Playing Support in Ranked

Where to begin? First let me preface this by saying that I am frustrated by the treatment I have received lately by teammates in ranked games. Now to add the context.

I am a support main and have been playing since 2013. I have a job and a family so I am a casual gamer. I play League with three of my sons and we rather enjoy the competition and fun when we play together. Due to my job and lifestyle I am lucky to play a few games each week. I was finally able to make level 30 and play ranked last year, being stuck in Bronze, which I am okay with. I assume I am much like other players that wandered into the game and have tried to read guides and watch video to get better. I tried various positions until I finally settled on support. I am not great at last hitting, but have found I have a knack for warding and crowd control champs. I have also played a lot of normal and find that I can win about half my games as support.

Here is my issue. When my team is doing well, everything is great, but no one ever gives support players credit; however, when the team is losing, I often hear, "this bot lane" or "this support". That doesn't bother me too much as everyone gets frustrated. But it's when players begin swearing and flaming me that I have issues. I once had a team start this in a ranked game and I simply replied that I was new to ranked, and it would be more helpful for them to tell me what I could do better instead of just saying that I blankety blanket suck. To their credit they pulled a 180 and spent the rest of the game giving me tips and coaching me. We still lost the game, but I honored them instead of reporting them for anything. We had a great attitude and the other team honored us as well even though I fed hard. It was a great experience that could have been bad. I learned a lot and had fun.

Contrast that with another experience I had in a preseason ranked game where we had a tough lane matchup in the bot lane, and were doing okay until I started to lag. I know lag is an overused excuse, but it does happen. Now the lag happened when I began to initiate the other team and we both ended up dead bot lane. During the next ten minutes, our jungler and mid each ganked bottom lane at different times only to have the enemy jungler show up and reverse what almost was a double kill. At that point the top laner went toxic and began complaining about bottom lane not playing safe and feeding. By the end of the game my mid, top, and jungler were flaming everyone but themselves and we lost. I actually had a decent conversation with the enemy jungler after the game. He noticed that we were very disjointed, had some bad dives by our fed players, and got caught out at bad times. He also said I had some clutch cc, but that those opportunities were missed by my teammates. I honored the enemy player, but had to get off the game for a bit to allow myself to calm down.

If you have read this far, you probably have some responses or suggestions for me. I have a couple of my own.

1. First of all know that everyone has a different experience and skill level for this game.
2. If someone is struggling or feeding, offer help first. If they tell you to screw off and keep feeding, then by all means flame them. They deserve it if they don't want to learn what to do to be better.
3. Remember that sometimes even in ranked you get autofilled to a position you don't know well. I have seen friends put top and jungle as choices and, end up being picked for support without any experience as a support. And yes this was in the silver tier. The flaming was awful.
4. Keep a perspective on the importance of the game. I have seen flaming in normal and preseason when it really didn't matter. Chill out people. Watch the streams of when the pro's lose. They lose when world's are on the line without flaming a teammate for a choice that lost them the game.
5. Don't play a position in ranked if you haven't gotten good with the role and a few champs, then you won't be a support that loses badly and gets flamed.
6. Don't be personal in your insults. I get a lot more out of "bot lane play safe", "don't dive that", or "you should pick up x item instead", than "You're so F-----N bad!" or "Go F yourself!"
7. Mute people who are toxic. They can communicate with pings if they really want to win. If they don't want to win they will just keep flaming and blaming.
8. Remember that even the best champs only have about a 60% win rate. That means you will lose about half your games even with the best champs. You can make the next tier winning half your games. Losing happens. Get used to it and do it gracefully. It's not like this is a presidential election or anything.

Remember, there are very few people who like to play support. I think this flame/blame game has a lot to do with it. Riot has even given ten more free champs each week to entice more people to play support. I think more people would play the role if they felt more appreciated and encouraged. Thank you for your time and feel free to add most tips like the ones I posted.

Rant over. :)