Season 7 support must haves

SciFi Scrivener·Jan 5, 2017·1 votes·1,355 views

Yes, I'm one of the few, the proud, the supports. I enjoy playing other roles on the rift, but support is a real challenge and I enjoy it. Since I just started playing near the end of last season I'm trying to build up my champion pool. My question is which champions are a must have for any support player to have available to them?

Currently I play (in no particular order)

Braum
Soraka
Taric
Zilean
Thamn Kench
Lux

I'm thinking Bard, Blitzcrank and Thresh need to be added to my pool, but is there anyone I'm missing? Is there one or more I should not spend time on for now?

If you are a support main, who are your top 5 champions to play?

10 Comments

EndlessSorcererJan 5, 20173 votes

Personally, I think Janna and are probably the most important supports to know since they are rather powerful and versatile. While Nautilus excels at initiating fights while Janna excels at protecting her allies (and blocking divers), both options have strong roaming potential and can adapt to different situations.

Soraka is a great option for sustaining through the laning phase and assisting your allies globally. She is exceptionally useful against team compositions which lack the ability to dive onto her and/or rely on poking your team down before fights.

Braum is great for protecting your allies from harm and absorbing damage for them. While he can have issues in some match-ups, he can largely negate the threat posed by many champions if positioned correctly.

TahmKench is useful against team compositions which rely on picks and/or have delayed damage since he can devour their target and protect them from damage. As such, he is great when the enemy team has champions such as Morgana, Lux, Elise or Zed. As added benefits, he is quite capable of fighting against many opposing champions alone, his Devour is great for killing Scuttle Crab and his ultimate provides significant amounts of map pressure.

Lulu is exceptionally useful against many divers due to her ability to protect her ally (bonus health, shield) and disable the diver (Polymorph, knock-up) until her allies can respond. As a bonus, she is useful against stealth champions (i.e. Kha'zix, Vayne, Akali) since her E provides true-sight of the target for its duration.

is great for picking and locking down targets due to her powerful CC (Q, ult), has decent sustain during the laning phase and can easily trigger Spellthief's Edge for additional gold and damage. However, her Black Shield is by far the strongest portion of her kit when used properly. If you have an ally whose main weakness is CC (i.e. Katarina, Master Yi, Vayne), then you can temporarily remove that vulnerability and let them tear apart the enemy team.

While it probably isn't necessary, having a damage-oriented support can be rather useful for those rare, rare instances where your team picks primarily low-damage and high-utility champions. Your best options for this situation are probably: Zyra Velkoz

PhDs NutsJan 5, 20172 votes

Morgana and Alistar

SchmidttyGamesJan 5, 20172 votes

Zyra (Zyra Main Disclaimer)

In the current meta of the bot lane party, no one can defend the bottom lane like Zyra can. She makes any dive onto her a huge risk. It's amazing to me that she isn't banned more often than she is, because even with just a Sightstone and Frostfang, I have wiped out 4 man ganks on my own post 6.

She has huge range with her plants, effectively up to 1550 (750 on Q - 750 on Q Plants + 50 if you throw the seed that far). She can proc Thunderlords in a split second with a quick Q-W-W. Her Ultimate is disgusting when used correctly. Once you get used to "picking your spots" and how squishy she is when you get caught out (Think Janna), you'll find that she has tremendous safety while also being able to dole out ridiculous damage from the Support Role.

AptestJan 5, 20172 votes

who you should add, and which are the must haves, are different questions. in my mind, the must haves are:

Sona - flexible caster support that goes with a lot of teams.

Janna - the queen of peel

Alistar - when you need to express yourself by bullying the enemy team.

All the other champions, you can have them, or you can not. there's reasons either way.

Stardew ValleyJan 5, 20172 votes

Nami Thresh Janna have been perfectly balanced for a year now -semi-support main Also recommend: Lulu Zyra

UsiTsukinoJan 5, 20172 votes

I play with these for no meta-reasons. I just feel comfortable with them.

Thresh Lulu Nami Taric Janna Soraka

Supports I pick when I'm lazy:

Sona Leona

Also, there are lots of Bard Alistar players out there. Those aren't my pick, but other supports and non-support people enjoy them.

Also, a good Zyra is a pain in the... Stupid lanning-phase-plants >__> xDD

CIickTheLanternJan 5, 20171 votes

I'd def practice thresh, he is by far the best utility support IMO, and can play very well ahead and behind

ZephyrDrakeJan 5, 20171 votes

it all depends on preference, the ones i usually pick are Sona Bard Taric Leona and seem to do pretty well. Some others i would say to pick up are Janna Soraka due to how much they bring to the game. The most important part (at least in my opinion) is to pick something you are comfortable with and stick with it

Kirius DarkJan 5, 20171 votes

Add Morgana

Annie and Lux are notoriously total shit supports who leave their ADC to hang and pretend to be some bot lane AP carry who rarely ever get sightstones. Both of them have long CD unreliable CC that if they miss they're heavily punished AKA either go ham and give up a double kill or leaves their ADC to die.