How to Avoid Dying as a Support

One of the reasons an enemy may gain an advantage is through kills. As a support, you have little to no defense against the AP and AD carries. It is a daunting task warding the jungle and protecting your carry. You may get caught out, resulting in a free kill, but there are ways to prevent this. Here are a few tips to avoid giving away kills and to keep your carry and yourself safe.

Warding

We need wards in the game. There are no questions about it. Wards provide us with vision and vision can reveal hidden enemies which will help your team's strategy and shot calling. However, attaining this vision is a huge task. In many situations, supports will roam alone dropping wards along the river and bushes. Bushes are hiding spots and are only revealed through wards. The act of checking a bush with no vision is facechecking. Many supports facecheck bushes to place wards or wait for enemies. There is a risk in facechecking bushes due to the fact that there may be enemy champions hidden. However, high risk, high reward. If there is no champion in the bush, no harm is done and you have attained vision.

But what if the enemy jungler is camping the bush? A support risks facechecking a bush that could result in a free kill. A single kill can snowball the game and ultimately cost you the win. So how do you avoid the risk and attain vision?

Image courtesy of eureka747 

One thing to do if you are going to ward is to tell your teammates or ping the destination. Notifying your teammates will do two things. The first thing it will do is allow your teammates to know your destination. It may be difficult for your teammates to understand your warding patterns and this will allow them to notify you on missing enemies or wards located nearby. A follow up to notifying your team on your location is that you can ask for help. Warding alone as a support can be dangerous due to the lack of items or damage. Asking a teammate to follow you while warding will reduce the chance of a free kill.  Communication is key and with it, you can avoid being caught out alone or team ward.

Understanding the Situation and Engaging

There are several support champions in the game with different abilities. A support’s role can be to engage or disengage. The first type of champion we are going to talk about are the engage supports. Champions like Leona, Thresh, Blitzcrank and Alistar are all play-making supports. With these champions, you should be able to play aggressively and engage when the situation calls for it. These champions have a high skill cap and there is a lot of play-making potential. However, learning when to engage is essential to securing a kill. Before engaging there are a couple things you should consider. I would recommend to take a look at the ADC items. If your ADC has an item advantage such as a B.F. Sword over a Pickaxe, then the trade will most likely go in your team’s favor. After checking the items, there are few situations to consider.

First, you should keep enemy cooldowns in mind. When engaging in a lane, the trades can be close and support can usually walk away with slivers of health. However, certain Summoner Spells such as Heal and Flash can turn the trade around. Your first engage should not be outrageously aggressive. Engaging in the early stages of the game will most likely result in Flash or Heal being used. Once these Summoner Spells are used, the engage can be followed up and can result in a kill. Without Heal or Flash, there is less outplay potential from the enemy team and finishing them off will have no setbacks. 

Image courtesy of shunkazami787

Second, having an idea of the location of the enemy jungler is essential to engaging. When engaging with no vision, the fight can easily be turned into a 2v3 if the enemy jungler arrives. If you see the enemy jungler near the bottom side of the map, it is best to avoid engaging. However, if you see the enemy jungler ganking top, this is a great them to engage. Knowing the location of the enemy jungler is essential in engaging. 

Third, know where your own jungler is. Your jungler is there to help you and if they is nearby, an engage can be followed up with a gank. A perfect engage will usually result in a kill or a Summoner Spell used. However, if you are not confident in obtaining either a kill or Summoner Spell, your jungler can provide pressure. The pressure of the jungler will lessen the risk of a lost trade. 

Finally, you don’t always have to engage. There is no need to spam your abilities every time the cooldown resets if there is no follow up damage. Save your mana! Take your time with your abilities and position yourself correctly instead of binding a minion. A lot of the time, when you spam your abilities you may get yourself into situation where your team can not follow up. Make sure to engage when the team is ready and to follow up. The job of a support is set up the plays, not to finish them.

No one wants to feed. At times, it might seem like there are no defenses as a support. With low base health and low gold income, the life of a support is rough. Even though supports have the risk of dying early, there are ways to avoid them. Remember to communicate with your team and understand your role in different situations. When there is a need to engage or disengage, the support role is vital to the team. You need to be alive to set up these plays and I hope you use some of these tips on the Rift.

Are you into fantasy leagues? Then check out AlphaDraft and put together your allstar lineup!