Supportal Kombat- A Beginner’s Guide to Playing Support in League of Legends

Whether you’ve been auto-filled into playing support or simply prefer setting your teammates up for glory, this guide will help you understand the fundamentals of the Support role. Through keeping your carries safe, providing engage tools, or locking down your opponents from a distance, as a support you can enable your team to pull out the win.  

The Different Kinds of Supports

For the most part, the different kinds of supports can be broken down into four categories.

- Enchanter Supports

Enchanter supports are champions who like to stay close to their Bot Lane carries throughout the laning phase, providing heals, shields, and disengage while safely poking away at the opponent laners from a distance. This allows for an enchanter support’s carry to safely farm and take strong trades with their opponents. When it comes to the teamfighting phase of the game, they provide poke damage from a safe distance while also ensuring their carries survive longer than the enemies. Most enchanter supports start with the Spellthief’s Edge to generate gold, which will eventually be upgraded into a warding item. This is often followed by utility items such as Redemption, Athene’s Unholy Grail, and Mikael’s Crucible. Classic examples of champions that fall under this category include Janna, Nami, and Sona.

- Tank Supports

Tank supports are those whose primary role is to create distance between their carries and the enemy through soaking up damage so that their carries don’t have to. By simply walking up and throwing a few auto attacks and abilities at the enemy, they dissuade their opponents from taking a full fight because the time it will take to burn down a tank support will allow for the carry to take out both enemy laners. Tank supports often have some form of crowd control to lock down the opponents to provide even more time for their carries to find themselves on the positive side of a trade.

In later stages of the game, tank supports often become a wall that the enemy team must burn through before they can access the backline carries, creating time and space for your team to put out as much damage as possible. Most tank supports will start their build with a Relic Shield for gold generation, which will eventually be upgraded into a warding item. After this, it is common to build items such as Locket of the Iron Solari and Knight’s Vow to help provide additional protection for your carries. Examples of tank supports include champions such as Tahm Kench, Taric, and Braum.

- Engage Supports

 Engage supports are the champions who want to dive or disrupt the backline and create opportunity for picks on the unsuspecting enemy. They will often have at least one form of crowd control that leaves the enemy carries vulnerable, allowing for the rest of their team to win the fight. Although it can be argued that this category would be a subcategory to tank supports, because many tank supports often have engage tools, there are many champions in this category that are not inherently tanky, but instead tend to build tank items. Because of this it seemed appropriate to have these champions make up their own category.

These champions often start their build with either Ancient Coin or Relic Shield for gold generation and eventual warding. Their build often varies depending on the situation but often depend on items that provide health and defensive stats in order to allow for survivability throughout an engage attempt while also providing utility for the team’s carries such as Zeke’s Convergence. These supports include champions such as Thresh, Alistar, and Rakan.

- Off-Meta Supports

Off-meta supports are the champions taken into the support role that you would often expect to see played in another role. These champions are often high damage threats during the laning phase, used the pressure the opponent into taking bad trades because they can’t possibly match the damage that a conventional support pick would have, especially at early levels. They also have the advantage when it comes to the mental game in champ select, because the unpredictable pick can often make enemy teams double guess themselves when trying to figure out lane assignments before the game starts. By winning lane through oppression in the early game, the off-meta support then transitions into being a fifth carry champion through utilizing a full damage build following the upgrade of their gold generation item into a warding item as opposed to purchasing utility items, which is more common for standard support champions. Picks that one may see that fall under this category include champions such as Brand, Veigar, and Swain.

Knowing What Support to Pick

Because there isn’t just one kind of support that works best in all situations, it is important to be able to recognize the best support pick for your team. More often than not, you will want to pick your support based on what you bot lane carry is playing and what the opposing bot lane is playing. In some cases, you might want to counter a strong enemy support pick. For example, if you see the enemy is playing a champion with strong crowd control, such as a Thresh or Blitzcrank, it might make sense to play Morgana due to the high value her Black Shield ability brings. When a strong counter to the bot lane champions is not apparent though, it can be more beneficial to base your pick off what your own lane partner is playing. By understanding the style your lane partner intends to play during the laning phase, you can choose a pick that will lead to a winning 2 versus 2.

For instance, if your lane partner picks a champion such as Caitlyn or Kog’Maw, chances are they won’t want to go for fights during the laning phase where they have to commit fully because they will want to scale for later in the game. With this in mind, you might want to pick an enchanter support or tank support to allow for your carry to have a fairly uneventful laning phase. On the other hand, if you are laning with a carry such as Draven or Lucian, champions who like to skirmish at early levels, playing an engage support to enable them to get early kills would probably be a smart choice. By taking these different aspects of champion select into consideration, and picking an appropriate support, you can set yourself up for a more successful game.

Warding

One of the most fundamental responsibilities of the support role is providing vision for the team. Although warding the map is a shared responsibility, because the support’s gold generation item eventually upgrades into a warding item, the support will naturally have more chances to gain vision across the map. During the early stages of the game, before the gold generation item has transformed into a warding item, it’s a good idea to use your Warding Totem to secure vision in the vulnerable parts of your lane.

Most of the time you’re going to want to put your wards in the river area so that you and your lane partner don’t get caught unaware from any jungler ganks or mid lane roams. Because the warding totem has a fairly high cooldown, it is also important to buy Control Wards whenever you have the money to do so. These will help not only secure vision, but also deny vision to the enemy team.

Once your gold generation item does get upgraded into a warding item, you should switch out your Warding Totem for the Oracle Lens (which is often commonly referred to as a sweeper). With these tools at hand you can now both provide and deny vision throughout the map. As the game goes forward, it is important not only to ward for your lane but also for major objectives such as Drakes, Rift Herald, and Baron Nashor. Additionally, placing wards throughout different bushes in the jungle will also allow for your team to roam through the map more safely. By providing and denying vision, your team will have the freedom to make more low-risk/high-reward plays by taking the enemy team by surprise.

Roaming

Although it is important to stay in your lane and provide your lane partner assistance during the early stages of the game, you have the ability to impact other parts of the map as well, providing a numbers advantage for your teammates to get early kills and objectives and help snowball your team to victory. However, in order to do this, you must pick your moments because a mistimed roam can also set your team behind.

Before roaming, it is important that you and your lane partner have established some level of minion wave control. Otherwise, a roaming support abandons their carry during the vulnerable early game, leaving them susceptible to ganks and tower dives. The best way to set yourself up to roam is to set up ample vision for you bot lane partner so that they can keep themselves safe from any unwanted surprise while you are gone. In addition to this, it is important to choose moments when the enemy team is unexpecting of a roam, or not set up to retaliate when you leave your lane. Examples of good times to roam can be when your lane partner is heading back to base with a wave of minions pushed up, giving you a chance to roam to mid lane. You can also take an opportunity to roam straight from base as your lane opponents will likely expect you to come straight back to lane instead of providing assistance to other teammates. Additionally, to make your roams more effective, coordinating with your jungler can be quite effective as it can allow for your team to have an even greater numbers advantage during a lane skirmish.

Roams such as these are best executed when you have secured vision in the area that you want to roam to. If you take a risky roam and are caught out by an enemy carry on your way to help your team you may just die before being able to do anything at all and instead of starting a snowball towards victory you may just set your team behind.

Communication

Lastly, it’s important to ensure that you have an open line of communication with your teammates. Whether it’s discussing what your lane partner intends to play during champ select or whether or not your jungler needs help securing vision around the dragon pit, communicating with your team will make your decision making throughout a game much easier. Communicating information allows for more informed gameplay which allows for better decision making overall. For example, giving an “Enemy Missing” ping for when the enemy support is missing (and not just when a teammate misses an easy skill shot) can let your teammates know that they might be on the roam to another lane. Giving an “On the Way” ping can let your mid laner better setup for your roam, making it easier to make your efforts fruitful. By communicating with your teammates, you can provide information around the map and make your teams play cleaner and more precise.

Hopefully, these basic tips on playing Support make your time in the bot lane less of a chore and more of an opportunity to influence the map in a way that’s different than being a kill focused carry. I wish you the best of luck on the Rift. GLHF!

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