In League of Legends , supporters are usually the players who sacrifice themselves for their teams. They prepare attacks for their team, set wards, and serve the team: but this does not apply to the 20-year-old Ryu “Keria” Min-seok, the supporter of T1. He is one of the 3 most successful players at the LoL Worlds 2022 in terms of kills and assists compared to his own deaths.
This is the role of supporters in the LoL meta:
- In the current LoL meta, supporters usually play tanks who prepare team fights with engage abilities.
- Supporters opt for champions like Leona, Renata Glasc, Amumu, Thresh, or Nautilus.
- Their job is to pin down one or more enemies with crowd control abilities during the engage so that their teammates can quickly eliminate “squishy targets.” Supporters ensure that mid laners or ADCs shine and can collect easy kills.
Slow support champions are the sacrificial lambs and punching bags of LoL
The downside of these champions is: These champs are quite immobile and actually easy targets. A Nautilus or Amumu practically cannot escape once the enemies have a hold on him. Even in the laning phase, supporters are harassed every second by enemy ADCs, targeted by junglers, and easily taken down by mid laners with combos.
As a result, support players usually die constantly. In the group stage of the LoL Worlds 2022:
- Leona died 34 times in 9 games – KDA of 1.4
- Amumu died 25 times in 6 games – KDA of 2.1
- Nautilus impressively died 21 times in only 4 games – KDA of 1.3
The new top laner will soon start killing supporters:
What is the consequence? Because supporters hardly get any kills themselves, they often have very poor KDA rates. They rely on their bot laner, the ADC, to carry. If their team is struggling, supporters look really bad in the stats:
The worst KDA in the group stage of Worlds was held by the support of Cloud9, Zven: He had 27 deaths with only 5 kills and 18 assists – a KDA of 0.9
Supporters like Koala (1.0), Hyklissang (1.8) or Vulcan (1.8) also didn’t fare much better.
Support is generally a role where one can hardly shine.
Keria shows his claws – achieving one of the best KDA rates
There is one exception: The 20-year-old Keria from T1 achieved a KDA of 15.4 after the 6 players in his group. This is the third best in the whole tournament. He even has a better KDA than Chovy, Showmaker, or Knight – 3 of the best mid laners in the world.
Keria has only 6 kills but an impressive 71 assists. He has only died 5 times.
So he actually has more kills than deaths as a supporter – that’s quite an achievement.
For comparison: The second strongest supporter in the tournament, Lehends, has a KDA of 7.1. The supporter from Gen G secured 10 kills with 12 deaths over 7 games. There is quite a gap to Keria.
What makes Keria different? Keria has the advantage of playing for T1, and he seems to have a great understanding with his bot lane partner Gumayusi: he is ranked 1 in KDA – Gumayusi dies even less frequently than Keria.
On the other hand, Keria plays champions that stay further back: he only had 1 game each on Alistar and Thresh, where he had to engage.
With Thresh, his former signature champion, he also encountered his only loss of the tournament so far and achieved only a KDA of 1.3.
Supporter Keria achieves a KDA of 28.0 with cat Yuumi during the group stage of Worlds
However, he usually plays champions that stay behind the lines, like Nami (15.0) or Soraka (20.0).
However, Keria is most dangerous with his version of the magical cat Yuumi: he plays her quite offensively with a build focused on DPS. Due to the cat’s special ability to slip into his teammates, Keria remains safe.
As the site Dotesports reports, Keria plays the champion with a “heavy DPS build” and relies on Ludens Echo. This allows him to not only empower, buff, and heal his partners, but the cat also has claws. This grants Keria his exception to the rule.
In 2 games with Yuumi, he achieved a KDA of 28.0. No wonder many feel the champion Yuumi is so powerful that Riot should ban her from the game:
LoL: The cursed magical cat ruins Worlds – Twitch streamer NoWay says: “Global ban this garbage”
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