Season 8 Starter Items: Support Edition - Bran's Thoughts

So Now that I have had some time I want to revisit this thread. And I want to do something similar for the others. However it will take some time as testing the starters isn't the easiest thing with games needing to reach late game and some the correct premades or gods to measure their impact better.

What I have noticed is that the pick of a starter is mostly based on the early game as upgrading won;t always happen during a game.

So it was kinda to be expected that Sentinel's Gift would triumph and become the staple. and likely that it remains as it is still the cheapest option even after the price reduction of the other 2 starters. on top of it With the start having you take quite some damage the sustain from it is really great.

it;s upgrade has one clear winner and unless it gets nerfed harder, I don't expect people to pick up Sentinel's Boon that much. The sustain is nice but hardly impactful as most teamfights are without minions late game and the increased gold is not making a lot of difference. Better to just make your team extra tanky with Sentinel's Embrace.

As long as the other starters remain mostly unchanged I fear we won't see much play of them, sadly.

Now Benevolence kinda surprised me as I had thought to fall behind a lot more. While you do fall behind in gold in EXP it keeps up quite nicely. It also does pretty nicely if you're dying a lot or doing 'nothing' din the jungle because of the passive gain. The transferred 10% is barely noticeable to gain a small exp lead for your adc. the cost decrease was severely needed.

now it's upgrades are not to bad. Compassion felt a lot nicer even though it was a worse Sentinel's Embrace. With the changes. it might become a lot closer to compete with Sentinel's Embrace but sadly currently Sentinel's Gift prevents it.

animosty was kinda nuts if you could hit structures after that it felt kinda meh on the support side, haven;t tested it solo but might have been a lot better.

now War Flag felt really underperforming for me in conquest. the power is noticeable and early n the sustain, but come mid game and the only noticeable thing for me was the power. However in other game modes this becomes a slightly different story as the sustain can be quite annoying to deal with and turn into a snowball. Sadly the reason it suffers is how it stacks. It has nice stats if you reach full stacks but this is hard to make use of as minion waves are only 6 minions.

It's upgrades War Banner suffers even more because of game stage. The stats it provides in the passive is barely noticeable except for the healing and the MS. However it suffers as that requires killing minion waves so for the FG fights or between waves you have nothing.

Spartan Flag is IMO the better of the 2 as it will slightly impadct the fight even though the 10% increase feels underwhelming. the aura is huge so it does not suffer to much from the retreat regroup tactic as you can have this up during the whole fight.

curious what others think of the items now that you got to use them

Yeah just looking at the stats of the items I had certain expectations or guesses and was wrong on some of them.

Sentinel's Gift and Sentinel's Embrace are definitely the safe strong picks for Supps. War Flag is definitely a functional starter for teamfight modes, and needs strong early games to make it effective in Conq.

I don't have a handle on most effective for the Jungler starters, but it seems like people are having some success with all of them.

For Mid it's obviously been Conduit Gem and Archmage's Gem...buffing Tahuti at the same time turned early S8 into a burst meta, and am glad Archmage and Tahuti got nerfs.

For Solo it's been the Axe starter for the most part, and have heard Vampiric Shroud has worked for some of the magical solos.

For Carries, I think I drastically underestimated Gilded Arrow and had high hopes for Leather Cowl. Also expected Death's Toll to be a regular starter just for the safe sustain. I'm not sure how popular Death's toll is, though I've seen it used on the opposing team a reasonable amount. I definitely feel the lack of mana sustain in Cowl, and haven't even tried Toll yet, funny enough.

indeed starting War Flag is pretty team dependant but it is also easily countered by your opponent.

for supports the sustain from Sentinel's Gift is pretty big, especially as it is cheaper and provides them with more pots depending on what they started.

adcs in the opposing lane can also sustain quite well unless they grabbed Gilded Arrow, which I also underestimated when revealed. Apparently the gold gain has it do quite well,

The gold gain on Arrow is pretty crazy, especially in later portions of a match.

One thing to remember about War Flag is that it restores some health and mana to nearby teammates as well. Quite nice for teamfight modes, just having one person with it.

In ranked Joust, me and my friends have been running Khepri (War Flag, Talisman and Emperor's core items) with me playing Izanami and our other friend on Sol, Erlang or another warrior depending on the enemies comp.

It's nuts how you can shred objectives so easily and have so much pressure from your lane clear then using that clear pressure in combat with the attack and movement speed.

Yeah, I knew you were an awful person, Biggie, and you just confirmed it for me. Shame on you.

I'm not that bad, we only win like 70% of our games so it can't be that toxic right...

It sounds like you're trying to convince yourself XD

No comment.

I know bran I mentioned it in the official post.

Double bruiser joust just became worse, because of it.