User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Concept) Burke, the Apothecary/@comment-80.98.153.26-20121215203516/@comment-1330314-20121217071215

If you wanted to, you could play Burke as a pure support, though his healing would fall off. The main dynamic with him is that he can work as a support and a carry at the same time. His healing gets more powerful as he levels up his AD, so farming good items is beneficial. Though he might have to let the carry farm at the beginning, he could take over on another lane once the carry's fed enough.

Secondly, carries start out rather squishy and get focused on hard right from the start, since obviously you'd want to starve the other team's carry before they get too powerful. In the space of a minute, even if you zoned out/killed the enemy pair they should be back fully ready sooner than that, therefore you can't rely on Burke's autoattack to fully top up the carry, especially since he's less effective as a support mid-fight.

You also seem to misunderstand my concept: Burke synergizes especially well with tanks, not carries. If you pair him up with a tank in the early game he'd be able to farm well and get really powerful. The other carry would be more vulnerable, but if they ever drop down too much Burke can take over as the carry.