Pub Crawl #1: 5 Carries

Welcome Friends!

Feeling confident going into the next game and think, yeah I’ll random first and my team will work around it. Random Anti-Mage and find yourself mouthing “the fun ends here” and amidst your glorious dreams of 800 GPM you notice not one, not two, but four other carries. Now don’t you despair, there is light at the end of the tunnel, the deep, dark, hellish, carry-filled tunnel.

From experience of this in various skill brackets I’d like to give you my tips and tricks for victory, battle points, and MMR. There are safe heroes whom you can play as both support and carry, and once you understand the nuances, you can play anything!

Support Carries

What you as a player in this situation will need to do is determine whether you can do better as a support or as a split-farmed carry. Think about the skills on the team and which would continue to be effective with fewer items. Heroes such as Alchemist, Juggernaut, and Gyrocopter can be both brilliant supports and amazing carries because of their abilities. Juggernaut’s Blade Fury and Gyrocopter’s Rocket Barrage have a lot of damage and Alchemist’s Unstable Concoction has high damage and a long stun. These abilities allow you to have minimal items yet still have an impact; a level 7 Juggernaut with basic boots can still kill the opposing mid-laner and heal the carry to full health.

Supporting Itemization

It’s a lot easier to play support using a support hero however it is possible with any hero. Ultimately all you need to do when supporting is provide a safety net for your carry, be it using lockdown spells, heals or items such as Eul’s Sceptre or Force Staff. Other items which you can use to support your team while also providing yourself some benefits would be Heaven’s Halberd and Ethereal Blade (costly but being able to save a team-mate from enemy carry is worth it).

Putting Into Practice
This is a personal example of a game.

At a quick glance you can see which team has more cohesion. Let’s put the teams into roles:

Radiant
1 – Lycanthrope
2 – Invoker
3 – Mirana
4 – Nyx Assassin
5 – Lich

This team makes some sense, as much as you’ll find in a pub match, but let’s look at the Dire squad.

Dire
1 – Weaver
2 – Faceless Void
3 – Medusa
4 – Timbersaw
5 – Windrunner

All but one of these has the capability to play support effectively in this game, and here we’ll go over possibilities available for this game

Weaver Support

Second worst support out of this team due to his innate squishiness which requires him to have Linken’s Sphere or Power Treads and Drums of Endurance, which would be near impossible from a support position. Shukuchi gives him elusiveness, yet the cool down wouldn’t decrease in the earlier levels since his supporting capabilities would come from maxing The Swarm and utilizing its armour shred.

Courtesy of cyborgmatt.com 

Faceless Void Support

Hands down the most useless support out of this lineup, the only supporting style spell he has going for him would be Time Walk as it has an Attack Speed slow. Chronosphere will get you killed more often than it can save. However building Drums would allow you some attack speed to synchronize with Time Lock and help to peel for your carry.

Medusa Support

Out of the first position roles this is the most effective as a support; she has long ranged harass through Mystic Snake, survivability through Mana Shield and Stone Gaze to go through magic immunity and stuns the opponent after 2 seconds. Items such as Drums work very well, as well as a Blade mail since she will take reduced damage due to Mana Shield.

Courtesy of anandtech.com

Timbersaw Support

Although Timbersaw requires the least amount of items to perform his role as a support. His skills don’t provide any decent lockdown, despite the slow from Chakram, which is powerful. If required to perform a support role picking up Arcane Boots wouldn’t deviate from natural build path and Pipe of Insight would synergize well with Reactive Armour.

Windrunner Support

This is the optimal hero to play support in this lineup, a decent CC spell, movement speed steroid and a decent damage nuke. Your basic support items such as Mekanism, Pipe and Force Staff work extremely well for Windrunner.