The true role of a support.

Nkeyo·12/6/2014, 12:33:19 AM·1 votes·759 views

I've seen two conflicting ideas on who a support should prioritize out of the laning phase, so I wanted to get some opinions.

My personal way of playing support is adc first, team second; not to say I don't assist my team, I do whenever I can, but if doing so means leaving my adc to die then I won't. I've allowed adcs to literally carry the entire team like this.

However, playing as the adc, I've gotten told to "stop crying" when I'm getting dived all day by people running past my team because the support was in the middle of the team, and I was left open. This method has seen far less consistent results, it usually involves the adc (both me and others) either dying over and over again, or getting zoned out of the fight then the team getting wiped.

So which way does the meta prefer these days? Are both right, but at different times?

4 Comments

Raith Alghul12/6/2014, 9:13:21 PM2 votes

Your ADC is the most consistent source of damage on your team, if the enemy team is able to kill them early in a team fight they will win most of the time, the rest of the team should not be letting people run past them toward the ADC. Before the Sona rework she had a lot better peel since the slow on tempo was up every 4.7 seconds at max CDR, I had 1 game where the enemy Vi would immediately ult meat the beginning of team fights because she couldn't get to the ADC with me there, so she would ult the support and then get blown up immediately and the enemy team would be trading a jungler and their teams off tank for a Sona, assuming I Vi could even kill me. There are other factors to consider though, like who your main carry is and who the enemy is focusing, if your APC is carrying hard you might want to focus most of the peel on them instead, there was another game where our mid and bot were not doing well and our main carry ended up being a Renekton, we had a vi jungle peel the main damage dealers off him, while me(as Sona) and our mid Kayle focused on healing and buffs, pretty much left the Draven free to just run around and deal damage anyway since the enemy team was focused on the Renekton, as a side note our jungler thought it was GG at 20 but we were able to turn it into a clean victory just by changing the way we were teamfighting.

FiendOfOne12/6/2014, 12:48:40 AM1 votes

It depends on the support, the ADC, and how the game is going. Example: Leona is going to be diving into teamfights. Nami is going to be on the backlines with you. Lucian, Ezreal, Tristana, and Corki can probably reposition themselves as needed (especially the first two). Vayne sis going to be moving all around the edges of the fight. Varus and Ashe need more protecting. The enemy team has two assassins - maybe protecting your mid laner and ADC is suddenly more important. etc.

MattAkhavan12/6/2014, 7:28:19 AM1 votes

Your goal should be the one who can carry the game first team second. Your ad might be 4-4 and your lux might be 20-0 i would put my money on the lux.

TehomCD12/6/2014, 9:33:58 AM1 votes

It really just depends on team comps and the game. If your ADC is pretty weak or your team has poor initiation and needs you to help initiate teamfights or set up picks, you may not be defending your ADC much. But right now, I feel defending your ADC is usually the stronger default strategy, especially in sieges where things tend to revolve around how well protected the ADC is as turrets are chipped away. In teamfights, sometimes your mid might be a more important carry to defend, but that's really situational - a mid who already has gotten his entire combo off may not be worth protecting over an ADC who might do more damage over the course of a fight, even if your mid is much stronger.

I would tend to say that for less experienced players, it's far less common to see people peeling well, because less experienced players tend to be less adaptable - they'll tend to use the same strategy in any game and tunnel vision on single players in teamfights, so you get the 'every team dive for a carry no matter what' rather than people instantly changing their focus based on what's important and where people are positioned.