Talk:Braum/@comment-5259099-20140806111002/@comment-6281696-20140811232756

The issue is that most "supports" have 1 aspect that can be construed as supportive, at which they are so good it borders on OP (e.g. few people can compare to Leona's CC or Blitz's disruptive grabs, or the utility of Morgana's shield), while miserably failing in every other respect. And as such don't have a very consistent kit. They just have 1 thing they can do, and they do that well, but if they fail to do that, or are simply done with their combo, they are now useless. And because people are used to supports being rather bad people claim he's OP, because in comparison he suddenly has a lot. However, he doesn't have a lot. The rest's just rather awefull when it comes to proper supporting. Especially the older supports as they weren't designed with the same issues in mind. In all honesty he's the first support who's actually good, instead of just not completly awefull.

What makes this worse are a number of design philosophies Riot has. E.g. the focus on having supports use items with extra actives, instead of building stuff that focusses on improving their existing abilities like every other role. Or the fact that sighstone will never get decent stats because they think that if sightstone is good stat-wise there's no longer a trade-off for sight and everyone will start using it. Ignoring the fact that currently there's no trade-off for supports because fighting blind is infinitly worse than any lack of stats so the item is mandatory. And there are many more issues that screw with supports like that.

O and as for the different support roles. Although in principal these do exist, in practise there's only one or two types of supports really in LoL, the rest consists of mages with high basevalues for burst and easy to land CC. This last group is basicly the antithese to support, and border on toxic as a supportive style due to their sheer numbers and ease of use. E.g. Annie's full combo at 6 from a supportive point of view, is very close to toxic as there is close to nothing the opponent can do to respond with really. You might as well play under the assumption that when Annie gets in range your carry dies. Or "support" lux who just fires a barrage of spells in your general direction from far away until you die. The only "counter" being getting enough defense to be able to survive their damage, be it burst or a barrage of "poke", long enough to actually be able to reply with a counterattack of your own. But because riot loves big numbers and "making plays" they are allowed to exist, because apparently this is interesting in some way. Even though they are borderline impossible to respond to when played well, and barely more than a nuisance when played badly.

Anyways, tl;dr, you think Braum is borderline OP I think most of the others are borderline UP which is made worse by a number of flaws in riot's design philosophy.