There is a world far away populated by graceful and beautiful winged beings gifted with immortality, where an ancient conflict still rages. Like so many conflicts, this war split families. One side proclaimed themselves as beings of perfect order and justice, fighting to unite the world under their law and strong central governance. Those that fought against them saw their kin as tyrants, creatures incapable of seeing the larger view, who would sacrifice individuality and freedom for the illusion of efficiency and safety. Morgana was one who fought against what she perceived as the tyranny of her kind, and for that she was branded "fallen". Morgana was not innocent, having plumbed forgotten ways to gather forbidden might to become a powerful mistress of the black arts. This goal was driven by her obsession to defeat the general of the opposition's army - her sister, Kayle.

While the two were in fact birth-sisters, Kayle struck the first blow by disowning any filial connection when Morgana refused to join her cause. Eventually, Morgana grew in power enough to not only reach, but challenge Kayle. As the time approached when the two would meet in what could be their final conflict, Morgana was suddenly summoned to Valoran. At first, Morgana made a deal with the League's summoners to fight in exchange for greater power. With the advent of Kayle into the League, Morgana now willingly fights in the League of Legends for the privilege of being able to destroy her sister again, and again, and again. She lies in wait for the day the bonds of the Institute of War no longer hold her, and on that day she plans to destroy Kayle once and for all and return home a hero.

"There is no rest while Kayle's brand of tyranny still exists."
- Morgana

Ever since Royal Club's Tabe took to the stage back during the Season 3 World Championship, the support game just hasn't been the same. It's been a season for pyromania and terror as Annie and Fiddlesticks have turned the Garena Premier League's duo lanes into tense sudden-death showdowns. But all of this plays into Taipei Snipers captain and support player MiSTakE's hands. While most teams fear the Flash-Tibbers drop, the Taipei Snipers are undeterred, protected by a Black Shield and living up to their name with cannily aimed Dark Bindings.

For one week, the top KDA in South-East Asia's Premier League wasn't an AD carry, mid laner or gank-happy jungler, but the Season 2 world champion support player. This is how MiSTakE pulled it off.

Why Morgana?

Long-time Taipei Assassins fans will remember how the team broke out at the beginning of Season 2, debuting their legendary teamwork against World Elite as Toyz Flashed over the Ancient Golem wall to lock up the entire Chinese team with Soul Shackles. But Morgana lost favor as a mid laner in subsequent patches and fell off the radar until recently.

MiSTakE's revival of the champion isn't due to nostalgia, but the shift in the support metagame: with professional supports increasingly less reliant on defensive skills and more so on disruptive toolkits like Pyromania, Death Sentence or Rocket Grab to outright win lanes, the stars have aligned just right for her return to Summoner's Rift.

“Morgana has been played as a support against Blitzcrank and did quite well,” states MiSTakE. “The reason why I've play Morgana recently is that Morgana works according to our current team compositions, and she deals with Annie and Thresh quite easily.”

But these champions had been played before without Morgana's presence. Explains MiSTakE: “It's not because Morgana's a bad champion, but that other supports were much stronger and preferred by pro players.” He notes that the subsequent nerfs to those champions, such as Zyra and Thresh, has directly increased her viability and pick presence.

Syngergy and Timing

With Dark Binding's long range, twice the distance of any of Annie's offensive spells, Morgana's capable of ensnaring a target from far across the battlefield - thematically appropriate for a team that calls themselves the Snipers. But it isn't just a matter of naming conventions, as it fits their preference for long-range poke as well.

“Morgana can deal tons of damage with a poke-style AD carry (Ezreal, Sivir or Caitlyn) when her Q hits the enemy,” says MiSTakE. Her shield is a direct answer to the hard crowd control currently found in bot lane, and her ultimate, Soul Shackles, is a great answer to bruisers that try to close in.

However, with supports traditionally poor on gold, a bot lane Morgana lacks access to Zhonya's Hourglass, and its temporary invincibility is usually considered a core element of her mid lane play. To offset this, MiSTakE recommends heavy defensive investments: a 1-25-4 mastery spread to provide better survivability in lane. Runes, however, go towards maximizing her spell impact: magic penetration marks, armor seals, and heavy AP investment for both glyphs and quintessences.

MiSTakE favors playing her offensively as well. “I'll have Dark Binding and Tormented Soil ranked up by level two,” he said. “It'll allow your team to fight with better damage against your opponent.” But past the first couple of levels, skill-ranking is based on need. “If the enemy has crowd control skills, E will be leveled to avoid their initiation.”

MiSTakE prioritizes his skill ranks as followed: R > Q > E > W. “I'd considered leveling Q and W to do more damage, but I'd rather pick a support that does that better than Morgana,” he explains. “E is the second priority because the level of the support is usually behind the team. Not all skills can be maxed out, so the extra levels of E provides better protection at late game.”

Even with Annies and Fiddlesticks running rampant as supports, there are key considerations before a player locks in Morgana. “If we miss Dark Binding during the laning phase, we'll lose the advantage on the exchange,” explains MiSTakE. “I'll try another support if we picked Graves, Corki or Lucian, as Dark Binding is rather easy to dodge.” Her impact is also mitigated against supports with healing abilities, or against AD carries that have invested heavily in lifesteal.

Future Performance

MiSTakE's experience on her has been based on Season 3's items and gold income, but he is optimistic about her relevance after the 2014 preseason. “Patch 3.14 is great!” he exclaims. "The current patch restricts the variability of the support role's item builds. Only champions like Thresh and Zyra, those with a bunch of crowd control skills, could affect team fights well.

Increased gold and adjusted skills of support-only characters give more flexibility for their item builds, and also grants Morgana more viability with our team compositions… Higher AP is great, as it makes Morgana more threatening to the enemy during the laning phase.”

As the game transitions to a more support-friendly environment, be on the lookout for dark wings and darker winds. The terrifying sound of Soul Shackles winding down to a full-team stun will soon return to Summoner's Rift.

The Fallen Angel of Bot Lane

The last few weeks of LCS have seen a little bit of a surprise in bot lane: Morgana support. Morgana support isn't anything new, by any means. She has always been a support with extremely strong and extremely weak matchups, and one of her best matchups is Leona. With Leona's huge recent popularity, it should come as no surprise that Morgana should come into the limelight.

While Taipei Snipers support Mistake ran Morgana support in Season 3, in Europe, Roccat's VandeR popularized Morgana as a counter to Leona, with 3 dominant wins and a KDA of 1-6-30. Since then, Alliance's Nyph and SHC's Migxa have both played support Morgana, and her overall win rate has moved to 7-1. I sat down with VandeR to talk about his team taking the No. 1 spot in Europe, the state of bot lane and what brought about the Morgana pick.

Support Skills
VandeR credits his success at support to a combination of important skills. As a support, "you have powerful initiation abilities, but at the same time you are much squishier and have less damage." To him, the most important thing to learn as a support is to "match timing with your team, so they are in position to defend you after initiation, and bring damage to finish off the targets." Unlike with tankier champions, if you initiate too early, you may die before you team can follow up on your initiation, and leave them 4v5.

Surprise Success

As for being the top team in Europe, VandeR had seen them "in the top 3, just behind Fnatic and Alliance," but was "surprised" when "both of those teams didn't perform that well, and ROCCAT did much better than expected." Now that they are in first place, he feels confident that they "are going to improve a lot, so if other teams want to fight for first place, they will have to train hard." While he hesitated to place them in the top 3, he realized that the No. 1 spot was an option "when they won decisively against Gambit in Week 2."



VandeR's top support has been Thresh, on which he is 6-2, and who he believes to be "the best support besides Annie," which they tend to ban. As such, "picking Thresh is somewhat natural." What makes him so strong? "He gives you everything you need. Pretty strong laning phase, good peel, good initiation, and great escape/repositioning tool for your team. Every skill can be game changing."

The Setting of the Sun

Among the top 3 supports, this only leaves Leona, whom VandeR believes "a good Morgana counters completely," for a number of reasons.

First, "when Leona is initiating, she often puts herself into dangerous positions, and if you block her stun then, she is extremely vulnerable." Essentially, while Leona is already a high-risk/high-reward support who often relies on going all-in, Morgana can bait her in, then spell shield her stun and ultimate, which mitigates almost all of the reward she would get, while still opening her up to counter-ganks or bad trades.

When Leona uses Zenith Blade to go in, she puts herself in melee range, which allows Morgan's Soul Shackles to get a full channel on her.

Finally, Morgana is very mechanically simple to play against Leona, since "when she goes in with Zenith Blade, it's easy to hit Dark Binding, because you will know where she is going to appear." As well, the long animation time of Zenith Blade gives you more than enough time to land a Black Shield.

On the other hand, in the Morgana vs Annie matchup (VandeR's least favorite), "you have less time to react, especially when she does flash -> Tibbers combo. In laning phase, it's not that complicated because most of the time you can predict it, but in teamfights it's hard." He thinks that Morgana should in theory do well vs Thresh or Annie, but "everything comes down to proper execution, and Alistar or Leona are much easier to counter as Morgana than Thresh or Annie."

At this point, VandeR mused: "Maybe one day my reactions will be good enough to use shield when Annie does her flash combo!" Until then, it sounds like he'll be saving Morgana as a counter to Leona, or a team-reliant pick.

Inspiration, Trust, and Success

He also revealed that Morgana wasn't the only surprise he had up his sleeves, but that he "was thinking about Morgana a lot and tested her in many games." When he told his team Morgana was good, "others agreed to try it, and it worked. We share those ideas between ourselves and if everyone on the team agrees, we test it and see how it plays out." It's very clear that this new team already has built up bonds of trust, and it shows in their play.

But where did he get the idea? "Someone in solo queue picked her against me. I couldn't do anything. Obviously solo queue is much different from a tournament game, but I could definitely see the potential of this champion. All I had to do was transition it into a complete pick."

It's pretty amazing watching this champion at work in the dive-heavy meta; here are some examples of Morgana plays:

Vi's Assault and Battery - once Black Shielded - dragging her into harm's way for no benefit, only to be locked down by a Dark Binding and killed away from her team.



Leona's gap-closer is almost useless, as the follow-up Shield of Daybreak and Solar Flare fail to stun an isolated target she thought she could catch, leaving her out of position and out of abilities.

Essentially, Morgana is best against high-risk/high-reward champions who all-in, because her Black Shield nullifies their attempts and leaves them out of position.

Spreading Influence

Other players have picked up Morgana since, with an overall KDA of 3-26-83, for a KDA ratio of 3.3, but VandeR has truly mastered her, with a 1-8-37 KDA and 4.75 ratio, and a 1-6-30 KDA and 5.2 ratio vs Leona.*

One thing is clear: ROCCAT's players trust each other with new picks, and we should continue to see innovation from them, especially as long as they hold the #1 spot.

Morgana has an impressive 20.3% pick or ban rate in the EU LCS as of week 7. It’s impressive because it’s only recently that she’s come to her true fruition. Week 7 saw Morgana’s first picks in the NA LCS and she was picked in 3/4 games. She currently has a 72.7% win rate in the EU LCS which is by far the highest of all the common supports. Annie has a 56% win rate, Thresh has a 50% and Leona has a lowly 43.5%.

The main reason that she’s so popular at the moment is because she effectively counters the other members of the ‘big four’ supports. Her Dark Shield makes it incredibly difficult for a Thresh and Leona to make plays because it negates all their crowd control. Annie is a slightly better pick against Morgana – perhaps this is why her win rate is above 50%.

Morgana is also very good against some of the popular top laners like Dr Mundo and Shyvana. Shyvana has a single gap closer which is both easy to shield and easy to predict her movements. Mundo is similar and it’s extremely easy for a proficient Morgana to nullify their movements for long periods of time with very little effort. The Shyvana case study is evident in the (week 7) EG v Dignitas game. Krepo made the game very frustrating for Cruzer and there are a couple of really clear examples which underline how annoying Morgana can be to play against.

As all the ad carries playing in the LCS are extremely skilled, the very notion that they could be free from crowd control for up to 5 seconds is mind boggling. It’s even stranger that a team like CLG hasn’t picked Morgana up yet. I would be shocked if they didn’t pick or ban her at all in Week 8.

Runes and Masteries

XDG’s Sheep

Some of these are based upon educated guesses. I know that they are approximately 90%-100% accurate because I’ve reproduced the starting stats that Sheep had. Obviously I can’t know if he choose hybrid or magic penetration marks but it’s a better choice to take hybrid against melee supports anyway. You can land a fair amount of free auto attacks when you land a Dark Binding too.



Sheep’s choice of runes and masteries is deceptively balanced. The 22 starting ability power gives an initial impression that it’s a very aggressive page. But the defensive glyphs as well as the focus on movespeed and cooldown reduction give a really nice mixture of kiting and bursting. Starting the game with 10% cooldown reduction is great for Morgana because Dark Shield has a high cooldown when you have low ranks in it. It also allows you to play more aggressively with the bindings because the zonal control you lose if you miss is lost for a smaller amount of time.

Q>E>W

In every Morgana game I’ve analysed so far, the preferred choice is that maxing Dark Binding is superior to maxing Black Shield. Not only does maxing Dark Binding increase the damage, it also increases the root duration from 2 to eventually 3 seconds. This is an incredibly long crowd control effect and I can see it being nerfed to 2.25s in the future to keep it consistent with other nerfs. The argument can be used that a snare is not as brutal as a terrify or a taunt, but the reality is that if you get snared for 3 seconds then you are probably going to die.

In almost cases it is not worth the damage per second drop to max Morgana’s shield first because the amount of magic damage you will be needing to avoid with it should be negligible in the early parts of the game.

Another point of contention is to whether you put an early point into Tormented Soil. It increases your damage per second and as long as you don’t need the increased shield or reduced cooldown then putting a point into Tormented Soil at level 3/4 is sensible.

Itemisation

Most Morgana supports in the LCS take a very standard support core of Talisman of Ascension, Sightstone and Mobility Boots. They often then branch out into a Mikaels Crucible. Roccat’s VandeR almost always buys a Zeke’s Harbinger on Morgana. This is because Roccat often run a Trundle in the top lane. It synergises efficiently with both Trundle and their carry.

Other, more niche, items which could be used are Locket of the Iron Solari and Zhonya’s Hourglass. A Zhonya’s is only necessary if you are needed to initiate fights with flash-Soul Shackles. Locket would be useful against Fnatic’s double ap compositions, but normally you’d expect the jungler to buy this item.

When patch 4.3 is used in the competitive scene, I fully expect people to buy the Frost Fang over Nomad’s Medallion because it gives superior gold generation and lane dominance. The only downside is that Talisman’s active is incredibly useful. Perhaps they will switch to Talisman later in the game. I’d also expect supports to take the Mobility Boots far less often because of the roaming changes. I anticipate Lucidity and Swiftness boots.

How do her abilities help her support?


Soul Siphon (passive)

Although it’s not particularly useful in terms of supporting, it still allows for marginally better than average sustain for a support without an obvious healing spell.

Dark Binding (q)

Dark Binding is very easy to hit on champions who charge at your team. A good example of this is when Cruzer charged EG with Shyvana’s ultimate only to find himself snared mid way through his flight. It turned a potentially losing fight for EG into a winning one because Cruzer found himself negated for a long period of time.


Watching Sheep play Morgana against CLG’s Leona Jinx botlane demonstrates her ability to control zones in the lane. Having already blown Doublelift’s Barrier with a fantastically aimed Dark Binding, Sheep is able to single handily zone both Aphromoo and Doublelift.


Another example of this zone happens a few minutes later when Sheep is able to zone Doublelift from a tank minion despite CLG being ahead in the bottom lane.


Of course none of this would be possible if Sheep was playing someone like Annie or Sona because Morgana’s spell shield completely negates Aphromoo in the laning phase.

Tormented Soil (w)

Tormented Soil reminds me of support Fiddlesticks’ drain. It’s not neccessary to skill, but in general, it will increase your early dps. Sheep started with 22 ap against CLG and he was therefore happy to put a point into it at level 3. It certainly adds to Morgana’s zoning potential and when the new Spellthief’s edge line comes into play, it will be a really safe way of picking up and gold and harassing with the time dependent Tribute (15 extra damage on abilities / auto attacks) passive.

Black Shield (e)

This is definitely what makes Morgana stand out as a support. Black Shield is a crowd control nullifying spell which allows Morgana’s target to escape or chase freely. It’s an incredibly powerful spell which runs out after five seconds have passed or it gets destroyed by magic damage.

Morgana is seen as a complete counter to Leona in lane. Sheep asserts his dominance onto Aphromoo from level 2.


As soon as Aphromoo closed onto Zuna, Sheep spell shielded him and therefore Doublelift wasn’t able to follow. This left Aphromoo in a difficult situation because he’s stuck between Sheep and Zuna. It’s a case of not respecting Morgana’s shield which almost costs him life.


A more aggressive example of a Black Shield is when YellOwStaR shielded Cyanide’s Wukong so xPeke’s Gragas couldn’t knock him back. It really is a jack of all trades spell and can be used in a variety of ways to frustrate and over-run your opposition.

Soul Shackles (r)


This ability deals an initial burst of damage followed by a 3 second tethered slow. This eventually stuns for 1.5 seconds providing they stay in range. It’s useful in a wide range of circumstances; while it may not be effective against a burst assassin like Kha’Zix because he can jump in and out, it’s far better against champions who like to charge at you like Trundle, Shyvana and Dr Mundo.

Soul Shackles, of course, can be used hyper aggressively. It’s still a very good form of initiation and YellOwStar showed this in the game against Gambit. Having already got a non-lethal pick onto Darien, YellOwStaR followed up by flash Soul Shackling Gambit which got them two kills.

Soul Shackles is also effective against ‘dive buddies’ as it can hit multiple targets. The 20% slow makes it far easier to hit your binding onto a target and should the aggressors leave your ultimate range before it finishes then you’ve successfully zoned them away from your ad.

As Morgana’s ultimate is a tether, it has a pretty big advantage of following champions who become untargettable like the popular Elise. Simply Soul Shackling a ganking Elise should be enough to survive the gank because she shouldn’t be able to stun you with your Black Shield up.

Aiding the jungler

Morgana is especially skilled at helping the jungler with ganks. Her Black Shield and Dark Binding combination make it incredibly hard for the opposition to escape. Black Shield is also useful to prevent your junglers gank from failing. It can prevent a crucial stun from annie or a flay from Thresh. When you hit 6 you can then lockdown both players.


WildTurtle flashed over LemonNation’s Dark Binding but that made it impossible for Xpecial to dodge without prior warning. 2 seconds is such a long crowd control in the early game that it was almost guaranteed that Xpecial would die.


Sneaky traded his flash for Xpecial’s to pickup the kill.

Niche playstyles

LemonNation demonstrated two niche playstyles on support Morgana.


Firstly, he roamed mid at the seven minute mark when his lane was pushed. He utilised the fog of war well but the snare missed and it didn’t result in a kill. But it put further pressure onto Reginald who was already having a tough time. I’d like to see more roaming supports in the LCS especially if they have a safe laner like Caitlyn.

Secondly, he bought a really effective Elixir of Brilliance against TSM at 17 minutes and 24 seconds into the game. LemonNation activated it a couple of minutes later as soon as Butt 9 began to siege the tier two bottom tower. If he started, as I suspect he did, with 10% CDR then the Talisman and Elixir would have taken him to his 40% CDR cap. LemonNation sat in the brush just below the tower and spammed bindings until he eventually got a non fatal pick unto Dyrus. It forced Dyrus and the rest of TSM to retreat and relinquish the tower.

It’s arguable that the Elixir was overkill but it allowed LemonNation that extra zonal control which helped Butt 9 continue to steam roll TSM.

Not only did Fnatic’s YellOwStar use Morgana to pick people off, he also used her as a poke enabler. In a similar fashion to LemonNation, YellOwStaR would catch someone in a binding so Nidalee and Lulu could unleash their burst. It gave them multiple free towers. Morgana is great at this because her Dark Binding has such a long range that you can abuse the fog of war making it far harder to dodge.


The blue circle is where Diamond had been snared just milliseconds before.

Judging by recent patches, I expect Morgana to get nerfed. She’s not only strong but she’s frustrating to play against. I imagine Riot will perhaps nerf the total snare time on her q and perhaps remove a second from her Black Shield. I’ve been playing support Morgana for the best part of a year now so I would be tremednously happy if they did leave her alone. That said, she’s only at her strongest because she counters the other 3 main support champs so well. If they fall out of favour then perhaps she will too.

Over the past few weeks we have seen an increasing amount of our favourite fallen angel, Morgana, being played in the support role. The survivability, disengage and strong team fight presence all make her a perfect candidate for a number of possible compositions, but the real question is why she is chosen when a number of other champions offer the same thing. With the season 4 changes to the general role of support alongside the introduction of new Gold per 10 items, more specifically Frostfang, it becomes clear why she is a solid pick. However, what a lot of people don’t see is how much of a counter she is to the current meta, and finally, what it would take to bring her down from power.

So why is Morgana being played support instead of mid?

First of all we should consider why Morgana is a viable support. She has peel for her ADC with Dark Binding and Black Shield, and I cannot stress enough how Black Shield is the most integral part of the Morgana support playstyle. Together with the peel, her Dark Binding is an amazing engage for both bot lane skirmishes and making picks on the enemy team because at max level it binds for 3 seconds; comparable to Ashe’s ultimate. The next thing we wonder is why she’s being played as support instead of mid, the main question of this section. There are a number of reasons for this, all revolving around the season 4 meta change. Morgana used to be a strong pick in mid lane due to her insane wave clear, allowing her to farm up the minion waves, take the jungle camps and roam to pressure other lanes. Unfortunately this is no longer an asset for Morgana, as the meta mid laners being played mainly have good wave clear themselves; Ziggs, Gragas, LeBlanc etc. The advantage these champions bring that Morgana doesn’t have herself is mobility. This means not only can she not wander off to farm jungle and gank lanes, but the current mid lane flavours can do it better than her.

But Morgana has always had this kit, why is she being played as support now?

To start with think about why she’s an attractive pick on bot lane. She directly counters the meta supports. Thresh hook? Black Shield. Leona engage? Black Shield and disengage with Dark Binding. Annie wants to blow up your ADC? What a surprise, Black Shield! The current support meta is hard engage, and Morgana says no to that. That’s right, Morgana’s actual counters in lane aren’t actually being played on a consistent level, and all of the current favourites are an easy match-up for her. After this we look at why she fits into the season 4 meta as a whole. If we think about the popular playstyle right now champions like Pantheon, Vi, Elise and such come to mind. What do all of these champions have in common? Single target engage and hard initiation. Morgana counters exactly that and its extremely simple for her to achieve. She Black Shields the target player on her team and they’re free to disengage from the fight, or at least position themselves out of harm’s way. With the absence of AoE CC that we used to see regularly (Sona, Amumu, Lissandra etc), we now see a new way of engage, the almighty pick compositions, and Morgana has been discovered as the counter to it.

The last and one of the most influential changes to appear in season 4 was the change to the gold generation items for support. Let’s take a look at Frostfang.

Now the reason this item is so strong on Morgana is due to two reasons. Firstly, the AP she gets from the item is enough for her to have a presence in lane alongside the correct set of runes and masteries. Secondly, the main reason, is Morgana’s Tormented Soil periodic damage ticks all proc the passive on Frostfang; free gold!

When did Morgana support start making an appearance in pro play?

If we’re going to get into the origins of Morgana support then we would have to travel slightly further back than when she officially started to be introduced into the professional scene. Ex-Gambit support player Darker made a thing of it in solo queue, when he realised that it was the direct counter to the holy trinity of season 4 supports (Annie, Thresh, Leona). It was seen perhaps once or twice around the very start of season 4, until it became a staple pick in the NA and EU LCS as well as GPL Winter 2014. We saw Morgana being played a great deal in NA due to Krepo being a huge fan of her and calling her out pretty early on in the season. We also started to see her in EU LCS, one of the most memorable times being Roccat’s Vander playing her in week 5, and Vander actually picking her up as one of his go-to supports. Surprisingly we never saw Korea playing Morgana much, which lead to a great deal of speculation as to why it was being played in EU and NA until very recently. SKTT1 in OGN Master’s played a Vayne/Morgana lane only last week, which the pro players saw as validation of the champion’s viability.

But what is the real reason perhaps that Morgana isn’t picked as much in Korea as everywhere else? Well, Korea tends to ban out Annie/Thresh/Leona slightly more than its western and Chinese counterparts. This brings in more champions like Sona, Nami, Karma etc, which Morgana has trouble with, and this leads us onto the next point.

If Morgana support is so strong, what would it take to see her fall from grace?

With the changes to Frostfang being one of the main reasons everyone is picking Morgana support up, this also means that players will be taking a look at other AP supports that are able to take advantage of this item. The champions we are most likely to see using it are either poke or sustain orientated, think Sona, Nami, Janna, Zyra, Karma and Soraka. These champions are the hard lanes for Morgana to play against. So how do these champions counter Morgana? Let’s focus on the champions that we have seen slowly edging themselves into competitive play in the past few weeks. Sona, Nami (mainly picked in OGN), Karma and Zyra (seen from Fnatic at IEM) are all either sustain or poke lanes, something which Morgana struggles against due to the only defensive spell she has is her Black Shield. Now Sona and Nami are easily able to out-heal any damage that Morgana is going to throw out in lane phase, but also their AoE abilities make it so Morgana’s Black Shield can only shelter one person from the engage. A Black Shield isn’t going to save more than one person from Sona’s Crecendo or Nami’s Tidal Wave. Karma is the champion we have seen more and more often, and if we think about it, isn’t Karma an amazing counter to Morgana’s Ultimate too? She can speed up her ADC and herself to easily run out of stun range.

The next major point comes with the Doran’s Shield Nerf. The nerf came at the same time as the changes to Frostfang, and with it made tanky supports like Thresh and Leona slightly less strong. This made Morgana’s offensive ability to kill them a lot easier on top of the fact that she could stop their engage.

Where will Morgana go from here on out?

Chances are Morgana will still be seen in competitive play for a while until the meta changes with the current favourite team compositions and tanky engage supports. Morgana should be eventually pushed out when her counters come into play, ironically for the same reason she was brought into flavour. What we see overall is a bigger triangle in the support meta more than just Annie, Thresh and Leona. Tanky supports are countered by disengage/AP supports, which are countered by sustain supports, which are countered by tanky supports… and it goes on.

If you want to play more passively and only poke with your abilities. This is a much more safer pick, since you won't be putting yourself in close proximity to the enemy due to your low range, and your abilities will do more damage themselves.

If you're still feeling like you're taking too much damage from the enemy ADC, you can take Greater Mark of Armor runes instead to block out some of it. However, you'll be sacrificing some of your own damage as well.

Used to be the standard for supports, or any role in general actually, but they were nerfed pretty badly. You can still run these if you'd rather have the extra armor instead of health.

If plan to have even more AP to scale with once you finish your core items and start building damage, these could be a good place to start. Only choose these if the enemy team has minimal magic damage! This way, your black shield should block most of it.

Morgana's AP ratios are really good, so 15 AP can go a very long way. Especially early game, 15 AP on a support with amazing scalings can hurt a lot. Most supports would go with Health Quints, but due to Morgana's spell vamp off of her passive, the extra AP will help you regen more anyways.

I personally, have never tried out these, but I can see how they would work! Morgana's base movement speed is extremely low, and she has no dashes/gap-closers/movement speed buffs. The extra 4.5% movement speed is amazing. It'll allow you to keep up with any enemies so your Soul Shackles won't break, and it'll also allow you more mobility in and out of teamfights.[/columns