Why do you like playing support? I don't feel rewarded for doing so. I find most of the supports boring as hell, that's just me though. I'd rather play a mage bot side to have some bigger impact while going full ap afterwards lol. otherwise, i don't feel as useful. but damn, that lack of gold, even after 30 assists.
and what's the deal with performance ranking? I went 10-8-11 on fiora in a normal game and i got an S. go 1-2-25 on janna and get an B - A.....
Because someone has to, and I'm really good at it.
Ok, I'm gonna cut all the BS and get into the nitty gritty on why I'm a support main.
Stereotypically, support mains are described as "passive" and "friendly" and other weird sht. But this isn't the case most of the time. Nah man, of course not all support players are like this, but what's really fun about playing support is...
bullying the enemy laners into submission.
In what other role can you focus solely on harassing the enemy team and denying them objectives? Instead of taking the time to CS I can devise machinations on how I'm going to be a pain to the enemy team.
I love supporting because I feel like I'm a pokemon trainer. I raise my ADC until he can stand on his own and then I move on to help the other pokemon in my party to level up. Then I watch them go wild.
I main support, and I find it incredibly rewarding. You can set your team up for kills, or save them from deaths. While I do agree that there are plenty of support champions that have very passive play, I typically keep to the other ones that actually offer some excitement. My best support champ is Leona, and whether or not she has much damage doesn't matter. Her general tankiness keeps her alive through most of any fight, and her stuns are great for initiation, especially when one of the enemy champions is out of position. There's nothing more rewarding than landing an ult on the lone ADC who is away from his team, and securing the kill with roughly 4 seconds of stun time.
I also play support because there's typically not as much for me to do at any point in time (not worrying about cs) so I can spend a lot of my effort being the shot caller. In many of the games I've won, my team has let me decide how team fights progress and which objectives to work towards. Since I'm not last hitting minions all the time I can focus on the board as a whole, and decide what to do in any given situation. You're support to your whole team, not just the ADC. You're basically always in team fights, so there's rarely a dull moment.
If the tank is the backbone and the ADC is the muscle, then support is the heart that's keeping it all working :)
So I have an excuse to ding-a-ling. 
you might not feel rewarded, but when I play Janna/Nami/Sona/Leona/Braum/Lulu I KNOW that it is my ult, my shield, my CC that won that major teamfight that got us all ahead. That got us Baron. That got us two turrets or an inhibitor.
As far as I'm concnerned the victory or failure of bottom lane is all about me protecting you and bullying them.
Have you seen the average all-chat when you are good at Soraka?
'Rito needs to nerf that cancer.' 'And I wanted to actually play this game...' 'WTF OP'.
It's glorious.
Amusingly, I originally mained support because I played with people who knew I was willing to support. (Pay back: I never went through the refer-a-friend program.)
Reminiscing aside. I main support Because I prefer league's macro-level strategy over mico-mechanics. I consider farming and jungling a snooze-fest, K/D/A means nothing to me (gold lead/deficit is a different matter), And right-clickers. . . Well, suffice it to say I'm not an ADC secondary. I highly favor play-making utility over strait damage (which seems to be all 80% of the community cares about). While this doesn't actually restrict me to the support role, supports often bring the most utility to bare. And even in other roles, I still focus on utility champions (kennen/Ashe ADC, Zyra/Malphite mid, Shen/Morgana top, Sejuani/Fiddle jungle).
There are a lot of other play aspects that often get lumped onto supports but aren't strictly their job; such as vision, map awareness, objective control, and lane manipulation (thanks Riot for making this last one harder on the losing team).
it's nice seeing an unkillable monster and knowing that you were responsible
I like playing support because there is nothing more satisfying than single handedly winning the game. That's right. It's not the adc and apcs that win games. It's the supports. The supports are the play makers. They are the ones that prevent squishies from dying and cc-ing the enemy to kill their squishies. It's the best feeling in the world when the enemy team realizes that the real carry is you and hates your guts for not letting them kill anyone. :3
The reason why i love to support is (In my opinion) is because i love it when people say "wow! you an awesome support" or "awesome thanks for saving me" or like when i play Janna and stop a whole team fight and heal all my team mates then we win the team fight with out any of my team mates dieing and the all chat is just filled with FUCK U JANNA 
and im just like [slayer-jinx-catface]
S1-5:
S6: not interessted in playing support anymore
Playing support gives you a huge amount of control over the game, assuming your allies arent potatoes. Thats why its a popular role in diamond. Not as much below. Supports can:
-win botlane a lot harder than adc players can, since in earlygame adcs are kinda constrained by their supports. A weak adc will quickly lose lane, a strong support will quickly win lane, the other two cases arent as dramatic.
-control vision. Youve got the sightstone, you can make sure wards are where they need to be.
-controlling engages and the flow of teamfights. Whoever has the engage/disengage/utility has a ton of agency past laning phase.
Assuming the game isnt an absolute stomp, this stuff will win or lose a game. Not to mention most supports can still do this without being fed.
I main support for 3 reasons.
A few reasons:
Personally I go into lane either really laid-back and having a good time or I enter Support-carry mentality "I will drag your ass to glory whether you want to or not!"
I like playing support because I prefer helping the team win then trying to carry. After all, it is a team game. Also, I really love playing 
(and occasionally 
) and cause im not too good at cs'ing. I also found out that Im not too bad playing ^_^
I love supporting. I still do, but... not so much anymore. I don't feel like I contribute as much. I loved going Talisman, and providing people with quick emergency escapes or ease of engages while retaining the item for my support stats. But now, Talisman sucks... Talisman sucked most of season 5, they fix it, then they quickly made Frost better while also nerfing and removing a lot from Talisman.
Supporting doesn't feel as rewarding or great as it used to, but unfortunately someone has to. Whenever I don't go support, I notice a massive spike in losses... People that fill end up supporting and aren't well versed in it, unfortunately. It doesn't help Riot heavily favors tanky supports too, and with the rise of assassins (again), it's even scarier to pick squishy, immobile supports which are what I main (Soraka, Nami). Doesn't help Soraka has been banned in 90% of matches too, since Impulse picked her back in late September. =\
I used to be a top lane main. 
to be exact. But then 2 of them got wrecked on the MR buff and AP item nerf so I wanted to be where I normally saw losing the game for me. This turned out to be botlane, where 9/1 enemy adc's were carrying games solo handed last month against me. So I went supp a few times and well.................I got my adc's fed 8/10 games. I own all the supports but I wanted to get a list down based on what I saw helped the most (Peel, movement, map prescence, getting my team to their backline, being able to play from behind, etc). And I saw what I really did well with was 
. I noticed many times that I could get my adc fed with 
but when it game to late game, any and every long range mage or Zed could snipe my adc then I had to protect the mid laner if I could. Or the occasionally stupidly fed top lane carry.
TL;DR I like somewhat tanky champions as my team often lacks tanks. Should they not lack tanks I like high utility or high damage champions. So I went from Top to bot lane due to my fav ap top laners getting hit in the knees with the ap and mr item changes.
The role is just really chill.
I don't have to worry about farming in the early game. I only have to worry about protecting my lane partner, harassing the enemy (some supports), and ensuring we maintain vision. These are all way more interesting to me than farming.
Mid to late game, I'm more focused on roaming and global vision control. I get to initiate and set up plays that enable the rest of my team when and where I please. I'm not there to exert map pressure, so my actions are less restricted to the flow of the map than other players' are.
In team fights, I get to set up picks or simply peel for my carries. There's no pressure for me to do all the damage. It doesn't much matter how fed I am. My role is pure utility, and I'm happy to do it. I love enabling other players, and I know that when I do my job well, people will notice. It's a wonderful feeling.
Ultimately, in the support role, I feel I have more freedom to do what I want. Sure, my damage is usually poor, but that's perfectly fine. I'm not here to get kills. I'm here to guide our team to victory.
I don't need or want glory. I don't care about KDA.
I want success.
The kind that comes with a perfectly timed bubble, denying an enemy kill, fueling their rage and hate-fire! The kind that comes with a well placed lantern or lick-n-gobble over the wall. THE SLAM into the wall while you watch your gold WALK AWAY. THE HEADBUTT AND PULVERIZE TO THE ENEMY TEAMS MORALE. WHY LORD WHY CAN'T YOU GET A SINGLE KILL!?!?!
That's why I play support, or support styled when I have to play other roles.
I'm afraid to go in when I try to play mid or adc or any other role. When I play Support, I enjoy sneaking up through the bushes and trying to stun somebody. I love all the utility abilities that allow me to make everyone else shine. I take tremendous pride in having a huge assist score. It's the same reason people choose to play healer classes in other MMOs. The enjoyment of setting up amazing plays that allow others who aren't afraid to go in, to go in and get tons of kills.
Because i know how to peel. I can't trust anyone else to do that.
I'm not a support main but as an adc main, support is not foreign territory for me, it's my secondary role and I have made bot my little house in the woods... that being said, support is the only position where you get to play against 9 people... yeah xD sounds crazy but it's the reality of the role, you have to be aware of your team health and have to click them many many times in order to save them, more often then not I find myself looking at my teammates more than my enemies, but then again, the enemy kills you so you have to be aware.
The vision game I hate, I used to be very good with it on S3 S4 and S5 but this season warding is just such a pain, I forget to change the damn trinket all the time! I've made some rules around it though, when you get your sightstone, buy red trinket... then the red upgrade I keep forgetting :S I can't understand why the freaking thing can't evolve on it's own!
I play support because I love manipulating the the battlefield. It feels good to speed up an team mate and get them out of a sticky situation. I like starting the pick that leads to a kill. I don't care about getting kills or how much damage I do. The games where I have an absolute blast are the ones where I enable one or two people to absolutely demolish the other team.
I enjoy being a playmaker on pretty much any champ I play. Morgana flash ults, Thresh hooks, Janna zoning, etc. I'm even hyper aggressive on Soraka. It's different to be a support than a laner. It's only as boring as you make it. I agree the gold income is low generally, but I often have more gold than most people on the other team when we win. You just need to be diligent in proccing Spelltheifs/Relic shield, and Bandit to keep up. Rating is also dependant on many factors, not just KDA.
Because its so adorable watching you writhe and lash out for that 10hp carry whose just one auto away from death but just barely out of range because of that well timed stun...
....Denial is a hell of a drug kids
Support is a force amplifier. In other games, these would be the healers and buffers. They keep the time alive when they otherwise wouldn't be or they provide utility to assist the team in things they otherwise couldn't. This is what a support does.
Some support champs can be "kill securing" support like Tahm Kench and Leona can sometimes be. When I run with a brand new ADC player I take ignite instead of exhaust as leona or tahm becuase if the adc won't capitalize then I will.
And yes, I WILL flash in for the last auto AND take that one turret shot to kill the lone enemy adc. Ping against it all you want. Imma touch the butt. And if you WON'T as an adc when I gave you ALL the vision in the world and stunned them just outside tower range, I'm taking that kill myself. Call me a jerk, call it KSing a champ you were gonna let walk off, but I'm TEAM support. I'm here for the TEAM. It just so happens I'm around the adc the most. If you won't capitalize on my hard work then I'm not going to watch it just walk away. I'll ignite that 50 health fucker and get that kill banner once they're in fog of war. And I'll laugh.
Not to toot my own horn when I say this, but having extensive knowledge of many different play patterns that the enemy can perform, and how to counter those plays, makes the support role rewarding to me.
Playing support champions with on-demand hard CC makes it very easy to stop any enemy plays being made. 
, and the like, make it very fun and easy to stop enemy plays, given that you actually know how to.
I enjoy throwing a wrench into enemy plans all game, and helping my other teammates succeed.
Support isn't about carrying your team, it's about ENABLING them to do their jobs more effectively.
Not a support main but it's my secondary position. I love support because you get to be the play-maker of the team. I love being the backbone of a teamfight, providing peel for my carries, engage on the enemy's carries, and heals for people about to die. I love walking out of a teamfight with everyone barely alive and know that if it wasn't for me they'd all be dead.
Also as other people have mentioned I love harassing in lane, especially as nami building frostqueens because after my first back I generally have about an entire kill of gold from the passive even if nobody got any actual kills. :)
As for ranking it was probably also looking at your warding, shielding, and teamfight participation
Its fun knowing your ADC (or the rest of your team for the matter) loves you when you make them an unkillable god blasting across the rift. It's very easy to tell when the support player is good because playing support is more about macro than it is micro. Knowing that if it weren't for you, The tank wouldn't have done their job as well, the carry wouldn't be alive, you teammate wouldn't have caught the enemy out, etc. Its all just so satisfying.
We the support players understand just how truly powerful and important the support role is. You aren't the teams bitch. the team in your bitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZTEtzsOtDw
Because I hate myself
Because I can be a cow.
Moooooo
I have been playing bot lane adc alot, and it's very noticeable when you have a good support. Whenever I have a good support that I work well with, I feel like I have a true partner bot lane, I don't call the shots, my support does, I don't set up kills, my support does, all I do is get the kills and some heavy poke off and ward a bush or two. People tell me I'm op (and I'll admit I play 
whenever I'm not playing 
, but I do have other adcs as well) but I just say "it's all the support" I let them know how awesome they are, because your team always appreciates it. I had a Thresh once, I came into the game 2 minutes or so late, I come in NOT A SINGLE HIT WAS ON THAT TOWER!! He was tanking harass, harrasing back while waiting for me, he was amazing, landed every hook, knew when to throw every hook, made the best engages resulting in several early kills. I'm sure knowing what you did for your team is enough, but I honestly wanna thank every support main out there, it isn't easy all the time, gotta make sure your partner isn't a potato and make good calls of which I all appreciate.[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]
For me, I like to support because one your team RELIES on you to help early game carry the ADC which will impact the team much more later on. Poking down and zoning out is fun too making the enemy laners scared of you. (I do this whenever i go mid as well) Especially when you can prove someone wrong when you master a support champ and play them successfully in another lane. (Before they made Q weaker and buffed assassins, I used to play her occasionally mid to spice up the game) //coughadthreshtopcough// Especially if the enemy laner thinks you're VERY vulnerable without your adc and tries to 2v1 you when they're at a critically low health but you kill and shut them down. (Who says supports aren't suppose to get kills when their teammate is dead?) This is just my opinion though X3 sorry if i was bad at explaining some stuff. The feeling of playing supports after I tilt in a game makes me feel calmer and I don't really know why*[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]*
I just dont like csing, and its better than laning. I am transitioning to top tho because secondary supp = always supp
Because nothing says "F--- YOU!" to an assassin like Headbutting them away as Alistar, or any other CC from any other support champ.
I originally started playing support last season because I wanted a challenge. I climbed back up to Gold playing Soraka, Leona, and Janna. I think the way a lot of people play support is what keeps them from picking up the role.
There's the player that thinks they're just a ward bot and thinks that standing behind their teammate and protecting them is always going to be enough. For sure, in some games you're going to do just fine, but in a lot of close games or ones where you're behind, you're going to lose easily. You need to carve out room in your lane and position yourself correctly every time. Always think about the next trade and how you can stay one step ahead of the enemy. Never let yourself get bullied because this season is really unkind to players who get bullied out of lane. You're already starved for XP and gold.
The next type of player is one who sees a lot of supports play like the one I've just mentioned, and they go the complete opposite route. They are way too aggressive and play like they're in a solo lane. They usually do this playing a mage, but not always. Sometimes they end up totally dominating their lane, but other times they contribute heavily to creating a snowball bot lane that consumes the entire enemy team. There is no stability. The matchup is more about if the enemy lane has an experienced support or not.
Playing support is all about knowing when to engage and when to play safely. If you've mastered that as a solo laner, then you're going to learn how to be a great support quickly. Another important aspect to enjoying support is figuring out who you like to play as, and where they excel at and what their weaknesses are.
Some people say you should play all kinds of different supports so you can fill out what your team needs. I disagree with this for two reasons. The first is that support is never going to be enough to fill out what the team is missing. You're always behind the rest of the team in gold and XP. The second reason is you should always play what you're best at in a competitive mode. Support champions do take skill, and you want to give yourself every advantage.
The last tip to enjoying the support role is picking the champion you enjoy, and it actually may not be an AP building support. There's nothing wrong with playing a mage bot if you do it correctly, but give others a chance. You want to enjoy the champion you're playing more than anything else.
I'm a Soraka main mostly, although I have been playing Lulu a bunch lately. I played a lot of healers in my MMORPG days, but I was pretty surprised I'd like playing one in a MOBA. A big reason I like her is that I get a lot of attention from the enemy team. I'm the number one target, and I can position myself and prepare better than my ADC can most of the time. I'm really good at baiting enemies as Soraka. I also am able to carve out room for my ADC in lane pretty easily as her now. So always remember you never know who you might enjoy playing.
In my opinion if you treat yourself with respect and realize you have the ability to contribute heavily towards a win, then you're going do great most of the time and most people will treat you with respect outside of Bronze and low Silver.
As for champion grades, wards are weighed heavily in support grading like any other role. That's both wards and control wards you place, and ones you destroy. Vision denial is very important. Oracle is pretty underrated as it is, but as a side note that trinket gives you so much added utility and you can do more with it than just deny vision.
Not to mention there are just a lot of great frustrating Janna players out there that can stop any fight they want. Some champions are difficult to get an S+ on due to their popularity, just like any other role. Getting mastery 7 on Janna was a bit difficult for me too, but I was also learning her at the time. So just be patient.
