Support Overview

This blog post is a brief introduction to a series of blogs that will be going over different aspects of the game. This first blog entry will be a general overview of supporting in League of Legends. Expect more support entries in the near future, along with a collection of other roles as well!

Supporting is often an under appreciated and underrated role in the game. From my personal experience, I've witnessed countless summoners (especially in solo queue) refuse to play the support role since they feel that they cannot carry their team from that position; however, from watching my friends' games over the past few months, the highest rated players are in fact support mains who have climbed from bronze or silver rating back in season two, all the way up to mid-gold and platinum divisions from only playing support. Playing support is more than just sitting back and letting your AD carry farm. When playing against evenly matched or superior enemy teams, sitting idly in a bush and spamming your heal won't help your team win the game.

One might ask, how can a non-damage dealing champion have so much impact on the game? Well, the support is called a support because they support the entire team through vision, map presence, or by relaying information across the members. You'll often hear the saying that "wards win games," and while it doesn't mean you'll win the game by just spamming wards, vision is a crucial aspect to controlling the game.

Vision

By having vision on the enemy team, you allow your team to react effectively, and apply pressure safely. Knowing where your enemies are located on the map is similar to having a map hack. There will be no surprise encounters that could cost the game, or surprise enemy teams hiding in that bush by baron. In addition to granting vision, supports are often tasked with purchasing oracle's elixir and vision wards to deny the enemy vision. I can't stress enough how important denying enemy vision is, especially when it comes to late game and completing objectives. One huge mistake I often see lower ranked players doing is that they like to camp certain bushes or the baron pit, only to discover the enemy had vision on it the whole time, and either come to ace their team or apply pressure for free by pushing down a tower. Vision is such an important element of the game that is able to be manipulated in order to bring your

team to victory.

Map Presence

In order to win in a League of Legends game, it is required for your team to push down the enemy turrets, and eventually the nexus base. The way a team achieves this is by applying pressure through map presence, destroying turrets in order to make their way into the enemy base. Supports offer this presence through ways such as granting and denying vision, or by roaming the map. Generally, in a standard game where there is a 2v2 bottom lane, a good time for the support to roam is either when the enemy tower is taken or your own tower is lost. The support can roam to other lanes such as mid or top in order to help apply pressure to take down another turret. This offers more global presence and gold, and can also help defend an incoming push from the enemy team, who is applying pressure themselves.

Communicating Information

The last section I will be talking about in this post is the need to relay information to your teammates. It is important that a team is all on the same page when it comes to things such as objectives or team fighting. As a support, since you do not need to actively focus on last hitting minions, you can convey things to your team such as dragon/baron timers or enemy cooldowns. Getting these objectives is very important, because it relieves pressure on the map when they have been cleared. It also grants your team global gold and experience over the enemy team. A losing lane in top or mid can be aided through the accumulation of these objectives so when it comes down to team fighting they will not be as far behind their counterpart as they may appear. By keeping track of enemy cooldowns such as summoners or spells, you can relay the information to your teammates to coordinate engages while the enemy has their summoners or spells down giving your team an edge in the fight.

Overall, supports have a huge impact on the overall flow of the game and are just as important as any other member of the team. While they may not make all the flashy plays, they help bring the team to victory through harder to be seen means. There is still much to be covered but I hope this post has given you a general overview of some of the aspects regarding the support role. The next support related post will be regarding wards and crucial ward spots so stay tuned for that! Thanks for reading and be sure to follow our Twitter and Youtube pages for more updates and videos.