I played a normal game tonight that served as a painful reminder of just how toxic support currently is to League of Legends. I’ll spare you the long and drawn out replay and just say that my opponents had a healer and my team did not. Actually, scratch that. The things the healer allowed them to do were so utterly ridiculous that I need to explain.

My team was losing the early game badly, but with some farm and a little map control we were able to regain our footing. We took baron twice, knocked down two inhibitors and I thought we had sealed the game. Not so. As we went to push the third lane, three of my teammates and I got caught in a well placed Orianna ult/Veigar cage combo. I made it out alive but three of my teammates died. The enemy team had five up, all chasing down Fiddle. There was no chance I could stop them so I tried to quickly backdoor bottom lane. I got the turret down in a hurry and moved on to the inhibitor. Pantheon was able to bring me down from the 25 percent HP I had survived with. Despite the fact that we had two lanes down, the enemy team of Tristana, Veigar, Soraka, and a very low Orianna were able to soak wave after wave of turret fire and super minion aggro, tearing down a lane turret, two nexus turrets and finally my nexus.

It sucked, and they wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support. I know Riot has said support is going to get nerfed/changed, but I think we can take the Kayle remake and use it as a barometer for the change we’re likely to support over the next 3 months.

Originally, the Kayle changes were supposed to be a serious remake, altering the way that she performs healing and shielding significantly. What we got in the end was a passive remake and some number tweaks. Though she does seem to deal damage a bit better than before, she certainly isn’t in a great position. She heals decently as ever, though, and her ultimate can still be incredibly frustrating to play against. In short, Riot decided to leave her role virtually unchanged, a role that contains some of the most problematic elements in the game.

I think we’re going to see the same thing happen with the other support characters. Riot has agreed that healing is bad for the game, but I have yet to see even a suggested solution to the problem. Chances are, if Riot is going to do anything significant to healing it will happen to all the targeted healing in the game in one patch. Remaking one champion at a time doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves the other healers up the viability list. Unfortunately, I don’t think Riot can afford to significantly change the way support works. Tournament players are too used to it, and for the time being, tournament play is the most exciting thing happening in the LoL community.

What’s more likely is that we’ll see a long string of number adjustments for the support characters in game, reducing heals and increasing the resistance buffs granted by their spells. Reducing the duration of shields and increasing mana costs. Until the launch of Season Two, I think support is going to stay as it is – frustrating the hell out of blind pick players and encouraging the passive tournament play that pretty much defines high tier these days.

If you’ve been on the forums over the weekend you’ve probably noticed the pile of threads about the Kayle “remake.” I use quotation marks because, c’mon, a new passive and some late game nerfs and we’re calling it a remake? This is what took six months? The majority of the community seems as unexcited as I am. I think there are a couple reasons.

First, there is precious little to get excited about in the game right now. Everyone is waiting on Season 2 or waiting on Magma Chamber news, or waiting for something that changes gameplay in a significant way. The Kayle remake was at least something to get pumped up about in the interim. Even if it went well, though, it would just pull another champion into viability, which really doesn’t do a whole lot for the game’s longevity.

I think the biggest reason people are upset with the remake is that it’s going to be very easy to make Kayle either under or overpowered but nearly impossible to balance her. The fact that she can heal, speed boost, and make herself invulnerable means her carry potential better be in the toilet, but Riot is trying to give her something like 75 percent carry, 75 percent support power. While I think the idea of condensing two roles onto one champion is a good one, I’m not sure the game supports the change, at least not in its current state.

Supports are already a huge balance problem. Giving a support some carry power doesn’t resolve the issue, it makes things worse. Take away too much of Kayle’s damage, though, and she becomes horrendously unfun. She’s a terrible early game farmer as it is, which seems to point her toward support, but she doesn’t have the skills to truly support a team as needed.

I think Riot would have done well to scrap her kit entirely, think about what they really liked about the kit and kept it, and then built a champion from there. Is a targeted nuke/slow really an exciting ability? No – scrap it. Same for her ranged skill and her passive, old or new. Now you’ve got a champion with a heal/speed boost and a potent shield. It’s a nice setup for teamfighting, but how do you make her enjoyable in lane? Working with her existing kit makes for a really lackluster buff to an already underplayed champion.

Looks like the Kayle remake is finally set to go live with the next patch. Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel. I was a little disappointed at first because they aren’t changing much, but I also think Kayle has a kind of cool kit. She’s an odd champion for sure, and the update doesn’t make her any less odd.

Her passive has been remade into an armor/MR shred, which should be better than her current passive. She’s getting some mana cost buffs and base damage buffs to compensate for some of her scaling, which also should be a good thing. My biggest frustration/misunderstanding with Kayle is why she can build Righteous Fury into an “always up” skill. Just make her ranged and balance her around that. It isn’t interesting in any way that she can only sometimes be ranged from levels 1-9. Give her range and give her some balance around that.

I’m curious to see how the remake will play out, though. Honestly, I think most of the spotlight was education about the way Kayle works. Most people don’t know when to use Intervention, which is a big part of what makes her strong. Now that they know, will we see Kayle in the support lane?

I’ve always respected Shurelia for her community presence. She’s highly active in the forums and willing to admit when the community has offered up suggestions the Riot staff hasn’t considered. She’s started a thread in the General Discussion forums answering questions that typically get posted after a patch (why is so-and-so OP now, wtf are these changes, are you kidding me Riot, etc.).

Among the most notable of her answers are that Pantheon is fine, it’s just that he does extremely well against unorganized teams. There is talk of making him into more of a Spear Shot champion over Heartseeker, but from the sound of the post Heartseeker would still remain strong. I can’t really disagree more here. I think Heartseeker does way to much damage and is entirely too hard to avoid. Yes, it makes Pantheon vulnerable, but the only way to get away from it is Cleanse/sidestep or Flash. Other than that, you’re getting hit for half your health or more. It’s infuriating to lane against if you don’t have a hard stun or a silence, and even then it can be easy to stun too soon or too late.

Malzahar is also having a new mechanic built into his ult called suppression. Suppression keeps you from doing anything, including casting summoner spells. Shurelia says it will no longer stun, but you can’t move, cast, attack, or use summoner abilities. Sounds like a stun to me. It also sounds really crappy. I know it’s not fun to see your ult cleansed but it’s also pretty lame to go from full to dead in one ability (see Pantheon…). Quicksilver Sash will be the only way to get out of the ult. The same mechanic is being considered for Warwick. If this goes live, I hope to god they remake Quicksilver. It’s a decent item, but it’s way too expensive to justify in most situations for what it provides. The people who really need the item will be carries, who already have trouble scaling if they don’t get a good early farm. They’ll have to do something to balance this thing.

Last, Kayle’s ult will likely be going to an even shorter cooldown, but with a shorter duration as well. The reasoning is that it’s easier to CC a target for three seconds versus five, which is true, but if a carry takes Cleanse and has Kayle it will still be infuriating to play against. I don’t buy that 3 seconds is an easy CC even if the target has Cleanse as Shurelia suggests.

The rest of her answers have much less significant impact on the game but would probably still be of interest to anyone who follows game balance closely.

For anyone who missed it, Kayle got a bit of an overhaul in this last patch that has made her much stronger, particularly once she’s acquired a few items. I was never a Kayle player and rarely a Kayle fan. She was usually useless until level 16, when, with some CD reduction, her ult would get down to a 36 second cooldown. Now, it’s an entirely different story.

The biggest change was made to her passive, which now reads as follows:

Holy Fervor (New Passive): 30% of Kayle’s attack damage is added to her ability power and 15% of Kayle’s ability power is added to her attack damage.

That is one kickass passive for a hybrid toon. The other major change was to Righteous fury, the bonus damage from which is now applied as magic damage (and scales with AP). Other than that she got some cooldown reductions, a few leveling tweaks, and better attack range on both her regular attacks and Righteous Fury.

On the whole, nothing big changed about Kayle, but the small changes were enough to pick her damage up to very competitive levels. I spent a bunch of time playing Kayle yesterday, mostly on Twisted Treeline, and I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t overbuffed. Early game she still struggles with mana regen, but by the time you have a Nashor’s, Kayle is a devastating force. The synergy between Reckoning and Righteous Fury tears anyone apart. I mean anyone. I was shredding a Singed with both Rod of Ages and a Rylai’s, all while healing myself or my team and waiting to hit Intervention to save someone’s ass.

For now, my Kayle build is a Nashor’s rush with Guinsoo’s after. I follow that with either an Aegis if I need survivability or a Trinity Force for some general goodness. At some point I’d like to try a more damage heavy build after the Guinsoo’s, but I’ve always need to get more health in the games I’ve played.

For a skill build, I take Reckoning at level 1, then one rank of Righteous Fury. After that I alternate between Reckoning and Divine Blessing, taking my ult when I can. At level two you can hand out a surprising amount of damage with just a Reckoning -> Fury combo. Righteous Fury also deals bonus damage to towers, so once you have your Nashor’s you should be trying to push since you can really tear into some buildings.

As Slygoat said on the forums, I think Intervention needs to be reworked. Even with the increased cooldown (up to 90 seconds at all ranks), it’s virtually always up for teamfights, the cast range is enormous, and it essentially nullifies what was probably many of your opponent’s best skills.