Introduction
With 14.10 and split 2 around the corner, here's what you need to know for support!
Some QoL changes to make it target better. Heal will probably be the summoner spell of choice for most supports especially enchanters.
Boots
Boots of Swiftness reworked to give movement speed on Autos, making it no longer a choice for most supports. It’s probably alright to go this on Senna and MAYBE ashe but ashe probably prefers lucidity still.
Items
So ADC items are the big focal point for this patch, with a lot of them getting changes or significant buffs. What does this mean for supports? We will probably be on champions that enable ADCs to carry such as enchanters.
Knights vow is getting a nerf. It no longer redirects double when the ally is below 30% health, and instead grants some HP regen ( a stat which i think is negligible outside of lane ) . This nerf makes sense since Knight’s vow has been one of the highest winrate items in the game for awhile now, to the point where they were buying 2 every game in competitive games worldwide. The item will probably still be good especially in the context of ADCs getting buffed.
Runes
Font of life is reworked. Now impairing movement heals you and the lowest health ally for 10-50 linear, lowered for ranged champions. This also has an innate cooldown of 20 seconds. The heal number is just too low to justify the cooldown, so this rune for now is a lot worse.
Cash back - this is a new rune on inspiration tree row 1 that gives you 6% gold back when you purchase legendary items. For an item that costs 2200, that’s 132 gold back. So you would need 3 legendary item completions to outvalue magical footwear. It’s honestly not a bad rune, but it’s hard to see myself taking this when it’s competing with hexflash which opens up creative options and magical footwear in the same row.
Time Warp tonic no longer gives ms and no longer works on biscuits, and instead has immediate potion health restore go from 30 to 40%. I think this is a big nerf and is not even worth a consideration anymore. I think a big portion of baiting people with this rune was the extra MS it provided alongside the burst healing at low hp from popping the biscuit.
Relentless hunter 0 MS at 0 stacks instead of 5 MS. A lot of supports that couldn’t utilize other runes went into domination purely for relentless hunter, but this nerf is quite hefty. I personally don’t see myself taking this rune anymore when better generic options exist in the inspiration tree like Cosmic insight.
Legend Haste replacing Legend Tenacity. It’s a bit hard for supports to stack legend runes since we don’t farm as many minions,so it’s unlikely we take this.
Jack of All Trades is a new rune in row 3 of inspiration that gives you ability haste and adaptive force depending on how many unique stats you have from items. It’s competing for a slot with Cosmic insight which is really strong for supports, so I don’t think it’ll be worth it to go. But if it does end up being good, the support item gives 3 unique stats HP health regen and mana regen. Merc treads gives another 3 with mr ms and tenacity. But it’s pretty hard to get 10 which is the cap.
Systems
Minion xp split gives slightly more XP, meaning more experience for bot lane! This means we won’t be as underleveled compared to solo laners which is a big buff!
Conclusion
Overall 14.10 is a big buff to bot lane. I’m predicting enchanter + hypercarry to be the strongest combination going into split 2, with barrier on ADC and heal on Enchanter. ADC has less reason to take ghost after it got nerfed + lethal tempo removed. Big winners for support on this patch are definitely Sona, Milio, and Nami, since they have their itemizations buffed across the board and the AD meta will suit them. Items to be more heavily considered in builds are Ardent Censer, Helia earlier and Dawncore later. In terms of specific build paths, I will let you guys know after I play the patch next week. ALSO I FORGOT TO MENTION SENNA! She should be good with the new AD items.