Positioning Yourself As Support

Hello folks, my name is Rampant Idiocy, and I'm a new contributor here on team-dignitas. I'll begin by issuing a disclaimer that I am in no way a professional player. In fact, my peak is gold, which I had for one wistful evening during Season 2. However, I have been playing this game for two years now, and I have a wealth of experience, especially in playing the most stigmitized of roles -- Support.

Look at these underappreciated heroes in all their glory!

Supports get a bit of a bad reputation in the lower elos, never getting the glory for their lane succeeding, but often taking the blame if their lane fails. So, it comes to reason, that the support's best case scenario is to win his lane. Now, I'm sure we can state the importance of warding, of keeping timers, and of general map awareness of the Support player, but I have found that the most important job that a Support has in lane is his positioning.

Positioning is what allows you to eke out those small advantages for your AD Carry in lane, and what will enable the bigger plays that let you completely take control the lane. Your goal as a support is to position yourself in such a manner that you ensure that your Carry will get the farm (and possibly kills) that is necessary for your victory in the latter portions of the game. Secondly, you want to deny the opposing team's carry this farm, granting your team as much of a lead as possible coming out of the laning phase.

On paper, it sounds simple enough, "Duh, we want to win the lane...", but once you're in the heat of the action, blowing your Dazzle defensively as you're running away from a Hecarim lane gank, you want to figure out what you did wrong. So here are the three most important concepts to consider when establishing lane control.

 

1. Brush Control

Probably the most important thing for you to consider when you're positioning is who has control of the lower brush. Never underestimate the power of stationary vegetation, as the control of this portion of the lane gives a team a massive advantage, allowing a duo to harass for free, giving them a staging area for strong initiating supports, and inviting the jungler to come through the lane for some free Carry kills.

Brush control isn't a zero-sum game however, as you can have hard control or soft control of the brush. Soft control is the easiest to take, as wards give a team the ability to neutralize most of free harass that might come from the brush and denies the possibility that the enemy jungler is able to gank you. Other abilities, such as Lux's Lucent Singularity and Zyra's Rampant Growth give this same vision, albeit temporarily, while giving you openings to harass those sitting in the brush. However, while soft control gives you safety, it doesn't give you the momentum that so-called "hard control" will. Sitting in the brush also gives you soft control, as you gain the advantage of complete control of the brush you are in while you are able to threaten quite a bit of the lane.

Hard control of the brush comes not only from your physical presence in that brush, but from denying your enemies vision in these brushes. Vision Wards are king here, eliminating the soft control that the enemy's Sight Wards give while ensuring that they cannot establish it for three minutes afterwards. However, after you establish brush control, it doesn't mean you should sit in the brush, with your twiddling your thumbs, and yell "Brush Control!". With a few of the more instant punishing champions, like Thresh, Blitzcrank, Leona, and Taric, you might be able to get away with minimalist tactics but...

 

2. Always Be Threatening

when you sit in the brush you are deliniating a clear zone of control. Even with a champion that punishes mistakes incredibly hard, such as Blitzcrank, you have established a predicted zone of control and the opposing team can (and should) adapt to it. If you're playing Blitz, you can be sure that they're going to be hiding behind minions, and waiting for you to Overdrive out of the brush to react.

With Leona, they'll stay out of Zenith Blade range or, even worse, lure you into an extremely poor engagement with its unfortunate interaction with their Flash. When you sit in the brush, you are establising an equilibrium that they are allowed to become comfortable with, and they're going to be able to act against. Their ADC is going to react to it, their Support is going to adapt to it, and their Jungler is going to come through tri-brush and gank you from behind while you still have that thumb in an uncomfortable place.

The key to being threatening is to be unpredictable. If you're sitting in that bush, you're denying them a clear zone of farm, but they're going to try to play the lane so that eventually that farm lies outside that zone. They're going to edge toward river, not last hit, or blow abilities and back because they know you're still trying to freeze the lane. So instead of sitting in the brush, you should keep moving around and pressuring cracks in their defense. Harass them, intimidate them, and do not allow them to make the current situation the new status quo. Its only threatening if they think you are going to kill them.

You'd never expect this guy to hurt you. Perfect use of unpredictability.

But with more reactionary supports, such as Sona, Janna, or Soraka, your "threat" (outside Sona's Crescendo) is limited to much more of a harassment role. But keep getting those Vision Wards, eliminate that brush vision, and never let them get too comfortable. And if you're not always sitting in the brush, it won't be strange if you leave the brush when your Jungler is sitting in there waiting for their move.

Finally, while its good to be unpredictable, being utterly chaotic isn't good. One of the biggest mistakes newer supports make is blowing cooldowns to perform some quick harass. Certain abilities are made to be that sort of harass. Sona's Hymn of Valor, Soraka's Starfall, and Zyra's Deadly Bloom are these sort of harassment abilities. Taric's Dazzle is not. If I had a quarter for every Taric that Dazzles, runs up, Shatters, and runs away while his Carry is sitting dumbstruck near tower, I'd be quite a rich man.

With charaters with such hard Crowd Control, your goal is to kill the enemy, and if you blow one, well all of a sudden you aren't threatening for however-many seconds. Look, holding onto cooldowns makes you feel like you're doing nothing, but patience is a virtue. Making your abilities count means that you are threatening, and being threatening means you're winning bottom lane.

 

3. Experience Range

I wish this was a joke, but it isn't. The biggest pitfall you can make with all this aggression is striding out of experience range. As a support, you scale so much with levels that you cannot afford to fall behind the curve in experience. This can happen by either getting over zealous and camping their bottom brush while their minions are near your tower, or by being forced by the other team off your turret. Either way, you can find yourself extremely weak when compared with your counterpart. This becomes even more important before level 6, when the first Support to reach 6 gains the incredible ability to change the lane's pace completely.

I'm particularly guilty of failing in this aspect when I play Nami, as I become so zealous about hitting twice with Ebb and Flow that I find my self horridly out of position while my Carry farms. I've lost many fights with a level 7 AD Carry getting killed by their Level 5s, while I'm helpless to help at a lowly 3. I understand the urge to keep the pressure on, the want to scream "Blood for the Blood God" as you are supporting, but you need to control that bloodlust and make it calculating if you want to dominate a lane as a Support.

 

Somedays, supporting feels like this.

When you combine these three factors you get the calculus of lane positioning, the attempt to meld all three of them into the perfect support play. That's not going to happen. You're never going to get all three of the things perfectly. You would be able to get perfect brush control if you sat in the tip of the bush, but you're going to lose out on EXP for that. You might have to sacrifice the brush to open up new lanes, such as the River, of threatening the opposition. You might have to fall back to keep getting EXP, even if it means not threatening to kill them if they step out of line.

How you manage to balance these is your style of Support play. I just hope that this serves as a reminder that your goal isn't to kill the other people all the time. It's just as efficient to bleed 'em slowly.