Enchanters are very popular to pick in many different scenarios, and there are good reasons for that. You will most commonly encounter them in the botlane and sometimes midlane too. They are picked to ensure that your team survives through shields and heals, amplify the damage of the carries, catch enemies with crowd controlling abilities such as knock-ups, slows, and lastly, they can shine through during a teamfight. Let’s take a look at what you can build to further enhance their power!

Be wary of your gold, gold efficiency contributes to your team power

Cost efficiency is very important and being support, your gold is often quite limited. The way to combat this is to choose items that are the best for the situation. A typical example is that a Zyra or a Brand would not benefit from enchanter items such as Athene’s Unholy Grail or Ardent Censer. Instead, they benefit from items such as Liandry’s Torment or they build items such as Luden’s Echo and Zhonya’s Hourglass. These items are in average 3000 gold, and there are times when supports like Sona or Yuumi has decided that a Lich Bane or a Luden’s Echo is a good purchase.

Perhaps you do good with these, but not all games give you that much gold to utilize the items properly. The reason is that the team does not always need you to deal damage, they need you to keep them alive. What you should do is to itemize according to the situation, so following a build strictly is also not wise, an example would be boots. As an enchanter, there are players many making use of Mobility boots or even Ionian Boots of Lucidity. What if the enemy has assassins that deal a lot of physical damage, the wiser course would be to alter your usual build and consider to buy Ninja Tabi.

If you look at Enchanter items, they are way more gold efficient. Meaning that Enchanter supports have a lot of flexibility because the items are so cheap. It means that they reach their power spike much faster than for example tanks or mages. If you back at the correct times, you will get your first item earlier.

How does shields and heals work?

Shields are an addition of hit-points that absorb damage in place of actual health. It may last on the recipient to absorb a set amount of damage (shield strength) and/or until the duration runs out (shield duration). An active shield is indicated on the champion's overhead health bar in a distinct color. The unit's resistances (armor and magic resistance) will still mitigate the damage before being absorbed by shielding. The shield's strength can be increased by heal and shield power.

Healing is the action of replenishing a unit's current health, different from the other forms of health restoration (life steal, spell vamp and health regeneration). It can be weakened by healing reduction such as grievous wounds.

Some supports build full AP items instead of enchanter items. Sometimes you might have wondered about what items would be effective for different purposes. There are so many different items for enchanters to pick from. Other times you will be tempted into going AP items because the AP scales with your shield and healing, but they are often very expensive and not worth it in the long run. Because other items boost the shields and healing without containing AP.

Shields and heals scales with resistances:

In theory, if you shield or heal your teammate that has a lot of resistances, they benefit from it too. Given that you make use of items with healing and shield power such as Mikael’s Crucible or Redemption as an example.

Each 1 Armor equals 1% more effective health against AD, and the same is for Magic Resist and AP. To make it easier, it means that 100 armor equals 50% resistance, and 200 armor equals 75% resistance.

“Following the above damage formula, each point of armor increases the effective health pool against physical damage by 1%, formally: Example: A unit with 60 armor has 60% increased health against physical attacks. If the unit had 1000 maximum health it would take 1600 physical damage to kill it. “

To make it easier I will give you some more examples further below, but if you are interested in knowing more about the resistances you can read aboutarmor here.

The reason you should know is to find out why Enchanter items will help your teammates more than the shield you get from only scaling with AP. According to the League of Legends official wiki, these are the key examples:

• Unlike HP, increasing armor also makes healing more effective because it takes more effort to remove the unit's HP than it does to restore it.
• HP helps you survive both magic damage and physical damage. Against a team with mainly burst or just low magic damage, HP can be more efficient than MR.
• Percentage armor reduction in the enemy team tilts the optimal health: armor ratio slightly in the favor of HP.
• Whether or not the enemy is capable of delivering true damage or percent health damage, thus reducing the value of armor and health stacking respectively.

Example 1

If you are for example Lulu, and you shield your teammate for 300 and they have 100 armor, the enemy needs to deal 600 physical damage to break that shield. That is because the shield scales with the armor that your teammate has, and this is also taken into account that the enemy does not have armor penetration.

Example 2

If you are playing Nami, and you can heal your teammate for 200 with 100 armor, it means that the enemy needs to deal 400 physical damage to remove that extra health.

The most gold efficient items are for the enchanters, make use of it.

Let’s take a look at the so-called golf efficiency. Think that your stats and healing scales well with the items and they scale with the runes such as Summon Aery or Revitalize. You can read about the theory of gold efficiency here or you can look up different items at the wiki to find out the individual cost analysis.

Ardent Censer - No activation required
If you play Sona and use your W - Aria of Perseverance, building Ardent Censer, would be 199.1% - 389.32% gold efficient if four allies (and the caster) are buffed by its passive.
It will do well for champions that can heal or shield one at the time too, but most efficient when you can for example be used for multiple teammates at the same time. Soraka is also an example. Locket of the Iron Solari and Redemption also triggers Ardent Censer. Font of Life Healing triggers Ardent Censer.

Athene’s Unholy Grail - No activation required
This item allows any champion that can shield such as Lux, Morgana, and Lulu to become healers if they manage to deliver damage. Which is especially easy as Morgana or Lux due to their AOE abilities. Additional healing effects and Revitalize apply to Athene’s Unholy Grail’s healing. It gains 5% efficiency per 25% mana regeneration

Building Athene’s Unholy Grail with a standard mage-support build with Shard of True Ice, Redemption, and Ardent Censer, will grant a total of 400% base mana regeneration. This means that building this means that you will get 80 AP from the passive DISSONANCE grants 20 AP from the item's own mana regeneration.

Redemption - Active item
The rune Summon Aery will prioritize targets based on proximity to the center. It has increased efficiency with Athene’s Unholy Grail. It scales well with Revitalize, granting +5% healing and shielding power. It can grant pressure around the map and has a big impact in teamfights. Redemption can give you a lot of mana regeneration and some health.

Shurelya’s Reverie- Active item
Its effects will spread to allied champions, pets (Tibbers, Daisy, Spiderlings, etc.), and minions. It has decent stats that will give you health, +100 base health regeneration, and +100 base mana regeneration. It also gives you +10% heal and shield power, and you can use its active to initiate, or disengage from, teamfights. Champions such as Rakan can make use of Shurelya's very well.

Mikael’s Crucible - Active item
Has the highest heal and shield power in the game, with a massive +20 heal and shield power. If your carry cannot afford to go Quicksilver Sash yet, but there are a lot of crowd control effects on the enemy team, consider going this. Keep in mind that manaless champions will not benefit from Harmony, even if they have items that increase mana regeneration such as Faerie Charm or Chalice of Harmony. It will also cleanse crowd control effects that apply ~0.2 seconds after it has been used. Crucible also gives you +40 magic resistance. The gold efficiency is further increased by 3.57% for every 25% mana regeneration obtained from other sources.

In conclusion, it isn't necessarily wrong to build AP items, but it is less effective towards what the enchanters are supposed to do. Some scale well with AP items and that is fine, but others just won't. Think of what is more cost efficient and what will highlight the strong sides of an enchanter's kit well. Examples of that would be there are possibilities of Janna or Sona going a poke build, or something similar. The poke build won't be cost efficient, but they can deal some damage. Enchanters are supposed to make their carries stronger and survive longer, than trying to be the carry themselves. The optimal build would be something that helps you and the team survive, good luck with the games!