For the 80% of us who do not willingly throw ourselves in front of skillshots meant for others and knowingly embrace flame for the unreasonable expectations of our allies, entering champion select in a game of League of Legends and seeing a ward in the place of your champion portrait can be a harrowing sight. So who are the best autofill supports to play for all those who fail to weasel their way out of being the resident second-class citizen. The answer to your plight comes in the form of Poke Supports! Second-rate mid laners who are able to play aggressively or passively based upon the utility they bring to the team. The less utility they provide to the team, the more reliant they are on playing aggressively early in order to be effective. Played properly, low-utility, high-damage poke champions can snowball lanes out of control while higher-utility, lower-damage poke champions can sit back and keep their team topped up constantly. Picked into and against the right composition, these champions will make the enemy's journey to victory feel like an uphill trudge through a muddy trail in the midst of a hurricane. Slightly uncomfortable.

Higher Utility

Generally, the higher rank you go or the more you trust your team the more you can build support items like Redemption and Mikhael's Crucible. Conversely, if the trust factor is not there, put the carry pants on and transition into raw damage with items like Rabadon's and Void Staff. Simple-to-play champions who are able to decide between Mary Jane and Rambo at any point in the game include:

In lane, go for safe trades and poke while looking to scale up. Against engage supports, be weary of getting caught out and exploded until you have managed to get them low. The lower you get the engager, the harder it is for them to look for picks on you and your carry. In the extended fights over objectives mid and late game, playing a champion with heals and shields allows your team to generate an advantage the longer a fight goes on. Similarly, these champions provide your team with a mix of disengage, engage, peel, and damage depending on your pick. Sieging the enemy's towers also becomes a lot easier as your team can look to get in little trades every time the minion wave crashes into tower while you heal/shield them. You are at your strongest grouped with your team. Just be sure to stand behind your tanks.

Given these champion's inclination towards scaling it is generally better to avoid pairing higher utility poke supports with scaling late game hypercarries like Jinx, Vayne, Kog'Maw, and Twitch. Too much scaling is extremely easy to abuse in the early game at all ranks. Furthermore, it is of paramount importance that you ensure your team already has 1-2 tanks or bruisers in other lanes. Otherwise, your team will likely get bulldozed before they can enjoy the full benefits of your utility. While it is possible to play without tanks, this requires a lot more coordination, and good luck relying on that in solo queue. At the same time, ensuring that your team has 1-2 reliable sources of AD damage is almost extremely important given you will be bringing additional AP damage to the team and making Maokai mains froth at the mouth.

At the same time, you must not forget to look at the enemy team's picks. The low mobility and squishy nature of poke champions make them easy pickings for fed and mobile assassins. Additionally, hard engage wombo combo teams may be slightly terrifying to go up against given your desire is to have your team grouped up with you in order to heal and shield them.

Given the above weaknesses, you want to be particularly conscious of your positioning. Never be the first to face check and for the love of Faker do not go and farm a side lane. The playstyle is simple, lane with your laner and look to scale, once you reach 1-2 items, stick to your team and provide utility. That's it. Snowball mid game fights with your endless sustain and profit off of takedowns to amass more support or AP items. Rinse and repeat.

Higher Damage

For those who have opened themselves up to the hope of being carried and been disappointed time and time again; for the wearied guardians and the reluctant protectors who swore never to entrust another with the responsibility of carrying, I present a taste of power.

High AOE, AP champions who benefit more from Magic Penetration than building raw AP, these champions tend to feel extremely oppressive to lane against. Similarly to higher utility poke supports, these champions need to be slightly wary of engage supports but have an easier time poking them down and are thus less countered by them. Higher damage poke supports tend to be a lot more snowbally and are thrust into a set playstyle. You harass the enemies early and look to get kills, look to get picks with your high damage and CC, and position yourself in teamfights so you do not get exploded before getting a game changing CC or ultimate off. In this case, you take the role of mini mid laner seriously and become a second source of reliable AP damage. Unfortunately, once you get behind in lane, the rest of the game can be pretty painful for you as people will shrug off your damage and run you down. As always, your mobility tends to be zero so positioning and looking at your team composition before locking in one of these champions is still extremely important. Due to your damage and presence in lane, higher damage poke supports pair up well into late game scaling hypercarries.

My Pick for High Damage and High Utility

Despite weighing in more on the utility side of the scale, a feature that makes Zilean unique is his build. Regardless on whether you decide to run Glacial Augment or Aery, Zilean's penchant for going Hextech GLP and Twin Shadows combined with the effects of his E allow him to disengage from charging enemies or enable his team to engage upon enemies effortlessly. Without getting flanked, it is really hard for enemies to engage on his team whilst he is there. Furthermore, unlike other utility heavy poke supports, the rest of Zilean's build tends to be mostly made up of AP items because of magnificent 90% scaling on his Q and 200% on his R.

The cake upon which the icing of his utility and the cherry of being able to build AP rest upon, Zilean's R, can and does tend to be game changing. Creating a window of 5 seconds of utter confusion among enemies as they attempt to resist the urge to proc his R, what generally transpires is enemies growing impatient or mistiming their attack and activating the 3 second resurrection animation. Following which your ally respawns with 600/850/1100 (+200% AP) HP. It's really quite tilting. Especially since the target of your R tends to be the most fed player on your team who is putting out consistent damage before the R, throughout the 5 seconds, and after they revive with full HP. The above mentioned icing of stuns and slows also help peel people off your carry before the need to press R even arises.

The best high damage poke support to pick, Queen of URF, and the lustre at the end of the proverbial tunnel that is being autofilled support, Lux is my top candidate for best support. To start things off, Lux has great AP scaling on all her abilities which promotes the high AP build that we are going for. Additionally, she can provide an AOE 45% slow with her E, a 2-second skillshot root (that sometimes feels like a heat seeking missile) with her Q, a potentially team-wide shield that scales off 70% of her AP with her W, and a 24 second CD 500 AP line nuke that has 100% AP scaling with her R. She can make picks, punish enemy carries who stand too close to each other, assist in wave clearing, shield her entire team every 6 seconds with 40% CD, and one-shot squishies that get hit by her Q.

Lux even has the flexibility of being able to build a mix of support items like Ardent Censer, Mikael's Crucible, or even Redemption before investing in AP. Her high range make picking up a Mejai's Soulstealer a legitimate option so long as your positioning is good. For runes, Go into Resolve with Guardian, Shield Bash, and Revitalize in order to get the most out of your shields. In your secondary you can opt for whatever your heart desires. For abilities you can either opt to Max E or W first, R whenever you can, and Q last.

As always, the importance of good positioning can never be overstated. Good ward coverage will allow you to make picks on rotating enemies and may win you games. Assassins and champions with high mobility are to be feared, especially when your Q is on cooldown. If you feel unsafe, throw out your W first for the shield and to feign your enemies before trying to hit them with Q. Like hook champions, you lose a lot of threat and are more vulnerable when your Q is down. In straight up 5v5s let your tanks do the tanking, do not walk up and look for game changing bindings, chances are you are high on the enemy team's hit list and you will be eradicated on sight. Instead, peel for your carry with bindings and shield your entire team. At that point, throwing your E in to create slowing zones and aiming your R to hit as many targets as you can between your Q and W cooldowns is just showing off.

Finally, Lux can be picked with and into any champion, that being said there are better and worse situations to be in as a Lux. Where the grass is greener, good champions to work with include:

In contrast, enemy champions that may dampen your glow: