Patch Notes 3.14

"I for one welcome our new AP support overlords."

I'm very excited to see who rises to the top this preseason. Patch should be tonight!

 

Holy shit this is a patch im excited for!! The new support items and buffs to nami are great and the new ward update such as the visible pinkward is going to add some crazy gameplay with jungling and dragon/baron fights. Finally support is going to become a more playable role with less rage about warding because of the introduction of trinkets.

Overall i am creaming my pants

 

Wooo so excited!

 

I'm probably not skilled enough at league for these updates to really have a noticeable effect for me, but I read through the patch notes and it all looks like good stuff. Support updates especially/slight vayne nerf ;p

 

sorry but people are a bit dumb if they think supports got buffed in this patch...
i will just post a few examples:


Janna needs 200ap to get her old zephyr movement speed buff back.
Janna needs ~140ap to get her old slow value back on zephyr.
Lulu needs 167ap to let pix do the same damage as before.
Sona needs 100ap to get the same movement speed bonus on celerity.
Soraka got the passive they removed from Mikael's Crucible which was deemed as choosing between 2 bads, either healing more when a target is lower health, or healing less when he's at higher health.
Soraka needs 600ap to shred the same magic resist as she did before.
Soraka's ally needs to be at >33% life or less to heal just as much with Astral blessing.
Soraka's allies need to be at >58% life (Not considering AP scaling) to have the same amount healed from her wish.

also remember all nerfs they gave on ap ratios /base damages to supports in this patch

 

yah, supports got wrecked this patch. hopefully the new gold buffs balance those nerfs out. I'm mostly worried about supports like annie/zyra/fid who *weren't* nerfed

 

No more Janna for me it seems.

 

You should realize that the individual changes on the champions aren't why supports were buffed. They're buffed due to the increased gold income and item paths that are now available so i'm not particularly sure why you're looking purely at the changes of each champion to support your opinion as to why supports were not nerfed.

Overall many of the supports had their early game nerfed but their late game scaling buffed. Taking your 3rd point for example; lulu will be able to get 167 AP EXTREMELY easily with the new items and gold income.

On a side note:

You seem to be a bit confused about the Soraka changes. The changes being made to her will make her much more potent and are actually quite a large buff. Your points do not take into consideration ALL of the changes made to her.

1) First of all, her base stats were significantly improved which is always a good thing.
2) Her heals were arguably buffed as they heal for significantly more if your target(s) are at low HP which adds to the global assistance she has as well as turn around potential. While the base stats are lower i'd consider this more of a neutral ground as opposed to a buff/nerf.
3) Also introduced an armor buff to Astral Blessing
4) A BIG thing about the soraka changes is that her Q reduces the cooldown of Astral Blessing. This will increase her overall healing ability.

In general I definitely feel like they're trying to change soraka's play style to more of a tankish support that would be able to get a little bit farther into fights/trades.

Hopefully you take the time to read this and understand why supports were "buffed."

Edited:

While some of the support were nerfed (namely Janna), other supports were buffed (Soraka/Taric). These stat changes among roles happen all the time so no particular surprise. If you do the math for the gold buffs it's actually a substantial increase in income.

 

167 extremely easy? how? you really think you will get past 150 ap in 20mins with support lulu? well if you rush ap, yes you do. and with 167 you get the SAME as it is now...
I understand that soraka got huge buffs on that healing cd reduction and stuff but overall this pathc was awfull for support imo

 

If you continue playing an extremely passive Soraka you'll obviously be less effective. Riot is looking to change the way Soraka is played which is a very good move on their part.

Im not sure when you'd be hitting level 17 by 20 minutes. I think if that happens you already won. Regardless, they're changing their focus from damage to utility. I'm just arguing the point that although they obviously reduced the base damage its still comparable.

Supports will be getting easily 150% of the gold they're getting currently so you can definitely expect some heavy AP.

Thanks for actually taking into consideration what i've said. Some people just give a big middle finger to the other person when they have opposing views

 

League is something i always like to discuss with people, specially when they're not "THIS IS SO OP, UR NOOB"

 

AP supports aren't really what they sound like; you build AP but you have no damage at all. The utility scales only on hardcore support champs, not AP mages.

 

I main Sona and I think this updates are really good. Yes they did nerf her damage and heal but made her more AP which makes her more squissy for me. I still think it's a buff since before this I used to go really tanky as Sona (with about 116-117 games and 83 wins or so).

Because of that I now will have to change a bit of my play style but I think it will be rewarding in the late game as her movement speed buff will be about 12% + 8% with 400 AP which makes her movement speed buff 6% better late game. Sona's slow will also benefit from this with 12% (0,04 AP scale) which will also be really good. The damage output that they enemy does will also be 6% less with 400 AP and if you go full AP you can get to about 1k AP (which wouldn't be the best choise IMO but you could) which would get you 15% less damage on their part with Diminuendo.

Her Hymn of Valor will be nerfed in damage but her powerchord will be buffed which almost makes up for it IMO. Her damage on ultimate wasn't there to do damage anyways really. Yes it's sad that they nerfed the ultimate AP scale but not too big of a deal.

I'm looking forward too test this out since as I'm writing this I'm still in school with such a lust too play some League of Legends!

 

For anyone who thinks supports got nerfed, have you noticed the New Support Items because these will give 10 gold EVERY 10 seconds for just attacking a minion. All of the additional items are making supports STRONGER, imagine not having to spend all your starting cash on wards, sounds fucking great to me. Although I understand what you mean, because they have effectively nerfed the damage on most of the supports, but in order to provide an overall stronger utility. Support = utility NOT damage.

 

Trinkets is the only feature which intrigues me.

Finally a way of warding as a team in Bronze, Silver and Gold..

 

I think that these updates suck for support supports as well as mage supports... it seems like they're forcing people to become mage supports to get on the same level.

The only one that I would consider a buff is Soraka, though I haven't done the calculations. I would usually build an Archangel on her and I would enemy e-cast all the time, so I think that the mana scaling is great for that use, and I love the armor bonus increase.

 

I feel bad for my blitzcrank
Everyone else got buffed besides blitz.

 

None of these are buffs in my eyes. Unless games go for 40+mins, supports got shafted. Even if games did reach 40+ mins, it would maybe still just break even in comparison to before.

 

You don't think Taric got buffed?

Edit: During the testing of these changes there were many occasions in which the support actually got more gold than the mid laner. Although I believe they did change this to be a little bit more balanced I think you're underestimating the increased gold income.

 

Nah, just played 2 games as support soraka and janna. Pretty much useless.