Intro to Support: Starting Items

With season 4, there came many changes to vision, support, and items. For supports, pre-season was all about learning and adjusting to the new changes. Before the update, the support’s job was to light up the map, their build consisting of  large amounts of wards and very few full build items. Now with only three sight wards, one vision ward, and three new gold per 5 items, what exactly should a support do?

 

Starting Items

So this season the new gold items are Ancient Coin, Spellthief’s Edge and Relic Shield. Besides these three new starting items there was also the addition of trinkets - Scrying Orb, Warding Totem and Sweeping Lens.

When playing a more passive support such as Sona, Soraka or Janna, I would recommend starting with Ancient Coin. Its stats grant both HP and mana regen, which allows for sustain on mana dependent supports. Though Thresh isn’t necessarily passive, I would also recommend starting Ancient Coin on him, due to the passive of Talisman of Ascension and his ability to play aggressively in lane.

For Relic Shield, I would recommend running this on more tanky supports such as Leona, Taric, Nunu and in some cases Alistar. The reason for this is because Relic Shield’s stats include additional health and also HP regen. Relic Shield also has a nice passive that executes a minion giving gold to both the champion and laning partner, while healing the closest ally champion. It's efficient on tanky supports, while allowing them to help sustain their carry.

Tip: When running Relic Shield, it’s highly beneficial to only last hit cannon minions. This is because canon minions grant the highest amount of gold and when executed with a Relic Shield stack, your carry gains an addition 5 gold.

As for Spellthief’s Edge, I would use this on high poke and AP oriented champions. Generally in game it is recommended for Nami and Sona, due to their long range poke. However, for only 10 AP and some mana regen, I've personally never seen Spellthief’s Edge to be useful. I’ve occasionally run it on Zyra, but it has never felt useful and I’ve never gotten the chance to fully upgrade it. If I do, I end up exchanging it for a more late game oriented item. If you want an alternative to Spellthief’s Edge I would recommend either picking up a Doran’s Shield, Doran’s Ring, or Ancient Coin.

Doran's Shield or Doran’s Ring can be an alternative start because Doran’s Shield gives bonus health and its passive allows for you to take less damage in lane. Taking less damage in lane could possibly help you win a trade in the end. Doran’s Ring also gives you generally the same amount of mana regen while also giving you HP and more AP.

 

So generally, if you’re starting off with a gold generating item, you would most likely pick up an HP pot, a ward and a Warding Totem. If you decide to go with a Doran’s item you’d only pick up an HP pot and a Warding Totem.