Hi everyone! I have just gotten into the world of supping. I like it so far but Im getting a absolutely terrible score. To be exact, on my first game i got 1/13/8. Is this ok for a support or do i suck? I was playing soraca and healed 10k damage btw.
Hello,
To nitpick, it was 1/13/8, but based on your level and your zero experience of being a support, no, I'd say you don't suck. In fact imo it's quite good for a first time supp :P
Support is a great role, but your responsibility is basically to die as little as possible and enable kills/save teammates from dying. The best thing you can do is get the enemies to focus you or bait them when you're lower, but make sure you have enough stuff (abilities, Summoner spells, Potions), to survive. Having said that, a 0 killscore is expected of supports, and while 13 deaths is generally quite a lot, at the end of the day what matters is if your death helped somehow.
As a general rule of thumb on higher levels, acceptable would be anything in the 4-8 deaths range especially since your ADC was so dominant (18/3/8 if I see correctly).
When your ADC gets 2-3 kills that means you don't have to risk your neck as much any more, so your deaths should mainly come from these first kills, if at all.
A lot of support players get a bit eager to help their team get kills, but your deaths actually matter more than the kills you enable, so your first goal should be to keep deaths at their lowest possible.
You also bought 0 pink wards. You should always make sure to have a pink on the map (hidden in bushes) as ANY role, but especially as support.
There was a video on YT I watched quite a while ago called "why your deaths matter" that explains why you should AIM for dying as little as possible quite well if you're interested.
Keep it up, you'll improve :)
You had too many deaths. No matter which role you're in, dying is pretty much the worst thing you can do. You want to aim for no more than five deaths in a game (five is a bit high, actually), but as long as you have more kills (or assists, in a support's case) than deaths you're in pretty good shape. Ideally you want to have at least double the amount of kills/assists as you do deaths. Like 1/5/10 would be a pretty good score, then 2/5/18 or something would be very good. Like, you had a good number of assists and kills for a support, but any time you have deaths in the double digits (in any role) is a bad situation. You have to have a pretty obscene number of kills/assists to ever justify having 10+ deaths, IMO, if there ever is a justification for that. I mean, it's great if you're getting assists/kills, but it's never okay to give kills to the enemy team.
As long as you win, any score is acceptable!
Generally, 1/11/8 isn't the score you usually see for the side that is victorious.
Aim for a lot lower deaths and more assists (higher % kill participation). Generally the higher your kill participation, the higher your impact on the game was. Higher deaths may be seen more for supports that need to be in the fray to be useful (ex. leona), but for soraka I don't think you should be dying that much.
One of the probs was that me and trist were being focused by the enemy team really bad. The moment that we entered the lane, there were 5 people ready to murder us. My trist didnt do bad, but most of those 11 deaths were me saving her. What can i do in this situation to save my adc and not die??!!
Supports can have a wide range of acceptable scores, and your performance (early game at least) will largely depend on your adc.
A support's job is to protect the adc and set up kills for them. Some are better at the former (soraka) while others are better at the latter (blitz) and others yet Excel at both (thresh).
A good score for a support would typically be something like 1/2/20. You want to participate in a lot of kills, but typically you want your teammates to get kills and you get assists (they need the gold more). You'll accidentally take some kills though, or in some cases you'll need to secure a kill the adc can't get. In general, you're better off securing EVERY kill, a good carry will get the kill anyways and it's never worth the chance they escape. There is no such thing as kill stealing, kill gold + assist gold > kill gold only, even if some goes to the support.
You want few deaths. Supports will and should sacrifice themselves to save the adc or any carry, but these are calculated decisions. You shouldn't sacrifice yourself for a tristana who has her jump up in 0.5 seconds. Basically, a sacrifice is only worth it if the move definitely saves them and they were going to die without the move.
In general, a support should have the best KDA via having very few deaths and many assists. Obviously this is easier said than done. I'm solo queue, your success will fluctuate a lot based on the adc you're with. Just keep practicing and try to notice your good plays and your mistakes rather than just looking at a KDA.
Bump??
I don't play a lot of support, but here's how I measure my success when I have to fill as support:
In the laning phase, if I have more kills than my ADC, and they were kills I could have given to my ADC, or I accidentally take it with a DoT or something, then I'm doing my job wrong. It's okay to take kill if you know your ADC can't get it. If I have less deaths than my ADC, and I could have protected my ADC in a way that they would not have died, then I am not doing my job. If you could not do anything to protect your ADC, then it would be acceptable for your ADC to die. Also, you should have more assists than your ADC.
In the mid to late game, do the same thing, but apply it to the entire enemy team.
Throughout the game, make sure you ward as much of the map as your ward slots allow. If you don't have wards out on the map, then you are likely doing a bad job, although if you got super ahead in the game and bought an item that wasn't sightstone, then it would still be reasonable to have less ward coverage.
However, support mains can probably provide better advice on what a good support score is better than I can, so take my advice with a grain of salt, unless commented otherwise.
Obviously, you want a low death count, but even within the realm of that, there are certain situations where you may have a higher death count which is fine.
Take Braum and Leona for example, both are initiator tanks, chances are, or should be the case, you're going to have a much higher death count using them as oppose to someone like Nami or Lulu who stand back and help assist players in the fight.
The best advice I can give for you, if you're learning support, is to stick first with low-risk champions. In other words, use champions whom are not required to start the fight, or enter the fray of the fight itself, Nami (if you can land her bubbles), Annie, Lulu, Morgana, are all good ones.
Once you got a good handle, it becomes easier to learn how to play 'carry' supports, Blitz, Thresh, Zyra, Leona, and Braum all come to mind. The critical part of learning these champions is recognizing when is best time to initiate, (Braum's ult, Thresh and Blitz's hook, Zyra's AoE denial, Leona's AoE stun.). If you initiate poorly, your team is going to pay dearly.
I will also warn you, ignore what many of people who are critical of you are going to say. Many people claim support is useless when the reality is far from the truth, but a good support can have a huge impact on winning the game, and vice versa, can cause a game to be lost. Focus on communicating with ADC, and don't worry about negativity from other people, the job of a support is a pretty thankless one in most cases.
So yeah, just practice, and welcome to the world of supports :D
You want to strive for something like this 0/0/XX
You don't want to die for free, you don't want to take kills if you can avoid it. With her rework, Soraka is probably the least new player friendly.
Sona and Annie are two pretty good cheap options. Currently Zyra and Blitzcrank are free. (last week would have been great, Nami and Lulu were free).
Ok guys! This is some really good info here!!!! Can you give me a cheap support i could buy?? Anything above 1350 ip isnt economical atm because i need to prepare for tier 3 runes?? Once again awesome info, thank you all!!
