Hi guys, I'm a ~1600 player that plays everything and decided to try and start a topic for dedicated support discussion. I am not a dedicated support player, therefore, feel free to question or deviate from anything contained in here. This is intended to be a starting point. This is also a work in progress. The OP will continue to be updated over the course of the next few weeks until it reaches a point I'm satisfied with.
I have near 60% winrates with my top three supports, sona, soraka and janna.
In the current metagame, a support is a champion that goes bottom lane and helps protect an AD carry. The support generally does not take any lasthits and instead, relies on passive gold generation to get items. Support champions are champions that do not require large amounts of farm nor levels to be effective.
Supports generally start the game by buying wards and a faerie charm. Their job is to ward around the bottom lane in order to keep safe from ganks and to help either defensive, offensively or both in the bottom lane. The degree to which you can do either depends on which support you happen to be playing. Later in the game, supports in conjunction with the jungler try to keep vision on map objectives and deny the enemy vision of the same. In a 2v2 situation bottom lane, the support is the playmaker in most lanes, either initiating with a stun/knockup and providing an opportunity for the AD carry to follow up on. The support is also the one responsible for getting the AD carry out of such messes via the same disables.
Avarice - Gold as a support is difficult to come by and these help you get it Swiftness - Used primarily on aggressive supports such as alistar in order to set up opportunities to get a kill
Marks:
Resilience - As a bottom laner, the primary form of incoming damage is physical and armor helps mitigate the damage Magic Pen - Used on poke oriented supports such as sona. You are stronger offensively but weaker defensively
Seals:
Resilience - The most cost efficient slot to get armor on. Defensively speaking, the strongest rune you can get as a support. Avarice - Additional gold per 10. If you use gp10 in this slot, you must have armor in the marks slot or else you will be too squishy
Glyphs:
Shielding - MR/level is very common on any champion that does not face magic damage early. Warding - Flat MR is very good against champions that rely on magic damage in lane since it's stronger when the magic damage you take is strongest, in the early game. Champions such as corki, tristana and ezreal deal a hefty amount of magic damage in the early game.
0/9/21 is the most commonly used set of masteries on a support champion. The masteries in the defensive tree are pretty standardized but the masteries within the utility can be varied depending on whether you want mana, movespeed, or a myriad of other combinations. The most contentious mastery point here is scout which grants 5% more vision range on wards. The other options you can stick the point into without changing much is improved recall, good hands or movespeed. Feel free to experiment.
Chexx has provided some images of common ward locations and the extra vision granted by scout.
An alternative is the 1/15/14 mastery split on supports in order to get summoner's wrath in addition to being tankier than the other setups. It's very good on taric, leona and alistar in particular since having armor+MR shred means that your AD deals very close to true damage in the early game with autoattacks if you can all-in.
Other mastery setups are also viable, however, if you put fewer than 14 points into the utility tree, you begin to lose out on starting gold and passive gold gain, two things that get increasingly hard to make up as you get better at the game and your opponents make fewer mistakes.
A final mastery setup that will be touched on is 9/0/21. This is a more offensively oriented setup that relies on being able to 100-0 someone at level 2-3 or at level 6. Good combinations to do this with are alistar+tristana, leona+corki and taric+graves.
In general, when experimenting, do not put over 9 points into offense. It's a waste of points since you do not get the items to utilize those points effectively.
Flash - Always get this. It's by far the most useful summoner spell, allowing you to initiate, escape and make plays. Even in lane, it's useful in extended trades because by flashing when at low health in a trade, you can bait the enemy AD out of position to secure a kill for your AD carry.
Exhaust - Currently the preferred spell to have on a support. If either side initiates, your first priority is to exhaust the enemy AD before they can blow their front loaded burst (buckshot, boomerang, phosbomb etc). Lowering their damage can save either yourself or your AD and allow your duo to trade back while the other duo is waiting on cooldowns
Clairvoyance - Not as useful as it once was. With the new jungle, many jungle routes opened up and casting clairvoyance is much more of a crapshoot. Good warding has largely replaced CV's in importance as to determination of the enemy jungler's location. It is however, one of the strongest lategame summoners for positioning around baron.
Promote - This is actually surprisingly good later on in the game. It's somewhat useless in laning but can be good if you HAVE to back but you're getting pushed in. After laning ends, this grows far stronger since if you promote a bottom lane creep, someone HAS to go to stop it from taking a tower. It can also stop large creepwaves by itself, meaning you can send a supercannoncreep from spawn to bottom lane and push a wave back without ever showing yourself bottomlane. It works best against champions not taking teleport and not named shen.
Ignite - Can be useful if your AD carry is not running it in order to secure kills but given that the support is generally the lowest level character in the game, it's not as good on a support as it is on top/mid/AD
Heal - Not particularly good compared to exhaust on a support since healing your AD is 1/2 as effective.
Faerie charm + 4 wards+1pot A safe opening with the maximum number of wards possible. This is the best option for passive lanes where neither side has a particularly high chance of killing the other without help from other lanes/jungle (example would be janna corki vs soraka graves)
Faerie charm + vision ward + 2 wards + pot An alternative opening that allows you to deny one point of vision to the enemy team. The vision ward should be used to deny vision of tribush, the near lane bush or river. You want to deny vision along a gank path for your jungler
Faerie charm + 3 wards + 2 pots Without the +40 gold from the mastery, this is a normal opening. The extra pot lends itself to trading in lane.
Regrowth pendant + ward or pot This opening gets you the quickest possible philosopher's stone. You will have to use that one ward smartly or base the second you have enough for a philo + 2 wards.
boots + 1 ward 1 pot Used only on aggressive supports, espcially supports that lead invades. Alistar, blitzcrank, leona and taric are the champions that use this the most. It is the second least safe opening but has the most kill potential due to being able to position for and follow up on opportunities to kill.
boots + 3 pots The most dangerous (read: stupid) opening by far. You have to make something happen or base early or else. In any normal game, the jungler will make a point to go and kill your lane until such a time as you decide that buying wards would be a good idea.
Ruby Crystal + pot Used if you know for sure that the enemy jungler isn't going to gank before level 4. You will base the moment you have enough for a HoG + 2 wards, which should be right around the 4.5-5 minute mark, the time around when the level 4 jungler is looking to gank. This is more danagerous in some aspects than the boots opening as you cannot run away quickly.
Philosopher's stone: Gives mana and health regen in addition to gp10. Heart of gold: Gives a large amount of health and makes you tankier in lane Kage's Lucky Pick: Seen only by supports that get far ahead. Generally bought if buying a shurelya's at that point in the game will not benefit the team meaningfully Boots of Speed: Essential item usually gotten immediately after getting a philosopher's stone. Allows you to chase or run away quicker. Sight Ward: The single most important support item. Vision allows you to avoid any traps, take only favourable engagements and know where enemy champions are. Vision Ward: Similar to a vision ward but can see invisible characters and more importantly, enemy wards. Used either for bush control, dragon control or for setting up ganks.
"big" support items - These items are possible end game goals for a support. Shurelya's reverie - The active gives everyone around you a speedboost and is important for initiating an engagement or retreating. Aegis of the Legion - Makes yourself tankier and grants nearby allies a good amount of armor and MR. If the top laner or jungler builds it, it's not quite as useful to buy early but is still very good on tanky supports such as alistar, leona and taric. Locket of the Iron Solari - A good last item on a support, gives a small shield to everyone around you. The shield itself isn't very large, about the same as a level 1 soraka ulti but it's enough to keep everyone alive an extra second or so. Soul Shroud - Gives a hefty amount of health for yourself and an aura that grants everyone near you 10% CDR and a minor bit of mana regen. CDR is good in every scenario but especially so if your carry is kogmaw since so much of his damage comes from having W up. Zeke's Herald - This item gives any autoattacker on your team huge amounts of lifesteal in addition to extra attackspeed. It's best bought when three people benefit from autoattacks (AD carry+toplane+jungle). It is especially good when paired with champions such as olaf, irelia, nocturne etc. The lifesteal means every one of those is much tankier than they otherwise would be and the extra attack speed helps mitigate some of the loss from frozen hearts that are so common nowadays. Oracles Elixir - Gives you the ability to see invisible units and wards. It's very useful when posturing around either baron or dragon. Without vision, it's difficult to determine when and if it's safe to go anywhere.
Tier 2 boots - These should be bought AFTER one big item has been completed. : Mobility boots - Very good on supports that are passively helping their team just by being around or can initiate/catch people with the aid of these. alistar and soraka are good examples of supports that use mobility boots extremely well. Ionian boots - CDR boots are good on any support. Shurelya's in addition to CDR boots puts most supports near the CDR cap of 40% (Usually between 35-39%). These allow you to cc more often, heal faster, etc and are generally a good pick on any support. Ninja Tabi's. Less common but can be seen on alistar/taric/leona/blitzcrank from time to time. Their tendency to be in the middle of the fight also means they get focused a lot and anything that helps you live longer against focus is good. Mercury treads: Same idea as above but it helps you with CC and magical instead of physical damage.
Playstyle changes depending on which support you play.
As much as I'd love to write about how to play each particular support, I feel linking their respective threads much more productive. Instead, I'll discuss general things for all supports.
In solo queue, it's rarely worth it to ward anything prior to 2 minutes. If you do intend to do so, good spots are the enemy wraiths and a defensive ward at the buff your jungler is not starting at.
At 2:00, watch mid lane and see where the enemy mid enters lane from. From that, you can determine which buff camp the enemy jungler started.
In lane, when you place your first ward depends first on your lane. Against an aggressive lane that pushes the lane towards you, be prepared to lose control of your near lane bush. Before you lose control of it, place a ward inside the bush. Once you've been pushed in, if your AD plays correctly, it will take three or more creep waves before the wave pushes out. If the bottom duo is forced to overextend for that long, they're vulnerable to ganks.
Placing a ward in the river depends on the enemy jungler that you're facing. Junglers such as maokai, amumu cannot gank before hitting level 4 without gimping their jungle. Hitting level 4 on those champions will take until 4 minutes into the game and they will finish at either wraiths or wolves. If you are on purple side, you aren't in danger of getting ganked until ~4:30 into the game and do not need to throw down a river ward until then. Similarly, if the jungler shows top, it'll take the jungler at least 90 seconds to make it from top to bottom if they don't skip any creep camps.
Avoid placing any wards if there's a 0% chance of seeing anything useful with that ward. If you know where the enemy jungler should be at any particular point in time, or if you've seen the enemy jungler, you have a good idea of how long it'd take for the jungler to get to your lane. Make use of that knowledge to be efficient with your wards.
Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
Does having a good runepage for support make a big difference? I only have like 20 champs and 2 rune pages so I'm too cheap get one for support but i can definitely see the extra gold and armor from reds having an impact.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Play more support. If you're at 1600 ELO, you have no excuse for playing support at anything under the 1500 level. There's is no reason that you should make it up there playing only one or two roles exclusively. If you have to force yourself to learn, play soraka, sit a little behind your ad and just heal them and give them mana. Just doing that puts you into 1400s. Easily. If you ward bottom lane and use exhaust at appropriate moments, you bump yourself up to 1600 with no issues. There's nothing inherently difficult about playing any support since most supports are point and click.
Edit::
On July 13 2012 15:47 GhandiEAGLE wrote: I would suggest adding Lux to common supports used, she is getting fairly popular lately. At least at my ELO
I do not feel that Lux is a particularly good support. Her shield takes time to travel and is a skillshot, as are her CCs. It's the one support spell that is easy and possible for your teammates to dodge. In addition, snares and slows aren't as good as stuns. Sona fulfills much the same role with a stronger, lower cooldown and more reliable poke. Leona provides stronger CC and higher kill potential. Both are nearer to the ends of the spectrum than lux but overall I think their kits are better suited to the support role than lux's is.
On July 13 2012 16:12 Feartheguru wrote: Does having a good runepage for support make a big difference? I only have like 20 champs and 2 rune pages so I'm too cheap get one for support but i can definitely see the extra gold and armor from reds having an impact.
It helps a huge amount as far as money goes but overall, it means you get a 9-10 minute philostone instead of an 8 minute philostone. It's a difference but not a gamechanger. You can either use your AP carry page which is good on any of the ranged supports (sona/janna/soraka/lulu) since their poke can do stupid amounts of damage early or you can use an AD page on supports like alistar, taric, etc and do much more damage when you initiate. You might be doing less overall for your team lategame since shurelya's/aegis make such a huge difference once the teamfight stage rolls around but your early game could potentially be stronger. I highly recommend that you get a total of at least 4 runepages if you want to be serious about playing ranked since a top bruiser+AD carry page, AP page, jungler page and a support page are the 4 basic pages that most other pages are built off of.
On July 13 2012 16:12 Feartheguru wrote: Does having a good runepage for support make a big difference? I only have like 20 champs and 2 rune pages so I'm too cheap get one for support but i can definitely see the extra gold and armor from reds having an impact.
Extra gold is vital imho, otherwise you can't keep up with the needs for wards while also getting all the other stuff in an acceptable time.
Keeping 2 wards up all the time costs 8.3g/10 (150g/180s), your natural gold is 13g/10, so basically two thirds of your base income is used up for wards which delays your gp10 items for an eternity unless you ward less - which would make you a bad support. With runes it's 8.3 of 18.25, so less than half your income, making warding more affordable without cutting too much into your other budget.
I use a single armor marks, gp10 seals, mana regen glyphs and gp10 quints runepage for all supports.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
You're just strictly talking about the laning phase, and even there, you can get fucked by a support if he/she starts denying you map control around tri-brush/dragon area despite being able to do good with certain champions. I feel that most people don't wanna play support, because they're used to the "i buy items, i kill" kinda mindset and that just isn't happening as a support because you'll be playing champions in the sub-optimal manner with gp10, ward/oracle pressure and aura based items.
To OP:
I don't understand why you would get the mastery "Scout". It's 5% extra vision, and someone posted a before and after picture here on TL some time ago, and you can't really see any difference at all. Also i think you should add up the 1/15/14 mastery page. It has become extremely popular lately on bruiser supports.
Masteries: 21-9-0 (Leona, Taric, Blitzcrank for example), 1-21-8 (Everybody). Rarely I actually go a 9-0-21 set up with 10% cdr (SoS is also nice~) when you are the aggressor with passive spells (Soraka + Ezreal / Graves) And get the Sage mastery please...
Runes: I think 15 AD is very nice on supports (with 21-9-0) that naturally deal damage with auto attacks together with your carry. Blitzcrank's powerfist in combination with your overdrive (a slow would also be good) can chase the enemy while dishing out the damages. Leona has an auto-reset with her Q so that would basically mean you deal 45 extra damage (of course more with the 21 offense set up) along with your AD carry burst damage.
Items: Zeke's Herald should be added in there. Will of the Ancients is super good at times. Boots is usually a choice among Merc Treads, Boots5, CDR Boots, or Tabi.
Openings: Faerie charm is of course a safer item start because of Philo stone. But the actual gain from that item is 100 mana every 3 minutes (mana potion every 3 minutes). I think with super aggressive laning set ups faerie charm should be disregarded for an all-consumable starting build. I'll only list the 475 startings (515 u can do the math...)
1pink 2 green 5 potions: Particularly against a lane that can fight back and with one less ward you can only stay for 6-7 minutes maximum. Need to make use of your consumables in a short time so look for fights and kills while making use of only 3 wards.
1pink 3 green 3 potions: a more bitchy set up to stay longer and you are against a lane that can't really fight back. Because the goal is to stay longer and pressure the enemy harder be more conservative with the pink so you can effectively use it for almost the full duration. This is good if you plan to stick around in the enemy's tower for a good 6 minutes because the enemy can't fight back (and you should harass them to make the jungler hesitant to gank for a 300hp ad carry).
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
You're just strictly talking about the laning phase, and even there, you can get fucked by a support if he/she starts denying you map control around tri-brush/dragon area despite being able to do good with certain champions. I feel that most people don't wanna play support, because they're used to the "i buy items, i kill" kinda mindset and that just isn't happening as a support because you'll be playing champions in the sub-optimal manner with gp10, ward/oracle pressure and aura based items.
To OP:
I don't understand why you would get the mastery "Scout". It's 5% extra vision, and someone posted a before and after picture here on TL some time ago, and you can't really see any difference at all. Also i think you should add up the 1/15/14 mastery page. It has become extremely popular lately on bruiser supports.
On most of my characters, I either get 4 points into MS or none at all. Half a percentage point moves you nowhere faster. It's worth 1.5ms. Scout isn't much but I feel it's more useful than the other available place to put that point.
I'll add the 1/15/14 though, it gives every major support mastery in utility besides the 21st point, gets the 10 resist shred and is slightly tankier to boot, thanks for the insight.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
You're just strictly talking about the laning phase, and even there, you can get fucked by a support if he/she starts denying you map control around tri-brush/dragon area despite being able to do good with certain champions. I feel that most people don't wanna play support, because they're used to the "i buy items, i kill" kinda mindset and that just isn't happening as a support because you'll be playing champions in the sub-optimal manner with gp10, ward/oracle pressure and aura based items.
To OP:
I don't understand why you would get the mastery "Scout". It's 5% extra vision, and someone posted a before and after picture here on TL some time ago, and you can't really see any difference at all. Also i think you should add up the 1/15/14 mastery page. It has become extremely popular lately on bruiser supports.
On most of my characters, I either get 4 points into MS or none at all. Half a percentage point moves you nowhere faster. It's worth 1.5ms. Scout isn't much but I feel it's more useful than the other available place to put that point.
I'll add the 1/15/14 though, it gives every major support mastery in utility besides the 21st point, gets the 10 resist shred and is slightly tankier to boot, thanks for the insight.
Don't get scout. Get reduced time dead or more mana. Scout is LITERALLY useless.
I'm not going to dig up the picture right now, but a while back someone took screenshots of ward vision with scout and ward vision without scout. There is at most like 5 pixels of difference in vision between the two.
To be more specific. Wards have a sight range of 1100. Scout increases vision by 5%. That's an extra 55 range. For reference, melee champs have a range of 125. You increase your sight range by less than what is considered melee range. Scout is useless.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
You're just strictly talking about the laning phase, and even there, you can get fucked by a support if he/she starts denying you map control around tri-brush/dragon area despite being able to do good with certain champions. I feel that most people don't wanna play support, because they're used to the "i buy items, i kill" kinda mindset and that just isn't happening as a support because you'll be playing champions in the sub-optimal manner with gp10, ward/oracle pressure and aura based items.
To OP:
I don't understand why you would get the mastery "Scout". It's 5% extra vision, and someone posted a before and after picture here on TL some time ago, and you can't really see any difference at all. Also i think you should add up the 1/15/14 mastery page. It has become extremely popular lately on bruiser supports.
On most of my characters, I either get 4 points into MS or none at all. Half a percentage point moves you nowhere faster. It's worth 1.5ms. Scout isn't much but I feel it's more useful than the other available place to put that point.
I'll add the 1/15/14 though, it gives every major support mastery in utility besides the 21st point, gets the 10 resist shred and is slightly tankier to boot, thanks for the insight.
Try the improved recall. You'd be amazed at how many times that saves your life ^^
I'd like to add some stuff in terms of opening items.
Fcharm + 4 wards situation: When you know this is going to be a prolonged farm lane, with absolutely no kill potential from both sides, that means it'll be a while before you get a chance to go back.
Fcharm + vision + 2regular wards + pot. situation: where denying vision for strong lvl 2, or lvl 4 ganks for your jungler. I like this opening when I have a jungle lee sin, that is going to give a good lvl 2 or lvl 3 gank. -Also good as offensive support at lvl 2, it can deny bush vision in lane, thus making your presence much more deadly.
Boots + ward + pot -I don't like running this. This is as close to balls to the walls, for lvl 2-lvl3 kill advantage. So for example, if you're running a taric+corki lane, or leona/graves, or some combo that is almost unbeatable due to sheer strength advantage due to lvl 2, this is a good opening for that. So if you see a combo of like ashe+sona lane, and you're running taric+corki, or taric+urgot, or leona+graves, leona+etc etc, Boots+ ward+pot isn't a bad opening. Just make sure when you do your actions you don't gank'd mid action.
regrowth+ pot -not a bad start, if lane is a farm lane, with possible weak poke from enemy. So if the enemy lane is sona+ashe, you could probably get away with starting regrowth + pot, while playing passive.
On July 13 2012 16:56 Milestone wrote: I'll try to add in a lot of missing stuff...
Masteries: 21-9-0 (Leona, Taric, Blitzcrank for example), 1-21-8 (Everybody). Rarely I actually go a 9-0-21 set up with 10% cdr (SoS is also nice~) when you are the aggressor with passive spells (Soraka + Ezreal / Graves) And get the Sage mastery please...
Runes: I think 15 AD is very nice on supports (with 21-9-0) that naturally deal damage with auto attacks together with your carry. Blitzcrank's powerfist in combination with your overdrive (a slow would also be good) can chase the enemy while dishing out the damages. Leona has an auto-reset with her Q so that would basically mean you deal 45 extra damage (of course more with the 21 offense set up) along with your AD carry burst damage.
Items: Zeke's Herald should be added in there. Will of the Ancients is super good at times. Boots is usually a choice among Merc Treads, Boots5, CDR Boots, or Tabi.
Openings: Faerie charm is of course a safer item start because of Philo stone. But the actual gain from that item is 100 mana every 3 minutes (mana potion every 3 minutes). I think with super aggressive laning set ups faerie charm should be disregarded for an all-consumable starting build. I'll only list the 475 startings (515 u can do the math...)
1pink 2 green 5 potions: Particularly against a lane that can fight back and with one less ward you can only stay for 6-7 minutes maximum. Need to make use of your consumables in a short time so look for fights and kills while making use of only 3 wards.
1pink 3 green 3 potions: a more bitchy set up to stay longer and you are against a lane that can't really fight back. Because the goal is to stay longer and pressure the enemy harder be more conservative with the pink so you can effectively use it for almost the full duration. This is good if you plan to stick around in the enemy's tower for a good 6 minutes because the enemy can't fight back (and you should harass them to make the jungler hesitant to gank for a 300hp ad carry).
21/0/9 isn't viable on a support. No support gets enough money to build enough damage that getting more than 9 points in offense would benefit them in a meaningful way later in the game. I forgot zeke's herald and I'll add that. Will of the ancients isn't particularly good on a support since the price increase. Revolver doesn't help any support but sona and lux and 2300 for an item that benefits only your AP carry(s) is a waste compared to getting a aegis or even zekes. In team compositions with two AP carries, they generally involve having kennen or vladimir or rumble, all of which build WotA. 9 points is the maximum I'd recommend putting in offense
Losing out on the passive gold gain in the utility tree hurts a lot with any mastery setup that doesn't involve having the gold gain. If you cannot capitalize on the advantage that having more offensive masteries gives you, you're gimping yourself later in the game.
If you're planning on playing aggressively early, boots+3 is the most offensive a support should ever go
Openings where you get more than two potions are generally detrimental to your play. There is no normal lane that puts out enough harass in a normal game that you need to extra pots to stay in lane. Generally, when you want to seriously go for a kill, you're going to blow all your offensive summoners. namely exhaust and your AD carry's ignite. If that fails, you're going to have to wait four minutes before you can try again. If it succeeds, you get to push your lane and base. Either way, the potions aren't going to see serious use. The one or two potions that a support generally buys is for incidental damage taken from one or two autoattacks while they're either poking or trying to maintain bush control.
On July 13 2012 17:55 wei2coolman wrote: I'd like to add some stuff in terms of opening items.
Fcharm + 4 wards situation: When you know this is going to be a prolonged farm lane, with absolutely no kill potential from both sides, that means it'll be a while before you get a chance to go back.
Fcharm + vision + 2regular wards + pot. situation: where denying vision for strong lvl 2, or lvl 4 ganks for your jungler. I like this opening when I have a jungle lee sin, that is going to give a good lvl 2 or lvl 3 gank. -Also good as offensive support at lvl 2, it can deny bush vision in lane, thus making your presence much more deadly.
Boots + ward + pot -I don't like running this. This is as close to balls to the walls, for lvl 2-lvl3 kill advantage. So for example, if you're running a taric+corki lane, or leona/graves, or some combo that is almost unbeatable due to sheer strength advantage due to lvl 2, this is a good opening for that. So if you see a combo of like ashe+sona lane, and you're running taric+corki, or taric+urgot, or leona+graves, leona+etc etc, Boots+ ward+pot isn't a bad opening. Just make sure when you do your actions you don't gank'd mid action.
regrowth+ pot -not a bad start, if lane is a farm lane, with possible weak poke from enemy. So if the enemy lane is sona+ashe, you could probably get away with starting regrowth + pot, while playing passive.
Added regrowth + pot. I might want to reposition where I put the opening items section since I stuck it under playstyle >.>
As far as runes/masteries are concerned. It really depends on how you want to play out the lane.
I duo queue with my friend as support, pretty often. We run ridiculous lvl 2-3 kill lanes. For example Taric/Graves as my lane. As taric, I'll run mpen reds, armor yellows, armor blues (or mr blues, depending on enemies), and gp10 quints. Masteries will be 9/0/21. Running exhaust+flash.
Essentially lvl 2-3 will be balls to the walls engage.
Or if it's a more defensive lane, just due to strong early game jungle presence or what not. run 0/9/21, with armor reds, gp10 gold, armor blue, gp10 quints.
Some supports people should try out, Kennen, Anivia, Lee Sin, Morgana.
On July 13 2012 15:47 Feartheguru wrote: Anyone else have the issue that their support skill is miles below their skill at other roles? I'm 1600 elo right now but my supporting skills are pretty much 1k elo level. No matter what I try to do as support I feed every game., both in lane and teamfights.
Support is the easiest role in the game, no offence but I always find it bizarre that people (Especially around 1600 and over) cant support well. My winrates are all really high (Except Taric) on support, maybe my point of view is wrong since I had to main support for about 40 games of premade 5s because no-one else would do it.
Seriously aside from Alistar and blitz I don't think support takes much real skill at all, and even for those champs you just have to hit pulls or combos and you are already a good support. People are just too selfish in solo q and refuse to support 99% of the time because they think they have to play a carry role to win, then they get last pick in a few games, are forced to support and are like WTF THIS IS HARD because they literally have less than 10 games as support ever.
You're just strictly talking about the laning phase, and even there, you can get fucked by a support if he/she starts denying you map control around tri-brush/dragon area despite being able to do good with certain champions. I feel that most people don't wanna play support, because they're used to the "i buy items, i kill" kinda mindset and that just isn't happening as a support because you'll be playing champions in the sub-optimal manner with gp10, ward/oracle pressure and aura based items.
To OP:
I don't understand why you would get the mastery "Scout". It's 5% extra vision, and someone posted a before and after picture here on TL some time ago, and you can't really see any difference at all. Also i think you should add up the 1/15/14 mastery page. It has become extremely popular lately on bruiser supports.
On most of my characters, I either get 4 points into MS or none at all. Half a percentage point moves you nowhere faster. It's worth 1.5ms. Scout isn't much but I feel it's more useful than the other available place to put that point.
I'll add the 1/15/14 though, it gives every major support mastery in utility besides the 21st point, gets the 10 resist shred and is slightly tankier to boot, thanks for the insight.
Don't get scout. Get reduced time dead or more mana. Scout is LITERALLY useless.
I'm not going to dig up the picture right now, but a while back someone took screenshots of ward vision with scout and ward vision without scout. There is at most like 5 pixels of difference in vision between the two.
To be more specific. Wards have a sight range of 1100. Scout increases vision by 5%. That's an extra 55 range. For reference, melee champs have a range of 125. You increase your sight range by less than what is considered melee range. Scout is useless.
I added a note to it. I'm not going to the effort of changing the picture associated with it though.
Just some thoughts on vision wards. I find them being used on bot lane far too often in the current meta.
Unless your lane is in dire needs for a gank, which it shouldn't be, vision wards are pretty useless. Otherwise you're denying vision, for actions that won't happen. The main goal for the botlane (which should essentially be a farm island), is just to get farm for your AD carry. Adding a vision ward doesn't add any ability for your AD carry to farm, that a regular ward wouldn't.
I'm pretty conservative on vision ward usage, the only thing that should be pink'd during laning phase is dragon, and possibly blue buff., or if you're begging for a gank, then pink to deny vision. Or if you're running leona/blitz/taric, where denying bush vision is key to a strong burst offensive gank combo.
Also some thoughts on playstyle on botlane. I'm actually a huge fucking fan of pushing the shit of your lane, and just ward correctly and excessively. (unless enemy jungler is something like rammus/hecarim).
On July 13 2012 18:08 wei2coolman wrote: Just some thoughts on vision wards. I find them being used on bot lane far too often in the current meta.
Unless your lane is in dire needs for a gank, which it shouldn't be, vision wards are pretty useless. Otherwise you're denying vision, for actions that won't happen. The main goal for the botlane (which should essentially be a farm island), is just to get farm for your AD carry. Adding a vision ward doesn't add any ability for your AD carry to farm, that a regular ward wouldn't.
I'm pretty conservative on vision ward usage, the only thing that should be pink'd during laning phase is dragon, and possibly blue buff., or if you're begging for a gank, then pink to deny vision.
Also some thoughts on playstyle on botlane. I'm actually a huge fucking fan of pushing the shit of your lane, and just ward correctly and excessively. (unless enemy jungler is something like rammus/hecarim).
Playing aggressive supports such as leona/blitzcrank/alistar paired with similarly bursty ADs such as graves/trist/corki, you absolutely want to open with a vision ward + 2 greens. If you've ever laned against a good coordinated combo, they can 100-0 you through summoner heal before you have a chance to flash. They can take over your near lane bush (their far), pink it and zone you from creeps for 3 minutes or kill you and zone you for longer than that. If you have no vision of the champion, it's many times harder to react to a zenith blade/blitz hook or alistar hittting level 2 and seemingly randomly flash+exhaust+pulving you before headbutting you away from tower and you should abuse that.
It's also much better to have a vision ward on you if your jungler is maokai, nautilus or a similar jungler with heavy CC that can guarantee a kill if they can get onto someone since you can guarantee them a way in.
As far as pushing as aggressively as possible, that's actually the optimal way to play botlane since you are essentially immune to lane ganks, the other team has a difficult time trying to last hit and deal with the harass you can put out onto them. It's much easier to do on purple side than on blue since you don't have to worry about tribush. On blue, if you push that far and you see the jungler at tri, he will reach you when you're just past midlane and you will die if the jungler has serious CC. On purple side pushing hard, if you have a river ward, you're safe until you're almost midway along their lane bush. It's a pretty big difference in the safezone you have to stay safe while pushing in.
On July 13 2012 17:55 wei2coolman wrote: I'd like to add some stuff in terms of opening items.
Fcharm + 4 wards situation: When you know this is going to be a prolonged farm lane, with absolutely no kill potential from both sides, that means it'll be a while before you get a chance to go back.
Fcharm + vision + 2regular wards + pot. situation: where denying vision for strong lvl 2, or lvl 4 ganks for your jungler. I like this opening when I have a jungle lee sin, that is going to give a good lvl 2 or lvl 3 gank. -Also good as offensive support at lvl 2, it can deny bush vision in lane, thus making your presence much more deadly.
Boots + ward + pot -I don't like running this. This is as close to balls to the walls, for lvl 2-lvl3 kill advantage. So for example, if you're running a taric+corki lane, or leona/graves, or some combo that is almost unbeatable due to sheer strength advantage due to lvl 2, this is a good opening for that. So if you see a combo of like ashe+sona lane, and you're running taric+corki, or taric+urgot, or leona+graves, leona+etc etc, Boots+ ward+pot isn't a bad opening. Just make sure when you do your actions you don't gank'd mid action.
regrowth+ pot -not a bad start, if lane is a farm lane, with possible weak poke from enemy. So if the enemy lane is sona+ashe, you could probably get away with starting regrowth + pot, while playing passive.
I like boots+wards opening against low mobility lanes such as kog'maw+soraka, because you tend to play overly agressive to not give them the advantage when they gain the levels they need.
On July 13 2012 18:48 Sponkz wrote: I like boots+wards opening against low mobility lanes such as kog'maw+soraka, because you tend to play overly agressive to not give them the advantage when they gain the levels they need.
If you open boots its kinda of all-in in lane phase. You set your self up to all most be even or slightly ahead or just be really far behind in gold. Its high risk low reward rushing your philo/HoG first is just so much safer.
On July 13 2012 18:48 Sponkz wrote: I like boots+wards opening against low mobility lanes such as kog'maw+soraka, because you tend to play overly agressive to not give them the advantage when they gain the levels they need.
If you open boots its kinda of all-in in lane phase. You set your self up to all most be even or slightly ahead or just be really far behind in gold. Its high risk low reward rushing your philo/HoG first is just so much safer.
Yeah exactly. You're aiming to get a big lead (mostly achieved through killing) before the enemy can become even with you.
Also something worth adding in the item section is that your first gp10 doesn't always have to be philo. It's getting quite common to go faerie charm -> hog -> philo, just to survive burst lanes etc.
On July 13 2012 18:48 Sponkz wrote: I like boots+wards opening against low mobility lanes such as kog'maw+soraka, because you tend to play overly agressive to not give them the advantage when they gain the levels they need.
If you open boots its kinda of all-in in lane phase. You set your self up to all most be even or slightly ahead or just be really far behind in gold. Its high risk low reward rushing your philo/HoG first is just so much safer.
Yeah exactly. You're aiming to get a big lead (mostly achieved through killing) before the enemy can become even with you.
Also something worth adding in the item section is that your first gp10 doesn't always have to be philo. It's getting quite common to go faerie charm -> hog -> philo, just to survive burst lanes etc.
Do you stay in lane long enough to affort hog + wards at the first back?
Sometimes i do, sometimes i don't. If i don't i just grab a ruby + wards and tell my carry to push the lane or play it safe, when i get the 350 gold so i can re and get some gp10.
I haven't tried this yet because I normally just do FC/wards/pots, but wouldn't boots make sense for Alistar support? More than most. I hear you on the downsides but Alistar as a support is so positionally-dependant, especially for a kill lane.
On July 14 2012 01:05 mordek wrote: I haven't tried this yet because I normally just do FC/wards/pots, but wouldn't boots make sense for Alistar support? More than most. I hear you on the downsides but Alistar as a support is so positionally-dependant, especially for a kill lane.
Boots first is really, REALLY risky.
I do note that on aggressive supports I like MS quaints.
On July 14 2012 01:05 mordek wrote: I haven't tried this yet because I normally just do FC/wards/pots, but wouldn't boots make sense for Alistar support? More than most. I hear you on the downsides but Alistar as a support is so positionally-dependant, especially for a kill lane.
Boots first is really, REALLY risky.
I do note that on aggressive supports I like MS quaints.
I understand but I feel like a lot of Alistar's usefulness as a support is reliant on him being in the right spot. I only say this because when I play Ali support I'll normally get my philo first but I feel so constricted in what I can do. My health and mana are topped off but I don't get to do much with it since I can't harass very well. I mean, I can guard my carry and let him cs fine without boots I guess but I feel like I could be doing more.
The only ones on that list that aren't full troll supports are Orianna, Morgana, Gangplank, Ashe, Shen, and Fiddlesticks.
The other ones are there just because they have some sort of CC, whereas the ones above actually do things that are useful instead of having a single slow/snare/stun
The only ones on that list that aren't full troll supports are Orianna, Morgana, Gangplank, Ashe, Shen, and Fiddlesticks.
The other ones are there just because they have some sort of CC, whereas the ones above actually do things that are useful instead of having a single slow/snare/stun
TBH, I seriously think support kennen is 100% viable. He offers a lot of poke during laning phase, and his W is impossible to avoid, you can actually end up zoning the shit out of the enemies. Also with his ulti, you're essentially adding a giant fucking stun barrier, around your AD carry during a fight, and at the 3rd rank of the ulti, you'll be stunning everyone in your aoe 2 times, easily, offering more than enough time for your AD carry to peel/kite everyone to death. Think of it as a sona ult, except so much more.
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: 21/0/9 isn't viable on a support. No support gets enough money to build enough damage that getting more than 9 points in offense would benefit them in a meaningful way later in the game. I forgot zeke's herald and I'll add that. Will of the ancients isn't particularly good on a support since the price increase. Revolver doesn't help any support but sona and lux and 2300 for an item that benefits only your AP carry(s) is a waste compared to getting a aegis or even zekes. In team compositions with two AP carries, they generally involve having kennen or vladimir or rumble, all of which build WotA. 9 points is the maximum I'd recommend putting in offense
Except WotA doesn't benefit only your AP carry. A large percentage of ADs, junglers, and top laners do a significant portion of their damage as spell damage (even AD-scaling and physical-damage spells benefit from spellvamp).
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: Losing out on the passive gold gain in the utility tree hurts a lot with any mastery setup that doesn't involve having the gold gain. If you cannot capitalize on the advantage that having more offensive masteries gives you, you're gimping yourself later in the game.
Losing out on 3-4 ward worth of gold is "gimping yourself later in the game"? lol
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: Openings where you get more than two potions are generally detrimental to your play. There is no normal lane that puts out enough harass in a normal game that you need to extra pots to stay in lane. Generally, when you want to seriously go for a kill, you're going to blow all your offensive summoners. namely exhaust and your AD carry's ignite. If that fails, you're going to have to wait four minutes before you can try again. If it succeeds, you get to push your lane and base. Either way, the potions aren't going to see serious use. The one or two potions that a support generally buys is for incidental damage taken from one or two autoattacks while they're either poking or trying to maintain bush control.
All-consumables starts take 1-2 mana potions. The reason for this is that it lets you squeeze out extra wards (which let you play more aggressively due to better overall vision coverage) while still maintaining the exact same effectiveness because Faerie Charm isn't going to give more regen than 2 mana pots.
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: 21/0/9 isn't viable on a support. No support gets enough money to build enough damage that getting more than 9 points in offense would benefit them in a meaningful way later in the game. I forgot zeke's herald and I'll add that. Will of the ancients isn't particularly good on a support since the price increase. Revolver doesn't help any support but sona and lux and 2300 for an item that benefits only your AP carry(s) is a waste compared to getting a aegis or even zekes. In team compositions with two AP carries, they generally involve having kennen or vladimir or rumble, all of which build WotA. 9 points is the maximum I'd recommend putting in offense
Except WotA doesn't benefit only your AP carry. A large percentage of ADs, junglers, and top laners do a significant portion of their damage as spell damage (even AD-scaling and physical-damage spells benefit from spellvamp).
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: Losing out on the passive gold gain in the utility tree hurts a lot with any mastery setup that doesn't involve having the gold gain. If you cannot capitalize on the advantage that having more offensive masteries gives you, you're gimping yourself later in the game.
Losing out on 3-4 ward worth of gold is "gimping yourself later in the game"? lol
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: Openings where you get more than two potions are generally detrimental to your play. There is no normal lane that puts out enough harass in a normal game that you need to extra pots to stay in lane. Generally, when you want to seriously go for a kill, you're going to blow all your offensive summoners. namely exhaust and your AD carry's ignite. If that fails, you're going to have to wait four minutes before you can try again. If it succeeds, you get to push your lane and base. Either way, the potions aren't going to see serious use. The one or two potions that a support generally buys is for incidental damage taken from one or two autoattacks while they're either poking or trying to maintain bush control.
All-consumables starts take 1-2 mana potions. The reason for this is that it lets you squeeze out extra wards (which let you play more aggressively due to better overall vision coverage) while still maintaining the exact same effectiveness because Faerie Charm isn't going to give more regen than 2 mana pots.
1600 Elo support mains real cute
I'm going to stay with my opinion that 2300 gold is too much for a support to afford. Compared with what an aegis or shurelya's does for your team in the midgame, WotA isn't a first, nor second support item to buy. Very rarely will you get a third item and even though WotA gives spellvamp, zeke's herald does arguably more for a similar price.
Every bit of gp10 is precious on a support. 13gp10 is the passive gp10 that all champions get 2gp10 from masteries is ~15% of that. I feel that 15% is significant. It's your opinion otherwise.
If you want to harp on my ELO, or attack my skill, go ahead and do so. I don't main support by any means and there's a disclaimer at the top of the OP regarding this.
So a long long time ago some of us got together to make guides for all the roles, but for various reasons, it never ended up panning out. Myself and another TLer, Clickrush, took on the support role and wrote up a bunch of stuff a couple months ago, but we never actually finished it. I'm gonna link the google docs with what we had, even though it is unfinished since it might contribute to the discussion here. I'm a former 1500 elo support main who stopped playing support because my AD carry buddy quit the game.
Anyway, here it is for any who want to look at it and pick it apart and call me a cute 1500 elo support main >_>
Disclaimer This was all written a while ago, so some of it is going to be out of date with the current support styles.
Disclaimer 2 This never got to final draft version so excuse any grammatical errors. I never asked but I believe English is not Click's first language.
On July 13 2012 18:48 Sponkz wrote: I like boots+wards opening against low mobility lanes such as kog'maw+soraka, because you tend to play overly agressive to not give them the advantage when they gain the levels they need.
If you open boots its kinda of all-in in lane phase. You set your self up to all most be even or slightly ahead or just be really far behind in gold. Its high risk low reward rushing your philo/HoG first is just so much safer.
Not really.. if you look at pros some teams have been going a ton of boots on supports. With the gold mastery you can still take an assortment of pots and wards with this build.
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: 21/0/9 isn't viable on a support. No support gets enough money to build enough damage that getting more than 9 points in offense would benefit them in a meaningful way later in the game. I forgot zeke's herald and I'll add that. Will of the ancients isn't particularly good on a support since the price increase. Revolver doesn't help any support but sona and lux and 2300 for an item that benefits only your AP carry(s) is a waste compared to getting a aegis or even zekes. In team compositions with two AP carries, they generally involve having kennen or vladimir or rumble, all of which build WotA. 9 points is the maximum I'd recommend putting in offense
Except WotA doesn't benefit only your AP carry. A large percentage of ADs, junglers, and top laners do a significant portion of their damage as spell damage (even AD-scaling and physical-damage spells benefit from spellvamp).
Tbh tho if I was playing support and I managed to save up ~2k gold I'd rather get Aegis or Zeke's instead of WotA. WotA benefits everyone and is a good pick up, but it's usually very easy for the AP carry to pick it up and it's more or less core on some APs. Aegis is a good pickup too, but top or jungle grab it often. Zeke's is super good for your AD and is usually really good for your top/jungler too. Difference between Zeke and WotA is that top and jungle usually don't get Zeke's cause it's too far out of their way/not beneficial to them enough to consider it a core item in their builds.
To add onto the unconventional support openings discussion. I recall M5 running a Ruby crystal+potions support Nunu once. He took the extra starting gold mastery. It was actually pretty interesting since it let him rush a HoG really fast (sub 5 minutes or something) and the lack of a starting ward didn't impact them that much. The opening worked because the enemy jungler wasn't a strong level 2 ganker or counterjungler so M5 could afford to play blind for the first ~5 minutes. By the time the enemy jungler would start ganking, Nunu already backed and got HoG and wards.
On July 14 2012 05:46 brolaf wrote: Not really.. if you look at pros some teams have been going a ton of boots on supports. With the gold mastery you can still take an assortment of pots and wards with this build.
All-in:An aggressive strategy aimed at killing the opponent off completely in one attack. All available resources are put into this one attack and no follow-up is being considered. Should the attack fail and the opponent live through it, the game is almost certainly lost to a counter or to superior enemy tech/economy.
Using this definition you might not just flat out lose the game but your just really far behind usually a g10 4-5mins later, they get better Hp/Mana per 5 in lane able to harass more and be able to take more harass in lane and this is if you are not able to set up a kill or zone the other comp bottom lane out of several waves of creeps, and imho i don't think boots should be able to effect the amount of zoneing one could do but that's just my 2 cents on that. The fact the pros do it doesnt make the build less all-in they know what they have to do to become ahead and that's what they strive to do with the boots opener. but have you ever seen a game when they dont get the kills/zoneing out? they support is miles behind and it can snowball the lane for the other ADC/support.
Playing in the TL inhouse today, I need to add an item I forgot about. Soul Shroud. The CDR aura is actualy good on every champion in the game and costs in the 2-2.3k region that most other support items are at.
Soul shroud blows, cdr has become so easy to itemize for, that support don't need to itemize it for teammates. That's not even the issue either, the issue is that it's a 2k investment, but it often comes in at a point in the game where people already itemizing for cdr..
On July 15 2012 06:34 Lmui wrote: Playing in the TL inhouse today, I need to add an item I forgot about. Soul Shroud. The CDR aura is actualy good on every champion in the game and costs in the 2-2.3k region that most other support items are at.
Buy zeke's instead if you want cdr and hp. Soul shroud blows
On July 15 2012 06:34 Lmui wrote: Playing in the TL inhouse today, I need to add an item I forgot about. Soul Shroud. The CDR aura is actualy good on every champion in the game and costs in the 2-2.3k region that most other support items are at.
Buy zeke's instead if you want cdr and hp. Soul shroud blows
Regardless of people's opinions on it, it's still a viable support item, giving a teamwide aura so it deserves to be included.
I don't like, or agree with, the idea that support is a simple role that anyone should just be instantly good at and "takes no real skill"
I don't like it, because it ignores the difference between a bad, good, and amazing support.
I play Lulu and Karma, these are my supports. And when I'm playing, the enemy AD and carry are zoned out of the lane as much as possible.
No, supports don't snowball into some unstoppable force. And, for the most part, you don't even notice what your support is doing. But if there were a stat to add up how much damage I am mitigating during a team fight, or during a protracted push, as Karma...It would be huge. I keep my team pushing, and you can see it. There comes a moment where everyone just looks confused, like they feel like they need to back, but everyone is still full health, and we can keep going forward.
Enemy team dives on the carry, get her out of there, then get back to the fight to support the team.
There is just as much skill in judging how/what skills are minimally required to save my carry as there are in killing their's. Yeah, everyone could blow their ults and summoner skills killing the enemy carry, then get wiped by the rest of the team because they can't fight.
The same is true of a support. If I blow everything to barely save my carry, the rest of my team is left out in the cold because I can't help them. You have to know exactly how much to use, when, and where, to save a teammate, and then leave enough left over to do it again.
Frequently, I find myself in games where -I- am being focused, either out of frustration or necessity, because I simply refuse to allow them to kill teammates.
The point is, there's no announcement when a support saves the team. If a carry does his dance, chooses his skills perfectly and quickly, moves between enemies with great skill, everyone knows. His kills are announced to everyone. For me? There's no QUADRA KILL. No one flips out and pats on the back, starts trash talking over the ace. If I choose my skills perfectly, get hurt teammates out of the fight, and we end a teamfight losing only the tank..There's no flip out, no one commends the support.
Lets get a little respect for supports in here. There's more to it than you realize.
On July 13 2012 17:56 Lmui wrote: 21/0/9 isn't viable on a support. No support gets enough money to build enough damage that getting more than 9 points in offense would benefit them in a meaningful way later in the game. I forgot zeke's herald and I'll add that. Will of the ancients isn't particularly good on a support since the price increase. Revolver doesn't help any support but sona and lux and 2300 for an item that benefits only your AP carry(s) is a waste compared to getting a aegis or even zekes. In team compositions with two AP carries, they generally involve having kennen or vladimir or rumble, all of which build WotA. 9 points is the maximum I'd recommend putting in offense
Except WotA doesn't benefit only your AP carry. A large percentage of ADs, junglers, and top laners do a significant portion of their damage as spell damage (even AD-scaling and physical-damage spells benefit from spellvamp).
Tbh tho if I was playing support and I managed to save up ~2k gold I'd rather get Aegis or Zeke's instead of WotA. WotA benefits everyone and is a good pick up, but it's usually very easy for the AP carry to pick it up and it's more or less core on some APs. Aegis is a good pickup too, but top or jungle grab it often. Zeke's is super good for your AD and is usually really good for your top/jungler too. Difference between Zeke and WotA is that top and jungle usually don't get Zeke's cause it's too far out of their way/not beneficial to them enough to consider it a core item in their builds.
To add onto the unconventional support openings discussion. I recall M5 running a Ruby crystal+potions support Nunu once. He took the extra starting gold mastery. It was actually pretty interesting since it let him rush a HoG really fast (sub 5 minutes or something) and the lack of a starting ward didn't impact them that much. The opening worked because the enemy jungler wasn't a strong level 2 ganker or counterjungler so M5 could afford to play blind for the first ~5 minutes. By the time the enemy jungler would start ganking, Nunu already backed and got HoG and wards.
The REAL problem with wota, imo, is that when you can finally afford it (2500g), AP carries have already fallen off their power curves.
What about Nidalee as support? I'm far from a pro player but she has heal, her own "wards" (traps) and can punish people for not being careful with their positioning (spear).
On July 16 2012 22:32 Felnarion wrote: I don't like, or agree with, the idea that support is a simple role that anyone should just be instantly good at and "takes no real skill"
I don't like it, because it ignores the difference between a bad, good, and amazing support.
I play Lulu and Karma, these are my supports. And when I'm playing, the enemy AD and carry are zoned out of the lane as much as possible.
No, supports don't snowball into some unstoppable force. And, for the most part, you don't even notice what your support is doing. But if there were a stat to add up how much damage I am mitigating during a team fight, or during a protracted push, as Karma...It would be huge. I keep my team pushing, and you can see it. There comes a moment where everyone just looks confused, like they feel like they need to back, but everyone is still full health, and we can keep going forward.
Enemy team dives on the carry, get her out of there, then get back to the fight to support the team.
There is just as much skill in judging how/what skills are minimally required to save my carry as there are in killing their's. Yeah, everyone could blow their ults and summoner skills killing the enemy carry, then get wiped by the rest of the team because they can't fight.
The same is true of a support. If I blow everything to barely save my carry, the rest of my team is left out in the cold because I can't help them. You have to know exactly how much to use, when, and where, to save a teammate, and then leave enough left over to do it again.
Frequently, I find myself in games where -I- am being focused, either out of frustration or necessity, because I simply refuse to allow them to kill teammates.
The point is, there's no announcement when a support saves the team. If a carry does his dance, chooses his skills perfectly and quickly, moves between enemies with great skill, everyone knows. His kills are announced to everyone. For me? There's no QUADRA KILL. No one flips out and pats on the back, starts trash talking over the ace. If I choose my skills perfectly, get hurt teammates out of the fight, and we end a teamfight losing only the tank..There's no flip out, no one commends the support.
Lets get a little respect for supports in here. There's more to it than you realize.
^this
Support is a thankless job that tons of people think they can do just because they spam w as sona or soraka.
On July 17 2012 08:11 B.I.G. wrote: What about Nidalee as support? I'm far from a pro player but she has heal, her own "wards" (traps) and can punish people for not being careful with their positioning (spear).
No way to peel people off of your carry, and your damage falls off very quickly (and isn't even that high to begin with). You basically become a heal/AS buff bot. Also traps don't replace wards.
I'd argue that Aegis is the best thing to get as a support because building it allows for a lot of versatility.
I play a bit lazy, so usually I start faerie, 2green, 1red, 1blue. I grab my philo when I back, and then choose between boots and Kage's. Most of my supports are AP, and Kage's helps add a tiny bit of damage and is a bit cheaper than HoG.
After this, I rush Aegis starting ruby, mantle, cloth. If I back with only ruby, meaning we're probably doing shitty or I died), I can buy a HoG to buff my income and survivability to better play defensively. If I back and have ruby+ mantle, I can quickly get a Merc treads. If I have all the pieces, I can buy Aegis. The most expensive step of build Aegis is the final recipe, which is 750 gp. Ofc the game goes weird sometimes so I do other things, but I think this is a safe line of reasoning.
Wota is a nice item, but until its finished, I find it a fairly "selfish" item. First you get a hextech, which gives you some spell vamp and AP. It's 1200 gold, and benefits no one but you, and since you're pretty low damage anyways, you're healing for maybe a couple dozen hp per spell. Blasting wand is the same and is pretty big investment (860 gp) for supports who are usually pretty gold starved.
Zeke's is kind of the same as Wota. It's a good item, but the pieces are selfish and don't benefit your team in any way, and benefit you very little as well. ---
Well, support is pretty thankless but also fairly blameless conversely. If something goes wrong after laning phase, its not really that much your fault. You kept the adc alive. You let him farm. You got him some kills and saved him from some bad moments.
1. If your adc is ahead of the enemy adc, you've done your job really well and now your adc's time to shine. 2. If your adc roughly even with the other adc at the end, you've done alright and its up to his own skill vs. the enemy adc. 3. If your adc is behind of the enemy adc, then you done fucked up and better help him as much as possible.
If he can't do his job (carry) afterwards in situations 1 and 2, its his own damn fault. Yes, I'll do my best to help midgame and lategame, but there's only so much I can do with 2/3 of your gold and exp.
On July 20 2012 02:44 ticklishmusic wrote: Zeke's is kind of the same as Wota. It's a good item, but the pieces are selfish and don't benefit your team in any way, and benefit you very little as well.
Kindlegem is pretty good to have regardless. The other components not so much.
On July 20 2012 02:44 ticklishmusic wrote: Zeke's is kind of the same as Wota. It's a good item, but the pieces are selfish and don't benefit your team in any way, and benefit you very little as well.
Kindlegem is pretty good to have regardless. The other components not so much.
I'm personally not a big fan of Kindlegem, but if you do get it build Shurleya's.
Random fact: upgrading a philo into eleisa and then selling gives 10 more gold than just selling philo.
With the nerf to HoG, I'm seriously considering skipping it entirely (it's not like Locket is core the way Shurelia's is) and either picking up an earlier kindlegem or rushing aegis more often. I'm having a very hard time justifying paying the same amount of gold for 5 GP10 as for 10% CDR. There's no point in "investing in GP10 to buy wards later" if I have to gimp myself to do it. CDR means a ton to nearly all supports, and earlier kindlegem opens up your options in ways HoG doesn't. Might pick up GP10 yellows to offset it and see if armor reds are enough armor to not get blown up too easily early on - later on, the earlier Aegis bits (if that's what I choose) will make up for the lack of survivability.
Not a fan of Kage's on most supports either. Most of the AP ratios are so piss poor it's just not worth it, and so you're effectively paying 750 PURELY on GP10. If it's supposed to "buy you wards later" why not just buy 10 wards and use them later. ~_~
You're probably better off going for the early aegis, or at least buying the parts to aegis (but less supports are getting this, since more junglers/top are getting this item). The main problem with getting Shurelya's that early, is that a) you lose your gp10 on philo, b) the unique active is fairly insignificant in small skirmishes, and is much more essential mid/late game, than it is early game. As far going kindlegem for health, instead of hog, is fine, but if anything don't convert it to shurelya's so early. You're probably better off buying a zeke's with first kindlegem.
As far as locket of iron solari goes, i personally really love the item, i think it's pretty unique, and pretty awesome, maybe if they could have the shield scale w/ something other than just lvel, it would maybe make it more accessible. I'll still be running philo+hog, just because aegis is usually built by jungle/top most of the time, and early shurelya's isn't that amazing, so hog is still an okay money dump if you plan on getting locket.
As far as kage's goes, if you get early kills/assists in your botlane, you might as well pick up kages, it pays itself off in like 10minutes(if you sell it ), so if you get it within the first 10-12minutes of the game it's almost always a good idea to get it.
On July 20 2012 04:34 wei2coolman wrote: You're probably better off going for the early aegis, or at least buying the parts to aegis (but less supports are getting this, since more junglers/top are getting this item). The main problem with getting Shurelya's that early, is that a) you lose your gp10 on philo, b) the unique active is fairly insignificant in small skirmishes, and is much more essential mid/late game, than it is early game. As far going kindlegem for health, instead of hog, is fine, but if anything don't convert it to shurelya's so early. You're probably better off buying a zeke's with first kindlegem.
The thing is, Shurelya's can arguably be more powerful than Aegis depending on the context of the game. Aegis might be the difference in an even team fight, but Shurelya's can create opportunities for a fight tilted in your favor. Unless it seems like a slow game I usually get Shurelya's first because it has a more natural build path for a support. As to the losing the g10 of philo, I would argue that if you're already to the point where teamfights are likely to happen, then the gold production is going to be less of an issue thanks to assist gold and to the fact that it's actually not all that difficult to pick up some cs after the laning phase ends.
Maybe it's just my philosophy, but I don't feel like its worth trading the immediate power of Shurelya's for a reduction in gold generation.
In a straight up fight, Aegis is king and I don't think there's much arguing against that, but there's something to be said for the pure utility of shurelya's in creating opportunities for your team.
IMO Kage's is pretty good, esp on champs who can heal. It adds up to quite a bit extra hp. Also, Blitz's grab is almost a nuke, and scales at a 1:1 ratio.
I had a spiel about Kage's vs Codex and basically decided Kage's if behind b/c gp5 helps and it builds into DFG for free needed damage. Codex gives CD/mp5 and let's you spam and snowball your lane more.
The nice thing about building towards Aegis is that all of the items are essentially recyclable into other things if someone gets it first.
I'm a pretty big fan of Locket as well. I find it much better on you than Randuin's, which is much better on a tank with more MR/armor for the extended proc.
I had a thought about a botlane Ezreal with Lee support. I know this lane wouldn't be the best for lee since his lategame wouldn't be that great but i feel that Lee's skillset is pretty good for supporting. This lane sounds kind of all-in but imo it can work out like a Leona-Ezreal botlane, while Lee dealing tonsofdamages instead of tanking. A combinaison of the three summoners exhaust heal ignite is doable since Lee doesn't need flash.
Any thoughts about it? I think the damage output you get from this lane can be so freaking ridiculous it can work.
On July 20 2012 04:34 wei2coolman wrote: You're probably better off going for the early aegis, or at least buying the parts to aegis (but less supports are getting this, since more junglers/top are getting this item). The main problem with getting Shurelya's that early, is that a) you lose your gp10 on philo, b) the unique active is fairly insignificant in small skirmishes, and is much more essential mid/late game, than it is early game. As far going kindlegem for health, instead of hog, is fine, but if anything don't convert it to shurelya's so early. You're probably better off buying a zeke's with first kindlegem.
As far as locket of iron solari goes, i personally really love the item, i think it's pretty unique, and pretty awesome, maybe if they could have the shield scale w/ something other than just lvel, it would maybe make it more accessible. I'll still be running philo+hog, just because aegis is usually built by jungle/top most of the time, and early shurelya's isn't that amazing, so hog is still an okay money dump if you plan on getting locket.
As far as kage's goes, if you get early kills/assists in your botlane, you might as well pick up kages, it pays itself off in like 10minutes(if you sell it ), so if you get it within the first 10-12minutes of the game it's almost always a good idea to get it.
You should consider skipping HoG entirely. Paying 350 gold for 25 health and gp10 is a bad trade-off for the majority of the game. Just get a kindlegem and get 10% cdr for the price of the gp10. It's a WAY better trade imo.
On July 20 2012 04:34 wei2coolman wrote: You're probably better off going for the early aegis, or at least buying the parts to aegis (but less supports are getting this, since more junglers/top are getting this item). The main problem with getting Shurelya's that early, is that a) you lose your gp10 on philo, b) the unique active is fairly insignificant in small skirmishes, and is much more essential mid/late game, than it is early game. As far going kindlegem for health, instead of hog, is fine, but if anything don't convert it to shurelya's so early. You're probably better off buying a zeke's with first kindlegem.
As far as locket of iron solari goes, i personally really love the item, i think it's pretty unique, and pretty awesome, maybe if they could have the shield scale w/ something other than just lvel, it would maybe make it more accessible. I'll still be running philo+hog, just because aegis is usually built by jungle/top most of the time, and early shurelya's isn't that amazing, so hog is still an okay money dump if you plan on getting locket.
As far as kage's goes, if you get early kills/assists in your botlane, you might as well pick up kages, it pays itself off in like 10minutes(if you sell it ), so if you get it within the first 10-12minutes of the game it's almost always a good idea to get it.
You should consider skipping HoG entirely. Paying 350 gold for 25 health and gp10 is a bad trade-off for the majority of the game. Just get a kindlegem and get 10% cdr for the price of the gp10. It's a WAY better trade imo.
still feel so poor without hog, esp on support.
getting 1gp5 then a kindlegem when you aren't gonna need shurelias real early anyway is dumb imo considering before you were paying 350 gold for 75 health and gp10, it wasn't exactly the most cost efficient buy in the first place(and imo it hasn't been since they removed cloth from the recipe)
Randuin's I feel is too big of an investment for a support. In most (all) games, it's not practical to get a randuins first, you either want an aegis or a shurelya's. Assuming you already have the HoG, a randuins is 2.2k gold more above that. That's more than an aegis costs. At the point in the game where you can get a randuin's on a support, most AD's are hitting 4-5 items. Since you can't actively kill the carries, I feel that as a support, you should be far more focused on keeping your carries alive (CCing anyone near your AD) rather than trying to dive close enough to randuins a carry.
As far as kindlegem vs HoG, I feel that going HoG is still pretty mandatory on a support. I treat it as 825 gold for 200 HP + effect, similar to how I treat a kindlegem as 850 gold for 200HP + effect. The vast majority of the health you gain from both is from the ruby crystal. You're paying the balance for an additional bonus. It's also pretty rare that you wind up upgrading your HoG before it pays for the 350 gold cost (~12 minutes of sitting on a HoG). Yes it's not as good as before but it's still a very core item for a support to have.
On July 20 2012 04:34 wei2coolman wrote: You're probably better off going for the early aegis, or at least buying the parts to aegis (but less supports are getting this, since more junglers/top are getting this item). The main problem with getting Shurelya's that early, is that a) you lose your gp10 on philo, b) the unique active is fairly insignificant in small skirmishes, and is much more essential mid/late game, than it is early game. As far going kindlegem for health, instead of hog, is fine, but if anything don't convert it to shurelya's so early. You're probably better off buying a zeke's with first kindlegem.
As far as locket of iron solari goes, i personally really love the item, i think it's pretty unique, and pretty awesome, maybe if they could have the shield scale w/ something other than just lvel, it would maybe make it more accessible. I'll still be running philo+hog, just because aegis is usually built by jungle/top most of the time, and early shurelya's isn't that amazing, so hog is still an okay money dump if you plan on getting locket.
As far as kage's goes, if you get early kills/assists in your botlane, you might as well pick up kages, it pays itself off in like 10minutes(if you sell it ), so if you get it within the first 10-12minutes of the game it's almost always a good idea to get it.
You should consider skipping HoG entirely. Paying 350 gold for 25 health and gp10 is a bad trade-off for the majority of the game. Just get a kindlegem and get 10% cdr for the price of the gp10. It's a WAY better trade imo.
still feel so poor without hog, esp on support.
getting 1gp5 then a kindlegem when you aren't gonna need shurelias real early anyway is dumb imo considering before you were paying 350 gold for 75 health and gp10, it wasn't exactly the most cost efficient buy in the first place(and imo it hasn't been since they removed cloth from the recipe)
You could do a philo -> kindlegem -> zekes and then get the reverie later on in the game, but i dunno how much junglers tends to get reverie nowadays. I feel like aegis is a big waste of gold, since you shouldn't be the one getting it, randuins costs too much to make it a viable purchase for support (like, when are you ever gonna recall with 2250+ g?). Though i like the small components on aegis, it just feels like it synergizes so well with many wriggles junglers.
On July 26 2012 20:36 zulu_nation8 wrote: locket is terrible
Why and which other item would you suggest?
For 1400 gold (not factoring the gold earned from HoG) it offers something that is close to completely useless. I've bought it myself a few times, and in 99% of all cases i was thinking "wtf, why didn't i buy zekes/aegis instead?". I like the idea of the item, but having it scale with levels (you shouldn't be counting on hitting more than 16 in a single game, and that's 40+ min games we're talking about) and not even then it's worth it.
That 1% time when it's good, is when you have 3-4 shields on your team+soraka.
By the time you have enough money for locket (It shouldn't be your first and it should rarely be your second support item), you should be between levels 14 and 18. Putting a level 4-5 janna shield on everyone isn't particularly bad, especially since it gives squishies the equivalent of 8-10% extra health. It'd be better if the range on the active was raised to 850-1000 instead of the 600 it is now so that you can hit 4-5 players much more consistently but other than that it's a decent buy if your team doesn't benefit much from a zekes and already has aegis.
Ok, my short guide to Fiddlestix support. R>Q>E>>>W skiling order. Pick vs Leona, Janna, Nunu, Alistar. Bad poke, low sustain. You want a Shurelias jungler yours will be late.
0/21/9 masteries. 3 ward opening-> HoG (generally) -> Philo -> Pick (you need this) -> Ionian boots -> Zonyas. Generally get oracle around level 9 if you can and your flash is up.
He is very defensive laner until fear hits a strong 2+ seconds. You will have no sustain because drain is useless for you mid game. You want a burst harass champ that peaks around level 7-9 in damage with decent->strong early game like Corki or Ashe.
He is very fun to play and is incredible vs certain comps. Also don't be afraid to roam a little once you hit 7-9
On July 27 2012 08:43 Eppa! wrote: Ok, my short guide to Fiddlestix support. R>Q>E>>>W skiling order. Pick vs Leona, Janna, Nunu, Alistar. Bad poke, low sustain. You want a Shurelias jungler yours will be late.
0/21/9 masteries. 3 ward opening-> HoG (generally) -> Philo -> Pick (you need this) -> Ionian boots -> Zonyas. Generally get oracle around level 9 if you can and your flash is up.
He is very defensive laner until fear hits a strong 2+ seconds. You will have no sustain because drain is useless for you mid game. You want a burst harass champ that peaks around level 7-9 in damage with decent->strong early game like Corki or Ashe.
He is very fun to play and is incredible vs certain comps. Also don't be afraid to roam a little once you hit 7-9
Buying wards and oracles and all realistically, i dont see you getting Zhonyas for a long time unless youre doing really fuckign amazing.
On July 26 2012 20:36 zulu_nation8 wrote: locket is terrible
Why and which other item would you suggest?
For 1400 gold (not factoring the gold earned from HoG) it offers something that is close to completely useless. I've bought it myself a few times, and in 99% of all cases i was thinking "wtf, why didn't i buy zekes/aegis instead?". I like the idea of the item, but having it scale with levels (you shouldn't be counting on hitting more than 16 in a single game, and that's 40+ min games we're talking about) and not even then it's worth it.
That 1% time when it's good, is when you have 3-4 shields on your team+soraka.
When your team got hit by, say, Vladimir's R, and you activate your Locket, you negative 230 damage for your team. This is basically half of Soraka's ultimate on a 60 seconds cooldown in a teamfight. If that's not good, I don't know what is.
On July 27 2012 10:16 UniversalSnip wrote: I'm surprised people are taking buying hog seriously still with all the hate on it in GD.
I don't really see any reason to buy it anymore, what's the point?
You're paying 825 gold total for 200 hp and 5gp10. Before, you were paying 825 gold for 250 hp and 5gp10. You're losing out on 50 hp overall but there's literally nothing better you can get during the timespan which you'd buy a HoG. 175 hp you're getting regardless with the ruby crystal, it's just a question of whether you get +25 or +75 beyond that.
AFAIK, most of the hate on HoG was regarding getting it on top laners/junglers. It's still a core item on supports.
On July 27 2012 10:16 UniversalSnip wrote: I'm surprised people are taking buying hog seriously still with all the hate on it in GD.
I don't really see any reason to buy it anymore, what's the point?
You're paying 825 gold total for 200 hp and 5gp10. Before, you were paying 825 gold for 250 hp and 5gp10. You're losing out on 50 hp overall but there's literally nothing better you can get during the timespan which you'd buy a HoG. 175 hp you're getting regardless with the ruby crystal, it's just a question of whether you get +25 or +75 beyond that.
AFAIK, most of the hate on HoG was regarding getting it on top laners/junglers. It's still a core item on supports.
it still isnt bad on junglers either, top laners i think it was always a buy gp5 if you wanna lose your lane kinda thing. considering unless things have changed every jungle i see is still buying it pretty much
someone finally saying what ive been saying, you werent paying for that much health in the first place, and a 50 health difference isnt that big of a deal
On July 26 2012 20:36 zulu_nation8 wrote: locket is terrible
Why and which other item would you suggest?
For 1400 gold (not factoring the gold earned from HoG) it offers something that is close to completely useless. I've bought it myself a few times, and in 99% of all cases i was thinking "wtf, why didn't i buy zekes/aegis instead?". I like the idea of the item, but having it scale with levels (you shouldn't be counting on hitting more than 16 in a single game, and that's 40+ min games we're talking about) and not even then it's worth it.
That 1% time when it's good, is when you have 3-4 shields on your team+soraka.
When your team got hit by, say, Vladimir's R, and you activate your Locket, you negative 230 damage for your team. This is basically half of Soraka's ultimate on a 60 seconds cooldown in a teamfight. If that's not good, I don't know what is.
That's entirely way too situational to see in a real game and the comparison to soraka's is completely off base. First soraka's ultimate is global, and is not limited to nearby champs. Second it is a heal, not a temporary shield, so the Hp gains are permanently used, not temporary. Lastly in team fights, champs should be focused down 1 by 1. It is very rare that the full shield is used by every champ, and is more likely to pop on just one or two.
On July 26 2012 20:36 zulu_nation8 wrote: locket is terrible
Why and which other item would you suggest?
For 1400 gold (not factoring the gold earned from HoG) it offers something that is close to completely useless. I've bought it myself a few times, and in 99% of all cases i was thinking "wtf, why didn't i buy zekes/aegis instead?". I like the idea of the item, but having it scale with levels (you shouldn't be counting on hitting more than 16 in a single game, and that's 40+ min games we're talking about) and not even then it's worth it.
That 1% time when it's good, is when you have 3-4 shields on your team+soraka.
When your team got hit by, say, Vladimir's R, and you activate your Locket, you negative 230 damage for your team. This is basically half of Soraka's ultimate on a 60 seconds cooldown in a teamfight. If that's not good, I don't know what is.
That's entirely way too situational to see in a real game and the comparison to soraka's is completely off base. First soraka's ultimate is global, and is not limited to nearby champs. Second it is a heal, not a temporary shield, so the Hp gains are permanently used, not temporary. Lastly in team fights, champs should be focused down 1 by 1. It is very rare that the full shield is used by every champ, and is more likely to pop on just one or two.
Not at all. Most APs have some sort of AOE abilities (unless you are facing, say, LeBlanc), so it's not just Vladimir. Although I do admit Vladimir's R is the easiest to deal with when it comes to the Locket.
Locket is good against any AoE damage. Amumu ulti, galio, Kennen, anivia, karthus, morgana etc etc. 80-90% of commonly played AP's do some form or another of AoE damage. Also, it's pretty common to have two melee's in your frontline getting shot at (top/jungle) and then a carry of yours getting dived. Locket is effective on at least 3 people in this scenario.
On July 27 2012 10:16 UniversalSnip wrote: I'm surprised people are taking buying hog seriously still with all the hate on it in GD.
I don't really see any reason to buy it anymore, what's the point?
You're paying 825 gold total for 200 hp and 5gp10. Before, you were paying 825 gold for 250 hp and 5gp10. You're losing out on 50 hp overall but there's literally nothing better you can get during the timespan which you'd buy a HoG. 175 hp you're getting regardless with the ruby crystal, it's just a question of whether you get +25 or +75 beyond that.
AFAIK, most of the hate on HoG was regarding getting it on top laners/junglers. It's still a core item on supports.
I'd still take Kindlegem over HoG any day simply because of the fact that it actually builds into something good.
Gp10 is a really overrated stat. Just by the natural gp10 flow in the game you gain 78 gold per minute (13 gp10) and everytime you add an item which grants gp10 you can add another 30 gold per minute.
HoG by itself gives you a free ward every 2½ min, but then again you spent the gold of 11 wards in order to get that free ward, and you delayed your core by 825 gold aswell, which is roughly 10% of your total game income on average. Before when it gave 250 hp it was a decent choice especially if you could rush it quick, because it gave you a larger health pool to survive burst in lane and/or early team fights. Removing 130 gold worth of stats from an item that was purchased for better lane presence just made it worse and considering how much supports enjoy cdr i really can't justify how 5 gp10 is better than 10% cdr (and the opportunity to upgrade it even further)
I've been trying to figure out how i'm gonna build my supports now and i've come to this conclusion:
Either start with faerie+wards+pots or boots+wards+pots (amount depends on how many points into wealth). I like boots+1 ward+2 pots if i wanna play agressively and have confidence that i can get an early advantage.
Then you go philo/boots -> kindlegem -> aegis -> reverie. This build is optimal for the junglers who has a need for frozen and reverie early. Having 2 reveries isn't bad, but you can delay yours untill after your aegis, because the aura is nice for you and your team.
The other path is:
Philo/boots -> kindlegem -> zekes -> reverie. This build is optimal when your jungler is AD. I've seen a trend (correct me if i'm wrong here) where the jungler gets an early aegis after his wriggles.
It's not like reverie is bad, i just find it more suitable for late game with my type of play style. You can however get it at any point between your zekes/aegis if you feel the need for mini-ghost.
Hmm. Just looking through the few high ELO supports that I know in games where they play support
Nhat nguyen has built HoG every game. Spellsy has built HoG every game. Muffinqt has built HoG every game. Xpecial has built HoG every game. Gosupepper has built HoG every game. Lemonnation has built HoG every game. Zekent has built HoG every game.
I'm starting to see a pattern here, you?
It's still a really good item on a support. Losing that 50hp means you lose one autoattack of health. It might make a difference but really, at the point in time where you get a HoG, that 50hp isn't particularly huge in comparison to your total health.
Ok you see a pattern. Now can you tell me, why is that pattern good? Cus to me, it seems like time will show that people will eventually skip hog on supports (nobody runs gp10 runes anymore either) because it's bad.
It's only been 8 days since patch release and though i've seen some people getting hog in online tourneys i assume it will be skipped entirely at some point, when they realize that it isn't worth it.
I saw no mention in this guide about one of the single most important thing a support needs to do; keep track of placement and timer of every ward placed in bottom lane. Nothing is more annoying than being told after you're already there that something is warded. It isn't that difficult, you see the ward you type the timer and ping it, if you don't see the ward estimate the timer and say where he probably warded. If the support disappears and comes back to lane without a ward, you say the support warded something. It's something every support should do, but the gross majority (90%+) don't do it.
On July 27 2012 17:52 Lmui wrote: Hmm. Just looking through the few high ELO supports that I know in games where they play support
Nhat nguyen has built HoG every game. Spellsy has built HoG every game. Muffinqt has built HoG every game. Xpecial has built HoG every game. Gosupepper has built HoG every game. Lemonnation has built HoG every game. Zekent has built HoG every game.
I'm starting to see a pattern here, you?
It's still a really good item on a support. Losing that 50hp means you lose one autoattack of health. It might make a difference but really, at the point in time where you get a HoG, that 50hp isn't particularly huge in comparison to your total health.
The LoL community is notoriously bad at responding to changes in a timely manner, even when they're very drastic and very obviously require re-evaluation of how you play.
As far as arguments for HoG, "pro supports are still building it" doesn't hold as much weight as you think it does.
On July 27 2012 17:52 Lmui wrote: Hmm. Just looking through the few high ELO supports that I know in games where they play support
Nhat nguyen has built HoG every game. Spellsy has built HoG every game. Muffinqt has built HoG every game. Xpecial has built HoG every game. Gosupepper has built HoG every game. Lemonnation has built HoG every game. Zekent has built HoG every game.
I'm starting to see a pattern here, you?
It's still a really good item on a support. Losing that 50hp means you lose one autoattack of health. It might make a difference but really, at the point in time where you get a HoG, that 50hp isn't particularly huge in comparison to your total health.
Krepo also builds HoG every game. But he also only plays tankier supports (barring soraka)
On July 26 2012 19:26 arb wrote: still feel so poor without hog, esp on support.
The whole "I feel poor on supports without HoG" thing is entirely misguided perception. Mathematically, HoG takes way too long to breakeven for that perception to really have any basis. Assuming you just ignored HoG and proceeded to build your next item (be it Aegis, Shurelya's, whatever), HoG's cost-ineffectiveness should mean that you actually feel WEAKER with HoG for a good 10-12 minutes.
Assuming HoG at 15 minutes (any sooner and you're either very lucky in getting kills/towers/dragons), you don't even break even until 25-27 minutes. Past that point, you STILL shouldn't feel any difference in how rich you are until HoG generates enough money to be worth a component item (you can't really "feel poorer" if you're down 100 gold because that 100 gold can't actually buy anything anyway), meaning it takes another 10 minutes for HoG to generate the 300 gold that a Cloth Armor is worth--the cheapest component item that you would realistically buy. Given an average game is only 35-40 minutes, the difference between buying HoG and not shouldn't make you feel noticeably poorer until pretty much the very end of the game. And that's assuming that pushing forward the timing of key items like Aegis and Shurelya's didn't translate into a gold advantage through taking objectives with them.
Yes you can get your shurelya's/aegis faster but your second major item beyond that is going to be really slow. If you build shurelya's first, you have no gp10 beyond your runes/masteries/passive gp10.
13gp10 passive 2gp10 masteries 5*gp10 runes
for 20gp10. For aegis, you're going to need 17 minutes before you can afford it, not including assists/kills/ward costs *If you don't have gp10 seals, it'll take even longer.
Just grabbing times from a replay I have where I did poorly, 0/5/10 on taric, going philo -> boots -> HoG. This is a bit more representative of a game situation since wards are bought and used pretty consistently. I run GP10 quints and the gp10 masteries.
~9:00 philo ~17:30 HoG - At this point I'm 0/2/0 in lane. ~28:00 Aegis+oracles - Got a dragon and a few assists at this point. ~36:00 Shurelya's. -Got a lot of assists and baron in this timespan
You would have the shurelya's at around 21-22 minutes or so in a poor game, where you don't get much money from dragons/towers. There would be no difference in your tankiness in lane from 0:00-21:00 or whenever you buy a big item. If you want aegis first, you'd be holding out until ~24-25 minutes to buy it.
Theorycrafting a bit, if I had gone shurelya's first, 1400 gold from the point where I get HoG is going to come at around 25 minutes or so, a bit before I'd get an aegis. I'd get aegis from there at around 38 minutes instead. If I had skipped a HoG altogether, going shurelya's first, I'd have trouble affording an aegis before 40 minutes if I had to buy wards and oracles as well with just the passive gp10.
tl;dr: HoG delays your first major item by like 3-4 minutes at most and helps you get your second major item faster. There's literally no reason to not get a HoG.
Also, GP10 quints are pretty much mandatory on all supports besides alistar/taric/leona who sometimes run MS.
Your item timings are about right, but your conclusion is off. Average game length runs between 35 and 40 minutes, so realistically, items bought after 35 minutes are very often simply bought in the process of closing out a won game, or making a last stand in a clearly lost game. Pushing up that first major item timing by 3-4 minutes is FAR more likely to have a real impact on the game's outcome.
You're making the assumption that Aegis 3-4 minutes earlier does not create a timing advantage that allows your team to take an objective and make back gold (which very often it can) or conversely that having 300 gold less of itemized stats doesn't hurt your laning/teamfighting power (which it also definitely can).
On July 27 2012 18:41 Lmui wrote: There would be no difference in your tankiness in lane from 0:00-21:00 or whenever you buy a big item.
I maintain this isn't true. A support with Ruby+Cloth should noticeably out-trade a support with HoG.
How is HoG gonna get you your second item faster? You got your hog after 17½ min and your second major item at 36.00. That's 18½ min where you sit on your hog letting it generate gold for you, but it hasn't even paid for itself yet (that takes 27½ min) meaning you purposely delayed your second major item, hoping that HoG will make use to you.
The game I took the times/numbers out of was a ~46 minute game. Laning went long until ~19 minutes. It was a close game (within 2k of each other for last ~6 minutes) until the final teamfight and towers started falling and surrender came out. If you can take advantage of the 3-5 minute window where skipping the HoG to get faster items, it'll have been worth it but after you get the big item, you're paying for every second that you can't make something happen with it.
HoG is pretty much never going to pay for itself but it does give health, ~540 gold worth of it. 9.5 minutes after you buy it, it starts generating gold considering the health portion.
Math says that HoG won't pay for itself and get the second item quicker so I'll cede that point.
In all honesty though, item timings haven't changed at since the gp10 runes were introduced and people still got HoG on supports for the last I don't know how long. The ONLY thing that's changed has been the 50 health decrease, ~135 gold worth of stats or 4.5 minutes worth of gp10 from the HoG itself.
Inertia in items and builds is pretty heavy but I don't see how to change that. Locket as a 2nd/3rd big item is the point when getting the HoG is 100% better than not getting a HoG to start.
On July 27 2012 19:10 zulu_nation8 wrote: just dont get your HOG too late and its fine
how late is too late? show your math
If you do get a HoG, it's pretty difficult to get it any later than 17 minutes, the time I got in my terrible game. We had no objectives, I had 2 cs and I was 0/2/0. That's including the fact that I went philo -> boots -> HoG. FWIW my team did wind up winning that game since the other team threw a bit and taric ulti is pretty strong regardless of score.
On July 27 2012 18:41 Lmui wrote: Yes you can get your shurelya's/aegis faster but your second major item beyond that is going to be really slow. If you build shurelya's first, you have no gp10 beyond your runes/masteries/passive gp10.
13gp10 passive 2gp10 masteries 5*gp10 runes
for 20gp10. For aegis, you're going to need 17 minutes before you can afford it, not including assists/kills/ward costs *If you don't have gp10 seals, it'll take even longer.
Just grabbing times from a replay I have where I did poorly, 0/5/10 on taric, going philo -> boots -> HoG. This is a bit more representative of a game situation since wards are bought and used pretty consistently. I run GP10 quints and the gp10 masteries.
~9:00 philo ~17:30 HoG - At this point I'm 0/2/0 in lane. ~28:00 Aegis+oracles - Got a dragon and a few assists at this point. ~36:00 Shurelya's. -Got a lot of assists and baron in this timespan
You would have the shurelya's at around 21-22 minutes or so in a poor game, where you don't get much money from dragons/towers. There would be no difference in your tankiness in lane from 0:00-21:00 or whenever you buy a big item. If you want aegis first, you'd be holding out until ~24-25 minutes to buy it.
Theorycrafting a bit, if I had gone shurelya's first, 1400 gold from the point where I get HoG is going to come at around 25 minutes or so, a bit before I'd get an aegis. I'd get aegis from there at around 38 minutes instead. If I had skipped a HoG altogether, going shurelya's first, I'd have trouble affording an aegis before 40 minutes if I had to buy wards and oracles as well with just the passive gp10.
tl;dr: HoG delays your first major item by like 3-4 minutes at most and helps you get your second major item faster. There's literally no reason to not get a HoG.
Also, GP10 quints are pretty much mandatory on all supports besides alistar/taric/leona who sometimes run MS.
How is HoG only delaying your major item by 3-4 minutes at most? It's delaying it by 800 gold. If you had a ruby and a cloth with that same 800 gold (technically 50 gold less), you're almost halfway to aegis, AND have significantly more survivability than you would if you had just a HoG. If you had a kindlegem instead, you'd have more CDR which could make or break something else (but this is much harder to measure)
That extra survivability from random aegis bits might have even saved you a death, which is 300 gold denied to the enemy team - more important than getting gold yourself is keeping gold from getting into the enemy carry hands. 18 armor is like 180 EHP vs physical damage (Since you'll have around 1k health at this point)
There's this perception that you're spending your gp10 money on wards, but you're really spending most of your gp10 money it on HAVING A GP10 ITEM. Most games don't go super-duper late and if they do then you should be fine with your assist/objective money.
Also it doesn't hurt to steal some CS if you REALLY need gold for wards and/or items (like the game where lmui had 0-2-0 and his team didn't get any objectives) especially killing the small camps later in the game is quite useful. Like most AD carries up untill a very high elo don't hard-push the lane before they recall. This will leave you a small cap of 8-10 creeps that you can get without anyone complaining.
i think the problem with stacking gp/10 lies with the 0 cs idea behind the current meta in the first place. i think having the AD carry pick up the majority or all the farm in early laning is perfectly understandable (especially considering how you don't lose gold on death etc. as compared to dota and the relative gold gain per sec compared to gold gained on cs is fairly high since you can't lose it on death). however, i think a support roaming to hold other lanes while mid lane goes to gank, to apply more map pressure while a jungler for instance could apply pressure on bottom to ensure his ad carry's farm especially when there are no major map objectives elsewhere he needs to keep pressure on, and no / not very many camps up (or an ap mid as well) are ideas that people should consider more. these kinds of sweeping changes will not be made by any but an organized team that meets success however, so it is unlikely to see any such change anytime soon.
Here's another thing to think about. What if they took 50 hp off doran's blade? Would people still buy it? Actually, they probably would... but stacking it would definitely be dead. It just wouldn't be worth it.
Now consider that philo also got nerfed in this patch. It didn't lose as many raw stats as hog, but the difference between 50 hp and 3/hp5 is not actually that far off. Hp regen is just much less visible. You still autobuy philo because it was a much better item to start with than hog, but when you buy two gp5, you're basically getting hit by the nerf twice.
i've been running this on janna, taric, alistar, soraka, leona... everyone but nunu basically. i'm pretty sure this is the optimal support build at the moment, the defensive stats you can get for the cost follow the enemy's power curve nicely. you become quite tanky for a support in mid-game, with taric it's especially noticable.
i'll generally get the aegis before kindlegem if i feel a pressing need for defensive stats, sometimes i'll have kindle/cloth/null and then finish the aegis. If the lane is going well I'll get kindlegem first. CDR is godlike for clutch situations and that's where my preferred supports (janna, taric/leona/ali to a lesser extent) thrive
note the lack of a second gp10. i run MS/Mpen/Armor/Mres on janna/taric and i never have problems buying wards or completing items at a reasonable clip. make plays to get gold!
I think everyone up untill now agrees that hog should be skipped and philo stone should be the only gp10 purchase throughout the game because you can upgrade it into Shurelya's Reverie and philo stone is the most cost-efficient gp10 of all. My real main issue is that i find reverie inappropriate on supports, because their current budget just doesn't cut for it.
If i'm playing support i feel like i want 3 major things:
1) Auras for my team 2) Tankiness through health, armor and magic resists 3) CDR
Number 1 is pretty easy to achieve. There's plenty of items in this game which provides me with auras i can give to my team, but mainly the 3 most commonly used items on supports are reverie, aegis and zeke's. Number 2 is achieved by purchasing aegis, since it gives all 3 stats i mentioned so it's getting to the point where it's a instant-purchase every game and getting it for early team fights can be a game changer. Number 3 is achieveable by purchasing reverie and/or zekes and/or cdr boots.
The main issue here is that all 3 items combined makes a support a strong force in late game team fights, but i just don't ever see myself having them all on a regular basis. It's 2200 for reverie, 1925 for aegis and 2145 for zeke's totalling in 6270 gold and then you gotta factor in wards and oracles. I just don't see it happening often enough so a need for cutting off an item could be in place.
I don't feel like cutting off aegis ever. Number 2 statement is really important on supports so you don't just melt in fights. CDR is a very good stat on support, and most supports are defined by how well their base stat abilities scale with cdr so they can be more effective in fights. That leaves number 1.
I feel the 40% movement speed for 3 seconds is very strong if a team knows how to execute this properly. I think everyone remembers how oddone dominated with his reverie rush maokai in a tournament some time ago, which clearly showed us how broken a mini-ghost is. However i feel things have shifted alot more and right now i feel the reverie stacking should be considered a competetive only strategy because you need proper execution.
Aegis is overall a strong item on pretty much every support and the fact that it stacks makes it even stronger. You're bound to stack hp after the aegis, either for zekes or for reverie, so having +12 armor and +15 mres added on top of either +330 HP or +250 HP gives you more EHP.
I feel like zeke's is sorta an underdog item. Looking at the item, it's an inferior version of stark's fervor and the build path is changed. I like the fact that you can sit on a kindlegem while waiting for the 1290 gold to upgrade it (the other parts are poor choices to hang onto and you most likely won't have room for wards aswell). 20% Attack speed and 12% lifesteal aura doesn't seem like much, but if you have just 1 more person auto-attacking on your team, i feel like zeke's is worth it over reverie.
The combination of reverie+zeke's is inferior to aegis+zekes or reverie+zeke's because you're gonna lack resists for the +880 extra HP you're getting,
What are people's opinion on chalice on supports? 890g vs 800 for philo, you get mres but you can't of course get reverie. Maybe if you got chalice early on in the laning phase, skipped philo and still rushed aegis? I assume the 30 gold/minute generated is worth neglecting.
I've tested around with getting tabi early in the lane, should i face taric or janna with a strong auto-attacker. I feel they're a niche more than a core.
Also i've tested around and for those champions who benefit from early cdr like lulu, sona and soraka this build seems strong:
i've been running this on janna, taric, alistar, soraka, leona... everyone but nunu basically. i'm pretty sure this is the optimal support build at the moment, the defensive stats you can get for the cost follow the enemy's power curve nicely. you become quite tanky for a support in mid-game, with taric it's especially noticable.
i'll generally get the aegis before kindlegem if i feel a pressing need for defensive stats, sometimes i'll have kindle/cloth/null and then finish the aegis. If the lane is going well I'll get kindlegem first. CDR is godlike for clutch situations and that's where my preferred supports (janna, taric/leona/ali to a lesser extent) thrive
note the lack of a second gp10. i run MS/Mpen/Armor/Mres on janna/taric and i never have problems buying wards or completing items at a reasonable clip. make plays to get gold!
This has also become my standard build recently and I am really liking the fast kindlegem CDR. I feel it helps in early skirmishes as leona or Janna where I can get off one more stun or shield. Where do you get boots 2 in there though? And what are peoples opinions on the best boots 2 for supports? I typically run merc treads on aggressive supports like taric or leona and Ionian boots on Janna.
On August 15 2012 03:12 Sponkz wrote: I think everyone up untill now agrees that hog should be skipped and philo stone should be the only gp10 purchase throughout the game because you can upgrade it into Shurelya's Reverie and philo stone is the most cost-efficient gp10 of all. My real main issue is that i find reverie inappropriate on supports, because their current budget just doesn't cut for it.
If i'm playing support i feel like i want 3 major things:
1) Auras for my team 2) Tankiness through health, armor and magic resists 3) CDR
Number 1 is pretty easy to achieve. There's plenty of items in this game which provides me with auras i can give to my team, but mainly the 3 most commonly used items on supports are reverie, aegis and zeke's. Number 2 is achieved by purchasing aegis, since it gives all 3 stats i mentioned so it's getting to the point where it's a instant-purchase every game and getting it for early team fights can be a game changer. Number 3 is achieveable by purchasing reverie and/or zekes and/or cdr boots.
The main issue here is that all 3 items combined makes a support a strong force in late game team fights, but i just don't ever see myself having them all on a regular basis. It's 2200 for reverie, 1925 for aegis and 2145 for zeke's totalling in 6270 gold and then you gotta factor in wards and oracles. I just don't see it happening often enough so a need for cutting off an item could be in place.
I don't feel like cutting off aegis ever. Number 2 statement is really important on supports so you don't just melt in fights. CDR is a very good stat on support, and most supports are defined by how well their base stat abilities scale with cdr so they can be more effective in fights. That leaves number 1.
I feel the 40% movement speed for 3 seconds is very strong if a team knows how to execute this properly. I think everyone remembers how oddone dominated with his reverie rush maokai in a tournament some time ago, which clearly showed us how broken a mini-ghost is. However i feel things have shifted alot more and right now i feel the reverie stacking should be considered a competetive only strategy because you need proper execution.
Aegis is overall a strong item on pretty much every support and the fact that it stacks makes it even stronger. You're bound to stack hp after the aegis, either for zekes or for reverie, so having +12 armor and +15 mres added on top of either +330 HP or +250 HP gives you more EHP.
I feel like zeke's is sorta an underdog item. Looking at the item, it's an inferior version of stark's fervor and the build path is changed. I like the fact that you can sit on a kindlegem while waiting for the 1290 gold to upgrade it (the other parts are poor choices to hang onto and you most likely won't have room for wards aswell). 20% Attack speed and 12% lifesteal aura doesn't seem like much, but if you have just 1 more person auto-attacking on your team, i feel like zeke's is worth it over reverie.
The combination of reverie+zeke's is inferior to aegis+zekes or reverie+zeke's because you're gonna lack resists for the +880 extra HP you're getting,
What are people's opinion on chalice on supports? 890g vs 800 for philo, you get mres but you can't of course get reverie. Maybe if you got chalice early on in the laning phase, skipped philo and still rushed aegis? I assume the 30 gold/minute generated is worth neglecting.
I've tested around with getting tabi early in the lane, should i face taric or janna with a strong auto-attacker. I feel they're a niche more than a core.
Also i've tested around and for those champions who benefit from early cdr like lulu, sona and soraka this build seems strong:
It allows for a boots+1 ward+2 hpot opening while providing MS, mp5 and resists almost similar to 1/16/13.
Eh no. You should make HoG.
For ranged supports (Soraka, Janna, Sona, Lulu) survivability is crucial. Typically you are the easiest target because you have low innate armor, HP, and no escapes. The 200 HP helps a lot. Furthermore Locket of the Iron Solari is a good item. Seriously, it is a GOOD item. There is absolutely no reason why you should ignore it.
For melee supports (Leona, Taric, Blitzcrank) you should build HoG first, before philo.
On August 17 2012 02:47 zulu_nation8 wrote: if you wanna skip a gp10 i would skip philo. I don't think the nerfs should change builds though.
It's either skip HoG or skip both.
@Sponkz: Aegis and Zekes should be split between jungler and support. If you're getting one, jungler should get the other. It's not feasible for support to get both in reasonable time.
lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
On August 17 2012 09:13 De4ngus wrote: lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
But you get 350g back after roughly 12 minutes.... so....
On August 17 2012 09:13 De4ngus wrote: lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
You dont need any of those items that early, rather get hog so i atleast have some income.
On August 17 2012 09:13 De4ngus wrote: lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
But you get 350g back after roughly 12 minutes.... so....
Or instead of waiting 12 minutes you could just get an earlier Aegis with the Ruby Crystal you bought. Or Kindlegem like Gandhisauce said. People are too stuck on Gp10.
okok, the real question is why do people care what they build on support when it's like #2067567 priority, usually when I see a support with items and he's not 5-0-15 i get mad and think of the times where a certain spot shouldve been warded.
People get HoG so often on supports because you usually want at least 1 g/10 and that g/10 item starks to get HoG more often then not due to you being oneshot in lane if you dont get hp and even if you get 2 g/10 you should really get HoG and philo. The thing with g/10 on supports is just you need to be able to constantly buy wards regardless how the game is going. You get 0 kill 0 towers 0 drakes for several minutes you still have to be able to get a few wards (yes I understand obv you usually want to give some gold to the support nowadays but sometimes its just not possible due to everyone being underfarmed/being behind in the game)
Edit: for the build discussions the standart build atm is either shurelia or zeke first and the other after that if you are fed (yes supports can be fed with towers/drakes and maybe a few kills) you can get Aegis else the jungler should get it. Yes 2 aegis is probably cost effecient but aegis + zeke should be more cost effecient and saving the ad carry an item slot/a 2550 g item (for bt to be able to get more lifesteal) is very very good.
People just like to look at costefficiency but thats too one dimensional there is a reason you usually want to give the ad carry most of the farm and that is that an ad carry can use gold /stats the best into lategame and increasing your ad carries potential by quite a bit with the zeke is really great.
On August 17 2012 09:13 De4ngus wrote: lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
But you get 350g back after roughly 12 minutes.... so....
And it takes 12 more minutes to generate 350 extra gold.
So 24 minutes later, it's finally been cost-efficient for longer than it's been cost-inefficient. As opposed to anything else that was cost-efficient for the entire time.
On August 17 2012 09:13 De4ngus wrote: lolwtf why do people want to build hog so much? want to pay 350g for 20hp? ok. dont worry guys kindlegem doesnt exist. its not like it builds into useful items like reverie, zekes, or soul shroud.
You dont need any of those items that early, rather get hog so i atleast have some income.
Ya man that 350 gold surplus after 24 minutes is totally the difference between having income and not.
having 4-5 free wards immediately is more powerful than being 4-5 wards behind now and 4-5 wards up 25 minutes from now because 4-5 wards does more early game when Oracle's isn't in the game yet. Having 350 gold more worth of stats in an early game fight makes a bigger difference than being 350 gold worth of stats ahead lategame because it comprises a larger fraction of your total item value. Nobody cares about an extra Cloth armor 40 minutes into the game when people are on 4-5 items, but having an extra cloth armor worth of stats in lane is a huge deal, and is even significant into early teamfights.
There's been soooooooooooooo many cases in solo queue and even in 5s, where supports incorrectly buy items over wards. This is imo the biggest general problem when supporting, when you don't have the awareness to realize warding an objective or a ganking path is infinitely more important to your team than getting an item. I can't stress how important this is over pretty much everything else. I don't know the exact math and may very well be "wrong", or playing inefficiently when getting hog in 99% of games (probably not though), but item selection should be like so far down your list of priorities that you shouldn't even have the chance to think about it in most of your games.
Pretty much every non main support I've seen has the attitude of skimping on wards over items. The right attitude should be the exact opposite. When you don't have the awareness to track jungler paths or sense ganks, which is every support, you should err on the side of gross inefficiency, meaning whereas a better support may only need two wards in the next 10 minutes to defend vs ganks, it's not a bad idea for you to get eight. There are so many cases where on your first trip back you should be getting boots and wards, or just wards, instead of your gp10 or first piece of gp10. If you're not at the point where you know where the enemy jungler is pre 6 ALL the time, you probably should just always have two wards at bot. Hell just skip GP10 items altogether and buy boots and wards. I'm pretty certain if every support did that up until the highest elo they'd win way more games.
As a rule of thumb, when you back on support, get a minimum of 2 wards. If you ABSOLUTELY want an item now - like, it's early, you backed earlier than normal and you have enough for boots + 1 ward... get the boots + 1 ward and ask nicely for your AD to buy another ward.
Even when you're sharing the burden of wards with your team, you can't afford to not have any wards if there's a situation where you need a ward RIGHT NOW. This is true more often later in the game, where you need to up your quota of wards a bit (but hopefully, you should be getting some assist gold or maybe a few CS at this point) and you need to be carrying anywhere from 3~5+ wards in case there's a vision war over baron or something. You can't afford to be denied vision ENTIRELY just because there's an oracle floating around. It's just asking to lose the inevitable teamfight.
When towers go down, there are also more opportunities to ward. You can start thinking about warding deep in the enemy jungle to allow pushes to the second turret (usually a ward at whatever nearby buff camp bush is good for this, and a second ward at at the wraiths or Jbush to make sure you don't get ambushed from behind) without getting easily ambushed.
When oracles hit the field, you'll want to start placing SOME of your wards in places that your team can at least potentially respond to the enemy team clearing them. Warding your own jungle entrances works well here, or the riverbush at mid instead of the more aggressive enemy-wraith ward. Your wards might not cover as much, but they won't be cleared as easily either. However, you still will want some wards in more aggressive places when you're actively pushing (even if they clear the ward in this case, it's done its job - alerted you to either halt the push or prepare for a fight)
As far as GP10, I've only been going with 1 GP10 item and getting the rest of my GP10 from quints + mastery. It's fine. I usually can finish aegis by 20 minutes with minimal assist gold and still buying a healthy # of wards. Usually it's going to be philo - shurelia is core, locket is too situational. I've usually been going Philo -> Aegis -> boots2 -> Shurelia. If I'm a backline support and a frontliner already has aegis though, I might go philo -> zekes -> boots2-> shurelia? Or the other way around.
On August 17 2012 02:47 zulu_nation8 wrote: if you wanna skip a gp10 i would skip philo. I don't think the nerfs should change builds though.
It's either skip HoG or skip both.
@Sponkz: Aegis and Zekes should be split between jungler and support. If you're getting one, jungler should get the other. It's not feasible for support to get both in reasonable time.
It's just that aegis has so much to offer for supports in terms of survivability that i just find it hard sometimes to simply skip it, and junglers don't wanna skip aegis either and get zeke's, because it only offers HP. Those times when i went with reverie and zeke's i look at my resists and they're sitting at 60-70'ish while i have 2,2+ hp. It feels wrong.
Also at those advocating hog. You can just go boots -> faerie -> ruby (or ruby -> faerie) -> philo. Last few games i noticed how if the game goes past 40 min or so, i can actually afford to start building towards reverie and get it before the big game-deciding fights.
About the wards, you should only ward accordingly and not just ward because you bought 3 and therefore need vision in 3 places. Sometimes you feel pressure so it's more natural so keep tri, river and lane warded, but those games where the enemy jungler and mid just roam around mid/top area, i don't see a reason for it. It isn't the supports duty to always buy wards, you can ask the ad carry to get 1-2 wards if they got extra spare gold. Not like it hurts them for the rest of the game (especially if the ward saved your life)
On August 15 2012 03:12 Sponkz wrote: I think everyone up untill now agrees that hog should be skipped and philo stone should be the only gp10 purchase throughout the game because you can upgrade it into Shurelya's Reverie and philo stone is the most cost-efficient gp10 of all. My real main issue is that i find reverie inappropriate on supports, because their current budget just doesn't cut for it.
If i'm playing support i feel like i want 3 major things:
1) Auras for my team 2) Tankiness through health, armor and magic resists 3) CDR
Number 1 is pretty easy to achieve. There's plenty of items in this game which provides me with auras i can give to my team, but mainly the 3 most commonly used items on supports are reverie, aegis and zeke's. Number 2 is achieved by purchasing aegis, since it gives all 3 stats i mentioned so it's getting to the point where it's a instant-purchase every game and getting it for early team fights can be a game changer. Number 3 is achieveable by purchasing reverie and/or zekes and/or cdr boots.
The main issue here is that all 3 items combined makes a support a strong force in late game team fights, but i just don't ever see myself having them all on a regular basis. It's 2200 for reverie, 1925 for aegis and 2145 for zeke's totalling in 6270 gold and then you gotta factor in wards and oracles. I just don't see it happening often enough so a need for cutting off an item could be in place.
I don't feel like cutting off aegis ever. Number 2 statement is really important on supports so you don't just melt in fights. CDR is a very good stat on support, and most supports are defined by how well their base stat abilities scale with cdr so they can be more effective in fights. That leaves number 1.
I feel the 40% movement speed for 3 seconds is very strong if a team knows how to execute this properly. I think everyone remembers how oddone dominated with his reverie rush maokai in a tournament some time ago, which clearly showed us how broken a mini-ghost is. However i feel things have shifted alot more and right now i feel the reverie stacking should be considered a competetive only strategy because you need proper execution.
Aegis is overall a strong item on pretty much every support and the fact that it stacks makes it even stronger. You're bound to stack hp after the aegis, either for zekes or for reverie, so having +12 armor and +15 mres added on top of either +330 HP or +250 HP gives you more EHP.
I feel like zeke's is sorta an underdog item. Looking at the item, it's an inferior version of stark's fervor and the build path is changed. I like the fact that you can sit on a kindlegem while waiting for the 1290 gold to upgrade it (the other parts are poor choices to hang onto and you most likely won't have room for wards aswell). 20% Attack speed and 12% lifesteal aura doesn't seem like much, but if you have just 1 more person auto-attacking on your team, i feel like zeke's is worth it over reverie.
The combination of reverie+zeke's is inferior to aegis+zekes or reverie+zeke's because you're gonna lack resists for the +880 extra HP you're getting,
What are people's opinion on chalice on supports? 890g vs 800 for philo, you get mres but you can't of course get reverie. Maybe if you got chalice early on in the laning phase, skipped philo and still rushed aegis? I assume the 30 gold/minute generated is worth neglecting.
I've tested around with getting tabi early in the lane, should i face taric or janna with a strong auto-attacker. I feel they're a niche more than a core.
Also i've tested around and for those champions who benefit from early cdr like lulu, sona and soraka this build seems strong:
It allows for a boots+1 ward+2 hpot opening while providing MS, mp5 and resists almost similar to 1/16/13.
Eh no. You should make HoG.
For ranged supports (Soraka, Janna, Sona, Lulu) survivability is crucial. Typically you are the easiest target because you have low innate armor, HP, and no escapes. The 200 HP helps a lot. Furthermore Locket of the Iron Solari is a good item. Seriously, it is a GOOD item. There is absolutely no reason why you should ignore it.
For melee supports (Leona, Taric, Blitzcrank) you should build HoG first, before philo.
The reason i skip locket of the iron solari is because it scales with levels, something you can't be dependant on getting.
I remember this support Raka who "mained" her was convinced that rushing Frozen Heart on her was the best Soraka build possible, because you would be unkillable by AD along with your armor buff
As sup, I dont understand playing w/o philo. It is great, even ignoring GP5. Other than that its situational. My last game I went triple GP5 straight to frozen core. Sometimes its better to get just 1 and then Aegis. Support items are the most flexible IMO. 1, 2, or 3 GP5 items are all viable; just like RCP90 vs. AR 33.
3 gp5 is overdoing it imo. By the time you get your kage's the stats are neglible, and it won't have a chance to pay itself off. If you manage to get it early one, there's better purchases.
If you really think about it, why do you need regen as support? For kill lanes, most of your trades end up with someone dying, if no one dies then everyone is low and someone will die soon before you can regen, pots would be the most practical option. If you're Soraka, unless your AD is retarded you shouldn't run out of mana, unless you're retarded you shouldn't be low. For Janna you can harass a bit but you wouldn't ever do it often enough to need regen. For Sona if you are winning the lane and zoning you may ran out of mana, regen is probably good on her since you're rarely going all in but harassing often. Don't need on Lulu. On the other hand EVERYONE can use more HP because bot lanes trade and commit often. I don't ever remember when I felt the regen from philo was useful. If I'm low I leave because I wouldn't be able to trade, if I'm sorta low I pot.
I agree kindlem is a great item and also agree that you need gp10s for ward income later when you're broke. Which means if anything you should get hog + kindlem + maybe pick. A kill lane with a support who has hog + kindlem vs another kill lane with a support who has philo + hog or kindlem, not hard to see the former will win every time if traded correctly.
Also there's only one scenario when you can, but still not necessarily should get three GP10, when because either you fucked up or your AD sucks that somehow you're rich as balls early. Three GP10s would make sense to set up strong income mid to late for map control and early aegis. The only other scenario where you can afford three GP10s within a reasonable time frame is if everyone is rich, in that case I get a mejai or dfg because it doesn't matter.
Comparing hog+kindlegem to philo+hog or kindlegem i can see it being better. But if you compare hog+kindlegem to philo+ruby+cloth with is roughly the same amount of gold you spend, you realize why hog isn't optimal. The guy with hog+kindlegem has a higher health pool in lane yeah, but the guy with philo, ruby and cloth is only 1150 gold away from his aegis, giving his team the upper advantage, because the aura has a very significant impact early to mid-game. Meanwhile the enemy support is still missing all the components for his aegis AND he is using 3 slots (boots, hog and kindlegem) so he CANNOT buy more than 2 pieces before he has to sit on gold which imo means alot early on.
Not talking cost-efficiency here, but if i were to upgrade philo to reverie or hog to locket, i would choose reverie. Health is a good stat-choice for lane, but i'd get kindlegem instead of hog, if you really are scared of dying to burst, but experience has told me that a ruby+cloth+nmm (pre-aegis) is more than enough to survive burst/kill lanes.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LqiJa.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JqQ9a.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/m1K0v.png)
(barring soraka)
