There are a myriad of quality-of-life changes coming to League of Legends, in an effort to make the support role more rewarding to play.
The Midseason update is almost upon us, and one of its biggest goals is to make League’s support role feel more impactful and important to the flow of the game. Riot has already revealed plans to rework core support items to make them more engaging and fun to master, as well as plans to update many support champions’ basic attacks. This upcoming list of changes is the next step in the process of making support’s lives better.
Related: Support Auto Attack changes are coming in Patch 7.9
Crowd Control Name Display
Whether it be Karma’s stun, Lulu’s polymorph, Braum’s knock-up, or Thresh’s oh-so-satisfying hook, a support’s job is often to disrupt enemies in order to help our carries stay alive. The thing is though, most CC doesn’t feel great to land, other than watching enemies freeze in place or bounce around.
Assassins, ADCs, and mages can watch health bars disappear as they sling abilities and attacks, but what do supports have to make them feel warm and fuzzy? Nothing. That’s why Riot is going to be pushing out display names for crowd control. In Riot’s forum post, “Charmed” was the only example shown, but expect a big, bright “Stunned” to pop up above the health bar when you hit your Braum passive. This will make landing the CC feel more rewarding in the moment, not to mention it will be much easier to figure out who you should focus in a team-fight. We’re hoping that Thresh’s Q will say “Hooked” above enemies’ heads when they’re hit, so you can finally change your Summoner name to “On phonics.”
End-of-Game Stats
Farm count, damage dealt, gold obtained—none of those are details that a support player would really care to read about themselves. Instead, they’ll soon be able to go over stats that more accurately reflect their own performance as the white knights of League.
These four new options will let supports track their own progress as they improve at the game. It’s certainly a good start, but it would be great if there were even more end-of-game stats. Luckily, Riot stated in the announcement that there are plans to implement more later on.
Item Feedback
If you’ve ever had trouble deciding between two items to buy as a support in League, this one’s going to help you out. Active items like Redemption and Locket of the Iron Solari will track your stats right there in the item’s panel. If you’re stuck between buying a Redemption and an Ardent Sensor, if your best heal with the Redemption is low, maybe focus on being the Ardent Sensor until you’ve had time to practice with Redemption a little more.
Support mains everywhere should feel really good about these little changes, because, let’s face it, we’re underappreciated even if we are the real carries. More importantly, however, there are a scary amount of players that think of support as a lesser role—so much so that they dodge games where they’re auto-filled into the position. Changes like these might make the role itself a little more appealing.
