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Looking for Advice from Support Mains

Primadonna·7/25/2015, 2:57:07 AM·1 votes·1,506 views

Typically Gold+, because that's where I'd like to be by the end of the season... but I will read every single comment (even if you're not even Level 30) :D

I am currently a Silver V support/mid main who is in need of help. I can now confidently say that Silver V is not where I belong. Do not get me wrong, I'm not Faker not do I say I deserve to be gold, but when I play mid, I will win lane 90% of the time, and I can ALWAYS do my job as support. I only play about eight champions in Ranked since a lot of people don't take support, and I play the same two mid-laners. I am very comfortable with my champions and have watched many videos on them, specifically Lulu/Morgana/Karma.

Now, my main issue here is that I cannot climb out of Silver IV/V for the life of me. I started the season as Silver III, and played comfortably there for about 100 games, and then one really bad losing streak over multiple days, and I was stuck in Silver V with 0 LP and can't climb out. My Gold/Plat friends tell me that I have the right mindset for going to Gold and with my mechanics I definitely don't belong in Silver V.

If any of you have advice for me on how to carry my ADC (even really bad ones) through a game, I would REALLY appreciate it. I will post a few links to games I have played and want to see if any of you can give me advice.

My Karma win rate went from 61% to 50% these past 3 days... this is getting REALLY annoying. Should I ditch the support role completely and focus on practicing other roles that can carry the game? Is this just luck of the draw that I have been on the short end of the stick of for months now?

P.S. I just reread this and my point is NOT to establish that I'm a great player and I am being put on teams with teammates that suck. I want advice on how to improve my supporting skills to carry my lane, and potentially, the game. I know it can be done in lower ELO... so tips please!

[(http://i.imgur.com/sRbky5W.png)]

[(http://i.imgur.com/sRbky5W.png)]

Here's some fresh data for you.. just came out of this game. :||||||||||||

[(http://i.imgur.com/IbWrmUA.png)]

19 Comments

joebobby14127/25/2015, 4:10:57 AM4 votes

I would say the most vital thing when figuring out how to carry as support is two things.

You are in charge of your lane. You are responsible for keeping your retarded 8 year old child of an ADC from killing themselves in lane. If you can force feed them a couple of kills, great.
Once out of lane and grouping as a team for objectives, use your items and abilities exclusively to keep your pack of kittens alive. (Unless you are blitz, then use the pull to set up picks.)

I know I don't get into any details, but that's because a list of how to be good either would be copy pasted from every "be good at league" article, or so specialized to you that I would need to hang out with you first, so I just gave some broad concepts instead.

Rossonious7/25/2015, 12:19:29 PM3 votes

So I climbed from the bowels of B5 as a support/fill main and am working on S3 right now and am seeing some of the same stuff. A little peer to peer advice though might help us both :).

First, low silver adc is WAY worse than high bronze overall and it's frustrating because carrying a bad player past other bad players is easy, carrying a bad player past decent players is crazy hard.

Something helping me lately is pinging objectives a LOT after fights. Also, in team fights help those in proper positioning. If adc is diving say goodbye and shield mid, lulu ult on low score jinx in middle of enemy team does nothing cuz he's still a goner.

Also encourage your bad adcs to farm and take towers, they lose tons of CS dancing around mid.

ABlueQuaker7/25/2015, 4:01:09 AM2 votes

I'd highly recommend moving away from playing Karma or Lulu. Their CC isn't meaningful enough, and most of their abilities rely on building fairly AP-heavy. Not to mention Frost Queen's Claim is a gigantic waste of money. I never go past frostfang.

I'd recommend you learn Naut, Alistar, Blitz and Janna at the moment and getting into the habit of rushing Locket or Banner on Naut, Ali and Blitz then getting FH, Randuin's and Thornmail. Builds are the difference between a good and bad support.

On champions like Janna or Nami, you'll want a build more like sightstone, zhonya's, morello's, mikael's/banner, void. As long as you have mikael's/banner and a sightstone, you've got your core support items. After that, you probably want a bit of AP to help both your damage and utility scaling, as well as morello's for the grievous wounds and the CDR so that you can use your CC and utility as often as possible - and if you have mikael's you shouldn't ever go oom.

90% of being a good support is picking a good support that can make an impact, know what your champion's role is (e.g. zoning, engaging, peeling, kiting, disengaging, etc), and building your champion accordingly. There's no point getting Talisman and Righteous Glory if your team revolves around counter-engaging. Same as there's no point going full tank on, say, Sona (I've seen this before and it cost their team the game). And last of all, don't just get a bunch of random auras and activate-ables.

Cheeseyoger7/25/2015, 5:49:04 AM2 votes

Hmmm, I don't play a lot of support, or even a lot of solo/duo. So this is largely speculation, but I'd like to think it's speculation worth pondering.

Anywho, going up in solo/duo works by you showing that your in-game skills are better than those around you, at least on average. So it seems that instead of focusing on learning how to make a player carry, it would be best to learn how to complement many different players' ways of fighting.

And here's my reasoning: If your adc and you each go 30/0/0 and 0/0/30, you will probably rise, because good gosh, dem stats. But you won't usually get a partner that good because at least theoretically, if you belong in gold and are in silver, most of your partners aren't as good as you and are roughly as good as your opponents. Making for more moderate scores. However, if your adc goes 6/4/3, your jungler goes 6/5/13, mid goes 4/6/6, and your top goes 4/5/8, then with good teamwork and a lot of roaming or team-fighting you could realistically achieve something akin to 1/2/17 which should rise you, if not rapidly, at least steadily.

I realize the creedo of a lot of players is give your kit, your gold, and your life for the team as a support. But honestly, support isn't the expendable member, it's 20% of the team, and quite often participates in far more than 50% of kills. Help from a teammate can make you tie a fight you would have lost, win a fight you would have tied, and the support is the paragon of this idea. So if you want to rise, learn how to give many different players the extra push they need to do just one step better than they could normally and give that push to as many of your teammates as you can. Everyone can be a source of assists for you, or even kills if the situation calls for it.

Oh, and staying alive not only prevents the team from getting gold off of you, it also lets you support for even longer, albeit from a safer distance, lets you get back to the fight quicker late game, and generally shows the powers that be you have the skills to pay the higher tier bills. So try to stay alive as much as possible.

TLDR; broad perspective adaptive teamwork with an emphasis on staying alive and giving any teammate you can a little extra boost to achieve whatever it is they're trying to do is good to aim for.

Well, those are my speculative two cents. GLHF

Amelie7/25/2015, 3:07:35 PM2 votes

Gold support main here. At low Silver you need to play super aggressive supports that can feed your brainless ADC. That said, you can't always accomplish this. Sometimes they're just really bad. And in the last game you posted, you didn't even have a ranged adc (???).

Try to learn or play some burst/poke mages, like Annie, Vel'koz, Zyra, or even Lux. Alternatively, high-pressure supports like Blitzcrank or Leona. And don't upgrade past Frostfang. I personally stay at Spellthief's edge 99% of the time. You can get wayyy better AP items. If your ADC is bad, try to feed yourself and carry from there. If your ADC is average/good, try to keep the enemy low hp and afraid... while protecting your ADC.

It's ok to not focus on protecting the ADC and just let them die if they obviously don't know what they're doing. Low elo tends to go for killing the ADC no matter how good/bad they are. Stick with your strongest teammate and protect them.

FoxxMulder7/26/2015, 7:05:56 PM2 votes

Since support was my initial main role when I started league it really helped me figure out how the meta went abck and forth throughout the patches. I would agree that tanky supports that are aggressive will be the way to get you out of silver and into gold since that is my same goal. I would recommend ditching karma(since she doesnt really offer much) and start playing people like ali, leo, naut, and shen. Unfortunately thresh is falling off because most team comps will have heavy cc which will make thresh useless since he will go in and the be cc'd to death. In this meta its really about protecting your adc so he/she can farm and then providing a support that will be great for team fights and you wont have to worry about just dying because you are so squishy, alot of the way that i build my sup are with ancient coin for the gold. Face of the mountain may have been good but as far as being the most viable starting item ancient coin is the way t go. You also need to pay atttn to how the enemy adc is or how yours is. Items that have global effects to teams are much more of an impact than building self items.

TouchpadExpert8/5/2015, 1:02:48 PM2 votes

I am unranked but I excel in the support role.

One thing that I found really helps out is when you have a good jungler and they kill one or two of the enemy bot laners ping onto the enemy jungle and get some deep wards in there. This will give your jungler the edge if they want to invade and potentially kill the enemy jungler which indirectly helps out all your other lanes.

Also knowing your matchups helps out immensely. Know the 3 laning styles (poke, kill & sustain) and what style each champion is. Every champion has 2 styles: One they excel at, one they are mediocre at and one they have little or no ability of pulling off. Try to pick a support who compliments your ADC's style. So if your ADC picks Draven who is a kill/poke ADC you will ideally want a kill/poke support like Thresh alongside him.

You also need to know what compositions beats other compositions. The general rule is poke beats kill, kill beats sustain and sustain beats poke. So if you wanted to counter a Draven/Thresh composition you want a poke/sustain style bot lane. So my go to picks to counter this are Sivir and Morgana. You can whittle them down through your own poke to prevent them from moving in on you and any poke attempts they make get thwarted by spell shields or healed up through life steal or spell vamp. In games where the players are equally competent and omitting jungler presence, often times the deciding factor can be solved in the champion select screen, so why not give yourself the edge?

And more of general tips, try to set up a positive atmosphere in your team. In champ select or in the first two minutes strike up a conversation with teammates or even the enemy team. I know in a recent game of mine there were Rengars on both teams. So I just slipped in the info that our Rengar would be the better Rengar because he has nipple lasers to which my Rengar replied "pew pew." Our Rengar gave up first blood but with some friendly reminders to use the nipple lasers he wound up carrying later into the game. Joke and be forgiving of ally's mistakes. Make them like you and they will go out of their way to impress you and will be more forgiving for when you make mistakes.

Press tab and call out what an enemy is building next. I know in my last game I called out how the enemy Rengar was going AP and instructed my Rengar to get a hex drinker. Next time they had a cat fight our Rengar came out the victor.

Watch ally's lanes and ping MIAs for them. Tunnel vision is all too common preventing MIA pings. Prevent in team bickering.

Stop in team bickering. Keep them focused on what happens next. Play call objectives to keep their head in the game. Designate who goes where. Compliment anything they did right.

Call out where the enemy has placed wards so your jungler can gank the lane without being detected.

The Jokes On U7/25/2015, 3:12:53 AM2 votes

Supporting in solo que can be frustrating. This is my 3rd account, and I currently have two in gold and one in plat 2. I used to main support in s2 and s3 and found it incredibly frustrating to climb unless I duo'd with someone. Don't get me wrong, duoing doesn't get you an instant win but it definitely makes things a lot easier.

Don't just jump into ranked when you find a duo, play a few normals and communicate about both of your play styles. I will tell you that a duo will generally beat out a non duo lane simply because the fact that you'll have voice communication and you'll be able to voice what you need and things that need to happen without things like pings and having to sit there and type.

I can say that when I wasn't able to duo I ended up having to play supports more in an aggressive role. For example for the longest I refused to play unnatural supports because I still believed that natural supports were a lot more viable. Boy was I wrong. Annie, Tahm, Vel, Voli, Zyra etc. are probably better choices because they still give you a bit of carry potential for the fact that you'll be able to be an aggressive style support in lane but still give more of an offensive style late game which is generally what you'll need in solo que.

Hate to say it but solo que is more based off who can carry the hardest. I'm not saying its not team based but thats just how solo que works. There's less communication involved and more based off individual mechanics and skill. Its one of the main reasons why in ranked 5's diamond players are allowed to play with bronze players on the same team. Because its based off how you play as a team. (Too an extent.)

Personwithhat7/25/2015, 3:25:49 AM2 votes

Well....

I'm not really a support main, but basically I wish to play all lanes for fear of someone fucking up.

I'm spectacular at jungling, but everybody "wants it", and typically bot-lane loses.

So I started going support.

You can , actually, carry the game as a support. Poke, harass, do all the shit your ADC isn't doing cause he has tunnel vision.

Ping 40 times , 1 minute ahead of ajungler ganking you, and then MAYBE the ADC will react.

If your ADC is good, and u know it in the ifrst 5 minutes, then be offensive. You find your moment, and initiate.

If he's bad, and it's more likely, just counter-initiate and let him escape, perhaps with you too.

If he's so bad he plays like a bot, (oh god those games...), get mobi's, and start roaming the !@#$ out of top and mid.

If you have a good jungler you will win bot no matter how bad your ADC is, I've done that myself on both jungler and support side.

Don't , ever, assume a fully tank role unless you're entirely confident that your team can pull off damage. You need to have "some" harass , or you're useless.

My favorite so far is Galio and Braum. Galio with a good ADC is just !@#$ AMAZING. Q poke is insane, flash ult double guarenteed.

Galio with a bad ADC.....50/50. If enemy is a good pair and your ADC keeps ditching, (just had a game like that...), switch to offensive items. I managed to get to 6/15/8 as support, most deaths and second-most kills. my ADC was about 1/8 or something :\ yea......

Braum is a support I'm aiming for. In normals, I take exhaust + ignite, and I've NEVER lost the lane with braum.

He does insane damage, is tanky, and quite frankly I 1 v 1'd a rengar FFS and KILLED him. Yea XD kite-stun-repeat

So basically, assume your adc is shit. Play safely until you know, for sure, that he's good. If he is you've just turned on god-mode. Otherwise you win if you guys only die 3-4 times each. That means the other lanes can still pick up.

Note: DO NOT MAKE THE JUNGLER GANK IF YOU'RE NOT 100% SURE OF KILLS. IF HE DIES YOU JUST SET THE JUNGLER BACK AS WELL AS YOURSELF. DON'T. JUST DON'T.

SinatraZ8/5/2015, 1:17:24 PM1 votes

At the moment, the best support champs are Thresh, Janna, Braum and Alistar. If you watch LCS you will realise it. Now it depends of your playstyle. I don't like disengage champs like Janna, im more into tanks I play Leona/Nautilus a lot even if they are not the best.

What you wanna do is: 1- ALWAYS take summoner 3 instead of summoner 14 . In soloQ if your adc get hook by thresh or some hard cc, he will likely have more chances to live if you have exhaust. 2- Warding in a smart way. Too many supports get caught trying to ward. You have to look at the map a lot and if you see the enemy jungler is top, go deep ward their jungle for incoming ganks. 3- Always ward Dragon, most supports tend to only ward their bot lane and lose dragon control because of it. 4- Know when to roam. IF your adc is ahead or IF your lane is pushed and the enemies are backing. Then you go back to base and try a gank mid or top. The enemies won't expect it. 5- Mid/Late game, just stick near your adc all the time (or the mid laner if hes fed) and peel, peel and peel! Don't follow your front line if they go in because it will leave your adc and mid alone. 6-Always buy a pink ward

If you wanna roam and try to make plays, the best champions in my opinion are: Leona, Alistar, Nautilus, Braum and Thresh.

SadBoyRhymes8/5/2015, 2:59:01 PM1 votes

it also really helps when you do find a good adc to duo with. I did this last season and we were able to duo together to bronze 1 from 0 lp bronze 5 before season ended.