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Why Supports Do What They Do & Why There Aren't Many Supports (Long Read)

Mellori·12/5/2014, 8:44:55 PM·63 votes·8,668 views

Now, I just wanna say as a disclaimer before I dive into my explanation; this is my personal opinion. It's what I've learned and lived by as a support main. It's what I explain to my ADC when they ask the "why" questions that always come after a good or bad decision. I'm not trying to make the ADCs look bad, nor am I justifying when I do make bad decisions. It's just to get people on a generally same-page basis as to why one of the rarest roles to fill does what they do, and why there are so few people who play it to begin with. If I think of more things that I can explain, or if someone comments an idea I can relate with, I'll add them here.

Why Supports Do What They Do:

1. If you do something incredibly stupid, I'm not going to follow you. If you go tower-diving for a kill, I'm not going to follow you. Get the kill or not, I can't save you from a tower that does increasingly more damage, and I know it from past experience. I can wait on the edge toward our side and try to save you if I think you can make it, but I'm not tanking a turret for you. I'm a support, not a tank (other than in rare cases like Leona or Alistar, but they don't have large heals or strong shields to give the ADC that can really save them if need be).

2. If you're not in lane, I'm going to take CS If you die, or if you're backing, I'm going to farm minions while you're gone. You can't expect me to leave a whole horde of 30 minions for you to farm when you get back. If I don't get them, our minions or the turret will, and that's just sending free XP floating out into thin air. I could use that XP and gold to buy items, level up, and make use of myself.

3. I'm going to be where I need to be, not where you want me. So many times I've had the team ask me why I wasn't in a team fight, then shortly after I get to the next team fight, ask why I wasn't saving the ADC who was pushing lane and just died from a gank. The long and short of this is: I can't be everywhere. I can't be warding, and helping the team in a team fight, and helping the ADC push. If it's more important that we keep minions away from the exposed inhibitor while the other four members are in mid team fighting and I'm at the shop, I'm going to save the inhibitor then come help with team fight because it's on my way. If you're face-checking dragon and I'm still walking down the lane, I'm not going to go straight to you because you're either going to run into them taking dragon, or it's going to be clear and you can ward it.

4. Let me do the dangerous stuff. Your job as ADC, or whoever I'm following around in team fight, is to get kills and get fed. If we think they're at Baron/Dragon/Buff, let me go check it out. If they're there, you're free to follow. But since I have the wards, I do the face-checking. One kill on a support is better than them getting a double because you followed too early, or a triple because we all went as a group with no vision. One kill is always better than 2 or 3 for the enemy team, and if I did it right, I died to place a ward, so it was well worth it.

Why There Aren't Many Supports This is one I actually didn't know myself up until becoming a frequent support player, and it is in part just a theory. Each part could be wrong, or it could be spot-on. But it's what I've found to be the reasons why many people refuse to play support.

1. The job isn't easy. Next to jungling, supporting is one of the most difficult roles to play if you're used to being in-lane. Your job isn't just "go here, farm, kill champion, farm more". No. Your job is to ward as much of the map as you can with only 3 wards at a time in a way that gives the most vision, save your ADC if needed, follow the team in a team fight and save them if needed, face-check so your ADC can farm safely if there isn't a ward down, sacrifice yourself for your team if needed, don't take kills unless you have to, or secure a kill if your teammate can't, and much more.

2. It's a big change from being in-lane. Top, Mid, and ADC all have the urge to sit back and farm. With support, you can't really do that. Most ADCs will tell you to keep your mitts off their minions. You have to be everywhere at once, much like the jungler. However, your main job is getting someone else fed, which makes you heavily relied upon. As jungler, you don't HAVE to get a kill or give a kill if you gank. It's not always what's expected. Just pushing the opponent out of the lane gives opportunity for farm, and sometimes that's all you need.

3. You carry a lot of the blame. If the ADC is bad at what they're doing, you still carry the blame as a support in most cases. ADC died? You didn't save them. ADC didn't get a kill? You didn't help them get it. ADC didn't get farm? You must have been hitting minions and messing up their last-hits. Team didn't all make it out in a team fight? You should have saved them. Enemy took dragon/baron? You should have used more wards. The list goes on and on about the things that can be pinned on you that no one else can be proven to hold the blame for. The outcome of the game heavily relies on how well you do, and it very well should. But that just makes it twice as rough when the team loses.

92 Comments

Blade of Justic12/5/2014, 9:42:18 PM18 votes

I play support Zilean and people generally don't understand how a speed boost in the right situation can make or break a fight.

"Just play Leona." "Just play Nami." "Just play Janna."

It's not just the speed boost. It's the control.

The feeling you get when your enemy tower dives you and your ADC with such confidence that it will result in at least one kill just to realize that they aren't facing just any support, they're facing ZILEAN.

They dive, kill the ADC. But what is that? The ADC got revived.

Time to retreat.

Zilean is currently slowing you while speeding up his ADC.

Double kill for your team.

It isn't the fact that the enemy team is doomed that makes me play Zilean Support a lot. It's the fact that they didn't even know it yet.

ValyrianBlade12/5/2014, 9:30:23 PM10 votes

  1. Really depends, but you could tank the first 1 or 2 turret shots while the adc dives so they have enough health to get out. I've seen expertly coordinated tower dives in my own solo queue Games, where the support steps in to take 2 turret shots then backs out, the jungler then takes a couple then backs out, and the adc finishes the kill while taking a turret shot. We just tanked 5 turret shots and yet none of us took on too much risk and we got the kill. In general you're right here though. ****

  2. As long as you're only last hitting, of course you should be taking the wave. You can even use abilities of it's going to stop the wave pushing to tower as that will ultimately get me more cs as the adc. What I disagree with is that when I've backed and am coming back to Lane, you shouldn't be pushing the wave while I'm gone. If I miss more cs with you there than I would have without you there, I don't care if our team got more total cs it is suboptimal because the best gold scaling player got less. At worst you should only take cs I would have missed anyways, at best you could get me more cs by stopping the lane from going under tower.

3 and 4: agree entirely

  1. And 2: agree entirely

  2. Everyone takes blame. I can guarantee you that as an adc I've had Games where my teammates blame me for feeding the enemy adc or in general get mad at me due to the other adc wrecking our team, when it was entirely the supports fault. The support engaged when they shouldn't, I followed up to damage as much as possible before backing off when the support died and the enemy was still over 50%. Then I subsequently missed farm due to being 1v2 in Lane so backing and buying a pickaxe instead of being able to wait for a BF sword. Then the support engages again even though their adc has a BF sword to my pickaxe and again the support dies and I survive but obviously can't get the kill. Then with their adc ahead already I get zoned out of Lane, tower dove for kills, etc... and suddenly I'm the one dying since the support is roaming to place wards and all of a sudden the whole team thinks the adc is the reason we lost bot Lane when it was the support.

All I'm saying here is that adc is unpopular for this same reason, with 2 in Lane it's easy to lose due to your partner being garbage, and subsequently get blamed on it. Mid and top face blame much more easily though - even if they're dying due to tower diving ganks, or they can't have a ward down because they haven't backed yet and the trinket is only up half the time at first, or the enemy jungler has stealth, etc... If a solo Lane dies once they're behind and if they die again they get blamed for feeding. At least if someone dies bot Lane you don't often hear targeted blame being thrown as no one knows who's fault it was. Don't even get me started on junglers - they get blamed for everything.

Overall an insightful post though.

Cale01712/5/2014, 10:35:50 PM8 votes

I'm a jungle main, so I can appreciate the nods towards the nuances that us junglers have to take into consideration past what laners are worried about in their immediate vicinity. But I've also made sure that I was able to hold down in whatever role I was playing, so even if I'm not strictly a support main I can feel much of your explanation resonating.

Especially number one.

Desmond Law12/5/2014, 11:16:08 PM7 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGy5ZJ8cSUE

Germzz Z12/6/2014, 1:31:24 AM6 votes

Supports and Junglers are the hardest roles and take the most blame

Yavimawa12/5/2014, 11:52:15 PM6 votes

Usually when ADC sucks they imply that it's me who sucks. ADC who constantly hit minions not last hitting, constantly getting poked. They commit suicide by mispositioning, pushing like crazy... and it's all supports fault. Yeah yeah yeah we all know it. In the fact people don't like playing support because you have to rely on others. You can rarely do something on your own. It's like being 0,5 player in the team. OFC when you succeed to feed your ADC then it's all worth it, but when your ADC sucks you have next to no means to become useful. I usually leave the lane to help players that actually know what they are doing, but this creates the situation when the idiot on Bot is feeding enemy ADC and others flame "wtf leave my lane leave my farm omg omg"...

Playing support is hard because people think that players who play support are those weak players who can't play carry roles. They think that they are those good players who do all the job. The fact that they have vision all around them, all the shields, heals, stuns, they don't see it, they always have it so it's normal for them that it's there. Like spoiled child who doesn't understand that the food is something you need to work for to get. But when they put themselves in situation when noone could save them it's supports fault ofc.

Playing support is like being Batman... nobody likes you but you are the one who keeps them safe ;/

ParinoidPanda12/6/2014, 12:39:46 AM6 votes

Appreciate the article. I spam the role in almost every queue I go into because I just don't trust most other people to do the role right. In draft mode, when others take support, I get nervous, especially if I'm the adc, that my support might not understand how the role should be played. I'm low gold, at while not especially high, it's the breaking ground where supports need to know what they're doing or we lose lane.

I think the single biggest thing that people new to the role don't quite get is that the team makes decisions based on where wards are, and what they have or even have NOT seen. You pointed out that dying to place a ward can be worth. A ward may cost 75 gold, but that vision can be worth many deaths. I've even fought over a pink ward a few times because I need that thing where it is. If I lose it, their jungle/mid can roam bot or to dragon or they could invade our jungle. If our jungle gets invaded, and we can't see it, then our top can't push safely because they don't know that the other team is bottom. Stuff like that.

ThatH1N112/6/2014, 1:34:10 PM5 votes

Things I hate as a support.

  1. Yes I have wards, you do too, USE THEM.

2)Yes I got a kill, however, I got it trying to assist you. I didn't purposely steal your kill, calm down.

3)I am your support, not your baby-sitter and I'm not your bitch.

4)If you ping dragon and I come over and then you run off I am not concerned with you, if you run off and die don't blame me becuase i am going back to my lane to support my adc.

5)YOU CAN USE WARDS TOO!!!

6)There are objectives other than kills, so please worry about them so we can win.

Thanks, A support main

Edit: Number 6 didn't make sense at first, i fixed it.

Deep Terror Nami12/5/2014, 9:24:29 PM4 votes

I main support (only Silver division though) and sympathize and agree with all this except one point; "The job isn't easy". I beg to differ. To me, the job is just different. I don't find it difficult to sacrifice myself to slow down a gank so my ADC escapes, or to leave lane and deep ward or assist mid/jg for a gank. Maybe there really is a lot of pressure on me, I don't feel it as support, but maybe I'm just used to it.

Oh I guess I disagree on another point, too. "If you do something incredibly stupid, I'm not going to follow you". Yes. Yes I will. I never give up. I will always support you, because far more often than not, I will save your ass, or turn that gank you walked into into a 3 for 0.

Ale non è male12/5/2014, 11:25:09 PM3 votes

Dear OP, you forget 1 main thing, maybe the most important one

As support and ADC, we have to work together and we have to agree on strategy to follow Starting from champ select, we got to pick a bot duo lane with champs that synergize well each other in some way, and we have to focus on the strengths of our champs and how to play around strengths and weaknesses of their bot duo. If I have picked an aggressive support that can push enemy out of the lane, you can't just sit back and only farm every possible CS, get outpushed by the enemy putting ourself in a condition of disadvantage because our champions aren't good when forced to play defensively. And vice versa. We have to adapt each other, you can't dictate as ADC how we got to play, neither I can. And we got to look at what enemy do and how they are playing too. We got to adapt to the various situations reacting on the same strategy. We can lose because the enemy is stronger or better mechaniccally wise, that's acceptable, what is not acceptable is losing because we were doing different things and didn't help each other in the right way to beat enemy We got to make calls and listen to the call of the other people and eventually explain fast why we aren't following those calls and we are doing something else so we can help our mates adapt and change their behaviour to better react to the situations And we got to pay attention to each other pings, and this worth not only between me as support and the ADC, but also between us as bot lane and the other laners and the junglers. We got to call each other if there are situations of danger or enemy missing on the lanes to not put each other in trouble, since if some enemy snowball, he can destroy us all and make useless all our work

Silverthane12/5/2014, 10:11:16 PM3 votes

i agree as a support main. another thing why ive taken to stop playign support as often as i used to is many adc's troll or think they're gods and that us supports are just their bitches. if they do bad they go afk or feed and somehow its our fault or we get fucked cos lol try pushing back waves with nami or soraka.

sometimes i just pick off meta supports because playing the same champ gets boring. it just very frustrating playin solo Q as support nowadays. of course im not forgetting about bad supports too though. just saying why ive come to dislike the role over time. everyone gets a pat on the back except you. only on few occasions players do realize youre the one behind them winning and they throw kudos to you which feels great.

tbh though the role has been better ever since S3. and the role has gotten easier imo.

juice loosener12/6/2014, 1:11:24 AM2 votes

There aren't many supports because more often than not people would rather be the one to "carry" the team. Supports can't really do that on their own and this also applies to many people who solo queue. They really can't work as team with others and are too self-reliant to win the game.

Duo or pre-mades are a different story at least there's coordination. So, I can understand why there aren't many supports because you don't get the kills and getting kills feels really satisfying to a lot of players. It gives the mentality of "winning" which is why it's a big deal to non-support (or tank specific) mains.

HimedereQueen12/6/2014, 4:57:50 AM2 votes

I agree with this 100%. I am a support main as well. Yes i do play other roles as well, but if i have the option i support. Why? Because i enjoy it, no one else does it, and i know what i'm doing. Supporting isn't easy, nor is jungler. No one wants to support, from what i have seen, for the most part because we generally don't get kills. Let me just say this. YES kills are important. BUT objectives are more important. The opposing team can have 15 kills more than you, but if you got most if not every dragon, baron once or twice, and one or more inhibitors and all they have is a couple or your turrets than kills don't matter. Another thing that i've learned is that ANYONE can sustain off Assist. What do you think i as a support does? One or two kills won't hurt for me to have. Most of the time support don't take them on purpose and they get shit about it. We take the abusive comments and hate over it. And it's not just us, it's the junglers as well. If they went into your lane and killed someone and you didn't go in at all, ffs they didn't steal your kill. You didn't even get the assist. Long story short. We have a difficult job and you bitching about every little mistake upsets us. When i play as ADC i try not to get mad at my support because i understand how hard it can get. How easy it is to get behind on your build. And how much bull crap you guys blame us for. But in all seriousness, i love people who undertand how hard these roles are. All the roles are important. I appreciate every role, because this is a team work game. So thank you to everyone who gets that and understands that.

Graiskye12/6/2014, 4:33:19 PM2 votes

Wow you wrote down a bunch of common sense shit and the care bears come out in force. Just like they always do. League may have the most toxic community, its also got the most fucking carebears of any game ever. Three pages of 'I main support too', can I scratch your ballsak. Support is easy and boring, thats why no one wants to do it, plus its not fun too sit there and babysit some moron who doesnt even understand the concept. Fuck META, shove the support up the other teams ass.

Baxter90012/7/2014, 6:00:13 AM2 votes

I agree with pretty much all of this.

There is something I'd like to add on to #2 for why people don't support, and that's that a good support does things that would seem stupid for most roles, such as sacrifice themselves. As a support, I've often suicided towards enemies in situations where my adc almost certainly would have died otherwise. However I've had this fail about as many times as succeed, not because I didn't distract them, but rather because my adc turned around and tried to save me as I delayed them. Maybe you could add something in one of your sections about "I will sacrifice myself for you, don't try to save me".

[Sorry from this point forward it became a semi-guide on my most recent favorite non-traditional supports, stop if you don't care, there's nothing else of importance]*** Anyway, only other things I have to add is that non-traditional supports are really, really strong most of them time, don't scoff at them unless you know for a fact that they don't work. I have a win/game ratio of about 23/27 on AP sion support. Similarly I've been very successful with GP support, and AP Aatrox support, and these are only my most recent ones. However they all work because they bring really unusual strengths: AP Sion has an insane poke (only rivaled by zilean and karma, except his poke only costs 35 mana), split pushes like crazy, can 1v1 most squishies late game, even with a supports gold stipend, and can almost always escape due to his 26 sec ult cd with full cdr. GP support brings global influence and ability to accumulate a lot of assists, a huge buff for an adc with speed, damage, and AS, strong poke in lane, and finally, the ability to half health squishies late game for your adc to finish off, and to scare away assasins from your adc. AP Aatrox has a super low cooldown knockup, a low cooldown slow (and goodpoke late game), and a burst on the entire enemy team for 1300 damage.

These are all situational picks, but they are strong situational picks. This means AP Sion allows your adc to win lane by making it so your enemy can't ever initiate. Then once the tower is down, your adc goes mid and pushes (ideally top pushes top really hard too), while you push bot and force them to throw away someone fed on their team to chase you off, not kill you mind you, but chase you off for about 15 sec, while your team initiates a fight without their fed person. If they send someone not fed, it's an easy kill for you due to the ridiculous damage on E. Obviously you want AP Sion if your team can turtle really well until they need to initiate, at which point they are strong 4v4 (or 4v3), even better if you only need 3 to turtle, and the top laner can push top instead. GP support attempts to poke the enemy, keeping them low enough to not try to initiate, while also not trying to initiate himself. If he gets caught out he has his W to escape with. Once GP gets his ult, he should ult people in other lanes whenever they either need it, or are going to get a kill, thus you exit lane with a bunch of assists. You then, once out of lane, build critplank. However rather than traveling alone, you travel with whoever's fed most (hopefully your adc if you did your job in lane right, but anyone else who's fed still works) and prioritize the one that threatens the fed person the most. This means that assassins and other squishy's will pose no threat to the carry with no burst, as you'll burst them first, this usually leads to people focusing you, which is good, as if they blow all their ults on someone who isn't that important rather than someone who is, your team is free to clean up. Worst case scenario, your not paying attention and your carry dies, at which point you can one shot the squishies to half health (or just plain one shot them if you kept ksing). The thing about GP is that he gains gold even when being a support, due to the outrageous amount of assists he gets. His ult means he usually emerges from lane with at least 9 assists he got that weren't in lane, and once teamfights start, he get's an assists for every kill due to his E. Generally when you pick GP support, you want this to be first pick as people which counter GP top lane are pretty easy to beat with specific champs, meaning your top lane should have an easy time if they know what they're doing. You also want to pick it if your adc wants a farm lane and your other lanes have trouble with early game CC, but not late game CC (an example of this might be naut, rammus, ammumu, shen, and really anyone who has trouble sticking to people early). AP Aatrox is probably the most situational pick here. Don't pick this if the bot lane has a strong lane initiation lane pre-level 6 (thresh, leona, etc.) because you are fairly useless before that. Before that, you can slow them a bit, and you can either sacrifice yourself to make it super easy for your adc to escape with your Q, or if you managed to poke them down (hard early) then you can cut off about 3 seconds of damage from them (usually other supports make up for this more). Once you hit level 6 though the game changes big time. You ult is a huge nuke, usually allowing you to take out half of an ADC's health if you hit it, and your q and e. By this time you should also have your spell vamp which means that you can poke a lot more with your e, because now if you hit it, it refunds mostly, especially if you hit minions too. In fact you can heal from hitting anything more than 2 minions when your adc's away, or champions in a fight. Your play pattern from here on out should be to poke with your e as much as possible (it starts to hurt very quickly) then whenever someone on either team initiates, find the largest group of squishies and Q them, then ult + e and run to the edges of the fight. With spellvamp, you can usually escape unless someone blows an ult or two on you, and then poke with E until the end. Now at first glance this sounds stupid, the squishies are almost always going to panic and blow their ult to kill you, and that's exactly the point. Your passive allows you to soak up high damage ults and survive, while your spellvamp lets you take more than one. These factos combined mean that you should choose Aatrox when you think both adc's might passive farm a lot, and more importantly, the enemy team has a ton of squishies, especially if they have high damage ults. This is really the only one that I've found to be less effective against higher level players (from duoing with a friend), as a veigar will often realize after the first time not to blow their ult on me, and likewise you then just get CC'd and killed at their leisure. At silver and gold level though, I've found this to be highly effective, as if you Q to a squishy and ult, all they'll see is half their life missing and they'll ult you back, and do this in future teamfights. Anyway, the single biggest thing you have to watch out for is, if your team doesn't have anyone else to protect your squishies, and they have somone like renekton, jax, or darius who can't be bursted as they aren't squishy, but can still kill squishies easily, don't go Aatrox. Only go him if the entire team is made up of squishies and no-damage tanks.

Anyway, didn't mean to turn those into semi-guides, sorry!!! If you try one though, try AP sion, it's super strong.

Wise Squirrel12/6/2014, 2:44:27 AM2 votes

Why I don't support Candidate Reason

If I believe you are incapable of carrying (Making too many risks, lack of map awareness, keep dying constantly just to get one more kill over and over again as your death count becomes two digits), I am not going to pick a character that cannot fight on his own because I know you can't win this game.

I am going to try and carry myself, even if my chances are already low because of your attitude / knowledge of the game.

Whenever I support, it is because I am in the mood to play the utility role, and I don't even play any of the traditional supports (Because I dislike their kits).

Poro Princess12/6/2014, 3:50:38 AM2 votes

Hey! I main support at low Plat level, and you're spot on on those points! Don't worry, many players nearly low Plat level (including mid to high Gold players) will understand all of those. If you're experiencing issues, don't worry, just explain and do your best, you'll get to a point where people actually value supports up there :3

Ashes Arise12/6/2014, 1:55:01 AM1 votes

4th reason. Its boring as fuck

Onegarion12/7/2014, 10:03:38 AM1 votes

Coming from a support main I get the feeling you are mainly dealing with low elo issues. Being in gold I don't run into about half of what you are talking about on any near a consistent basis. There is a lot you have actually missed on with how a support thinks. There is a whole lot more than what you are talking about.

Budupops12/5/2014, 10:19:43 PM1 votes

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