Introduction
Yo it's me again with another guide because I just felt like doing one,idk why D:. Most of you might not know that but I actually main support. Yeah,really. I main the thing nobody wants to play :D. People often say that it's boring to support and it's like,easy and doesn't take anything but warding and dying instead of your carry. But that's sooooooo wrong. A good supporter has to do so much more and imo it's way more difficult than playing mid or toplane(which takes the least skill imo :<<<<). In the following guide I'd like to show you some strategies,basics, tips and tricks for playing support. Then again, my support skills are far from perfect but I'd call them solid or even decent.
Champions
The amount of support champs if actually pretty big. However there are of course some champs that work out better than others. The support role in a nutshell is basically offering as much as you can while having almost nothing to spend. Thus you want to have a champ whose kit is strong even without items. In the current meta the following champs are pretty much the strongest:
Thresh is pretty much the safest pickup for support right now. While offering insane amounts of cc he also gives you nice base stats because of his passive and probably the best escape in the entire game (lantern). His poke is good because of his Q and his ultimate slows 99%.
Lulu wasn't played a lot when she was released but nowadays she's probably one of the best supports of the game. Her kit offers a lot of poke,80% slows,shields and a lot of cc! She's my favorite champion in the entire game (followed by cait). She's a safe pick and you can play her against and with almost every ad carry.
Probably the best support at least in theory. She has the best poke in the game ,at least when you look at the support champs, she can heal,speed ppl up AND has an ultimate that can stun the entire enemy team. A good Sona can decide games,really. The problem are her base stats. She has less hp than a melee minion at lvl 1 and 9 base armor. While being the ultimate counter to other poke lanes she has no chances at all against kill lanes.
Janna is not the best choice at the moment. While her laning is super weak,her endgame is insane. She offers a lot of disengage but almost no poke or engagement tools at all. If you survive your lane she's awesome but once you get behind it will be difficult to catch back up.
Got a carry that does a shitload of damage early on? Pick Leona,stomp your lane and win your game. She is probably the queen of crowdcontroll and her passive boosts your carry's damage. She's not that good if your carry is a weak laner because a Leona pick really only pays off if you get kills early on.
The Koreans brought Nami to the competetive scene and she's picked often ever since then. She offers a lot of poke,heal and cc which is not that easy to hit actually. Her E and bonus movementspeed coming from her passive can really boost your ad carry. People say that her ultimate is too weak and I also think that's what makes her a weaker pick than Lulu or Sona.
Zyra is still one of the best supports in the game. She has a lot of CC,poke and free wards. If you built some AP her damage is also pretty decent so it's not like you're only offering CC but also a nice amount of damage to a teamfight. Another thing is that her skillcap is really high so it takes some time to master her.
Blitzcrank and Taric
Blitzcrank is a pretty bad pickup to be honest. You HAVE to land your hook otherwise you're pretty much useless. You can't do anything but 2 grabs in lane before you're out of mana. If you're not a god on Blitzcrank like Madlife is you shouldn't pick him I think.
Taric is pretty much the weaker version of Leona. Even though he offers bonus armor,heals and a reliable stun he's just not as good as the other supports. You can pick him if you have a carry he works well with e.g Graves. I also pick him sometimes but I don't really like him that much.
Poke or Kill lane?
Before I start I should probably explain what a poke or kill lane is. Poking is pretty much attacking your enemies in lane because you either outrange them with basic attacks or you simply have abilities that allow you to damage the enemy without taking damage yourself. As I mentioned before Sona and Lulu are probably the best poking supports. It's important to have a ranged champion to poke. So as soon as your support is ranged it's often a poke lane. However there are still ranged supports like Thresh that are good supports for the ultimate kill lane. It also depends on which ad carry you're playing with. So you have to know what which champ does. You have to know which carry works well with which support and what abilities every carry has and how much damage they deal at a certain point of time in the game. You see even picking the right support takes a lot of knowledge.
Kill lanes are pretty much the opposite of poke lanes. It's kinda strange to say which is better because certain kill lanes counter certain poke lanes and the other way round. Kill lanes are lanes where you go all in and just burst your opponent down. The problem is that if the enemy team plays a poke lane, they can get you so low that you can't go all in anymore. So you have to time your engagements well to succeed. Draven Leona is a prime example for the ultimate kill lane. While Draven's laning is probably the strongest in the game at the moment he can just stomp every lane opponent if Leona engages. Her passive proc gives even more damage to your basic attacks and her CC makes it almost impossible to escape them.
So, how do I decide what to play? There are a lot of factors that influence what to pick. It depends on your teamcomp and what you and your carry are comfortable with. You have to see what your carry picks and decide after that. You can actually "waste" your support pick because some comps don't work at all so decide wisely what to pick!
Warding
Yup, that's what you're supposed to do. Ward that shit and don't be afraid to ward. It's better to spend a few hundred gold too much on wards than not enough. Ruby Sightstone is a GREAT item for supports. You will save so much money that you can spend on items to power up your team so get it asap. I often choose Sightstone over Philostone because it is so f*cking good.
These are the basic places to ward. While it is not only your task to ward it's what you're supposed to do. You will often be flamed because you did not ward top after 3 minutes and all this kind of stuff. Just ignore them or flame him and his mother or so. Be sure to pinkward the objectives ( baron and dragon). Pinkwards are also nice to deny vision from the enemy team. You can also ward the tribrush and help your jungler to make ganking easier. Make their life's harder by destroying their wards, it really pays off. Since Ninjaganks are getting more and more popular I suggest you to ward your lane brushes so you are prepared .
Items
Items are actually pretty similar from support to support.
Since your starting items will be almost only wards, this will most likely be your first item to get, You can also go sightstone first if you're doing really well in lane but otherwise you'll lack gold if you don't get it early on.
GET IT ASAP!
These are pretty much your core items. Since you have to ward for the most parts of the game you won't have much gold to complete major items. However,if you do I suggest Locket and/or Bulwark. Your item choices also depend on your jungler and what kind of items he builds,because the auras of all the items don't stack anymore. So don't waste money on items you don't need!
Runes and Masteries
There are many different possibilities for masteries and runes when playing support. These are the really basic ones giving you the most sustain and gold advantage you can get.
You can also go for magic pen marks if you're playing a poke lane and you can also go less tanky or more offensive concerning the masteries. As I said these are really BASIC. You have to choose yourself what fits you and your playstyle better.
Final verdict
Supporting is hard and it's nothing for people who are mentally weak. Really. People will expect GODLIKE plays from you even if they suck hairy balls. I often support guys who are way worse than I am as AD carry. It's frustrating that's why I pretty much stopped supporting in soloq. I support guys I know. My best friend is a phenomenal Ad carry. We stomp most of the enemy lanes and we're a good team. What I'm trying to make clear is that you should find someone to play with when playing support. Find someone you get along with,someone you like and it will be a lot easier.Really.
As a supporter you won't get any spotlight. You're like the drummer of a band. Nobody know you're there but when you win the game and your teammates are talking big because they went 16/0 because of everything you did, that's the time you know you did well. And you'll sit there with a tear in your eyes and you'll know that it was actually you carrying your teammates. That's what supporting is about.
Oh here's a video of aphromoo explaining support :D
Feel free to put your thoughts on the support role in this topic. I'll probably keep updating this concerning the champs and itemization :). I hope everyone who seriously wants to support reads this and I hope I could help them a bit :)
