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Climbing as support (advice?)

WastedZombi··2 votes·1,653 views

So, I've been playing League for about four years now, primarily as support. I have mostly played with my friends who I feel have been holding me back from climbing elo. I know it sounds like I am just putting the blame on somebody else, but I sincerely believe that. I am nowhere near "good" at this game, always trying to improve... but it felt like my friends just want to try out a new champ every game, or focus on getting chests, and reaching Mastery level 6 with certain champs. Personally, I've always been the type to have a small pool and use the same couple of champions every game until I master them. Playing with these friends has caused me to lose many games and remain in Bronze V for a long time. Recently, I've created a new account, got it to level 30 and have begun playing ranked. I feel myself improving already, and my win ratio is always right around a comfortable 50-60% now. I just finished placements and am in Silver IV. I really like support, it's the role I have most fun in, and it is less stressful to me than maintaining my own lane. That is why I plan to continue as a support main as I try to climb the ranks. I already know a lot of stuff that I should be doing and am working toward getting better at it. Roaming is one thing, I've typically stay in lane to babysit my ADC, but I am beginning to make more roams to mid. I think I ward relatively well. I always drop about 30 wards per game, always have the highest vision score, and always try to make sure we have sight of the objectives. So, it's not really "advice" I am looking for, maybe just some minor pointers and success stories from other support mains who have been able to climb out of low elo, and maybe some recommendations for champions to climb with. I used to main Sona, but haven't found her to be relevant in a while. Not that she isn't good, I have just struggled winning with her in the current meta. I like the tanky/sustain supports Alistar and Taric, as well as Janna for babysitting the carries with her awesome shield and disengage. But these supports are hard to carry as if top, mid, and jungle are struggling in their lanes. I am pretty decent with Annie, and have recently picked up Lux and am working on getting better with her. I feel like a bursty mage that can carry in the late game might be my best way to climb. What do you think about this, and do you prefer Annie or Lux? And if I plan to stick with an AP support, what do you think is the best thing to do on a team with no tank? should I step up and take the role of tank? That's an issue I often face is lack of tank on a team, which is why I've gotten good with Ali, Taric, and Naut. One other issue I am currently facing is when I do roam mid, I always try to go at a good time for my ADC, when we are pushed to the enemy tower and I expect my ADC to either back, or farm from a safe distance and let the enemy push out until I am back in lane. However, it rarely happens that way. Usually my ADC stands right in the range of enemy CC and gets caught out by themselves, OR they roam mid with me which wouldn't be such a bad idea... but generally that leads to the enemy quickly pushing to our bottom tower and getting lots of hits on it while our lane is vulnerable. How do you deal with this? Is it better to stay with my ADC in low elo and start roaming when I'm with better teams? I do communicate with them, I ping danger and will say "Stay safe, roaming" or "warding drag, brb" but sometimes they do their own thing regardless of what I tell them.

BTW, you can look me up on OP.GG to see my history and maybe offer some advice on that if you see any mistakes off the bat. http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=WastedZombi

Thanks, guys!

10 Comments

Mysticman892 votes

I've mostly played support as a solo player since silver or so. Bronze->silver was about 50:50 adc/support since everyone is a monkey there and I could basically 1v2 regardless of what my support did once it clicked that I should prioritise not dying over getting kills.

Silver->gold was mostly leona, gold->plat was almost exclusively janna, plat->diamond was mostly janna with a bit of nami.

In silver people could get stun locked and exploded due to leonas passive pretty reliably as people wouldn't kite very well and would usually get caught, although it felt bad when the adc didn't necessarily follow up. If they did though, the extra damage and cc tended to result in my adc getting fed.

I really like janna as a support since she's mostly reactive, and you have the kit to try to undo the mistakes your adc/team makes. The enemy team will likely make as many mistakes (since after all, they're at your elo), so if you can undo your teams mistakes, your teams will on average get ahead, which in turn means you will have on average >50% winrate and so climb.

Nami clicked very nicely for me when janna started to get banned a lot, and is also pretty good at peeling provided you can land bubbles. A bit more scrappy which can be a nice change of pace if you've got an aggressive adc who can capitalize on it.

If you do want to go the mage support route, brand or vel are the main ones, annie and lux are very meh. Lux is basically worse morg for supporting, and annie needs more gold than brand to do meaningful damage. For the most part I tend to think if you have the skill/desire to play a mage, you should probably just play mid directly and have a lot more gold available to you though.

If your adc turns out to be useless, just survive lane as best you can, and try to help them survive it too (which is why I like stuff like janna since they're useful with monkey adcs, unlike more playmaking supports which need the adc to follow up on the plays). Once lane ends, you can figure out who the best person on your team actually is, and go focus your support efforts on them. With any luck you can 2v8 with that player, and if not, well you tried.

I do like support for climbing in general though, since conventional supports are always useful due to fundamental kit mechanics, while other roles need gold/xp to be useful. Every other role can be camped and pretty much shut down, but even if bot lane is a dumpster fire, a support can still emerge from it and do useful things.

WastedZombi1 votes

I completely agree with you about Lux and Annie. I'm not really big into mage supports in general either. They lack the utility that I love about being a support. I'm not a big fan of Morgana or Karma at all, and have never really played Brand or Vel, so my best bet would probably be to stick with the typical supports.

So I guess with that advice, I think I will continue the route I've been on for now. I'm already a decent Janna player, I may work on getting good with Leona and taking her into ranked as my tanky support over Taric. She has a great engage for roams, is a decent tank for late game, and does a lot of damage. Taric is good but his ult is sometimes hard to time well, and he kinda sucks at roaming because his stun is so easy to dodge. I love Ali for his disengage as well as engage, but he is pretty situational, he's not one I can play every game. If bot lane has a lot of poke, it's hard for me to do much early game.

I like the support role for trying to climb because like you said, they are very useful with a lot of utility in their kits. Plus I love being in control of vision. Especially at this elo, my teammates hardly ever buy vision wards so having a sightstone is a great advantage for me. I like to make sure we have map control. It can make or break a teamfight to know where the enemy is positioned!

Finn Teh Human2 votes

I don't main Support but I'd say in Silver unless your ADC is a smurf you want to go a carry support because ADC's in that elo suck. Sometimes you don't have to totally hard carry a game. Sometimes it's just about keeping your cool and making smart choices. I think Sona is actually pretty good because she works well with ardent and she can do damage. Plus people in that elo get overwhelmed by her very easily. I'd say the best thing to do (which I know most people do, but some like to play flavor of the months a lot) is have your main, 2 secondary picks, and pocket picks. For example if you main Sona, you might have Karma or Nami as your secondaries, and Soraka and Blitz as your go-to's if all else fails or if the team comps seem good for those champions. Good luck fam!

WastedZombi1 votes

Thanks!! That is good advice, part of my struggles is narrowing down champions. I know I should play situationally sometimes, but I also have my mains. I think I'll play some normals for a couple weeks, bouncing between a few champs and figure out who to take primarily, and which situations call for which type of champion. I like Sona and Nami for heals and poke, Janna for protection of the ADC as they're probably incompetent, lol... Ali as a tank, but I'm going to work on Leona a bit I think because Ali isn't always the best choice for me. I'm not good with him if I'm against a team that can poke us down fast.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, man! I'm really trying to improve my play style!

Finn Teh Human1 votes

{quoted}

Thanks!! That is good advice, part of my struggles is narrowing down champions. I know I should play situationally sometimes, but I also have my mains. I think I'll play some normals for a couple weeks, bouncing between a few champs and figure out who to take primarily, and which situations call for which type of champion. I like Sona and Nami for heals and poke, Janna for protection of the ADC as they're probably incompetent, lol... Ali as a tank, but I'm going to work on Leona a bit I think because Ali isn't always the best choice for me. I'm not good with him if I'm against a team that can poke us down fast.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, man! I'm really trying to improve my play style!

You're welcome :-)

sad þoy2 votes

I've been a Support main since S4, in this meta all you literally need is item 3504 on anything that can shield and/or heal. Enchanter supports are really good right now, I main Soraka and Nami and I win most of my games if my ADC is just DECENT.

Athenes Lulu2 votes

#1 thing: format your thread. It's pretty painful trying to get your main point with formatting like this.

Now onto the real topic, and since you're ~silver elo...

  1. You have 90 seconds to figure out how your ADC plays, and manage your expectations based on it. If he's passive, be mentally prepared that he's not gonna follow up to kills, all-ins, etc. If he's super aggressive, be mentally prepared to back him up. Everyone has different playstyles, so make sure to manage accordingly.
  2. If you really want your ADC to do what you want, lead by example, but not at the cost of you or his life. Even in silver, a lot of ADC players tend to follow what their supports do because it's almost always the supports who decide what will happen botlane. If you're things like Janna or Raka, expect shit to become a farm lane. If you're a tank support, expect botlane to be more kill lane oriented. It goes on, but you have to lead by example.
  3. Don't just support your ADC! If anyone's telling you that supports are "bound to their ADCs", that's actually not true. If your ADC is feeding but some other teammate is fed and is therefore more important? Prioritize that teammate, because he is the most likely factor that will win you games, not your (probably would be) useless ADC. If your ADC is THE fed one on your team, then that's the one you have to support. This is a very common mistake on a lot of support mains in low elo because they only know to support the ADC and don't know how to win because of that.
  4. Learn to shotcall, and have game sense and map awareness. Let's get real here, since this is silver, most people in your games will be monkeys that don't know what the hell they're doing. Since supports are the ones with brains, this is where you have to speak up, and lead your team where to go. You have vision, so use that and herd your teammates (especially your ADC in lane). Make sure to ping to back when necessary, because people can't be 100% focused all the time-- even as a support main since season 3 I had my ADCs save me through pings several times.
  5. Don't over-roam, but don't pick your nose in lane 24/7. Over-roaming will lose out on a LOT of experience, and that roaming at the wrong times may mean a free 2v1 advantage to enemy botlane. No, telling your ADC that "you're gonna roam" won't always help, because you already gave the enemy team an advantage by not existing in lane. Instead, roam only when you know for sure your jungler/mid/top is near botlane and needs your help for any given reason. There's much more reasons on when or when not to roam, but this is a good standard in silver.
  6. If you give up a kill or two, start playing safe! Have you heard of people talking about the glorious legends of "the feeder botlane", "games are decided by whichever botlane feeds harder", and the like? A lot of such complaints ARE from silver players that don't know when to back the fuck off after giving a kill in lane, and half of that comes from the support not knowing what to do. I also have worked with non-ADC mains trying to practice ADC with me, and even they pull that same mistake because they don't know when the fuck to back off. Botlane snowballs way faster than any other lane because most of the time, 2 people die at once, so you can only imagine that botlane snowballs just as fast. A good rule of thumb to keep is, when someone feeds a kill botlane, start playing safe!

Just spitballing some ideas. Don't think you're powerless, supports actually have a LOT of power even if their itemization isn't completely broken.

WastedZombi1 votes

Sorry about that, I was sorta just ranting/talking without knowing my specific point for this post. I do see what you mean though, and appreciate the time you took into writing and formatting your response!

I understand what you mean about roaming, that makes a lot of sense and this advice will really help me out. I've known I need to start being more active with roams, but haven't been able to find a comfortable way to go about it. I have noticed sometimes after roaming to mid a couple times, even if we did get a kill, I can sometimes fall two levels behind in bot lane. That shows I should have been soaking up XP in bot rather than going mid right away. From now on, I think I'll wait for a truly ideal opportunity, and watch my jungler when he's on bot side of river so I can follow him up for a gank mid if possible.

Athenes Lulu1 votes

On the topic of roaming... I should expand a bit on that.

Before you roam during laning phase, you have to ask yourself these questions:

  • What is the matchup? Can your ADC handle 1v2's? Will the enemy take a MASSIVE advantage by 1v2'ing, or will they just proceed to not do much? This is probably the most important question because in silver, even if you tell people to "play safe", they probably won't. And some matchups, like Leona and any strong all-in ADC, can easily dive 1v2 under your own tower and rake in free kills. If Lulu is the enemy support, your tower or even ADC may be at some real risk, and I have won a lot of games simply because the enemy support looked away to ward. This depends on who you play as well, because not everyone are good roamers, and you could lose a LOT if you ever did a bad roam.
  • What will I gain? What will I lose? This is also a fairly important question since it's obvious on what you will gain/lose. Of course you WILL lose out on experience, but will the enemy support lose out as well? Will your ADC be able to handle 1v2s, or will he get dived and therefore giving enemy advantage? Is that one single assist worth it for yourself, and what will your teammate gain if you were to show up to help? Is it worth saving your jungler who got caught trying to steal an enemy camp, or prevent some enemy teammate from getting free kills? If you think what you gains will be worth for what you sacrifice, go for it.

After laning, you have much more freedom on where the hell you want to go, but most of the time if you win botlane by getting their tower first, you can take your ADC mid and help take that down. If you got mid tower or got around 2 waves but can't take it down, go back bot and take care of the wave there because that's enough time for the enemy botlane to push to YOUR tower. If your mid is behind, stay botlane and keep pushing bot, unless HE is getting camped. If you lost your tower, don't roam unless your level is sufficient to help out other teammates instead of being "dead weight".

After that, it's up to you on who you should be peeling for, but don't leave your ADC alone completely especially if there's an assassin that can easily 100-0 him.

This is the general "roadmap" of your pathings, but like I said, you're actually not "bound" to your ADC especially in your elo, contrary to popular opinion. Every game is different, but these are pretty basic guidelines of what happens in gold/silver, and the rest are up to you to judge.

Often, I never roamed even once while the enemy support became a second jungler, and got first tower anyways. Recently, though, I've been seeing my other teammates going on numerous adventures through the jungle, and then to botlane, so I ended up roaming for quite a bit to rack up some assist gold while the enemy support picked his nose not doing much. All that is up to judgment, so you're gonna have to figure out as you play more.

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