Rise of the AD...S? Attack Damage Support!

In a world overrun with gold per 10 runes and items, one support build dares to be different.

As an almost exclusive support player, I often look at what other players in my position have been doing, and I wonder why they are doing those things. The first thing I ever questioned about how high level support players were playing was their choice of building Gold Per 10 very extensively. I almost immediately started doing the math and figuring out what the pros and cons of these sorts of builds were. I was surprised with what I figured out once I stopped following the cookie cutter rune pages and started trying out things that fit my play style rather than everyone else’s.

Who builds GP10?
Almost every support player in the game opts for a gold per 10 second build. I challenge you to try and find a decent number of supports who don't use some form of Gold Per 10 in their runepage.

This usage of GP10 has started in the pro scene and leaks its way down into low elo play. Bronze support players blindly socket these gp10 Quints without ever really considering other options, or calculating just what those Quints are doing for them, simply because their friends who watch the pros told them to.

Why do they build GP10?
The GP10 plague, as I’ve come to coin it, has been around for some time.  It stems from the not too distant past Meta of “farm farm farm farm farm”.  In the past, extremely long games weren’t only possible, but likely. At the time, support players saw how long these games were running and decided that they would cash in on some free gold with these GP10 builds. Which of course, was a very viable option at the time, but with a push heavy meta charging its way into NA, we need to reassess these old ideas.

What do we build instead?
That is the question!

While there are many options (flat health, armor, move speed, etc) there is one stat that perfectly fits the Meta that’s undoubtedly making its way into our competitive scene.

Attack Damage. Yes, Attack Damage.

Wait, what?
With the release of thresh we have actually had a pretty large increase in people trying out new things on support champions, one of these things is attack damage. For Thresh specifically, the attack damage scales wonderfully with the passive auto attack damage from his E and this gives him an insane amount of poke.

While this works best on Thresh, this idea can be adopted to many different support champions. Leona for example. Leona is a support that has ample opportunities to auto attack, every time she goes in for a stun, she gets at least one free auto attack off after the stun, and probably more if you’re going all in, which you’ll probably be doing if you’re following this sort of aggressive build. 

Suggested support champions to try AD runes on:

Thresh	Leona	Nami	Lulu	Even Kennen!

But what’s the point?
The point of doing something like building AD quints and reds, and possibly dumping some mastery points into the offense tree, is to get the maximum amount of poke out of the support. In the new meta it’s more important to out-poke your lane than it is to out-wait them.

You want to force your opponent out of lane and then push their tower to get out of laning phase and on to roaming and capturing objectives, like forcing an early dragon. With their lane gone, due to your outstanding poke, you have denied the other team map control and have set their lane way back in gold and exp, maybe even forcing their ADC to take some of their jungler’s jungle creeps. As an added bonus, your auto attacks will actually help with tower pushing.

But, how will I afford my wards?
The idea here is that you will be getting more assists rather than watching your ADC farm and passively collecting gold with GP10.
Supports also have extremely cheap builds. Recently they have been reduced to ward bots. So, it’s not justifiable to waste rune spots on something such as Gold per 10 runes.

Worth of a Gold per 10 build:
3 gp/10 quints	= 3 Gold per 10 seconds
9 gp/10 seals	= 2.25 Gold per 10 seconds
	= 5.25 Gold per 10 seconds
	= 31.5 Gold per minute.
	= 315 gold per 10 minutes.
	= 945 gold per 30 minutes.

 

That’s it! A lousy 945 gold after waiting for 30 minutes. That’s almost the entire game, and in some cases the game would have been over a long time ago.

Many supports also only get the quints and go for armor on their seals. Which would be a sad 540 gold in the same amount of time. It’s just more profitable to push objectives and obtain assists.

I think I’m starting to get it.
Good!

This idea of a support that can poke effectively not only has strategic advantage but it also promotes aggressive game play, which is something the bottom lane has needed for some time now.

Go out and try some Attack damage runes on your Thresh today and see how it will make you change your mind on using those boring GP10 choices. To further this idea I urge support Thresh to try building a Zeke’s Herald or other non-traditional items that have a lot of hidden potential, and don’t be afraid to reallocate some of those mastery points over into the offensive tree. I’m bound to write again, but more extensively, about other options for maximizing your support’s damage while still being able to do all the things your ADC has come to love you for. (Ward ward ward ward)