How to Carry as a Support by Roaming

Coming into the new season, one aspect of gameplay that I see people lack even towards high elo is the act of roaming. Now many people will roam correctly on roles like Top or Mid, but I personally think that a lot of support mains could be exerting more pressure around the map. First before I even get into how to roam properly, I should probably start by defining a “roam” in League of Legends.

To roam or roaming is when one leaves their lane to gank another. Sounds really simple in practice and theory but when I see people get in game for whatever reason an invisible barrier is erected on the sides of each lane and suddenly everyone is locked into a single lane. Now that we have the intro out of the way let’s make a quick tier list at how effective each common support champion is at roaming.

Tier 1
Alistar, Blitzcrank, Thresh, Leona, Annie, Fiddle, Braum

Tier 2
Janna, Nami, Taric, Lulu, Zyra, Karma

Tier 3
Sona, Soraka, Zilean

Each champion in the tiers are in no particular order and generally the more CC you have the better your ganks and roams. You can’t really go wrong with any support as most of them are chosen for their crowd control and even Sona can pick up kills with her Crescendo post 6. As a special note when you do take exhaust even walking up to someone and exhausting them could lead to an easy kill on someone with no flash and snowball a lane, however this should only be done when the benefits out way the down summoner as you will lose all ins and extended trades if you’re behind in the bot lane. (Some scenarios where burning exhaust is worth it include getting double buffs, snowballing an assassin like a Kat or Akali, you can take their turret afterwards, or you trade your exhaust for someone’s flash).

Roaming is very simple and easy to execute, but many people don’t see the opportunity to do it or think of it as worthless. First off to roam optimally as a support you usually do it after you push up to the enemies turret and instead of basing you walk through river or your jungle and look to gank mid. This is basically turning your lane advantage and control bottom lane into more kills or vision across the map. That is the ideal scenario but often you can roam just about any time you want, if the enemy is freezing lane by their turret, if you’re AD is mistreating you or does not play that well, if you’re duo queueing with the jungler and can secure kills between all your crowd control, or you just based and your lane is shoved up to the enemies’ turret. As you practice roaming and watching clips from LCS, LCK, and LPL you’ll get a good feeling of where and when to roam on which champions.

The end goal of roaming is to obviously get a kill but something that many overlook is the fact that you as the support are now moving across the map. Roaming becomes the perfect time to drop wards in key locations such as deep into the enemy jungle, around choke points, walk ways (such as the small area between mid lane and blue buff), pink the pixel brushes, or clear out wards for people without sweepers.

Warding while roaming around the map turns even an unsuccessful roam into more vision than 3 wards cramped in the bottom lane, and if your roam is successful or not your wards refresh in fountain if they were from a sight stone. Also it is very easy to roam top as well coming from base, but because of top lane's disance to bottom their is more risk invloved which I touch on later.

However with all the benefits of roaming there does come some downsides and risk. The highest risk is that you get killed crossing over a ward or trying to get some deep wards in the enemy jungle. This could end up leading to a lost objective or balance out the gold lead any roaming might have caused. You could die trying to kill a really fed mid or top laner. You also could end up walking to a lane to only find out it was warded and waste a lot of time. Also the time you are out of lane is time you are not soaking EXP as a support, giving your AD solo experience at the risk he might get zoned out or die 2v1 (this is a major problem in lower elos as supports are less likely to match the roam and instead your AD carry will attempt to get farm solo and die rather than stay in exp range).

In the end it’s up to you to choose to roam or not. Constantly I hear support mains saying they cannot carry games despite somehow being 5/0/2 as Annie once they take their opponents turret, when they have a huge amount of CC in burst. But you cannot just let a fed Annie sit in a brush making sure your AD carry gets 10 more cs or to be there if he gets ganked from river which should be littered with your wards. Roaming is not for everyone and some people prefer to not take any risk or do not trust their AD carry in a 1v2 lane. Sometimes it is better to just stay with your AD especially when you might be the only winning lane and you are constantly getting ganked by the enemy jungler and mid or teleported on by the enemy top laner. I hope everyone at least gives roaming a shot and learns that a support helps the team win, not an individual player.