The role of the support has been altered significantly within the last 4 years of League of Legends. In the early seasons of League, supports were exclusively linked with their ADCs throughout the match, in order to defend them from engage tanks, assassins, and long range burst mages. In Season 4, a higher priority was made on jungler-support synergy: most prolifically by Samsung White, the Season 4 world champions, who innovated a unique strategy with jungler DanDy and support Mata. Mata, come mid-game, would leave ADC Imp alone when he was in a safe side lane, and rotate around the map with DanDy to place and protect vision. Normally, junglers would be tasked with clearing and placing this vision independently, but by bringing Mata, Samsung White had an advantage in these skirmishes over vision, which were colloquially referred to as "ward wars".

In Season 6 & 7, the role of the support evolved again with the introduction of picks like Bard, and innovations around old champions, such as Thresh. Instead of purely laning with the ADC in the early game, these picks would be active in the early game by rotating at favorable times throughout the map. Advantages would be created early by these supports ganking lanes, and placing vision. No longer was it enough to only track the enemy jungler's pathing; the roaming support created an X-factor that many teams needed to consider when making a play while the enemy support was unseen.

No longer are supports just vision monkeys, linking with junglers and tanks in order to place and defend vision. Supports are legitimately terrifying threats throughout the game. Their agility with items such as Boots of Mobility, or Boots of Swiftness, and runes including Waterwalking or Relentless Hunter allow them to move through the jungle rapidly in order to influence their allies' lanes.

This article will feature gameplay from Johnson "Cao" Cao: a semi-professional League of Legends player, formerly support of Team Liquid Academy.

Supports & Roaming Affinity

Each support champion is capable of roaming, theoretically, but supports which are exemplary roamers generally have abilities which fill specific criteria:

• A movement ability: Pyke W & E (Ghostwater Dive, Phantom Undertow); Bard E (Magical Journey); Nautilus Q (Dredge Line)
• A displacement ability: Blitzcrank Q (Rocket Grab); Pyke Q (Bone Skewer); Thresh Q (Death Sentence); Nautilus Q (Dredge Line)
• High damaging abilities: Bard Passive & Q (Traveler's Call, Cosmic Binding); Karma Q (Inner Flame)
• Prolonged crowd control: Leona Q (Shield of Daybreak); Thresh Q & E (Death Sentence, Flay)

This in no means is an exhaustive list in any capacity, only illustrating a few ideas on what makes a support particularly great to roam with, and a few examples of which abilities are fantastic when roaming. You may be able to roam on Yuumi, but she lacks many of the innate characteristics that allow Blitzcrank to be an ideal roamer.

With this list, we can deduce some supports who are very effective while roaming: Pyke, Thresh, Blitzcrank, Nautilus among others are absolutely fantastic roamers. Meanwhile, picks like Lulu, Sona, or Yuumi do not typically create roams which are influential.

That being said, there exist circumstances for any support champion to roam, even on picks that aren't perfectly suited for roaming:

This is a prolific example. During the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational, Beşiktaş Esports support, Dumbledoge, completes a roam onto Faker's Azir, and secure the kill for BJK. During this timeframe, supports were not known to roam: especially on picks like Janna! Sometimes, roaming on supports like Janna, Lulu, or Soraka offer an element of surprise. Many players higher on the ladder will play safe when the enemy Thresh, Blitzcrank, or Nautilus is off the map, but even Faker didn't expect Dumbledoge's Janna in his lane.

When to Roam

The following picture was taken from a solo queue game from the perspective of challenger support Cao, and illustrates a number of minor details that result in an effective roam. We will dissect this picture piece by piece to understand how Cao was able to identify that this roam would be successful before he executed the play.

Here, Cao is seen roaming mid on Bard. Already, there's a massive amount of information that can easily be missed with an untrained eye. Let's go over step by step in order to figure out how to roam like Cao:

First, while you won't have specific information about enemy summoner spells, it's normal for teammates to ping enemy summoners upon their activation. Remembering these cooldowns are one of the first things you should be thinking about before deciding who to gank: enemies without summoners are extremely vulnerable to being ganked, as they'll have a hard time escaping when you show up to fight. Cao knows for a fact that both Volibear and Kassadin don't have Flash available to them, making them ideal targets for a gank.

Wukong is currently in base, and was trying to recall when Cao left base to roam. Cao knows that because Wukong was recalling, he is not an ideal recipient to gank: Wukong is either too low in health or mana to contribute to a gank, or he has too much gold and does not have the power necessary to contribute to a gank. Either way, Cao cannot gank top lane right now. So he instead goes to mid lane.

Great! Now Cao knows where to go, but now Cao needs to find out can he go.

This is a great time to roam: His ADC, Aphelios just based. Why is Aphelios basing relevant for Cao to roam? There are several reasons:

1. Aphelios just left fountain, he is full health and mana, and is likely facing opponents who are not full health and mana. This advantage allows Aphelios to remain relatively safer in a 1v2 scenario.

2. Aphelios just spent his gold, while the enemy Pyke & Varus still have unspent gold in their inventory: right now, Aphelios has power that Varus simply doesn't have as he has has not yet spent his gold.

3. The wave is pushing towards Aphelios, because the wave is pushing towards Aphelios, he is able to get at least some gold, even if he theoretically was zoned by the Pyke and Varus. It is important to not roam while the wave is near the enemy tower because your ADC will miss on critical gold and exp from the minion wave, resulting in lost resources for your ADC. By roaming while the wave is near the ally tower, Cao minimizes the resources lost in bottom lane, and Aphelios is able to collect the wave under the protection of his tower.

Nice, Aphelios will be okay if we roam here. Let's check out our target: mid lane, to figure out how we should execute this play.

Wow, this is a great time to reach mid lane. Let's go over why:

1. The enemy wave is a cannon wave, Kassadin has to walk up to secure this cannon. Even if Kassadin forfeited this cannon and just left, that cannon is worth around 80 gold, creating a free advantage for his LeBlanc: roams don't need to result in a kill to be effective.

2. The ally LeBlanc just hit level 6, LeBlanc is very strong when she has acquired her ultimate, and can deal massive damage against this Kassadin.

3. The wave is so close to the ally tower. Kassadin will have to run very far to escape to under his tower, this is leaving him vulnerable to a well timed gank by Cao.

Fantastic! Since the wave is close to the ally tower, the cannon minion's high gold value incentivizes Kassadin to walk up to secure it, and the ally LeBlanc is powerful since she just hit level 6 and unlocked her ultimate. This is a great lane for Cao to roam towards.

Alright, one last thing we should identify before we execute this gank: where should Cao gank from?

This is actually a pretty difficult one. We can still break it down though and understand why Cao ganked from bottom side:

1. His jungler is going to top side raptor camp. That's good, if Cao ganks from bottom side, he will push Kassadin into his jungler, and Nidalee will be able to collapse onto the Kassadin and secure the kill.

2. From an earlier invade from Nidalee, Cao actually knows for a fact that the enemy jungler is on top side. How does he have this information with no wards? Well, Nidalee found out that the enemy krugs, raptors, and blue buff are down, or she secured them for herself. This means the enemy jungler will go to his wolves or gromp in order to get resources, or he will invade Nidalee's jungle. Also, since the enemy red buff will respawn soon, he will try to clear his top side camps in order to path to his red buff around the time it respawns.

3. For Bard specifically, this wall being relatively large allows a greater freedom of movement with Bard E (Magical Journey) on this side of the map. Cao will be able to control more precisely where in the lane he ends up when he places his E.

4. (Not pictured) The ally LeBlanc is positioning towards the top side. In order to maximize the distance between himself and the LeBlanc, Kassadin positions himself to the bottom side of the lane, closer to where Cao is positioning, out of vision.

Well, this gank looks absolutely perfect. Cao, in the matter of seconds, has ran through a mental checklist in order to identify and set up a gank onto mid lane. The only issue here could be if Graves, who Cao knows is top side, counters this gank with a gank of his own, however, Nidalee being nearby and the relative strength of Bard and LeBlanc vs Graves and Kassadin allows Cao's team to win, even if Nidalee can't show up.

Let's see what happens!

Excellent execution. While it may seem like this play was spontaneous, in reality this ~10 second gank was set up for minutes in advanced by Cao and his team. Not each of these criterion we went over is necessary for a gank to be successful: maybe the enemy laner has Flash, or maybe we need to wait a few seconds for our ally to come from base. Generally, however, we want to fill as many of this criteria as possible in order to ensure success with our gank. Time is a precious resource: maybe if Cao went bottom lane, Aphelios could have farmed three extra ranged minions that he otherwise would have been pressured off by Varus & Pyke. If Cao warded, maybe he would have detected the enemy jungler's pathing and been able to defend top lane from a gank a few minutes later. Instead, Cao identified the best use of his time would be ganking mid lane and securing the kill onto Kassadin.

In short, League of Legends is a game about time allocation. Roaming is a tool in a support's arsenal that has historically been underutilized. By observing the gameplay from top ranked players such as Cao, we can learn when the appropriate time is to roam as a support, and how to implement this tool into our own play.