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On November 14 2011 04:55 R11 wrote:
Can the OP or anyone with insight expand on other possible items a support hero should go for perhaps with an advantage in lane or equal lane over getting gp/10 items?
I usually get gp/10 on supports and wonder if they are alternatives I could try. I noticed doran's but I feel that the benefits isn't as good in the long run because if it becomes a passive farming lane or you start losing a lane, you lose out a bit of money to buy wards and other items.
Personally for me I always feel uncomfortable as a support when the lane isn't going too well and I am unable to get a quick gp/10 item. It feels like you will have to make a choice of purchasing wards or getting more gp/10 (I usually get 2) and that you are behind.
On the topic, I know it really hasn't been done in LoL but the more I play, I really feel like getting a quick gp/10 goes a long way for supports and wanna know the viability of giving some farm to the support early game for the gp/10.
I've personally never felt the need to grab doran rings on a support over faerie charm, or even boots. The 15 AP doesn't really change much, mana regen isn't necessary if you manage correctly, and the HP - well HoG gives you the 250 HP compared to say 2 Drings at 200 HP. If you're doing well early on, maybe grab some for a Soraka to buff the heal, but again at your discretion.
I think for taking farm it depends on how much you're losing by because your carry is also probably losing lots of farm already. Honestly, if you start faerie charm though and even go run Avarice quints, I don't see how you'd be that behind. Assist gold helps for sure, but you can still manage Philo stone very fast if you die a couple times. I usually just steal a couple CS if I`m about to b soon and want to get an extra ward or two.
One of the things you might choose to do instead is simply hold out on Reverie and buy the rest of your core/aura items before getting converting out Philo Stone.
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On November 14 2011 07:29 Terranasaur wrote:
What about Aura items? Useful for supports?
Aegis is always a good pickup. If it's very lategame and your off-tank needs some help he may ask you to build Starks. Abyssal Scepter is ok if you are playing some odd supports (galio, zilean) or someone with good ap ratio to abuse. Soul shroud is usually not bought since your kindlegem should go towards your Shurelyias (Which offers CDR and an active to use, arguably better).
Also, where is the mention of Alistar with Tristana and Vayne? I have ran so many bottom lanes into the ground with such an aggressive level 2 fight. You've got 3-4 disables/knockbacks to net an easy kill.
As far as gp10 goes, philo stone -> Shurelyias is a must on any support. Heart of gold is ok if you're going to be in the middle of teamfights (e.g. Taric, Alistar) since the Randuin's slow is excellent. Kage's -> deathfire is ok if you're super far ahead and have gold to spare. Avarice blade, lol (trolling at this point).
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Personally support is definitely the hardest role to carry as for obvious reasons. On the issue of taking farm, I lasthit creeps that my carry won't be in range for/will miss for certain. If the carry is good though, that number should only be 1-2. I have no qualms about stealing whatever CS I can from people who aren't my carry though  .
Since supports don't carry in the traditional sense, I think the more important thing is to try to babysit the whole team by watching the minimap/warding critical locations. People often throw down wards, but zone out as they focus on CS. Ping spamming is a crude but very effective way of getting people to notice something on the minimap.
I personally do like rushing philo's and depending on how the lane is going, going straight for boots/aegis or else heart of gold if it's a more passive lane.
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The whole point of gold per ten is that it sustains continuous ward (and later, oracle) purchases so you don't have to waste last hits on them. They also sometimes build into good items, particularly Shurelia's. The idea is that as the worst scaling member of the team, the support throws farm out the window, goes pure sustain and tries to save as many lives as possible just by giving vision and using all-purpose abilities throughout the game.
Doing some ward images right now. This guide is very good.
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Opening ward placements
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oadeq.jpg)
A common mistake for new players is to exclaim immediately DAT BRUSH and place all wards in brushes somewhere because its hard to gain vision of brushes. But the point of early game wards is to keep the enemy jungler from coming into your bot lane and killing everyone in it. Top should ward for themselves when they feel threatened (and not push the lane without wards), but as a support, your first goal is that your carry be allowed to freely last hit and pressure without eating a gank. The secondary purpose is to prevent your jungle from getting stolen, which is also very important. This is my opening series of wards, I use this every game that I can get out there to drop them.
The primary ward prevents the jungle path down from blue or across dragon and getting into the triangle brush by your turret, or into the most commonly used brush at the edge of the river. Warding the bush does something similar, but gives less vision, doesn't protect your triangle brush as well, and gives much less warning about ganks. The only advantage it gives is that you can see into the brush, but in almost every situation, that doesn't matter as you'll just be backing up anyways or getting really in there and forcing the person out of the brush. This is the most key ward in the game, and frankly, not placing around level 2-3 or so it will lose you games.
The second ward, near mid, protects jungle and mid from ganks, and should be dropped by the mid-laner as people start to near level 6, or if they burn their flash/escape skill or plan on pushing. Gives additional dragon control by warding the path from mid tower to dragon.
The third ward gives you lane control by giving a huge amount of lane vision and prevents the uncommon possibility of a gank by a jungler simply running through his side's tri-brush, past his own tower, and into the bush when there aren't creeps to give vision. Pretty much never happens in low ELO, but is a common way of getting around ward #1 in high ELO.
Second Ward Set
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/o94EP.jpg)
When junglers are level 6+, you need to keep a ward on dragon pretty much 24/7. If that ward goes out, it might be that they placed a pink ward, killed your ward, and are doing dragon, so keep an eye on your dragon ward!
The dragon ward protects bot lane pretty much as well as the primary ward from above picture, but since you want vision of dragon, you'll lose a bit of coverage. To compensate, placing a ward in your tri-brush guarantees that no roundabout jungle thieves will gank through there, and that bot lane can't effectively dive into your jungle area through that path. A great pair of wards to push bot with.
The ward in the enemy jungle gives vision if their mid tries to come down to blue, possibly to gank, and gives some control (but not very good control) over their blue. The advantage of it is that if the other team tries to rush dragon, you'll be able to see it coming and have vision on a very important brush for a teamfight, and it gives protection to mid in that the jungler cannot take blue or wolves then gank without being seen. Its very greedy - a safer spot is detailed in the picture above.
These wards are the shared responsibility of the jungler and bot lane (wriggles), and the dragon ward should always be up until dragon falls.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Awu3P.jpg)
This is just a lot of great ward spots that I use frequently. Its not uncommon for me to plant 15-20 wards in a single game, but it's not just that I place a lot of wards and spy my enemies shuffling around. I choose my wards for three reasons:
1) To enable my team to farm/push a particular lane.
Whenever I can give my top or mid a free-farm and get them a ton of gold, or allow them to push a tower safely in the midgame, that's a great time to ward certain areas.
2) Steal dat jungle yo
Stealing blue buffs, red buffs, wraiths, or even better, stealing them off the corpse of the undefended enemy jungler is where it's at. Good ward placement allows you to go into the enemy jungle knowing that you'll be rewarded. Also, if you spot the enemy jungler doing blue, his wraiths and golems are free for your jungler or mid to take. All these wards pay for themselves easily in the free stuff your team gets from them.
3) To protect our jungle and major buffs.
"We need to ward baron" 15 minutes in is not an acceptable statement for a support. At higher ELOs enemy junglers will constantly try to find ways to shut down your basic routines by stealing your buffs and ganking your jungler, or taking uncommon routes to get a gank on your lanes. Ward up those important areas BEFORE important buffs spawn and take away their opportunity, or force an oracles.
Warding on the fly
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DVLrY.jpg)
This image shows how a few key late-game wards can enable your team to accomplish various objectives. Key off of existing wards and the flow of the match and try to place these safely. Each set is described by color below.
Dark Blue
By warding their chokepoints, my team gains full access to their jungle and a lot of safety around baron and top lane, as their only access point that I can't see is through their own mid tower, and it doesn't lead to anything that I can't see anyway. This set of wards is easy to get after taking the second middle tower, and allows you to really control the pace of the game by taking their red buff and top lane by storm. You can place the top ward one choke closer to the tower if you're feeling hungry or they're all dead for better effect.
Sky Blue
Fast baron setup. Ward the wraith camp on your way down to baron, then run up and ward the tri-brush. While doing baron, have a teammate zone from the small brush just south of baron and place a ward directly behind baron to block any steal attempts.
Teal
Top lane push setup. Wards baron and the tri-brush, and after that the only way that top can be ganked is through their own tower or through your own tower.
Purple
By warding blue buff and dragon, you can very effectively cut off any gank routes all the way up to the second tower and control blue - but be wary, the dragon ward will not give you enough time to escape a full fledged gank down river.
Red
Pre-dragon setup, similar to the Baron setup above. Warding their blue and on the side of their mid brush covers their approach AND retreat, allowing you to break off dragon, initiate, and chase if you're feeling spicy.
My conclusion
These are just a few examples of how warding can be used strategically, but the most important thing is controlling as many buffs and dragons as you can with wards. Remember guys, good support players are effective in team-fights, effective in lane, and buy a lot of wards and plant them, but they don't shoulder the burden alone - 75 gold is literally nothing compared to the value of shutting down the other team's ability to move freely, so invest in a ward whenever you have spare gold! This support/warding guide is useful for every position in the game and anyone can fill in the role of warder at any given time, and most pro teams run around with 3-6 wards and an oracles in inventory spread between five players, because the value of securing farm, stealing buffs, protecting buffs, and capitalizing on mistakes is WAY ABOVE the value of the ward itself.
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hmm
to chime in on this thread, since i'm basically full time support for SG. This is kinda going to be a stream of consciousness thing, and apologies if i repeat anything discussed, i read the op but i'm not going to read the whole thread.
1) Summoners are a little bit more flexible now. CV still mandatory, but heal and promote are interesting options on supports who don't desperately need flash (sona and janna come to mind)
2) Soraka is kind of a weird char (imo) in that she's a lot stronger as a counterpick against comps compared to synergizing with a team. For example, i wouldn't say that she's strong with sustain comps, but insanely strong against enemy comps that cannot deal with sustain (basically comps that are low in cc for the most part) or enemy comps built around sustain, because of how much she outputs. In laning phase, she's just as strong if not stronger than any support in basically any situation, but has some trouble midgame because she cannot keep ppl away from priority targets, so ends up in this weird position where she's OP as fuck in lane, but it kinda balances out a bit if you have a comp that can deal with her (high burst + cc)
3) i love the +gold at start mastery. lets my openings become a bit more flexible, and the standard opening (faerie charm) gets to add an extra mana pot, which lets me cut on pretty much all of my mana regen runes for other things.
4) in regards to aura items: aegis, starks and wota are pretty standard (starks/wota obviously team dependant and situational, aegis is a more generic item). Soul shroud is good, but often hard to farm up, and takes up too much space imo when it's not completed. Either way tho, everything after reverie. I really like that item (see #7)
5) here's a ward image guide i found via google
+ Show Spoiler +
6) i literally cannot stress how important wards are for a support to have. If there aren't any wards on the map at any given point of the game past MINIMUM 4 minutes, then you're doing it wrong. The a major part of the point of supports is that you can sacrifice gold and farm to spend on wards, so if you're prioritizing finishing your triple gp5 over getting wards, then your priorities are backwards, i dont care how far ahead/behind or whatever circumstance. The only time it's excusable is when it's basically a joke of a game (15 min game over type things)
7) reverie op
8) some supports can take oracles a lot better and safer than others. I always take it on janna, kus u simply dont die that much on janna, and not to mention she can get away with getting into a bit more risky positions to clear wards kus of OP tornadoes and ult. I get it a lot on cow, mostly because his ult gives good durability, and headbutt again provides a bit of leeway when going into risky areas. The rest of the supports its kind of a tossup and depends on how much the enemy is warding, how well you're doing, etc etc.
9) I think there was some discussion about stuff like karma and zil. Tbh i would only ever play them in mid, they are simply too strong there and too weak in comparison to other bot lane supports. They're also incredibly strong there, but also require a team sort-of built around them. They also are probably the highest level-scaling supports, which again reinforces why they should be in a solo.
guess that's it for now. Damn that was a lot more than i expected to write going into this
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On November 23 2011 17:57 barbsq wrote:
hmm
to chime in on this thread, since i'm basically full time support for SG. This is kinda going to be a stream of consciousness thing, and apologies if i repeat anything discussed, i read the op but i'm not going to read the whole thread.
1) Summoners are a little bit more flexible now. CV still mandatory, but heal and promote are interesting options on supports who don't desperately need flash (sona and janna come to mind)
Flash is basically mandatory on both champions for landing perfect ultimate in teamfights and living harder. I'm really confused by this part, because everything else looks really good, but by god, don't ignore the awesome skill-set of your support and just be the ward dude all game.
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On November 23 2011 18:31 Deezl wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2011 17:57 barbsq wrote:
hmm
to chime in on this thread, since i'm basically full time support for SG. This is kinda going to be a stream of consciousness thing, and apologies if i repeat anything discussed, i read the op but i'm not going to read the whole thread.
1) Summoners are a little bit more flexible now. CV still mandatory, but heal and promote are interesting options on supports who don't desperately need flash (sona and janna come to mind)
Flash is basically mandatory on both champions for landing perfect ultimate in teamfights and living harder. I'm really confused by this part, because everything else looks really good, but by god, don't ignore the awesome skill-set of your support and just be the ward dude all game.
theres a reason i point out janna and (tho to a bit of a lesser extent) sona. Janna should NOT be using ult to initiate, you shouldn't be in a position where you have to flash to get to whoever you're trying to ult for in the first place. Sona, kinda depends on some things. If they have a very high-mobility blink team, its prob worth getting flash, just because their high movement means it's a bit unlikely for you to just happen upon a good ult situation. A lot of the time tho, sona ult can be very easily set up with just celerity, making flash a bit needless. Also i wouldn't underestimate how much hp heal gives you and your teammates. I def find it noticable. As a lovely bit of anecdotal evidence, myself and treebeard managed to 2v3 as sona and kog vs vayne alistar and rammus gank, and almost solely due to heal, as well as some pretty slick kiting
on cow or soraka or taric tho, I def would want flash. Taric is very melee oriented, and has a tendency to need flash, tho more for escape than anything else. Cow really needs flash for initiations, and again pulverize has a very small practically melee radius, often necessitating flash for perfect positioning. for Soraka, heal is just ultra redundant.
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On November 23 2011 16:04 PartyBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2011 04:55 R11 wrote:
Can the OP or anyone with insight expand on other possible items a support hero should go for perhaps with an advantage in lane or equal lane over getting gp/10 items?
I usually get gp/10 on supports and wonder if they are alternatives I could try. I noticed doran's but I feel that the benefits isn't as good in the long run because if it becomes a passive farming lane or you start losing a lane, you lose out a bit of money to buy wards and other items.
Personally for me I always feel uncomfortable as a support when the lane isn't going too well and I am unable to get a quick gp/10 item. It feels like you will have to make a choice of purchasing wards or getting more gp/10 (I usually get 2) and that you are behind.
On the topic, I know it really hasn't been done in LoL but the more I play, I really feel like getting a quick gp/10 goes a long way for supports and wanna know the viability of giving some farm to the support early game for the gp/10. I've personally never felt the need to grab doran rings on a support over faerie charm, or even boots. The 15 AP doesn't really change much, mana regen isn't necessary if you manage correctly, and the HP - well HoG gives you the 250 HP compared to say 2 Drings at 200 HP. If you're doing well early on, maybe grab some for a Soraka to buff the heal, but again at your discretion. I think for taking farm it depends on how much you're losing by because your carry is also probably losing lots of farm already. Honestly, if you start faerie charm though and even go run Avarice quints, I don't see how you'd be that behind. Assist gold helps for sure, but you can still manage Philo stone very fast if you die a couple times. I usually just steal a couple CS if I`m about to b soon and want to get an extra ward or two. One of the things you might choose to do instead is simply hold out on Reverie and buy the rest of your core/aura items before getting converting out Philo Stone.
The thing is, you don't open with a doran's ring you buy them because they give you immediate stats which are good on like almost any support (hp, ap, mp5). Your start should ALWAYS be faerie charm+wards+pots (you could account for wards+pots only, but i doubt it to be a useful opening especially if you have a competent jungler on your team). You take drings if you massively stomp your lane and need some stats right now, to make you even more useful. Buying a HoG when you're ahead is kinda silly, because it will take around 8 min to become cost-effective. It gives very poor stats for the gold, so you should only take it, if you feel like that at some point you can turn the game around, or if the game itself is very passive and your role isn't as significiant at that given point of time of the game.
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But arent the stats on Doran's items pretty crap? The only one I would ever take is the shield, because armor scales and is useful forever... But for the same price you can get Oracles, a health crystal or starter item for auras, CD boots...
I don't understand why Doran's would be a priority.
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On November 24 2011 06:11 Deezl wrote:
But arent the stats on Doran's items pretty crap? The only one I would ever take is the shield, because armor scales and is useful forever... But for the same price you can get Oracles, a health crystal or starter item for auras, CD boots...
I don't understand why Doran's would be a priority.
doing the gold per stat calculation on a relevant doran item, the shield and ring are more efficient than other items. But on a support this is not optimal, you lose the ability to go to lane with wards, usually what I do is go into lane with a fairy charm, health pot and 4 wards (requires +40 gold in utility), if they have a level 2 gank jungler I put the ward in lane after small golems spawn.
The ward in the tri-bush at bot should be placed as close to river as possible, with improved sight wards its enough for the vision to extend into the jungle, so you are covering 2 lanes of entry, this is better for blue side that pushes because some jungles and avoid river by going through the tribush.
dragon wards should be done early for fiddlesticks junglers, they can solo it at a much earlier timepoint, the ward is needed to allow top to teleport into dragon fights, simple CVs can let you see, but you might end up with 4v5 and cant fight.
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On November 24 2011 06:11 Deezl wrote:
But arent the stats on Doran's items pretty crap? The only one I would ever take is the shield, because armor scales and is useful forever... But for the same price you can get Oracles, a health crystal or starter item for auras, CD boots...
I don't understand why Doran's would be a priority.
dorans rings are very cost-effective and give hp, mp5, and ap, all of which are useful stats on supports. getting 2-3 can be incredibly effective. As far as what first items should be, i pretty much exclusively go philo first on all champs, but not because i value philo itself, but because of how much i value reverie (which i consider pretty much the best item eva). For ppl who don't value reverie as much as i do, stacking drings and completely ignoring gold items can not only be effective but provides a very fast and strong immediate power level, which can be abused into providing more gold than a philo or hog can (via successfull dragon fights, really strong lane presence etc). Basically, doran's items are about being strong NOW, while other items are about being strong later on, and either strategy can be effective depending on how you take advantage of it.
as far as why you see high level players get gp5, its because they are actively trying to make games last 40+ minutes, at which point gold items become effective.
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On November 24 2011 06:11 Deezl wrote:
But arent the stats on Doran's items pretty crap? The only one I would ever take is the shield, because armor scales and is useful forever... But for the same price you can get Oracles, a health crystal or starter item for auras, CD boots...
I don't understand why Doran's would be a priority.
The shield is really bad. You pay some gold for the hp5 iirc.
I'm not saying doran ring's should be a priority. It's basicly something that can become very useful for you, if you're doing really well. You colud prioritize something like this:
Wards > Early pink ward for drag > First gp10 (usually philo) > More pink wards/oracles -> Dring if doing good and need immediate stats/hog if passive play or you expect a come back. > Aura items/t2 boots.
Don't understand this as "the only way to prio on a support". Sometimes you don't need an early oracles because the enemy support are quite behind.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/l2qch.jpg)
