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Hello!
I am a long time support player, and I am trying to improve my support play, because as of late I have been really lacking in my game impact most early games. As a result, most of the games I win are not by my own ability, and I have been feeding, or at least not doing as much work as I should do in the early game to help secure farm for my cores and denying farm to the enemies' cores.
I have been watching many of Purge's VODs, particularly ones where he supports, and I have noticed that his early game impact is very high most of the games (lots of kills and assists), and I have been trying to reflect his play style in my most recent games with very little success.
These are the biggest problems I am having, that I could use some help with solving:
1) Early game movement, ganks, and TPs. (I am especially afraid to move away from the core in my lane. I never trust them to survive.)
2) When to pull. When not to pull.
3) How to acquire enough farm and xp to be effective. (I never seem to hit 6 fast enough, also I'm generally late on my 6 minute ward timing due to lack of funds.)
4) When should I play aggressively? When should I be defensive? (I feel like I'm playing too defensively at all stages in the game and I don't make enough impact as a result.
Here are a couple more recent games, on some of my most played heroes. My profile name is Go Team Seaslug! at the moment.
Visage - 907760258
Here I feel like I could not really compete with the axe in the top lane, so I rotated bot to gank, but I spent a lot of time unsure if I could get a gank on the sniper. (I should have dusted and looped around). We ended up losing all 3 lanes, because I abandoned top, SK was underfarmed when he switched with me, and that I spent too much time jumping from spot to spot. In the late game, I played hyper defensively.
Crystal Maiden - 904754326
I'm happy with how the lane went in this game. I didn't pull here because I was afraid of a mirana bane tri lane, so I played pretty safe, and far back. (Also they warded the pull which I realized around min 4) And I made movements to keep the specter in check, getting a kill. I stayed in lane for too long, though. I probably should have smoked and gone mid than tping bot, because my team was winning that lane. It was a stomp. I'm not very happy with my warding either, but the skywrath took that over.
Disruptor - 901659519
I was happy about this game was the first blood and the deward just after. I did a poor job of zoning the sk, so he got to level 3 and was able to kill me by himself. (I played too far forward too). There was a failed gank mid against phoenix (I could not lock that hero down all game), and I tried to gank bot with a brood, but had no luck with it, staying too long with no mana (only leeching xp and leading to a brood death). After that the game just fell apart with all of the lanes lost. I'm also pretty rusty with Disruptor, so my glimpses, ults and fields were sort of questionable all game.
Those should be enough for you to look at. I am up for any suggestions you can give!
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1) Only leave your lane if you have no impact there - else stay and only tp if you can prevent your mates getting killed.
2) Pull when you cant control your lane or you carry can last hit under tower and the pulls cant be contested.
3) Rotate to empty lanes if it doesnt hurt your mates.
4) Depends on your lineup - understand your opponents lineup and your teams needs. GO for ganks if kills are possible, else farm.
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Took a look at one of your games.
Visage - 907760258
Here I feel like I could not really compete with the axe in the top lane, so I rotated bot to gank, but I spent a lot of time unsure if I could get a gank on the sniper. (I should have dusted and looped around). We ended up losing all 3 lanes, because I abandoned top, SK was underfarmed when he switched with me, and that I spent too much time jumping from spot to spot. In the late game, I played hyper defensively.
I dont think you did all that bad top. Worth noting is that Axe dumps on PA early and you wont be able to push him out of lane. PA cant do much early levels and Visage isnt very good at zoning either. Early lvls of soul assumption are terribly mana inefficient. You had a pretty weak saeflane.
-You stacked and pulled small camp. I think that was good. You denied a fair amount of exp.
-I like stacking and pulling over pulling easy->pulling hard camp. Axe can likely contest the hard camp, but with double easy camp your wave dies fast and he has no time to contest. And you can stay closer to tower safety.
-Not sure if you checked Axes items but he only had a salve. Granted you were both low on regen too, but considering his low regen I think you could consider just harassing him more with right clicks and maybe even dumping some mana into him. You had 2 clarities. Im not sure it wouldve helped though, he should be getting his tranqs quite early anyway. But you might have been able to slow down his CS a bit.
-PA could probably used dagger to harass more. She was sitting on high mana most of the time. The damage ads up, especially against a low regen opponent.
-PA should probably ferry another set of regen to her too. She was up against a tranq->RoH Axe....
-Moving bot was questionable. When you start getting higher levels in your nuke you have better chance of bullying Axe away, leaving PA alone probably made it worse.
-Not ganking sniper was probably good. Visage is a pretty weak ganker and sniper can be semi-hard to gank due to how far back he can stay. You probably need to catch him when/if he moves down in the river. Also remember you want to get lvl 6 fairly fast on Visage, roaming/ganking too much might slow that down.
Overall I dont think you did any notable mistakes though.
I'd say by far the biggest problem for your team was your lanes though. Offensive duo melee lane against a duo ranged. If you go offensive duo melee you really need two very strong laners. Slark can be ok offlane although definitely not a top choice. Sending SK down there too did absolutely nothing. Actually it probably actively fucked with your team having him there, he couldve got so much more by moving between his own jungle as well as helping you against Axe. When you send two ppl to the offlane they absofuckinglutely need to get something out of it. Just having two ppl sit there on shared soaking exp duty is super bad.
With SK in jungle/top you lose bot (which you do anyway) but you should be winning top handily. If SK is good he'll find farm by stacking in the jungle too which he'll clear later. You can also help him stack. And invoker was fine mid. But by moving SK bot you pretty much lost both side lanes. At ~8min with their dive into your jungle the game was pretty much lost.
If you want to take anything away from this game I'd say it is to never send a weak duo lane offlane if they cant at the very least compete with the presumed enemy safelane. Especially not if one of your heroes cab do well in jungle. That was your biggest problem to me.
Im currently 5400mmr playing mostly sup/offlane, for what thats worth.
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I'm similar - as a support I'm relatively confident in laning, pulling, warding, and teamfights but sometimes I worry that early game I don't rotate or gank often enough, and watching pro games it seems like good support ganks can really tip the game in your favor. I've had a few bad experiences trying to gank mid and instead feeding them a double kill, which doesn't help 
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Does your team have 1 support or 2? Generally its quite difficult to get shit done if theres only 1 support on your team.
On September 20 2014 16:16 soanparlell wrote:
1) Early game movement, ganks, and TPs. (I am especially afraid to move away from the core in my lane. I never trust them to survive.)
2) When to pull. When not to pull.
3) How to acquire enough farm and xp to be effective. (I never seem to hit 6 fast enough, also I'm generally late on my 6 minute ward timing due to lack of funds.)
4) When should I play aggressively? When should I be defensive? (I feel like I'm playing too defensively at all stages in the game and I don't make enough impact as a result.
Always carry a tp scroll. If you get a kill then get boots first, if the game is extremely passive you can buy boots first, or if the offlaner can kill you without boots get boots first. Otherwise get tp as soon as you have 135 gold, so you can save your mid and offlane when they get ganked/gone on. People dont expect it early game, and even if they die, you can get exp from a counter kill or just from the lane before they come back. Theres no real downside to it unless your carry dies (lol).
1. One support: Are you winning your lane? Does your lane partner have a large exp advantage? Being off of the map can threaten the offlaner, since hes not sure if you're wrapping around to kill him, pulling, or ganking another lane (assuming you have a smoke/he doesnt have ward vision)
If you're confident that your carry wont die, then you should either stack camp(s), both to pull and to farm, or try to gank mid. If your mid hero has no cc, then it may just be a waste of your time to gank. A good habit to get into is stacking the med/hard camp then going down to the rune at every 2 minutes (Assuming their mid doesn't go for it preemptively, in which case they might be able to kill you).
If trying to threaten the offlaner will result in you getting killed (vs clockwerk or BB for example), but your carry wont die, you can leave. If the carry will die, its best to sit behind him and throw out a stun when they try to kill him just so he survives. If you leave when this is the case, make sure you have a TP scroll (well, you should always have one...) to save him if they try to kill him.
Having 1 support is a bitch. Usually when im solo supporting I don't roam since the risk/reward of doing so isnt worth it. I just stack, farm and threaten the offlaner enough so that the carry gets decent farm.
two supports: This becomes much easier. You can generally leave you carry alone since he should have huge advantage vs the offlaner. Unless you make major mistakes or are outskilled, hes guaranteed lots of farm. You can get lots of farm from neutrals (pull through 2x on radiant, 1x on dire without fear of being contested), and roam without fear of your carry dying.
2. When not to pull:
When your carry is low on hp. Low is subjective, but generally means that he'll die/be forced back to base if the offlaner dives him. Heroes like WR and weaver are very good at this, since they can move faster than the carry can.
When the offlaner can contest your pull. A hero like axe can just walk into the creeps and take them all. Again, if you have 2 supports this becomes much easier for you.
When they have a siege wave coming. Your tower will take a lot of damage, and its not worth it.
3. Pulls and kills. try to get the last hit on every neutral, and be active in kills. If you're behind on EXP and your team isnt, you can make up for it midgame if you live through the fights. If not, you're kind of screwed. If you lose your short lane then you're going to be food for 3/5 of their heroes. If you can kill their mid or offlane, then you'll be fine exp wise. If you have a support that can jungle effectively, you'll be fine on exp. Worst comes to worst, you can stack camps and sap the exp when another hero takes them, but thats only if you cant get kills or farm from pulls. If you're not needed when your team pushes a lane, you can go to another lane and farm for a minute or two. This happens a lot in high level games.
You're gonna be underleveled a lot. It takes a lot of experience to know where to go to get the most exp while still being productive. Quite often, in all kinds of games, supports run around trying to get kills and either through bad luck or skill they dont get any, and they lose 3 minutes of jungle farm.
4. Its the same thing, experience. Knowing hero matchups, knowing how smart your teammates are, knowing how the enemy is playing. The advice I give to all my friends is to play super aggressive and die a lot. If you care, you can do it in unranked instead of ranked, idk. It gives you a good idea of how much you can get away with, and its fun. You want to slowly tone down the aggression until you can get the kill without dying, and thats generally how you should play. Playing super passive is a lot simpler, since its sitting back and reacting to the enemy. It depends on the heroes, but unless you have many counter-initiators or strong turtling heroes, its also worse because you're letting the enemy dictate the pace of the game.
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I would recommend DrPanda/Rocket-bear's soloQ support guide, if you haven't found it already.
There's quite a lot of good stuff in this forum that gets buried under the deluge of hero threads.
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Hi guys!
I just wanted to say thanks for all the help. It has helped me tighten my play.
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EPT
