The newest season of League of Legends is bringing a lot of changes to how summoners itemize. New items were added in every role and each new item brings something different to the table for all roles. Today, we will be looking through the new items given to one of the most important roles in the game, the support. Without further adieu, let's begin our dive into what new toys supports have to play with for Season 11 of League!

Mythic Items

Imperial Mandate

We will be going over the Mythic items for support first, and we’ll start off with one of the biggest items, the Imperial Mandate. This item offers 40 ability power, 200 health, 20 ability haste and 100% Base Mana Regen. What makes this item so good for a mage support is its active ability, Coordinated Fire. This ability deals 36-60 bonus magic damage, depending on what your level is, when you apply a slow or an immobilization ability, like roots or stuns. The champion you CC then gets marked and when an ally detonates that mark, it deals an additional 90-150 bonus magic damage, this time depending on the target’s level. Finally, it grants both you and the detonator of the mark 20% bonus movement speed for two seconds. The item’s mythic passive is an additional 15 ability power with the other legendary items you get.

This item builds well for those ap champions that can deal the crowd control necessary to trigger the mark. Champions like Morgana, Nami and Janna fit this bill nicely, each having one or more forms of the CC needed to trigger Coordinated Fire. Champions like Brand or Swain can also work, but since they have only one way to land CC in their kit, it can be more difficult for them to trigger the mark. However, don’t let that stop you from trying and going all out with the mage support you know best.

Locket of the Iron Solari

This item will be very familiar to those who have been around League for a while. The newer Locket brings with it 200 health, 20 ability haste and 30 armor and magic resist. The active for the item remains the same, grant a nearby ally a 230-385 shield, depending on their level that will decay over 2.5 seconds and will not be useable again for another minute and thirty seconds. There is something to point out however. If by some chance someone else on your team builds this item, let’s say Ivern for instance. If he used the Locket on an ally and you try to use it within 20 seconds have that target getting Ivern’s Locket, your Locket’s shielding will be reduced by 75%. Continuing, the item also has a passive, Consecrate, which grants all your nearby allies an increase in armor and magic resist by 5, with the item’s mythic passive empowering your other legendries to increase the defenses Consecrate gives by two.

This item, while very memorable and still has value, is one of the weaker mythic items for supports when you square it up against what’s brought to the table. That’s not to say that this item is a throw away. This item can do wonders against champions and compositions that have huge amounts of burst damage. Plus, the additional resist can be very helpful for your teammates, as long as you are around them. However, it does have some drawbacks, with one of the biggest is not giving you any mana regeneration. This would mean that you would have to be extremely careful with how you use your abilities, at least until you get more items that can help get some mana regen. Engage and tank supports work well with this item, like Leona, Taric and Blitzcrank.

Moonstone Renewer

The other brand new mythic item for supports to play with is Moonstone Renewer. This item brings 40 ability power, 20 ability haste, 200 health and 100% base mana regen. This item’s unique passive is Starlit Grace. When you affect enemy champions with either auto attacks or abilities in combat, you heal the nearest ally champion with the most missing health by 70-100 hp, all depending on what their level is. The longer you stay in combat, the bigger the heal, as which each second you are in combat, the heal is increased by 12.5%. This gets stacked for up to four times, giving off a max heal of 50%. Finally, the mythic passive grants 5 ability haste to all your other legendary items.

This item is probably the most creative out of all mythic items for support. By creative, I mean that it can it create huge possibilities for mage supports on the rift, specifically those that prioritize more on poke and dealing damage then on healing or crowd control. This item grants healing to champions that don’t have any healing in their kit, so this item is killer for mages that don’t have a healing factor in their kit, like Brand, Zyra and Karma. Their damage potential and ability power makes this item well worth it for team comps that don’t necessarily have any form of sustain. This item could also work for champions like Sona, Seraphine and even Swain thanks to his ultimate, so if you decide to go all out with a mage support, this item will really be worth picking up.

Shurelya’s Battlesong

The final mythic item for supports is one most people are familiar with, the once Shurelya’s Reverie is now the Shurelya’s Battlesong. This item offers 20 ability haste, 350 health, a 5% movement speed bonus and 50% base mana regeneration. The active for this item, Inspire, remains fairly similar to its past iteration, but it adds more. You and your allies still get a movement speed bonus of 40%, for four seconds this time instead of three. The big bonus comes with the second part, where you and the champions that are affected by the bonus movement speed deal 35-55, depending on your allies’ level, bonus magic damage over their next three auto attacks or abilities against enemy champions. This item’s mythic passive keeps the theme of movement speed going, grant legendary items an empowerment of 2.5% bonus movement speed.

This item works extremely well for those supports that are more focused on engages and disengaging from fights. The movement speed boost helps with that tremendously and can give your team a quick getaway or allow you and your team to kite faster while in the middle of a teamfight. Champions like Rakan, Morgana and Janna benefit a lot from this item, as they are excellent with their engage and disengages from fights whenever the situation calls for it.

Legendary Items

Staff of Flowing Water

Now we move onto the new legendary items for the supports and first up is the Staff of Flowing Water! This is yet another item geared towards those mage supports, as it offers 60 ability power, 10% heal and shield power and 100% base mana regen. Its passive ability, Rapids, grants 15% bonus movement speed and 20-40 bonus ability power, based on targets level, for three seconds after you either shield or heal an ally.

This item is geared towards those supports that well, shield and heal allies. Champions that can use this item to great effect is Sona, Janna, Lulu, Nami just to name a few. One key thing to note is that the passive does not have any cooldowns, so the passive can be spammed if you have low cooldowns on your abilities that shield and heal your allies.

Vigilant Wardstone

This final new item is probably the most interesting one of the new support items. This item offers no health or damage increases, only 40 ability haste and 10% bonus movement speed. However, it offers you the ability to increase your Control Ward storage from two to three and it increases the cap size of how many wards you can place by one. Meaning that you could instead place four stealth wards instead of three at a time and plant two control wards instead of one at the same time. There are two requirements for this item, however. You must be level 13 or higher to purchase the item and you must’ve already placed 20 stealth wards prior to buying the item.

This item is defiantly one of the most unique items on the rift. It’s ability to increase the ward size is huge for supports, as one of their key roles is warding and taking out enemy wards. Because of that, this item can go with virtually any support in the game. However, because it requires you to be level 13 or higher to buy it, this item should be a late game situational item. Don’t try so hard to get this item if the slot could be used for another, more important support item for yourself and the team.

Conclusion

The new items bring some fun and entertaining builds to the support role not yet seen before. Brand being able to heal his allies while dealing damage, Morgana marking allies for more damage and so on. I am really excited to see how much the support role changes from season 10 to season 11. Until next time, have fun and see you on the rift!