New and returning items have completely overhauled existing strategies in League of Legends for the 2024 season, but a rise in a frustrating playstyle may prove there’s still a fair bit of balancing to do as the season gets underway.
League of Legends players have noted a significant rise in a double support item meta as of the second week of Patch 14.1, creating strategies around enchanters that make them nearly unkillable—all while turning them into some of the most impactful champions in any team composition. This is a new take on a strategy that had been seemingly removed from the game early last year, where the sheer amount of sustain can funnel leads into one or two carries.
As part of a massive renovation to the existing item system, which included the removal of the controversial Mythic items, Riot Games reworked the existing starting support items into a single support item known as World Atlas. This item functions as a combination of the previous support items, where players would earn gold for themselves and their nearby ally when charges were available for dealing damage to enemy champions and structures or executing low-health minions.
Once players have accumulated enough gold through proccing World Atlas, they receive a choice of item they’d like to upgrade into—ranging from the speed-boosting Trailblazer to the sheer damage provided by Bloodsong—allowing support players to get more use out of their primary item slot while keeping the ability to place multiple wards. Yet it’s the power of these new support items that has once more given way to the rise of support items in other roles, particularly in double-enchanter bot lanes with Seraphine and even with some new combinations involving Nilah.
Riot had to step in a few times over the past several years to address unhealthy strategies involving support items in a similar manner, most notably with the emergence of Smite Janna top that prioritized gold deficits to earn objective bounties. In the time since then, players were penalized for CS’ing with support items with less gold upon excessive minion kills—including an increased gold penalty for the first five minutes of the game, which ultimately removed the strategy almost entirely.
Various pro players and streamers have voiced their frustrations regarding the movement of support items from outside of the support role. In a recent stream, Tyler1 remained adamant that a double-support bot lane like Seraphine/Sona or Sona/Soraka is “broken,” as not only is the sustain between the two champions difficult to counter without hard engage or crowd control but the two champions with the item share nearly 10 wards between them that can be placed at any time simply for completing their support item.
Another strategy abusing support items that has sparked conversation across social media involves Nilah with an enchanter/healing support like Senna or Soraka, coordinating last-hitting minions to ensure that Nilah is not falling victim to the support item gold deficit. Since Nilah already has innate experience sharing and healing, she doesn’t have to worry too much about the stats lost with World Atlas, ultimately upgrading it to Bloodsong to grant her bonus damage and the ability to ward more often.
Realistically, mid laners and top laners could also start World Atlas and focus primarily on roaming and ganking to avoid the gold penalty, though it would come at the cost of nearly always giving up the laning phase when—with the current state of burst damage and snowballing—this may be the most important time to gain a lead.
For now, though, the strategy seems to be primarily impacting the bot lane meta, yet it remains unclear if Riot will acknowledge the niche playstyle as problematic as it has before. Should a nerf be incoming for support items, either as a whole or directly targeting this playstyle, it should be announced with the Patch 14.2 preview, which is expected to be released either tonight or tomorrow.
