakes, reading guides, etc. The game is simply too massive to make it something someone can fully comprehend within an hour, so that endeavor can just be abandoned.

Against Bloodseeker, as a new player, you have no visual feedback

Wrong. You have an enemy facing you who flails their arms, a loud ripping/bleeding sound effect, blood bursts from your body and continues to leak out as you move and you get a debuff icon right above your health bar. Upon dying, you also get a window that pops up in the top left that shows you who killed you and what ability was doing damage to you. How much more information should we be providing to players? Any more would insult their intelligence. This is actually more information than Kindred's ult provides.



and only one option - run.

Wrong again, already explained this in the prior paragraphs. Even if things like buying a TP scroll aren't immediately obvious, new players have a tendency to play heroes they perceive as overpowered because they want to win. When they play Bloodseeker themselves, they'll inevitably run into a player who uses a teleport scroll as soon as they are ulted, and the player will learn "Oh, so THAT's how you counter Rupture!"

Funny how people think Bloodseeker ultimate is frustrating, but Darius "dunking" 5 people in a row twice at the highest level of competitive play is perfectly acceptable, so acceptable that he has an entire skin themed around it. Ask anyone who was on the receiving end of that dunking ridiculousness if they were frustrated after that crap, I'm sure they'll tell you "Yes".
In response to Kats
Kats wrote:
I see this has turned into more of a League debate than a meta topic. While we're on the subject of supports, however, what kind of support should the role be able to give to a team to be viable? Beyond the standard CC/Heal ability combo, what abilities and options give the support role a far more vital position?

Riots design goals for supports are what inhibit their ability to do more in a game. This is sometimes why they are referred to as "marksman's aid". As soon as we can abandon the idea that the support just exists to wipe the ADC's ass, we can move onto:

- Giving supports more ability and incentive to roam. Let's be honest: most of the time, relying on the jungler to make all the plays doesn't work out, especially when they go Devourer ( enjoy your 4v5 for the first 15 minutes, very fun, much wow ). Supports need to help their TEAM, not just the wannabe Doublelift they're laning with. Whenever I couldn't get ADC or jungle I would go Annie support just so I could get more bot lane experience, and whenever I saw my mid laner struggling I'd just rush Mobi boots, run down river, press R on enemy mid laner and suddenly my mid laner is winning the lane, with the opponent tilting typing "WTF why is Annie here?" in all chat. The impact this can have on a game is huge.

- Pushing is a strong support factor, however it's an absolute joke in League. Shadow Shaman is one of my favorite supports in Dota 2 mainly because even if I'm doing bad or hexing the wrong targets, the simple fact that whenever my team decides to group and push and I have my ultimate means a guaranteed tower if the enemies don't kill us is massive. Like, I don't know why it hasn't occurred to Riot yet that we need supports who can somehow either help shove lanes quickly or deal significant damage to structures.

- The item shop directly affects what supports can do as well. As I said, the active items suck in League. Another reason Dota 2 heroes are so strong is because they get to buy things like Sheepstick, Refresher Orb and Blink Dagger. These items boost their usefulness significantly and enable them to make game-changing plays League's joke supports could only dream of.

It's like you have one game where supports are just ward dispensers, and another game where supports are play makers. The mere fact that we get hyped up over things like an Alistair knocking someone up into the air is proof of how lackluster League supports are. Basically supports should be able to do more than, as you said, CC and heal. There's so much untapped potential.

[Edit] We could even do what we did with Morde and make a support that can tame jungle monsters ( the smalls ) and could use them to either shove the lane or act as meatshields to block things like Thresh's Death Sentence and an ability to buff allied minions and units ( non-champions ) so there'd finally be a reason to purchase Zz'Rot Portal. So now you have a support champion who can:

- Push well
- Utilize an item NO ONE HAS EVER BOUGHT IN THE HISTORY OF LEAGUE
- Interact with non-champion units and micro
- Has an interesting method of supporting that doesn't involve CC and being a heal dispenser
- Has a unique way of providing vision ( you can move one small into one of the bushes and push with the other one or two units ). I actually do this a lot with Lycan where whenever I push, I summon the wolves but send one into the jungle so I can see if someone is coming to flank me and push with the other.

Obviously the draw back is you're taking the junglers camps but this doesn't mean much if you're playing with someone like Lee who hits level 2 and is barely in the jungle after that point. You do have the occasional full retard Lee who farms jungle because "muh ultimate" but any Lee worth a damn isn't going to mind you taking one camp to pressure an objective.

Anyway, just a thought.
Also completely unrelated to MOBAs, GW2 has an interesting set up as well.

What you have in GW2 are 3 roles:

- Obviously your damage-roles to skirmish and contest points ( warriors, thieves, rangers, elementalists, etc. )

- Your support roles who heal, shield allies, grant boons like boosts of damage and movement speed or just flat out distract the opponent and make their life a living hell with debuffs ( mesmer, guardian, necro ). One neat thing with support Necro is that it really embodies the idea of a support sacrificing himself because he can actually transfer debuffs from his allies onto himself so that his teammates can keep fighting normally.

- Bunker roles who basically just sit on top of a point and set up shop, kind of like what Heimerdinger does when he goes mid lane and throws up 3 turrets, and makes it incredibly annoying to take them down alone ( engineer, guardian and I actually ran a mesmer bunker build when I was playing the game although it only worked against people who didn't know how to fight mesmers )

Supports also frequently had abilities that allowed them to revive fallen allies quicker or make walls/barriers enemies couldn't pass or shoot through. They just introduced like, the first dedicated healer Druid in HoT. At first ArenaNET was like "to hell with the holy trinity, we're not making healers, damage mitigation/prevention like what guardian provides is more fun" but I guess enough people complained to get an actual healer specialization.
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