Season 4 Support Discussion

[quote=OTGBionicArm]Hey guys! With season 4 upon us, and being primarily a support player, i decided to poke around the PBE with the new support changes, and craft some stuff. I thought I'd make a nice area for us all to dicuss the changes and how we'll be rolling hour supports in Season 4. From the looks of it, there are so many more options and allows great flexibility on how we wanna play them. At first I was a bit apprehensive about true supports scaling heavily on utility, rather then damage but I've come to accept this change after trying some out. I'll kick off the conversation by talking about [[Taric]], who I am most excited to use for Season 4. [[Taric]] kinda, really sucks on live at the moment, but I played him on PBE and I was having a blast. His new passive allows him to chain [[dazzle]] and [[shatter]] in pretty short succession if you weave autos in between his spells. With high CDR, I think [[Taric]] will become a bigger threat to priority targets. On Taric I was running 0/13/17 masteries to be a lot bulkier (Armor masteries) and getting all that sweet income in the utility tree. This is very similar to the common 1/13/16 or 0/13/17 pages people run on live. Additionally the bonus gold allowed me to buy more flavorful items like [[iceborn gauntlet]] and [[Sunfire cape]]. Taric's new scalings are pretty ridiculous. Shatter still does less damage, but now the armor shred is even higher, and his heal was doing nearly 500 health on ally casts with all the health I had. Also, Face of the Mountain (A new gold generating item) is broken as hell. Health+CDR, active takes 20% of your health and gives it as a shield to an ally, after 4 seconds they explode, doing that amount of health in damage to everything around them. Pretty baller. not to mention it now generates gold for allies if you last hit a creep, meaning it's now ok for supports to steal CS from time to time. :3 So MOBAFire, go on, talk about your favorite supports and how you'll be playing them this season![/quote]

[quote=-NA- Veng Lmfao]Well Lulu and Janna are my 2 favorite supports atm, so I'm eager to see how the new changes will fan out for them. But yes, Taric does look like he'll be a key support in the upcoming season.[/quote]

[quote=sirell]Having played kill-lane supports to death (no pun intended), I want to pick up [[fiddlesticks]] and [[elise]], but if [[taric]] makes a resurgence, I would love to pick him up again (he sat in my top 3 most played ranked champions for 90% of the season purely on pre-rework games alone). The simple undodgeable stun has always been one of my favourite things about him as a support.[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm][quote=sirell] Having played kill-lane supports to death (no pun intended), I want to pick up [[fiddlesticks]] and [[elise]], but if [[taric]] makes a resurgence, I would love to pick him up again (he sat in my top 3 most played ranked champions for 90% of the season purely on pre-rework games alone). The simple undodgeable stun has always been one of my favourite things about him as a support. [/quote] The stun is even better now with his new passive. If you auto after every spell cast, Stun auto, Shatter Auto, heal auto, That's 6 seconds off the cooldown. With CDR I think the availability taric will have on [[Dazzle]] is gonna be insane. OF COURSE, this is still not very useful in lane, as no one will just let you chain that combo like that. It's exceedingly useful in team fights though.[/quote]

[quote=jhoijhoi]I recently picked up Soraka again and I'm looking forward to how the new masteries, runes, trinkets and items will work with her.[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm][quote=jhoijhoi] I recently picked up Soraka again and I'm looking forward to how the new masteries, runes, trinkets and items will work with her. [/quote] Did you see her fancy kit changes? ^^[/quote]

[quote=NicknameMy]Hmm, the thing is, [[taric]] now no longer needs to be jungled in order to get the gold he needs for his super effective builds, so as a support, he definitly gained way more viability. And yeah, Face of the Mountain/Martyr's Call/(Whatever the next name is riot releases) is very strong. Not only that, also the support masteries are way better than in S3. Did you know that ADC's also get the T1 of Face of the Mountain to make it easier for them to farm and give the support bonus gold aswell. Many people on PBE also talk about support Mundo simply because of Face of the Mountain.[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm]Yea, carry and support both getting that shield thing seems pretty effective. I could see that being the new meta, not to mention the execution of minions helps to push better. :p Support Mundo eh?... idk about that. I was thinking jarvan or Malphite being a thing.[/quote]

[quote=NicknameMy]Jarvan can be played as anything anyway, similar to Lee Sin. Malphite could be interesting, as he currently misses a real viability spot. Of course, people play him top, but this isn't that effective anymore. And the new jungle, well, nothing for him, really...[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm]I still feel like Alistar will make a resurgence too. Easily obtainable mobility boots and tank items? yes please roaming murder cow.[/quote]