EPTWhat is Supporting and Why do it?
Supporting is a staple and irreplaceable role in LoL as well as in every DotA-like game so far. The Support Player is generally responsible for most of the map control and for denying his opponents' vision through counterwarding. During combat he/she will help his carries to do their job better, which includes alot of altruistic stuff like buffing, baiting, healing and even dying for the greater good.
If you have good map-awareness and foresight, then this might be a role you could enjoy. If your basis for having fun is a positive k/d score, then you should rather stick to AP/AD carries and leave the supporting for those who actually enjoy it and know what they are doing. Personally I think supporting is challenging and has a huge influence of a match's outcome despite the general opinion on this matter.
As you will not farm minions and even try to let your carries get kills (not recommended for new players!), you will die faster than a regular tank and deal less damage than a regular ranged champion. However your contribution is just as great as every players' and the difference between a bad and a good support is just as high as with every other role. Some have even proven that it is just as viable to win games consistently with mainly support champions, while outplaying the other team's lastpick.
The Aspects of Laneing and Combat as a Support
Supporting is all about synergy. The champion you pick has to fit your team, as you fill their holes and buff their strengths. This is why we start with explaining some of the stuff you do in your lane and engagements.
1. Babysitting
Some champions are stronger in the early laning phase as others. Babysitting means to keep that carry on your lane as healthy as possible during his weak phase. Ranged carries like Vayne and Kog’Maw do not have the ranged and sheer power to hold on against champions like Ezreal or Caitlyn and need you to sustain and protect them until their powercurve goes up.
Some strong babysitters are:
- Soraka - Strong sustain for both mana and health as well as defensive buffs make her
a good pick for babysitting. Her silence serves as an interrupt for spellcombos as well.
- Sona - Again healing and defensive buffs.
- Alistar - Great sustain through his heal and two strong disables to keep away jumpers.
- Janna - She doesn't really sustain but reactionary shields along with her two disables keep
you and your laning mate alive.
Most of the regular support champions are great at babysitting, but if you really have to keep your lane safe against an aggressive combo or an early game ganker, then you most likely want to stick to Sona/Soraka which offer the best sustain and defensive buffs. Other champions like Taric or Nidalee who also have heals are perhaps less suited for this, since they go out of mana very fast and their main strength isn't even healing. When picking a babysitter then also think about what utility you'll need to protect your carry, such as Soraka's silence for example can save you from channeling spells or spellcombos (thinking of Fiddle drain and Ali's stun combo).
2. Aggressive Laneing
Most AP carries and some of the AD carries such as Caitlyn, Ezreal, Tristana have a strong laneing phase and just need someone who keeps their opponent in place so they can kill 'em.
Alistar and Taric are probably the best examples for this because of their strong hard disables. When picking an aggressive Support then always think about your lanepartner as well. If you are paired with Cait, then you might consider Taric for the stun&trap combo but if your carry's name is Vayne then you are probably better served with Alistar for better positional play.
As for aggressive laners your options are the most flexible. There are a bunch of unusual picks such as Lux or Leona who will work just as fine. Not having a healing spell does not cripple your lane if you have the nuking power to get ahead. The only advantage of healing is the ability to do it from a safe position, which comes with the price of costing generally more mana than nukes though.
Aggressive laning as a Support can net your team some kills but comes with a higher risk. There's nothing wrong with babysitting a strong laner, except if your opponents carry has a steeper powercurve. In this case you want to take those risks and build up as much pressure as you can to zone him from some of the farm or kill him if he gets greedy.
3. Poking and Kiting or Initiating?
There are a bunch of carries who excel at poking. Kog, Ezreal, Ashe, Corki to name a few. There are tanks and bruisers, who just have to be (and can be) poked and kited before your team should face them. So if you will face a Nasus/Udyr/similar during the mid-lategame then you should think about picking either Janna, Sona or Soraka. Janna and Sona are very obvious choices. Soraka is picked for her mana sustain which results in infinite pokes and her clutch armor buff on heal is nothing to cough at when the fight starts. Again, there are other champions that poke very well and could be viable Supports as well.
However it is not only the AD Carry and the Support who determine which side the poke-trades win. If you'r able to guess which side will have the stronger pokes then you can choose the right Support to complement your team. If you think your team will get behind with the pokes then you can counter this with either sustain or with hard-disables so your team can force an engagement more
easily.
4. Countering Assassins
Assassins are the bane of Carries but they have a very risky job. Here it is important to consider two things: A) Knockbacks and hard-disables and B) Very potent defensive buffs.
Alistar and Janna offer the first and are both very good carriers for the Oracles to counter stealth assassins such as Eve, Akali or Talon. The strongest defensive buffs come from less usual support picks such as Kayle, Zilean or Shen. Those are much more common on a solo lane. However, if you think such picks offer enough besides their panic buttons then go for it. Consider how the enemy Assassin deals his damage when trying to counter him/her. Soraka's silence might be enough to keep an Akali from jumping your carry if you can maintain an Oracles on her.
5. Roaming
Roaming is the opposite of babysitting and also the same thing but on a larger scale. As a roamer your job is to constantly gank or zone/camp different lanes and possibly the jungle instead of staying on the same one during the laning phase. Your team should have a strong solo laner on every lane while one of them must be able to face 2 opponents without getting severely behind. The other prerequisite is having strong gank assist abilities such as disables or burst, so you can net kills. Roaming is an uncommon early game strategy because it sets the roamer behind in experience most of the time.
Known roamers are Evelynn, Twitch, Taric, Alistar and Maokai. Champions that force pink wards and oracles are obvious picks. Roamers like Alistar and Maokai offer disables and burst. A roamer often buys travel boots to be able to switch from lane to lane very fast. One of the advantages that roaming offers is strong mapcontrol because forces defensive behaviour from your opponents while you can almost freely ward some of the juiciest wardspots.
You don't have to be a dedicated roamer to switch from lane to lane though. When your carry is already ahead enough, or if your lane opponents are dead/missing then you always might consider to roam even if only to place some wards around team objectives, jungle buffs or the river.
Even if your lane is forced to farm under the turret then you might as well leave the lane to do something more useful than leeching experience, as long as your Carry cannot be dived.
If you keep a good eye on both junglers then you might be able to assist during ganks on the midlane or during counterjungling. Especially the latter can snowball very quickly in a huge advantage because if you are able to kill/scare away the other jungler and ward his area then your jungler can steal and counter him repeatedly.
Just don't do such things blindly or even without speaking to your teammates. Roaming requires opportunity and communication.
Awareness and Mapcontrol
1. Clairvoyance (CV)
Using CV has alot of purposes that we want to discuss here. Even with its low cooldown, it is not a summoner you want to waste. It can either piss on somebody's parade or be completely useless.
Catching somebody with it greatly depends on his and your experience with the game and can be tricky sometimes.
1.1 Tracking Opponents
Early in the game you want to use it to track your opponent's jungler. Knowing most of the viable jungle routes come in handy here. If you manage to know where he starts, then you can keep on CVing the camps he should be clearing. A simple example to make: Jungler starts with blue and you CV his wolves or wraiths depending on cooldown and timing. If he didn't show up there or didn't already clear them, then you can warn the lanes near those camps to be cautious.
The better your map awareness is, the greater the usage of this spell. There is a lot of info you have to consider besides the jungling route. Compare the behaviour of the other lanes and their CS. Compare the health and possibilities to gank those lanes.
If you have an experienced jungler in your team, then he often might call for CV assistance to counterjungle. Some solo laners will also ask for CV, especially before their first bluepill, since they often do not start with wards in their inventory. Use your judgment here. If you know that an area is clear, then just tell 'em. If you're not sure, then grant them one of your precious CV cooldowns.
Another important use during the early game and even midgame is tracking the other Support, when he is placing wards or even roaming. Some players will just not do anything if you catch 'em, to deny you intelligence. Use this to gain either an advantage in your lane, or follow him and annoy him with a bit of pokeing. However if you see him warding then just go on and kill that ward, when you have the opportunity.
1.2 Checking Brushes
During the whole game you want to use CV to check brushes and other tricky areas before so your team does not get caught. Everytime you have to do this, then remember this area, the circumstances and roughly the game time so you might be able to ward it the next time before your in that situation. The less CVs you have to use the better, because it can always miss and especially lategame it often does not catch everything you want to see.
You also have to use it aggressively so your team cannot be juked. If you see a gank incomming then be ready to CV nearby brushes. CV should allways come the moment someone enters a brush.
1.3 Timing your CV
A strong usage of CV is to keep track of buffs and dragons that are made by your opponents. Write down the time in the chat. To remember: Blue and redbuff spawn 5min, Dragon spawns 6min and Baron 7min after their respective deaths. Talking about death timers: You can also use CV after an opponents death to see if he is walking towards his lane like you expect him to.
Using CV basically all comes down to experience, foresight and timing. Al ways think about why you use it now and here and if you could have warded that area as well. If someone got ganked/caught then think about the timing and if you could have saved him with a CV etc.
2. Warding and Counterwarding
First of all: Wards cost nothing and you can buy them infinitely. Placing wards at the right locations limits your opponent's options for aggressiveness, map control and buff control for a great amount, while giving you opportunities for such team objectives. The team with the better ward bitch naturally has the better coordination.
The amounts of wards you have to place greatly differs from match to match, depending on both teams and especially supports. Denying enemy wards is called counterwarding, which is done with either pink wards or oracles.
2.1 Basic Ward Placement
2.1.1 Earlygame
SR is designed in such a way that you can completely shut down the enemy area with just 4 wards on the river entrances and possibly 2 additional wards on the sidelane brushes which goes both ways ofc. Those are the wardspots your team has to control the most during the early-midgame.
New players often make the mistake to ward very near to their lane. Don't do this! Alot of strong gankers have the luxury to be seen there and still grab a kill or force you to bluepill. Other gankers have insanely huge jumps that push them over big obstacles (Kassadin/Shaco). Denying every way to be ganked is almost impossible though, but place your early game wards a good chunk away from your lane to give you more vision and reaction time.
If you are able to roam some time, then also think about warding your opponent's buffs near your lane. This might save you a CV and can open opportunities for your mid player and your jungler to be aggressive.
2.1.2 Mid-Lategame Wards
Later in the game you should allways time your wards on Baron and Dragon and some of the crossroads near to them to see opponents approaching the area.
Other important areas include again jungle Buffs, river entrances and generally crossroads. Allways consider to ward brushes near crossroads.
If you have a steady farmer/splitpusher in your team, then grant him some safety. Place wards near the lane he wants to push, including some of the nearby brushes. With only 3 wards you can give him the opportunity to farm hundreds of gold safely.
Warding should be of preventive nature. If you are allways a step ahead of the game, then your wards will be invaluable. Defensive wards in your Jungle are often a good thing when your team is behind. Cover an area surrounding a turret that your team most likely wants to push. If you constantly think about the teamobjectives and flow of the game then you shouldn't have problems to know where to ward. And again, wards don't cost anything. Rather place too many than too few.
2.2 Counterwarding
The art of counterwarding is the thing that seperates the wheat from the chaff. You have two possibilities to deny enemy vision: Pink wards and Oracles.
2.2.1 Using Pinks and Oracles
New players with a minimum of Moba experience often spam Oracles from a certain point of time to destroy your wards. The efficiency of that greatly depends on the champion and the combat role he has. I don't recommend doing this by default. Counterwarding should mainly be done with Pinks.
Always keep track of your opponent's wardcount and where he places them. A well placed pink ward does costs 100 gold maximum or even less since you gain 25 gold by destroying wards. Even if your Jungler doesn't make use of it: The sheer uncertainty you create with denying wards will force defensive behaviour.
A good rule of thumb is to almost constantly place Pinks on the hotspots we discussed earlyer in the warding section. If you feel safe for spamming Oracles or if your team just needs it, then go for it. This safes you a slot and makes counterwarding a breeze. Most of the time however it is more cost-efficient to use your wits.
2.2.2 Mindgames and hiding Wards
Early in the game you can bait out your opponents Pinks by walking to a ward location and back to your lane, doing nothing. This can lead you to have a 150 gold advantage with just a cheesy trick.
Another thing you can do is to bait the other support with green wards if he has oracles. Make sure he sees you warding an area and set up a gank. Alot of less dedicated support players feel so intelligent about themselves clearing wards that they will bite. In the other hand: Don't just clear wards for the sake of it. Just as placing wards, the denyal of em should have a purpose.
Some ward placements might be less efficient for only vision purposes but you can sometimes save gold by placing wards on less common locations. This pattern might force you to place additional wards to gain the same amount of mapcontrol but if your wards are harder to spot, then you'll gain an advantage from this since your vision is not as easily denied.
3. Masteries, Runes and Itembuilds
3.1 Improving CV
Building a Support is basicly the same as building every other champion with one exception: You have to get 21 points in Utility masteries to minimize the CV cooldown and maximize it's length. Also every other point you spend in there, such as ability cooldowns, gold/10, manareg, experience gain are all very welcome. Spend the other points where your champion wants them the most.
3.2 Runes
If you babysit you want to consider gold/10 Quints and mostly /lvl stuff on your other Runes. Aggressive laners like to have stronger early-game stats such as flat armor, MS, health etc. For healers you need ap, cdr and manareg so use runes that complement your possible itembuilds for this.
3.3 Items
Again you build your support champion, just as every other, with the mindset of synergy and costefficiency. The two restricions are A) free slots and spare gold for ward/oracles and B) Almost no farming gold.
3.3.1 CDR, Ability Power, Defensive Stats, Utility, Auras, Mana regeneration
These are the six possible stats you want to build on most of the support Champions to make them stronger. There are Champions that scale very well with just AP such as Soraka or Sona. Just a couple of Doran's Rings are very cheap and costefficient while solving 2 other problems as well. You can up scale your gained AP with items such as Morello's Evil Tome, Abyssmal Scepter and Will of the Ancients, so the general rule is to allways improve your utility.
Staple defensive and utility Items include Aegis of the Legion and Shureilas Reverie. Other Aura items such as Frozen Heart and Stark's Fervor are very usefull for your team as well but less common because they either are expensive or provide almost useless stats for your most of the Support Champions. This doesn't sound very altruistic but don't miss out the fact that a Support is bound to costefficiency just as much as every other one while having a much more limited amount of gold.
When the game drags on and you might be able to buy a top tier item such as Deathcap or Banshees Veil then go for it, but if you plan on such items from the start then you allready have a completely false mindset for playing Support. If you are very AP hungry then you might rather consider getting Soulstealer at some point. This item forces you to farm assists and survive which both are things you want to do anyways. Your opponents however need to consider initiating on you if you gained too many stacks with it, which is again a good thing if you calculate that in.
3.3.2 Gold/10
Gold/10 items are not necessary on Supports than on any other champions and work the same way on them as well: You get free gold in 25min from buying overpriced stats.
If you plan on upgrading them at some time then for god's sake buy gold/10 items. If you plan on playing very passive during the early game then don't hesitate getting a couple of them. But do not dismiss the fact, that they are an investment that make you weaker now but stronger later. Doran's and basic items give you more for your gold at the moment you buy them and can lead to an advantage if you make use of them. Gold/10 items may open the possiblity of spamming oracles or purchasing a strong item later in the game. Either way: Don't be a fool and buy more than two or maybe three of them. The third gold/10 item will most likely not even pay for itself considering the time you get it.
And again, getting an additional pink ward can get your lane ahead by a much greater margin than a couple stats here or a bit of gold there.
4. Streams, VoDs and Replays
under construction
5. To-Do List
- I need some tipps/links for the 4th section "Streams, VoDs and Replays"
- If someone can help me to correct the english?
- Improving the warding section with pics
- Any criticism and improvements are welcome whether it's about the format/info/wording etc.
6. Changelog
25.Oct. 2011 published the first version.
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I'm neither a top player nor is english my native language. This is why I highly appreciate constructive criticism and anything that could make this guide better. If you post usefull content in here then I will gladly add it to the OP as well as any kind of corrections. At the end of the guide is a "To-Do"-List if you'd like to help me/us directly.
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