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Riot is giving LoL supports massive buffs by boosting their starting items

Support mains, rejoice.

Mateusz Miter

Published: Sep 27, 2023 02:23 am

With League of Legends Patch 13.19 hitting the live servers on Sept. 27, the developers are slowly but surely preparing for the preseason. Over the past 24 hours, Riot Games has added a bunch of changes to PBE, including massive buffs to support starting items.

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The changes were posted by Spideraxe on Sept. 26, and they feature buffs to Spellthief’s Edge, Spectral Sickle, Steel Shoulderguards, and Relic Shield. Each of these starting items will have its health increased significantly, and its AD or AP bumped up as well.

Support item changes:
– Spellthief's HP increased from 10 to 25
– Spellthief's AP increased from 8 to 10
– Sickle HP increased from 10 to 25
– Sickle AD increased from 5 to 6
– Shoulderguard HP increased from 30 to 50
– Shoulderguard AD increased from 3 to 4 pic.twitter.com/Hl2V4CoMhC
— Spideraxe (@Spideraxe30) September 27, 2023

On their own, these changes should shift the bot lane dynamic. But these aren’t the only changes coming to League ahead of the preseason. The developers are also looking to tweak Runes, champions, other starting items, and Dragons as well, according to Spideraxe.

It remains to be seen when these changes will drop to the liveservers. While a major shift to the meta in the preseason patch would make sense, some leakers, including Frank, claim these are scheduled to arrive with Patch 13.20. The update is expected to go live in two weeks, on Oct. 11.

Either way, with these changes to starting items, support champions should become more tanky and also have more opportunities to poke in the laning phase. With increased AD and AP, champions like Lulu or Karma will be a pain in the neck to play against.

Luckily for AD carries, Riot is also looking to buff Doran’s Blade and other basic starting items. This means marksmen will also have some have power in the early stages of the game.

For now, we have to wait for Riot’s confirmation, which should arrive sometime in the middle of next week.

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Author

Mateusz Miter

Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.