It’s great to be a support in Strife. Here are the three reasons why

In any MOBA, supports are probably the most toxic role to play. You have to survive the game without many items to depend on, since you don’t have the comfort of farming for your own, and you have to make sure that your carry has enough space while doing this. And doing all that while being the shock absorber of the team is a whole different story.

Enter Strife, the “second generation MOBA” that promises a more streamlined and less toxic MOBA experience. But do these features actually make life different for supports? Let’s take a look.

(See: 4 things to remember when trying a new MOBA game)

1. You’re no longer a sitting duck

The one thing that makes playing support difficult for me is how I can easily become useless. Supports generally have low health and mana pools to work with, and casting a number of spells and taking some damage can immediately render you useless. So to avoid being a sitting duck, you have to go back to your base, regenerate, and walk back to where you are needed to be useful again. This wastes a lot of time. Sometimes when I get back to the lane, the clash is over. Sometimes I return just to die.

Strife has out-of-combat-regeneration, which means that your health and mana regenerate at a much faster rate when you are not taking damage or attacking. This works really well in conjunction with the bush system, which is similar to League of Legends (LoL)’s brush. Slipping in and out of combat via the bushes allowed me to stay in the lanes for a much longer time. I didn’t have to go all the way back to my base just to heal up, or waste all my money buying recovery items.

(See: 10 things you need to know about Strife)

Eliminating long walks and idle time creates huge opportunities for supports to contribute more. In the lanes, you’ll find that you can kite enemies without worrying about becoming useless after using just a few abilities. However the MOBA meta-game in Strife remains punishing. You will still suffer for overextending and making cocky plays.

2. Last hitting is encouraged

For a support in a MOBA, last hitting is almost criminal. That’s the last thing that you’d want to do if you want to be an effective support and not irritate your carry. So when I played Strife, I was delighted to know that I wouldn’t be flamed for taking last hits. In fact, I was actually more useful when I did that! It’s all due to Strife’s gold sharing system.

The gold sharing system enables players to share gold when they last hit a minion, regardless of who dealt the killing blow. If you’re in a dual lane, for example, both you and your lane partner would get 30 gold each.