Supporting in Solo Queue

Support in League of Legends is a role that is both underestimated and under appreciated. This role allows one of the most integral parts of a team composition, the AD Carry, to get to a point where they can do their job to the best of their ability. However it is rarely ever noticed that the support was the reason for this.

A support, during laning phase, is in charge of making sure the AD Carry doesn't die. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as peeling, warding, and zoning to name a few. Peeling is something that all the tanky members of a team composition have to do. The AD Carry is almost always going to be focused, they are squishy champions with high damage output so they need to be killed or forced out of a fight for it to end in victory. During the laning phase this job falls to the support making sure to keep your AD Carry alive and healthy so they can farm and possibly put damage onto the enemy AD Carry. Warding is one of the smaller tasks but the rewards from doing it properly are extremely beneficial to the lane. Vision within the lane and of the river will stop any enemy champion from getting the jump on you. This is immensely important for making sure that you can see almost everything around you making it harder for you to be ganked and making life easier for the AD Carry to farm and secure kills with little to no repercussions. Zoning is what a support should always be doing, making sure they are in the way of the enemy AD Carry and support makes it harder for them to farm and do the same to your AD Carry.

With those things in mind it becomes a little easier to see how a support is truly what makes the lane when it comes to the early game rather than the AD Carry. More towards the middle game the support, depending on the champion, takes on more of an engage role rather than placing wards and supporting the AD Carry. An example would be Sona's Crescendo. This ability allows you to stop any enemy champion from moving for a brief period, they can't attack or peel for their important team-mates, so therefore you can focus the enemy damage dealers and take a fight before the enemy have a chance to fight back. Which can be somewhat useful. Supports are also generally the vision specialists. Whenever I play support I will always build a Ruby Sightstone so that I have wards at zero cost to me, not including pink wards. There is also the Oracle's Elixir which turns your champion into a moving pink ward allowing you to lessen your enemy's vision in the process of improving your own. The support is generally seen as the person buying this item but there are some cases where other champions should have the oracles as well.

Supporting in solo queue is always somewhat of a task because the bottom lane is the most communication reliant lanes to play, other than the jungler when ganks are concerned. Meaning that when you have nothing but the chat box and pings to communicate sometimes things can go, less than according to plan. Which can be frustrating for you as a support when the AD Carry blames you and calls you a bad player because they over extended and you weren't there to peel when they got jumped on. This is automatically your fault. It also doesn't help when you have to try and keep an eye on river for incoming ganks as well. So now you have to watch your AD Carry like a hawk to make sure that they are farming and also have to watch river to make sure you and your AD Carry don't get jumped on while trying to farm.

However if your AD Carry is smart and plays as a team, and you communicate well together, you can become incredibly far ahead and eventually win the lane. This task once completed allows you and your laning partner to become two of the most important pieces on the board when it comes to tame fights, you making the enemy team's life hell with Crowd Control and knocking off their vision, and your AD Carry murdering anyone that comes within range of their attacks.

It's not an easy task but just remember, a happy support is a happy lane, they could just as easily play Blitzcrank and pull the enemy AD Carry onto you and leave you to die.