League of Legends is being designed and balanced around the notion of supports being the secondary junglers. If you exclude your average Brand support enjoyers, the role is focused on Impacting the map and creating advantages alongside the rest of the team. In this preseason, some new items and vision control systems, make the support meta even more crucial. 

Preseason support meta 

Communication has always been important in MOBA games, but nothing relies more on it than the bot lane. The player base has been vocal about the need for a voice chat feature in League of Legends, but Riot has brushed it away. Even though Valorant manages to implement it successfully, the most League players got was a reworked ping wheel.

Support changes in Preseason 13

The new and improved ping wheel includes four new commands which help you signal your teammates to: Push, All-In, Hold, and most notably Bait. These run clockwise in conjunction with the old four that represent: Danger, On My Way, Assist Me, and Enemy Missing. While they might take some time to get used to, they should improve communication in the current meta, especially about wave states. 

Another new addition in this preseason is the vision ping wheel, which can help you signal that the area is cleared of wards or that you need help clearing it. On top of this, you also get a timer for how long the ally ward will last, helping you plan vision control in advance. If you spot a ward and ping the area with a vision ping, you and your teammates will get a timer on how long the discovered ward will last. 

While all of these are great changes that improve the health of the game and the meta, the new tank Mythic items might just ruin that. Even though they are expensive for a role that doesn’t generate a lot of gold, some of them are hard to pass up. Radiant Virtue is the most exciting item we have seen in a long time, and might just alter how the support role functions. Meta supports during this preseason like: Blitzcrank, Leona, Nautilus and Alistar among others, can swing fights in their favor with this item. 

Best support champions in preseason 13

With bot laners falling off in terms of impact, you would think that supports would take a step back as well. But the truth is, that most of the bot lane has stayed on the same trajectory because they received the fewest changes. Tank supports are finally somewhat viable after a 6-month span with enchanters running the show. But mage supports and enchanters still get the job done, with a few notable exceptions.  

Nami

Win rate, pick rate, pro play, solo queue. Whichever statistic you look at, Nami is the best support in the game. The interaction on her E ability with Electrocute might have been patched out, but she is still powerful without it. Lucian became the best bot laner in the game for half a year solely because of Nami. The main thing that separates her from other enchanters in this preseason, is her versatility.

Maybe she doesn’t offer as much sustain as a Soraka, Yuumi or Sona would, but she makes up for it in other areas. Her ultimate ability is a great way to start and stop fights, which is crucial to her dominating every lane in this meta. Layer her Q ability on top of it and you have crowd control with a duration not many targets can survive. And mainly, her E ability empowers all damage sources. Combined with her mythic item, Imperial Mandate which activates on the slow, and her ability to boost damage output is rarely matched. Nami does a little bit of everything and she is one of the best at some things, making her versatile and able to dominate every lane for easy wins in ranked.  

Blitzcrank

Blitzcrank might be one of the oldest champions in the game, but he is the best example of previous champion design. While new champions have three paragraphs worth of ability descriptions, Blitzcrank just does his thing. But in order to keep him fresh in an ever-changing game, Riot Games have created a terror in the bot lane and this preseason support meta.  The buffs Blitzcrank received a few patches ago to help him become a jungler made him a better champion overall.

Now he is the same threat to create opportunities with his hook, but with a lot more damage. Especially after he reaches level six and can use his ultimate ability. He has always performed the best against current meta supports since one hook equals a kill. But with his increased numbers and damage output, he’s been even better. And this was before preseason rolled around and he got some new toys to play with.

 For the most part, Blitzcrank’s build in the support role has stayed the same, but the new Mythic items are making some noise. Namely, in the 2,5% of games Blitzcrank support was picked, the players built the new item called Radiant Virtue as their Mythic item. His synergy with this item’s passive has resulted in a 57% win rate in those games, albeit on a small sample size. Blitzcrank was one of the best supports in the game without it, but now he’s even more over the top. Make sure to abuse him for some easy wins this preseason. 

Notable mentions: Renata Glasc 

Similarly to Seraphine, Renata is turning out to be an omnipresent support pick in this game. It might just be due to the game-changing ultimate abilities they possess, but Renata is much more than that. Making your enemies turn on each other is something we haven’t seen in League, but the value of it is the duration. Once enemies are hit by Renata’s ultimate ability, they basically lose control over their character for the duration. 

In theory, it might not sound like much, but crowd-controlling the entire enemy team for more than 2 seconds works great in practice. She is one of the best skirmishers in lane and this meta, due to her Bailout and Handshake. In total, Renata has one of the strongest kits in the game, and mastering her would make your climb much easier during this preseason, especially in the support role. 

Header: Riot Games