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Support main, slumped in other roles (just Bronze II)

Kei143·3/20/2015, 11:40:34 AM·2 votes·1,337 views

So I'm on a slump and I know why.

I'm a support main, and I think I'm pretty good at it. At my current level of Bronze2 / Bronze1, I truely believe I can get up to silver with my level of support play.

My problem lies when I'm in other roles. where my game play mechanics / mindset isn't close to my support play. At bronze 3/4, I was able to get away from medicore performances and outplay my opponents. At bronze 2, its like 50/50. Now at bronze1, it seems like that when I'm in other roles, I end up not doing well and costing me the game.

What I do realise is that the support role is much more forgiving in terms of build path. I can be creative and build to context and it'll still work out, but somehow in other roles, it feels like that if I don't follow the optimal path (which I always fall behind on, cos I suck), then I can never catch up and it just snowballs against me from that point.

I can't seem to get my mind around the "feed me every kill / CS else rage" mind set that ADCs / APC (heck even some top laners) want, so I don't think I'll be able to get close to my support play with the other roles. Now I know I can work on my other roles in normals / team builder, but I guess my real questions is, to what extent do I want to practice the other roles? Do people just queue dodge if they don't get their role? and if they do queue dodge, that means my level of play in other roles will never be as good, which spells trouble when climbing the ladder.

--Support main, at a point of confusion for other roles.

18 Comments

ZACKandATTACK3/20/2015, 5:03:59 PM3 votes

Learn to play Annie. You can use her as a support/mid/top.

GGMystic3/20/2015, 2:41:01 PM2 votes

Main a role, but be able to play at least 1 champ in every other role comfortably. You can make this a lot easier if you pick up a champ that can fill multiple roles. Using myself as an example, I main Jungle. Whenever I can't get Jungle, I would play Lulu in Top, Mid, or Support and use Lucian as my ADC. I have a much larger pool now, but like most players, I had to climb the ranks and learn.

I understand that most players tend to favor a few roles, but playing other roles to the point where you have at least 1 comfortable champion in that role will benefit you immensely. Here are a couple examples of how playing other roles will help you improve as a support: **Jungle **- Helps you to know when your jungler can gank and where the enemy jungler is likely to be (Map awareness). Also, it helps a lot with warding and dewarding. **Top **- Helps you know when you should drop a deeper ward in bottom brushes for Teleport ganks. **ADC **- It helps to be aware of what the other person's options are in lane.

You don't need to be amazing at the other roles, just be capable of holding your own.

I hope this helps.

bad arcade kitty3/20/2015, 3:19:42 PM2 votes

support players usually can pick mid pretty easy, it's nearly the same (if you play ap supports like sona, janna etc) except you farm with abilities and aa, you roam (gank) too etc

Actually, when I'm in normals / team builder, it just seems like that the level of play is much less than what I experience in ranked.

depends on your normal mmr try drafts, they usually tend to be better than blind picks

Br4ndon3/20/2015, 4:59:57 PM2 votes

You can safely play morgana as a top and she performs very well as a mid. CSing isnt an issue when your puddle is one shotting waves. Just think of it as playing support morgana, upgrade your yellow trinket so you can ward as much. The only difference is that you are using your W for 150~ gold instead of 30 gold. (oh and build path, but im assuming that you know how to build a morgana)

o0O Madoka O0o3/21/2015, 1:23:33 PM1 votes

Playing other roles can be struggling for support mains, especially in bronze where people play only certain lanes and won't give up their calls. I remember it took me about 400 games to be able to play all lanes other than support, and i'm still not every good at them. When I was in bronze I thought I was pretty good at support and I'm able to bully bronzes in lane badly. I climbed to higher silver later, and figure out it's just because people in bronze don't support at all. I struggled at silver for about a year and last season I made it to gold 5. I'm currently gold 1 due to some luck but I dont' feel I belong there, I should be somewhere gold 3 or maybe 4. Some advice to play other lanes: Generally, as you mentioned, it's pretty forgiving to play support, not only item builds, but also positioning and skill casting. You have to change that mindset first.

You can start playing adc, bot lane is still the most familiar lane to you. Practice your csing in bot games and normal.( I spent 100 bot games to improve my cs and I'm able to get 90+ per min without harass in bot games, 70 to 80 per min depends on how good the enemy support is. Recommend champion: Caitlyn, Graves, Corki. Remember: Try your best to ks every kill and take all cs wherever you go, you're not support anymore.
Alternatively, you can play jg, but that's for S4. You don't need to know how to cs. S5 jungle changes really hurt causal jungle players like me. I'm still trying to figure out a way to success in new jg. Current meta is Lee sin, Vi, J4(before he's nerfed, but still an okay pick). Sej and amumu are strong this patch. Elise is getting some buff next patch. Maokai has some problem in early clearing, but good at ganks and mid game teamfights.
Mid casters is also a choice, but the Athene nerf is hurting mages at the moment. Waiting for the Athene buff next patch.(The buff almost doubles the mana regen).
I don't recommend going top first, it's a completely different play style than bot. You can try to jg first, and then use the jg champs that you are comfortable with to try out top lane.

That's personal experience of a bronze support main to a gold support main but fill all lanes, hope this will help.

gitsi3/20/2015, 5:00:36 PM1 votes

I actually found top and jungle fairly easy to get to a level of competence at sticking with tanks and initiating bruisers. You get the safer laning phase with tanks and as long as you can land your cc and peel, which are normal support type jobs you'll be ok even if youre not the best farmer. Similar idea with mid, play support mages; karma, lulu, morg etc... who offer enough utility that you can be relevant lategame even if your still struggling with last hitting well.

RogueWill3/20/2015, 5:07:20 PM1 votes

Get 1 champ which are really comfortable with on each lane. It really doesn't matter who as long as you are really good with them. Jungle could also be a good role to get as second main as it is similar to support (specially if it is a tank or utility jungle)

ClutchCrux3/20/2015, 12:09:24 PM1 votes

as someone that used to play support when they couldn't jungle it takes no skill to play support. mechanically support lacks in about everything but positioning and using actives.