What to do as a support when your ADC is bad?

L Psy Kongroo··9 votes·21,135 views

This has got to be the #1 reason why people hate support: if the ADC is trash, it makes for a horrible laning experience, and undoubtedly causes the other ADC to get fed. Arguments ensue over who's fault it is, objectives are lost in the confusion, and no one ends up having any fun at all. So as a support, what can be done about bad ADCs?

"Roam to other lanes often and help them get ahead" - Sure, if you're Blitz, or Thresh, or Leona. But what if you're playing Janna, Lulu, Braum, etc.? Some supports just aren't capable of roaming 24/7, and even so, this tactic will likely cause much strife as your ADC begins flaming you for never being with him in lane. Your other teammates might even take your presence as an intrusion and tell you to stay bot and do your job.

"Attempt to advise the ADC, politely of course, on what they are doing wrong, hoping they will play better" - A nice idea in theory, but if you've got a bad ADC, they're most likely a self-centered jerk as well. You all know the type; always blaming others for their mistakes, never taking responsibility for anything, seeing all constructive criticism as a personal attack, and so on. In such a case, this tactic will do nothing at all. Even if you've got a friendly, personable ADC, advise is easier said than done. At the end of the day, if their mechanics and decision making skills are bad, they're not going to spontaneously improve just because you asked them nicely.

"Take cs, build full AP/tank/etc., and attempt to carry the game" - So basically, you want me to put our ADC even further behind while simultaneously denying the team utility and vision control? No thanks. This does more harm than good, and might even get you reported by the entire team for "trolling", even if you manage to win.

"Queue with a friend who you know to be a decent ADC" - Probably the best idea in the bunch, but impractical. How often are your friends around at the exact moment you want to play a support game? How many of them are capable ADCs? Hell, I haven't been acquainted with a single person in this game who I'd want to support. Maybe I'm too picky...........I think overall though, if you have to rely on a friend for every single support game, there's a real problem. Besides, duo queues have serious issues in "us vs. them" mentality, and the funny effect of sometimes causing you to do WORSE, rather than better. I'm sure you've all seen that dreadful message in champion select "me and X are bot, we're duo" and immediately lock in their picks. That's NOT a good way to start off a game.

So what can be done? Do you simply have to suffer through a bunch of bad games just because people have no idea how to play ADC? Must you always rely on a friend when you feel like playing support? And before some wise-ass suggests it, no it won't help to learn ADC yourself and never have to worry about this again, because in the process of learning ADC you become part of the problem. And as the most difficult role in the game to learn (with the possible exception of jungling), it will take many, many games before you become competent enough to not worry about it anymore.

42 Comments

SecretAgentHulk9 votes

I agree with the post and thank the commenters for their answers. I'd just like to share my favorite bad-ADC story while we're all here:

Braum executes three minions with Face of the Mountain, healing a 10% Ez BestADCNA (Ezreal): quit taking cs!

7ha7guy7771 votes

Braum sharing is caring

AMYS GRAVE5 votes

Braum Sometimes cold heart, just needs warm smile. :)

LordGeovanni1 votes

i swear tell adc let support exicute the seige minion they make sure to never let you exicute a seige minion and use what ever spells they have to take it. same no brain people who can only push mid and quit if they dont win early game cant maximize gold and cs

warpenguin5556 votes

You are kinda screwed. Just hope the rest of the team carries i guess.

Sailor Mint4 votes

Roaming is the only realistic answer. Anyone with mobos and CC can roam.

Keep it short and focused. Know what you're doing when you leave lane. And with minimal coordination, you can ambush them on blue/red or gank/pressure mid.

Kat Head4 votes

Play zyra, annie, velkoz type supports that can carry if need be. Stop playing the type of supports that cannot carry.

Yùsùkè2 votes

Do that and enjoy your reports. Zyra = one but one single hook/stun/slow or any kind of CC on her, and instakilled. Annie = has a very good lane when your adc is AGRESSIVE and obviously he has to know what he is doing. Picking Annie with a bad adc will get you both reported for feeding, since Annie totally sucks when behind. Velkoz = if you want to win like ever, don't, but do NOT play this champ anywhere. Yes, it is fun, but if you want to gain ELO do NOT pick it. Can be decent if you hit your abilities WITH having a good ADC to follow up. Pick Thresh and learn to hit your Q and E, no matter how braindead your ADC is, if you hit all those things on their carry he will do just fine. You can peel for him with all your abilities if something goes wrong. Thresh is a godlike support IF you manage to learn how to hit your things. BUT not hitting Q or E (mostly important not hitting Q, cos if you hit it, probably you will manage to E) WILL make you almost useless - except for your W. You can also do just fine by picking an easier alternative to Thresh, wich is Janna - you just spam all day your E and hard disengage with Q+Ult. OR You can pick Nami if you can hit your Q - you also offer sustain through heal.

Star Warden4 votes

Do that and enjoy your reports. Zyra = one but one single hook/stun/slow or any kind of CC on her, and instakilled. Annie = has a very good lane when your adc is AGRESSIVE and obviously he has to know what he is doing. Picking Annie with a bad adc will get you both reported for feeding, since Annie totally sucks when behind. Velkoz = if you want to win like ever, don't, but do NOT play this champ anywhere. Yes, it is fun, but if you want to gain ELO do NOT pick it. Can be decent if you hit your abilities WITH having a good ADC to follow up. Pick Thresh and learn to hit your Q and E, no matter how braindead your ADC is, if you hit all those things on their carry he will do just fine. You can peel for him with all your abilities if something goes wrong. Thresh is a godlike support IF you manage to learn how to hit your things. BUT not hitting Q or E (mostly important not hitting Q, cos if you hit it, probably you will manage to E) WILL make you almost useless - except for your W. You can also do just fine by picking an easier alternative to Thresh, wich is Janna - you just spam all day your E and hard disengage with Q+Ult. OR You can pick Nami if you can hit your Q - you also offer sustain through heal.

See, the problem with this is that you clearly have that bronze mentality (idgaf what your rank is, your mentality is bronze) in that you can report for being bad or doing badly. You can't report someone that is trying and expect things to come of it. Unless they are literally INTENTIONALLY feeding, note the key word there is INTENTIONALLY, they won't be banned or even have more than one person glance at it.

As for your reasons behind why each champs sucks, I refer you to my friend's op.gg where you see that zed right? That is his favorite support. Yup, ZED is his best support with a win rate of 71%. It was 88% but he lost mid a few times recently because of junglers camping the right &$%# outta him. (if posting that link gets this post removed for calling out a name or something so be it, but I can tell you right now that he wouldn't care that I posted that link)

It doesn't really matter who you support with if you know what you are doing and how to gain objectives/kills with the champion. Anyone with large amounts of harass or poke will do the job just fine.

Alljoy4 votes

Personally, I try not to feed, minimize my losses. Sometimes the jungler tends to be nice enough to help me take down the bot turret which helps alot because then I can try to roam as soon as possible to help the other lanes.

But in most cases, I don't think there is a whole lot you can do besides make the most of it.

Star Warden4 votes

Now for the rest of my comment because I think I nearly filled the last one up in the character limit.

And before some wise-ass suggests it, no it won't help to learn ADC yourself and never have to worry about this again, because in the process of learning ADC you become part of the problem. And as the most difficult role in the game to learn (with the possible exception of jungling), it will take many, many games before you become competent enough to not worry about it anymore.

Learning the position yourself isn't a bad idea at all, but for different reasons than you are thinking. Learning it yourself, teaches you the ins and outs of all the adc options and who you would pit them with in a lane. You not only know the best supports for each adc, but now you know WHY they match well. You also learn how each adc should be positioning and can help them maintain that safe zone in the process of fights or farm. If nothing else you can play the position yourself and ask your support to aid you or watch your support as you'll know what they are thinking while they play since you know their role as well as they do themselves. I don't think you need to become a plat level adc to understand the role. It is a simple role, but hard to master due to the level of mechanics required in positioning, farming, and all that other junk. An intermediate level of knowledge will take you MUCH further than none at all.

I also have to ask, why does just playing the role instantly make you part of the problem? Being a politician doesn't make you corrupt or a liar. Being a charitable person doesn't automatically make you nice or kind. (I've seen plenty of assholes work at charities) You are what you are and if you are that type of person you'll be that type of person no matter what role you play in this game.

Remember, only YOU can prevent flaming! (at least from yourself, though the mute button helps) http://imgur.com/PiTtPIf

L Psy Kongroo3 votes

I also have to ask, why does just playing the role instantly make you part of the problem?

Because while you're learning how to play ADC, you will be horrible at it for a good long time until you get the hang of the role. In this time, you will feed, misposition, get your support killed, go on tilt, and generally make the game extremely unfun for all players. Play normals you say? Heh, you're deluding yourself if you think people don't rage and flame and harass in normals. And even in normal games, going on a 20 game losing streak can be quite discouraging.

Star Warden3 votes

I also have to ask, why does just playing the role instantly make you part of the problem?

Because while you're learning how to play ADC, you will be horrible at it for a good long time until you get the hang of the role. In this time, you will feed, misposition, get your support killed, go on tilt, and generally make the game extremely unfun for all players. Play normals you say? Heh, you're deluding yourself if you think people don't rage and flame and harass in normals. And even in normal games, going on a 20 game losing streak can be quite discouraging.

This is what teambuilder and normal games are for, you aren't required to play ranked. People will be much less pissed at you in blind for doing badly than you would see in ranked where people lose points for your inability.

By your own logic, you should just NEVER play ANYTHING because people will be mad at you for not knowing how to do it. The same can be said for any role that you didn't learn while leveling up the account. If you are on losing streaks, you need to take breaks and do things not related to league.

The way you talk, you are just pissing and moaning about not having synchronicity with random people, which is to be expected as everyone has the same issue. You're devolving into pointing out all of the negative aspects instead of focusing on how to get better at the game. Sure people get mad in normals, but at least you know you aren't costing them anything and if they have any complaints you can simply mute them at the first sign of toxicity while you continue to learn from your mistakes.

All things take time to learn. You don't start against pros from day one, you instead face opponents that are of your own level.

I would say that you aren't part of the problem, if you aren't being toxic back to them and are simply staying calm, collected, and sportsman-like in your matches. Sure you may be frustrated, but you don't have to show it even if you are on tilt. The problem isn't feeding in normals, the only problem is you showing toxicity to those that are toxic to you. If you don't do that, you are more of a solution to the problem, than part of the problem itself.

KrillHead1 votes

True, but not really at the same time. I may be out of position here, as I am still unranked, but I only play Blind (for obvious reasons), and people are still very angry if u mess up. Because most of the people in Blind, do so because they can't play ranked, and having the game being ruined by someone isn't gonna make them happy. The level that people tilt in Blind is kinda unbelivable. A solution would just be playing bot matches as an ADC. But, I do agree with you point about the toxicity.

AdeBug1 votes

the solution is somewhere in between what you both say, and you urself suggested it in a comment: bot games. It's a great start, I went back to Jhin after a long ass time and boy my cs'in was crap. Not that I excel usually

disregardable3 votes

I'm saying this as an ADC that has at times fed horribly, raged, and blamed my support.

If your ADC tells you to leave the lane, please leave the lane. Seriously. Please. Most supports have enough sense to listen when I tell them this, but I've had ones that hadn't. So I roam mid. Then they roam mid with me. Then I roam back to bot. Then they roam back to bot. Then I start AFK farming the jungle. Then the jungler is doing worse too.

If the team is against you roaming to another lane, start taking the CS and building. Believe me, when mid game starts and you go help everyone, I will stay bot for a while and free farm. It's a late start, but it's seriously better than two underfed champs.

There is a third, less reliable option though. Harass the enemy laners as much as possible, distract them in the side river, do everything you can to pull them away from your ADC. Tell him that's your plan, and you want him to get as much farm as possible. Being a better support is the best way to, if not get a better ADC, have a better laning phase.

SecretAgentHulk2 votes

Ooh, distraction. I'll have to try this next time.

Aspynn1 votes

Well technically the best defense against this (before finding out if your adc sucks) Is to play a support that can go full ap and wreak the enemy adc so that your adc becomes relevant, even if he sucks ass. Now I don't mean mages with no cc, I'm talking people like syndra, velkoz, and lux, zyra, annie, in some cases even orianna. I've also seen brands. All of them have pretty nice cc, pretty good peel, and huge damage. Now generally this can affect your laning, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. If you play them right though, you should be able to poke down your opponents in lane enough to go all in for a kill. The best thing to do for a bad adc is to get them super fed, or even yourself fed. I'm not saying it's always good to play ap supports, but its a nice precaution to take in case you end up with a bad adc.

Remlap12231 votes

Ultimately, that's the biggest problems with supports, they offer nothing but utility and early game damage, so that if the carry gets behind, they get more behind, because they aren't generating XP so you can level/get gold, etc. Then we also have a horrible ADC main culture of some of the most entitled whiners League has to offer. This has lead to such a non-existent support culture in NA that TeamSoloMid had to go to Korea to find a support. It's pretty sad. I feel like Riot's presason changes helped supports, but they've still got a long way to go, because until Janna starts seeing as much playtime as Allistar or Leona, there's a clear discrepancy in the support role that simple patching won't fix.

AnomalousChimera1 votes

.... I don't know you're getting your numbers from, but based on lolking's monthly solo queue stats, Janna is played more than Alistar at all tier levels on the NA server (Alistar likely only more popular in Low Bronze), and on the EUW server, Janna is more popular than Alistar at all tier levels past Bronze. On both the NA and EUW servers, Janna sees more play than Leona once you're past Gold, and at least on the NA server, the usage gap between Janna and Leona isn't that large at the Gold tier level, suggesting that Janna is at least more popular than Leona at the Gold 1 division level. If lolking has stats for Janna in Korea, I'd expect Janna usage to outpace Leona even sooner.

Star Warden1 votes

I'm an ADC main. I'm only silver, but this is because I don't farm well in the early. I'm quite adept at making late game plays and going hardcore in the mid-late game fights. You can see my stats on my ADCs if you wanna look them up. I say this because I've been studying more than just playing, but balance as well as positioning and such through my time on this game, I just don't have the ability to put my knowledge to the test yet. My theory is strong, but my application is weak.

I feel the best thing to do is just to do what your adc asks and explain things to them calmly. Make certain that you don't come off as angry or troll-ish in your attempt.

If your adc tells you to leave lane, go to the most fed lane aside from the adc and do what you can for that person. If they are snowballing and you can aid them in snowballing harder, all the better for everyone. Roam isn't limited to jumping from lane to lane, you can pick another lane and just go there instead, but only do this if your adc asks for you to leave the lane. If they don't ask you should just do all you can to either farm, deny objectives, and protect them while they farm (DO NOT DIE FOR ANY REASON [short of dragon and only 1 man needs to die there] AND ONLY ENGAGE WHEN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. You are already behind, there is no point fighting a losing battle unless they are getting greedy and being stupid.)

If you think, that your adc is a narcissistic bast#$d that wont listen to you, then instead, ask them what they want from you. I can't tell you the number of times when I've laned with another adc main who makes very BIG and COMMON bronze mistakes and fixed a lot of his issues just by explaining that we need to sit and farm or asking him/her what they want from me. If they say they want stronger engages I tell them to ping when they are ready and I'll look for an opening. If they wanna farm I do my best to assure their safety while they do it. If they wanna push objectives I ward my half of the map in strategic points to deny ganks while we are under their turret. I will seldom leave my adc to solo ANYTHING, they aren't a solo class. You don't send your artillery to the front lines, same thought process applies in this situation.

Dependent upon the champion in which you pick, you can carry by taking farm, though I suggest against it for the reasons you pointed out in your original post. What you can do is ward the entrances of your jungle or key points thereof in an attempt to keep your other lanes from dying. If you know where they are you can have your team collapse on the idiot on their team who is attempting to solo. This is really hard to do as you're basically teamfighting, but trying to avoid a full on teamfight and many players don't get this concept in low elo matches. Even if they do, they get zoned into the moment and forget thinking they can get just one more kill and run. Another thing you can do is go solo a lane for a bit. You aren't stealing farm, you are pushing the lane, and you are gaining solo XP for youself as well as gold. You can ward as you go to protect yourself as well as your team.

I HIGHLY suggest against duo queues unless you have really good synergy and can just DESTROY your matches. The reason? When you duo queue you do more than just place two people with communication in one lane. You are also telling league that you should be matched against other people with higher MMR (better players) on the other team, while your team doesn't get that advantage. This means that all your other lanes are going to feed instead of your one lane feeding. You are starting the game off bad as your team is weaker with worse mechanics than their team.

Its All Skillzz1 votes

Well, its main reason i hate to support.... but yea when adc is bad you are pretty boned. i go with ashe support most the time an rush 2 gp10 items and try an assist as much as i can ive even carried games cause i got to my adc build though support gold. most time when i go ashe support though... i draw insane attention from jungler/mid and my mid never follows or calls mia =[ then rages at us after we wrecking bot lane an now his katrina is 6-0.

its alot harder to carry a super bad support, than a bad adc cause even a bad one can right click while you setup cc and plays. but a bad support will just rush in by themself an die an feed your lane and it really makes me angry.

CoolKnightST1 votes

It just takes time to learn adc. Their is a reason why most adc's are rate so low in difficulty: Ones you learned one you can perform on most of them. Bronze and Silver are probaly the worst brackets for a good support. You can carry your lane so hard and punish them for every cs they try to take. If you realise for every cs you zone them away your adc missed 3 cs you known this will be a lost lane. This is one of the reasons why burst supports are so popular in lower bracket of play. If you have killing pressure the risk to get overrunned by the enemy team is slightly lower.

It really depend on the sort of support you are playing with:

  • Aggressive Supports (Thresh, Blitz, Leona, ...): Try to roam more, ask you adc to freeze the lane but don't forgot to ward.
  • Sustain Supports (Nami, Janna, ...): To my experience this is the worst case scenario. The best thing you can do is trying to keep your adc alive. If you play it correctly you should have lane control in the early levels to delay the killing spray on your bad adc.
  • Poke or Burst Supports (Morgana, Karma, Zyra, Annie): Wait for your jungler and burst them down.

In lower brackets of play it's just so difficult to carry a botlane as a support without using a poke/burst support like Zyra, Karma, Fiddle, Annie, ... You should always think the worst case scenario: My team getting stomped. As a burst support you are able to bring the damage that is required to make certain plays happen that else where not possible from your position. You can provide yourself with the waveclear to stall out the game. And you have the pick potentional that can reward you with objectives.

What you also can do is just pick adc and carry the bad players until you reached a higher bracket of play. It's just crazy that I won more games with my worst role (adc) with a freaking Ashe than playing support where I win the lane every time. In lower brackets of play it just all depends on who has the best adc on your team. If you think you will perform better as adc than the other player. Just do it and you will win that game.

Edit: With best adc I'm also reffering to cs'ing that is really a nightmare in lower brackets of play. It's over the reason why you see so large gaps between lanes.

PL551 votes

I had this problem so much with Janna and even Thresh that I'm just picking champions like Orianna or Karthus for support. The ADC does its own thing while I just poke the other support/ADC down and play relatively selfishly while carrying games when I need to. Only problem is in lower elos people can't accept that other champions can play support so they rage in champion select, let's not even stop there they rage even if you win lane and they suck.

Drukyul1 votes

Go support mid. They'll take bot tower, your ADC will farm. You'll take mid tower, ward up the mid area, and have map pressure. Win/win

AdeBug2 votes

it's really random, some games roaming is appreciated, others... NOBODY wants you and spam ping and flame and everyone gets tilted beyond repair.

NoMonku1 votes

You can't do much with a bad ADC. Your only real "option" is to beforehand have picked an AP carry support, like Zyra or Karma. This, of course, is in hindsight so it doesn't help, but in terms of lane bullying power, these two are very good and can be built full AP(after rushing sightstone of course). As long as you can zone and create vision(warding), for the most part, you're doing your job as support and nothing really outside of that fills your territory. For me, if my ADC isn't good, my goal is to drag out the laning phase long enough to get enough gold for sightstone and gank boots, sightstone being the really important one. After they take your tower, you can start to roam, but just make sure to return to bot if they start pushing your secondary bot tower. It doesn't really matter which support you are at this point as your presence alone should be able to zone off people in mid or even top as long as you're the only one intervening. Try to help get kills or at least force the opponent to uses something (ultimate, flash, etc...) and then try to help them snowball. Outside of that, there isn't much you can do besides provide vision and play your support to the best of their abilities.

Champion Skin1 votes

Karma is really strong early and can pretty much carry the early game by herself While Zyra is a bit more vulnerable she have more damage when she gets going especially if her plants get to attack with the use of the snare/ult (Zyra plants have insane base damages something like 120 or something at lvl 18) Many of the times I have played Zyra support I deal the most damage to champions on my team... However she can be hard to play as she is squishy and has no mobility and is reliant on landing her snare to protect herself

Earl Eulrich1 votes

Either just leave him alone and hope you can snowball other lanes, though this really is risky as mostly mid and toplaners won´t understand what you´re doing and you´ll just get flamed by 3lanes then (despite getting two of them ahead) - resulting in a toxic atmosphere losing the game anyway.

Or just accept your fate and hope for a better ADC next game.

LittleBlast1 votes

I was playing a leona game, at the 10 minute mark both midlaners came bot and both adcs were mid. It was a weird game...

AdeBug1 votes

swapping more common top, but any 2 roles and lanes can be swapped

Drunk Rummate1 votes

I used to tear my hair out when I tried to coach people in SC2 for the simple reason that you can't inject APM into a noob. You can tell them all the right things to do, but if they're incapable of doing it (or remembering it when the time comes), then you may as well be talking to a brick.

The most effective way to deal with really bad lane partners from my experience is to just play extremely passive. Make sure you aren't personally feeding kills and use pings to signal that they are out of position or need to fall back. Make sure you put those pings directly on top of them as well, don't expect them to see one on the minimap. It has to be on their champion. I also recommend using the red ping instead of the yellow one, it gives a greater sense of urgency.

AdeBug1 votes

oh wouldn't that be wonderful, as if I need to ping my 10% hp adc to not engage. and then the 'muted' chat line comes along and then u go 'oh well we're fkd'

aGentleGrabnFist1 votes

Buy an infinity edge and start crit power fisting my way to victory!

Jenex1 votes

I honestly gave up on playing tank supports (my favorites) in solo queue in favor of supporting with Zyra almost exclusively. The majority of the time I will have the most damage dealt to champions on the team and I am still warding and clearing wards the most on the team. Zyra's base damages allow for this. You also get to do cool scouting things with her plants.

Some things I used to do more often when I supported, I would ask the adc how aggressive they are on a scale of 1-10, 1 being low, 10 being "OH KILL 'EM". I have an aggressive style in general, but knowing before hand that I might need to give ample warning to the adc to follow up on my zoning and harass at least made for a more communicative lane.

I wouldn't personally be afraid to take some CS, as a support you are going to be leaving lane to ward anyway. Your adc can have that opportunity to CS without you.

In regards to roaming, I actually like to follow the jungler the most to give them back up when possible.

AdeBug1 votes

I noticed that some camps no longer share xp, I think that's all camps now? But SOME jglers still ping spams to gtfo, maybe they think Ima steal the camp or something? Thank God it's only some, others have no problem with me helping them out.

WeiseAzir1 votes

CAN I JUST WIN A GAME IN GENERAL?

being support is cancer now!

SwiftKitten881 votes

i either stop supporting and take the CS bot if I'm on a support who can carry (like Lux ), or i go support another lane who knows how to play (if in playing someone like Blitzcrank )

KrillHead2 votes

What if I'm playing Janna?

Incarceration1 votes

I am a damn good adc (like my kda with corki reaches 20 at some times, but when someone else takes adc and feeds so bad that at the 5 min mark they lose their tower, what do u do about that?

WEEGEEMAN1231 votes

other teammates might even take your presence as an intrusion and tell you to stay bot and do your job. 5 years and it is still relevant. I had this bad KogMaw as Rakan support. my Kassadin was fed so I went to him. only to get a threat in response.

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