Unusual Supports

ShadowKnight1224·8/13/2014, 5:04:39 AM·6 votes·2,880 views

As a support main, I find myself trying out different types of non-standard supports, such as AP Nasus, Shen, Fiddlesticks, Pantheon, LeBlanc, Poppy, Lissandra and Anivia (just to name a few).

It's probably the Bronze ELO I'm at, but I enjoy people not knowing how to deal with these uncommon picks (AP Nasus and Fiddlesticks, in particularly, give me the giggles, particularly when the ADC attempts to 1v1 a Fiddlesticks through his lifedrain, or has to go back to base every 3 minutes thanks to AP Nasus's E spam). It's also fun to shut down "traditional" supports (Braum, Thresh, Morgana and Nami, for example) thanks to their kits not being geared towards these unusual situations.

What are your uncommon supports? How do you build them? Share your success stories here!

49 Comments

Caharin8/13/2014, 10:34:48 PM3 votes

My best support, EVER, with a 100% succes rate, is Nautilus.

His passive is a Snare, his Q is a semi-pull, a faster version of Thresh's Q, his W is a health-based shield with a dot, his E is three waves of AoE slow, and that ulti tho.

The reason to why he is so strong is because he doesn't need the gold to succed. He has his shield, and 4 CC abilites, were 2 of them can hit several targets. Getting Face of the Mountain means you can actually farm awhile. Getting items like Sunfire Cape, Randuin's Omen, Spirit Visage and Banshee's Veil just make it better. That his W shield scales with Health means the Ruby Sightstone is even less wasted.

And once you get mobo-boots, you can roam. You're a second ganker. A feared ganker. A terrifying ganker. I see people flash the Q or even just to get some distance before they get hit by the ult, simply to try and survive. But boy is Nautilus strong here too! I mean, what will they do? When I pull myself into them and start hammering out snares and slows everywere.

No one is safe when the TItan of the Depths arrive!

Serpents Embrace8/13/2014, 5:09:48 AM3 votes

Velkoz item 3092 item 2049 item 3028 item 3117 item 3151

YouLostMe8/13/2014, 6:29:48 AM3 votes

Malzahar is a lot of fun as a support. The lockdown his ultimate provides is wonderful for even the worst of ganks and his DoT lets him have full STE procs all the time.

Shen support is... doable. It's hard coordinating his heal with your carry though.

Ranger McDanger8/14/2014, 8:54:00 PM3 votes

Here is a list of non-typical supports I have fun playing as. AP: Anivia Caitlyn Cassiopeia Ezreal Fiddlesticks Gangplank Heimerdinger Karthus Katarina Leblanc Malphite MissFortune Ryze Xerath AD: Draven Darius LeeSin Thresh Vayne Yasuo Pantheon Crit: Gangplank Tryndamere Tank: Chogath DrMundo Maokai Nautilus Volibear

The categories themselves define how I would build them mostly. Grabbing Sightstone and a GP5 item (switch out at full build for something better, if appicable).

Hyrum Graff8/13/2014, 2:26:08 PM3 votes

Katarina support is ALL the derp.

Get an early gank from your jungler. Not to kill, just to get them low, and then enjoy zoning them all game long as they cower in fear of your resets.

ploki1228/13/2014, 3:24:28 PM2 votes

Another thing I've seen that I forgot to mention is Brand. Since his passive procs Spellthief for some reasons, any spell that you lands on someone will triple proc it. Then you have a semi-reliable stun and insane tower-diving damage with your ulti (if minions are far enough).

Mattarias8/13/2014, 5:41:23 AM2 votes

Apparently Kayle support is unusual. -_-

ploki1228/13/2014, 3:14:14 PM2 votes

Glad to see I'm not the only one into uncommon supports (and even happier to see people not refer to the meta or them being outside the meta). Personally, my top 2 uncommong supports are :

Poppy : Start with a coin and E>Q>W, max R>E>Q>W. Your goal in lane is to get level 2 early and have the enemy carry be next to a wall. At that point ,if he goes for the cs, you can probably 80-0 him with your adc. Build path is early boots into Trinity Force. Use your ulti to either turn ganks around or tower dive the enemies for easy kills (make sure to leave the last hit(s) to your adc so you don't eat those 3 tower shots when your ult wears off).

Veigar : Start with Ancient coin and Q>E>Q>W max Q>E>W. Get those Q stacks from the tanks (it may trouble your ADCs if you miss the tanks with Rank 1 Q, which is why I level it again at 3) and melee minions. Use that AoE stun to cancel the enemy's aggression (and get a little 50% hp poke in), and basically outnumber them. It's not unusual to see Veigar come out of lane with 1k worth of APs stacked up on Q. Build path is Targon rush into sightstone rush into damage.

I've also seen Bening Sentinel (eroticles on twitch) play a bit of Cassiopeia. You basically start with Spellthief's Edge taking Q>E>W then maxing E>Q>W. Evolve to Frostfang ASAP and get that early tear or chalice. Use your Q to triple-proc spellthief and deal some quite awesome damage. Your tool for laning is E. If you have a chance at all-ining, there isn't a slightest chance that anyone outdps you.

Lately I've also started trying support Shaco. Every single all-in lanes you will see will be a breeze, and winning against a poke lane is really hard. I've seen a few start with Spellthief's Edge and go AP, but it seems that I personally can't understand how to play him AP, so I go for a more traditional AD build (often it's Tiamat into Shiv, but I may try the Trinity-BotRK line). You always start with the coin imo, since like Shen, he can't proc spellthief well (JitB doesn't proc). I've only seen people start W, since it allows for wonderful cheeses and gank protection, but an argument could be made for E. Then it's E>W>Q, to get the maximum amount of poke, and the longer fear duration. In most cases the ranks in your deceive won't matter. Playstyle is straight forward... gain brush crontrol by pnating JitBs, and poke with E; if they try to engage, blow your whole kit on their ADC. Level 6+, use your ultimate whenever you have the mana for it if you're wining lane, it can be used to damage the ADC when he's pushed to tower (or zoning him entirely) or tank tower aggro and deal more damage to tower. If you're in a tougher spot, use ulti mainly to juke stuff (Cait's ult can probably be juked 100% of the time on 1200 ping).

The first two I've had great success even in plat (I used both of them in my promos), BS is using Cass in D1 and winning more than he loses (it takes a strong independant ADC though), Shaco... I'm still not convinced, but as a counter-pick to Leona or Blitzcrank, I would probably take him even in plat.

Quantum Weeb8/13/2014, 3:17:17 PM2 votes

Kennen support is mine, here's the build;

http://www.lolking.net/guides/238398

Peacemaker96698/13/2014, 4:03:12 PM2 votes

Support TF. Free mana gain, lots of poke, 4 sec CD stun, and global vision ulti. It's tons of fun, just have to be decent with his pick a card. :3

EMOFRATPARTY8/13/2014, 5:54:32 PM2 votes

I really want to try Ashe at Support.

A stronger ADC can gain more benefit from the early game while having Ashe around can help push the lane even more. The heals aren't there, but escape would be far less difficult if Ashe was helping someone else escape rather than herself. Focusing on other players would also allow anyone who isn't great at kiting to have better lane maneuverability.

Her slows stacked with vision control and her ult as an initiator? That's something I at least want to experiment with.

The Lexer8/14/2014, 3:20:26 AM2 votes

I personally love Orianna support. She's got a shield, a slow/speedup, and dat shockwave. The problem is you either are REALLY, REALLY good, or really bad. Depends on the matchup imo.

ElusiveCheshire8/14/2014, 6:07:28 PM2 votes

I've definitely gone the Nasus route. I was given such a hard time. I got FTM to last hit Q seige minions and share the gold. No joke, I had 200 stacks before my team realized that the efficiency of Nasus is in his Spirit Flare and Wither combo. The moment I close in, I just Q until my adc kills, (I'm evil enough to add a second slow with Iceborn Gauntlet) Turret killing is a lot faster too.

I have done Poppy Support. People never think I'm going to pin them to a wall... I just laugh and go WEEEEE PIN! SMASH! x3

I'll tell you how crazy I went one day. Jinx support. Max W first, low cd and proc it all the time. W and E, you can't escape the slow. People were like o.o.... This Jinx can support! x3

7ha7guy77711/4/2014, 4:17:42 AM1 votes

maokai support. knockback/slow, root, aoe poke/slow, and a damage reduction ult

dudemeister8/13/2014, 3:13:12 PM1 votes

I played Ziggs support once (by played I mean I was forced into it by my troll team). It was me and Cait bot and we dominated the lane phase, but like I said troll team is troll and other lanes fed hard.

Ziggs worked pretty well as support because he has nasty poke, an AOE slow, and a knockback. Honestly it was a lot of fun and I've been wanting to try it again with a better team Ziggs

Godhri11/14/2014, 12:23:19 AM1 votes

I've tried Zed support before. I went 19 armor penetration and 27 armor/27 magic resist scaling for my runes and just the basic offensive tree mastery. It worked quite well because I was able to land my E for escaping and Q for harassing. I think the reasons it worked well was

  1. I was in silver at the time... low silver like silver 4 or 5.
  2. I was able to sow a lot of confusion with my shadows and eventually my ultimate. Zed's ultimate sows a lot of confusion and fear in a support situation.

Another support I've used that I don't see used often is Syndra. I don't understand why people don't use her as support more often. She has everything from poke to stun to knockback to multi stun. End game all she has to do is use her ultimate then E in the right angle and boom whole team stunned. I can see why she wouldn't work in lower elo/tier games though because her abilities are not as obvious to spot and are hard to follow up on if you aren't paying attention or have a slow reaction time which is usually the case in lower elo/tier games.

Holy Necromancer! I didn't realize this was 3 months old! Lol!

TehNACHO8/13/2014, 8:47:58 AM1 votes

Jax. Jump->Stun is just such a surprisingly powerful engage, or if I'm engaged on or just trading, the auto attack dodging function of his E just dominates the hell out of bot lane against all but the most caster-like ADCs.

MrBuffington8/13/2014, 3:11:00 PM1 votes

Support Yasuo was always funny, that wind wall blocks everything, haha