Support Bacchus discussion.

So a few days ago i was watching jeff hindla playing bacchus. As a support this kinda got me in the mood to play him again. I had tried him out before and never really got as good results as i expected to get but after a second go round i have come to love him. The way he plays, he just puts on so much pressure and does it consistently over a large area, is amazing. With that being said im a little surprised that there hasnt been more if him being played. He has great damage in all his moves, an escape which is even better with odin being so valued in this meta, he has ok cc with his belch and a knock up which pairs nicely with awilix. The only downside ive really felt is that he seems to be squishier than other supports but i think his pros out weigh his cons. I was wondering what everyone else thought of him and his lack of play.

Mana. thats basically it.

I always thought he was tankier than other supports, what with his bonus protections and percentile damage mitigation on his wine chug and drunkometer.

I think it may just be because of the play style i use with him. I always try to be aggresing.

Well it has a bit to do with his mana costs he sees more play in arena cause of that.

And well Belch is a really unreliable stun as you can be interrupted by something else.

But yeah he is a more aggressive support with the damage he can do with his ult.

Moatly every time I play Bacchus I actually do well with him and yeah early game Bacchus is weak due to low mana so mostly you need to build that for mid game to help. But he is a dangerous if you have the right team comp. One of my friends usually do Odin and Bacchus being extremely powerful due to how burst damage both of them could do. So Bacchus is really scary in Season 3 due to how well his abilities work with each other.

Yes i find that building meditation as your first relic actually works extremely well to curve the mana consumption and also ease the amount of damage bacchus takes while being so aggressive.

(I'm still pretty old in this but meditation should only be build in Assault as later itn the game you won't use it a lot)

I guess some of this really depends on matchups, and probably would only work in casual, not ranked. I'm generally same as Dev...I don't play Conquest, but I know that Meditation is generally a no-no, because it's more important to get out of potentially life-threatening CC than to get a boost of mana (and a bit of health) when you could just be more careful with mana consumption.

But with Bacchus, this idea has merit. He is the only support that CONTINUALLY needs to use mana just to stay relevant. If his Drunk-O-Meter isn't at least maintained at the Tipsy level, he loses out on some major CC in both his Belly Flop and Belch of the Gods, as well as a bit of extra damage AND 7% damage mitigation. And to get the power buff from his ult, it needs to be in the Smashed zone, which also helps with more power and 14% damage mitigation. This means, really, that he wants to always be Smashed (who wouldn't?).

Now, it sort of helps that Chug at level 1 is only 40 mana, but it's still a drain. Also, to conserve mana, you want to level it last, as it sucks up 140 mana at level 5, which is horrible. This means that his extra potential for tankiness when he Chugs is only going to stay at 15 protections for a good deal of the match (instead of up to 35 at level 5).

Getting Meditation when CC threat from an opposing support is low (e.g. NOT Athena, Khepri, Xing Tian) might be the perfect complement to an aggressive playstyle.

I find Meditation to be an alright choice for supports depending on the situation, aspecially on true tanks with noticeable HP pools- this way they can restore 15% of their maximum health to an ally in need, which will have a lot more impact on his low hp bar.