Piggback Support - Support Champions that are only Helpful when Team is Winning

Certain champions appear to do well only when the team is already winning. This is especially noticeable for the support class. Often times, when your team is down one or two levels across the board, the support champion just couldn't do anything to bring back the game. Whereas other times, the support can make one or two decisive plays to capitalize on enemy's mistake, and turn the game around for the team.

Certain piggyback supports that only appear useful when the team is already ahead include:

Bard - feels useless in teamfights or as initiator
Ivern - feels useless in teamfights or as initiator
Rakan - has an AoE knockup, though dependent on position of ally player, which means only useful when chasing a fleeing enemy
Rell - almost never see this support, maybe underpowered?

Contrast this with heavy hitters, effective initiators, or champions with high crowd control and relatively low cooldowns like:

Taric - AoE stun and ally heals are spammable in teamfights, when you can melee an enemy champion
Brand - High nuke damage guarantees the enemy will think twice before engaging your ally
Malphite - Effective initation using ultimate guarantees a capture or kill for the team
Sion - AoE crowd control using Q, which is almost like a spammable ultimate ability in teamfights
Soraka - rapid heals and AoE silence makes sure your AD carry stays alive, even when engaged by two enemies at one time

So I'm guessing Nami would fit in category 1 or 2?

Dunno if this counts, but I think Janna is one of the worst supports in low elo. She can make a good player great, but she can't do anything with bad teammates.

Tanks are useless if opponents are fed

generalguy64 posted...

Dunno if this counts, but I think Janna is one of the worst supports in low elo. She can make a good player great, but she can't do anything with bad teammates.

She offers some of the best peel in the game though, while I agree if your teammates are literally just going to stand still, you're in for a bad time, but if they have even the slightest idea of what kiting is, you can make it extremely easy for them to do even if they're bad at it

I would argue against Sion and Malphite. There is a reason they are bad supports (46% wr for Malph and Sion doesn't even track); they need the income from tank items fast and without the stats are squishy and have very little utility or CC outside their ults. Sion's Q is not hitting anyone unless you sit in a bush or someone else already CC'd someone.

If you want a tank with a little more agency and damage that is Maokai or Galio both have reliable hard CC outside of their ults (unlike Sion and Malphite) as well as who are doing well in support right now.

I would say the mage supports probably have the most solo agency even if handicapped compared to their mid role. Zyra, Brand, Vel'Koz, heck even Anivia now. They can build Mandate or one of the Mage Mythics and take kills as necessary if needed. They also have CC to initiate fights or catch people out.

lol rell is not underpowered, one of the highest winrates for supp. banned often as well

my disappointment is she not thicc enough like wtf riot

bard is bad because he has a very high skill cap, there is a night and day difference between a good and bad bard

ChronoRogue posted...

I would argue against Sion and Malphite. There is a reason they are bad supports (46% wr for Malph and Sion doesn't even track); they need the income from tank items fast and without the stats are squishy and have very little utility or CC outside their ults. Sion's Q is not hitting anyone unless you sit in a bush or someone else already CC'd someone.

If you want a tank with a little more agency and damage that is Maokai or Galio both have reliable hard CC outside of their ults (unlike Sion and Malphite) as well as who are doing well in support right now.

I would say the mage supports probably have the most solo agency even if handicapped compared to their mid role. Zyra, Brand, Vel'Koz, heck even Anivia now. They can build Mandate or one of the Mage Mythics and take kills as necessary if needed. They also have CC to initiate fights or catch people out.

For Malphite and Sion, you really need to know when to attack or initiate.

if you are the player who would prefer to stand behind your AD carry, and wait for the enemy to initiate or attack, then Galio or Maokai might work. However, oftentimes Maokai and Galio are the only members left alive on the team, which means they are mostly ignored by the enemy in teamfights, unlike Sion or Malphite, which the enemy team wants to take out as quickly as possible.

I don't think any support is even close to being useless from behind. Supports champions are often the strongest part of a team when the team is behind, they often have the tools to make fights winnable when their teams can't do anything (blitzcrank is the best exemple).

Sure supports are harder to play from behind, but if you compare to champions that are bad when behind in other roles they are so good when behind that i don't think we can say any of them is bad when behind.

That being said, the support that are the worst when behind are easily sona and support senna as they are squishy as hell and requires stacks in order to be really effective in the case of senna.

bruh rakan is ridiculous unless your team is straight up running it down.

Rell is kinda awkward to fit into comps due to W being countered by everything. Heals forever, tho.

the only one that I'd argue is -bad- when his team isn't winning and he's behind is Pyke, since you won't get the sick reset chain, but even then he's got a bunch of CC and map pressure.

That and Yuumi, by design. Yuumi gets it worse than most 'cos if there's nobody powerful to sit on you're like half a champion. An annoying half, but still half.
~

Playing from behind as any tank support that isn't Alistar is an exercise in frustration but peel/counter-engage is always useful (alistar avoids this by always being too tanky to instant-kill provided he has ult, it's still frustrating but at least you can sorta tank)