Supporting your team can be difficult if you enter Summoner's Rift unprepared. It is important to know the ins and outs of your role if you plan on securing victory for you and your allies, and there a few tips and tricks that can help you do just that.

Choosing Your Champion

The first thing you will need to do before you can support your team is to choose which champion you will be using. There are multiple champions and multiple play styles to choose from, and it is a good idea to master more than one. However, when starting out in League of Legends, it is perfectly okay to just have a small handful of champions at your disposal. Either way, you want to figure out what sort of play style suits you best when choosing a champion to support with. Do you want to grab ahold of your enemies and bring them closer to you and your teammates? Or, maybe you want to stand in the front and tank all the damage to protect your allies. Alternatively, you can always stay back and assist your allies with shields, heals, and other buffs with a more enchanter based champion.

Other than choosing a champion that best suits you, you will also need to know what to choose depending on what your enemies lock in, or what your team needs you to pick up. If the enemy chooses something like Blitzcrank or Lux, locking in Morgana can help you block their oppressive crowd control. In this scenario, you can also choose other tank/engage champions to help counter their abilities.

When you are the first pick, (or before the enemy support in general), it can be hard to decide what champion to choose, since you have no idea what your enemy is going to go. In this case, enchanters like Morgana, Seraphine, and Lulu, or tanks like Rakan, Thresh, and Leona do not have too many hard counters, and work well with most team compositions. Anyone who can protect your team are good options against heavy engagers, as well as assassins who aim for the backline, like Talon, Kha'zix, and Zed. All in all, it is a good idea to try and master as many different champions as you can, and not only different champions, but different play styles. You may only like to play a certain play style, but picking up multiple champions will help give you a range of skill that can be used to gain an edge on your enemies, even if you do not enjoy playing these extra champions. Expanding your champion pool and mastering it are one of the first steps you should make in improving your support game play.

Warding and Vision Control

Placing wards and clearing wards is one of the main tasks you will have as a support, so mastering it is just as important as mastering your champion. Vision can be the difference between a successful teamfight, gank, or objective kill, and should be monitored throughout the course of the entire game. Keep in mind that the areas in which you need to focus on will change as the game goes on, so always keep a look out for where your enemy may be using the shadows to their advantage.

Whether you are winning your lane or not, always ensure that your vision is kept up with, as the enemy jungler can easily punish you for being overextended, or can rotate down and dive you under the turret when you are low. The river and the entrance to the enemy jungle are going to be your main points to keep vision control of at the start of the laning phase. Wards in the river can catch the jungler or the midlaner when they try to rotate down and gank the lane, while wards in the entrances of the enemy's jungle can catch the jungler as they finish camps and make their way down to your lane.

However, keep in mind that your enemy will try to keep vision in these areas as well, so you will want to use Control Wards as well as Oracle Lens to shut down their vision so that your jungler can come down and gank for you. Preventing your enemy from having vision is just as important as having vision for your own team, whether it is around the botlane, or around important objectives. Always have a Control Ward in your inventory to use on these objectives, or to use to help clear your lane bushes of wards that would otherwise spot you out.

When using Oracle's Lens, prioritize on clearing regular wards before clearing Control Wards, so your Lens does not expire before you can clear all the invisible wards. Be careful when placing and clearing vision in enemy territory, as it could lead to the enemy showing up to stop you, and you do not want to give them an easy kill. Be sure to use the Scryer's Bloom to further clear the vision around objectives, especially if you do not have Oracle's Lens or a Control Ward available. Using the Scryer's Bloom can also prevent your enemy from being able to use it to their advantage. Destroying or using Blast Cones can also keep your enemy from gaining quick access to objectives or ganking a lane.

As the game goes on, you will want to spread your vision control far and wide, and constantly move your wards to wherever your team needs to prioritize. This is why it is important to always keep at least one Control Ward handy with you, and to use Oracle Lens whenever possible. Keep in mind that your allies may not be paying attention to vision as dutifully as you are, and it may very well fall into your hands alone to keep up with the warding. Another thing to note is that warding can be dangerous, especially since you are usually entering enemy territory to place them.

You will want to either ward with another teammate, or use your abilities on bushes before moving too close to them, giving you a heads up if an enemy is waiting there to ambush you. Using Oracle Lens can give you another quick glimpse if someone is hiding but requires a closer distance than abilities like Lux's E, so it can still be dangerous. When clearing wards, it is a good idea to auto attack, then move your position, then repeat until the ward is destroyed. This is an important habit to pick up since it makes your movements more unpredictable, making it harder for the enemy to use abilities on you from places you cannot see. The same goes for Control Wards, however, they require extra caution, since they take longer to destroy, leaving you exposed for a longer period of time.

Your Role in the Game

Even though you are called the support, it may be hard to realize what your role in the game actually is. This role varies depending on what champion you are playing, what champions your allies are playing, and finally, what champions your enemies are playing. Other things that can change this is your advantage (or disadvantage) in the game, where you are on the map, and what objective you are fighting over. This may seem overwhelming at first, but you will get the hand of it the more games you play. Basically, you will want to help your team in any way possible, whether it means protecting your carry, engaging on the enemy carry, or simply keeping your allies buffed and alive during the fight. Another thing to note is that you are not responsible for the actions your allies take, because even if you are the best support in the world, you will still have to rely on your team mates to make safe and smart decisions.

While you can be a very important member of the team, you still cannot control the outcome of the game in its entirety, so be sure to keep this in mind whenever you play League of Legends. Since LoL is a team game, it truly requires everyone to play as a team, and you usually cannot singlehandedly secure the victory. With this said, as a support your role is to do whatever you can to keep your team together and strong, since you are only as strong as your weakest link. If an ally is struggling more than the others, you can rotate up to them and help give them a gank. You can even communicate this with the rest of your team to help organize a plan to assist your ally and keep them encouraged. Communicating through pings or quick words can help keep your team focused and on the same page as you so that you can all come together and defeat the enemy team.

By using information spotted on the map, you can use pings to communicate dangerous situations or to strategize a quick engage

Basically, as a support you are the glue that holds the team together, whether it be through your engages and heals during teamfights or your encouraging words and decisive strategies. You are not confined to the bot lane, either, since your allies may need your assistance with a gank or an objective. An easy habit to pick up in this case is to take quick looks around the map during the laning phase to gather information on what is happening in other lanes. This is easier for a support to follow through with since they usually have more time in between action than solo lanes do. Keeping track of the map is key to helping your allies wherever you may be needed, whether it is a quick danger ping or a rotate up to gank.

To Summarize

Supporting your team is a very important role and can consist of many different tasks. Whether it is through healing, engaging, warding, or organizing a strategy, supports are key to keeping the team headed in the right direction. Mastering different ways to support your team is the best way to excel in League in Legends and can help you secure more and more victories.