So you’re an ADC or Support player and you’ve been working on your synergy usingSerbianSausage’s article from earlier in the month, and know all about magical ADCs from Melodica256’s article. Where do you go next? Well, another important factor in being a successful duo lane team is knowing which support and ADC gods work well together. That’s what we are going to be looking at today.

SerbianSausage gave us two good examples in his article of a good aggressive duo lane pairing, Ares and Skadi, and a good passive lane pairing, Khepri and Xbalanque. Let’s first take a look at that aggressive pairing and how you should go about playing such a combination of Gods.

Ares is a very aggressive support option for three good reasons. The first being that his ‘Searing Flesh’ ability knocks back enemy minions to stack them up for easy and fast clearing. The second being that he has very high damage output. The final reason is his relative lack of crowd control (CC) for a Guardian, having only a cripple on his ‘Shackles’ and the pull on his ultimate ‘No Escape’. This means that if the ADC is being harassed or ganked, there is very little Ares can do to peel for the ADC outside of dealing damage. All three of these qualities make Ares a good choice for an aggressive lane support God, since the objective of playing an aggressive lane is to out clear your lane opponents and push the wave into tower, or to be able to pick off and secure kills on the enemy team if they don’t retreat further back down their lane.

Generally, the qualities that you are looking for in an aggressive support are high damage, good clear, and push potential. Some other good supports for an aggressive lane are: Ymir, Bacchus, Guan Yu, and Terra. All of these Gods either have good clear, lane control, good damage, or excellent set up ability for your hunter.

Skadi is a God who excels at putting pressure on the enemy team in the laning phase. There are numerous reasons why she makes a good aggressive ADC. One of these is the ease at which she clears lane. Her ability ‘Piercing Cold’ is a very good wave clearing ability and almost clears the entire wave at rank 3. This lets Skadi out-clear many ADCs and allows her to apply lane pressure. Next is her relatively high amount of CC for a hunter. She has access to a slow, a root and the slide from her ‘Permafrost’. All three forms of CC make it much easier for her to attack other Gods and secure the kill on them, which is exactly what you want to do in an aggressive duo lane.

So looking towards what other hunters you can play in this role, you would need a god that has good clear, high early damage, and CC to help secure kills. Along with Skadi, some other aggressive ADCs are Neith, Anhur, and Apollo. These gods all have good clear, a good form of CC to help get kills and have high early damage.

Now that we’ve looked at what gods make a good aggressive lane, let’s look at how you should play this lane. The objective of playing an aggressive lane is to out-push and out-clear your opponents using your good early clear. This should let you get minions into tower and make them lose out on some gold and exp. If you have chosen your Gods wisely you should be able to easily out-clear your opponents, and once you have you need to focus on poking out the enemy players. If you can get them to use their relics or their potions early on, then it should be a lot easier to secure a kill in the future. If you are able to deny the opposing lane enough gold and exp, and secure a few kills then you should be able to snowball off of that and dominate the lane from then on.

There are some things to watch out for if you are playing an aggressive lane. Due to the nature of this playstyle, it is very easy to get ganked. Because of this, make sure that you have wards active when you are pushing up the lane. This is especially important once players start reaching level 5. Another problem is if the game goes on for a long time. The problem with a lot of the aggressive ADCs is that they lack the late game carry potential that other ADCs have. Because of this it is important to build as much of a lead as you can in the early game.

Moving on from an aggressive lane, let’s look at SerbianSausage’s more passive lane pairing of Xbalanque and Khepri.

Khepri is the perfect example of a traditional support God. His kit is almost entirely based around helping other gods by peeling for them, and protecting them. He has 2 very good forms of CC that help him protect his ADC. The first being the pull and silence on ‘Abduct’ and the second being the area of effect (AoE) root on ‘Solar Flare’. Both of these abilities are great at helping to stop the enemy team from harassing your ADC and help Khepri to provide great protection for his partner. His second ability ‘Rising Dawn’ is also an excellent ability to help your ADC when a fight breaks out in lane. This is because it provides 3 seconds of % damage reduction; 10% at rank one rising to 30% at max rank. This gives your ADC a tremendous advantage over their opponent and will often be the difference in whether they survive or not. Finally, Khepri’s ultimate, ‘Scarab’s Blessing’ is the classic traditional support ultimate. Not only does it cleanse the target ally of all CC, and give increased movement speed and slow immunity, it also revives the affected ally if they were to die while under its effect. This ability is excellent for supporting a late game hunter who is liable to be ganked often during the early game.

To generalise, the qualities you are looking for in a passive lane support character are high CC, good peel, and the ability to protect your hunter. Other good passive support gods are Geb, Kumbhakarna, and Athena. These Gods all have a lot of CC built into their kits and are able to provide protection for their ADC using their abilities.

Moving onto Xbalanque now, and he is a traditional hunter in the sense that he is very late-game focused. The reason he is late game focused is because he is a basic attack oriented God, meaning most of his damage comes from his basic attacks rather than his abilities. Because of this he is heavily reliant on getting his items online to perform at his highest potential. This makes him a perfect god to play in a passive duo lane. There are a few other qualities that make Xbalanque a great passive lane ADC, and these are his passive, the steroid on his ‘Branching Bola’, the CC immune dash on ‘Rising Jaguar’, and his ultimate ‘Darkest of Nights’. First his passive. Xbalanque gains 5 physical power per enemy god killed, up to 6 stacks. This means that he can gain up to 30 power from this passive which translates excellently into the late game given that his basic attacks have 100% scaling.

Next his ‘Branching Bola’ ability adds extra damage on to his basic attacks, from 10 damage at level 1 to 50 damage at level 5. It also allows the bolas to split into 2 extra projectiles once it hits to deal extra damage to targets beyond the first one hit. This ability is excellent as an extra 50 damage per basic attack is a large amount, and that is before you even take items into account. This ability also translates excellently into the late game. Third we have his ‘Rising Jaguar’ ability. This ability gives Xbalanque a great form of escape, which will help him survive the early game, and keep him safe during the laning phase. One weakness from some late game ADCs is their lack of mobility, and thus are easy to shut down early. ‘Rising Jaguar’ gives Xbalanque an excellent tool to disengage from a fight and escape any CC that could potentially cause death.

Finally we have his ultimate, ‘Darkest of Nights’. This ability is a global ability that effects all enemies on the map by obscuring their vision and stunning them if they continue to move throughout. This ability is an excellent tool to help Xbalanque survive any ganks that he may get and is a great get out of jail free card to use if you get panicked. Since it is global means you can also be helpful for your team even in the early stages of the game when you might get pushed under tower by a more aggressive lane.

So to summarize what you should be looking for in a passive ADC, you want high late game damage, a steroid to help amplify basic attack damage, and some form of escape or protection. Some other good gods for a passive duo lane are Freya, Rama, and Artemis. These gods are all very late game focused and can carry a game when they get to that stage. They also all have a steroid and their basic attacks are their main way of dealing damage.

Let's look at how to play a passive lane. The objective of playing a passive duo lane is to enable your hunter to reach the late game where they will come online. In order to do this, you need to play safe in order for you to not be shut down early on. Some characters, like Artemis and Freya, have poor early clear and little to no escape; so for them you will need to make sure you don’t push up the lane too far and focus on farming the minions near your tower line.

Other characters, like Rama, are a little safer, as he has a decent escape and slightly better clear. However you still need to stay safe during the early game as you are still very liable to get ganked by the enemy jungler. If you are against an aggressive lane it is likely that you will get pushed under tower and be forced to farm the wave there. This can be an issue if you don’t farm effectively. Focus on clearing the archer minions first as this will minimise gold lost to tower. Once you get to the mid game it’s likely that the support will need to start roaming to help the team. This gives the ADC a chance to solo farm and regain any exp that they might have lost in the early game.

Beware when playing a passive lane that you don’t get too far behind. If you are against an aggressive lane they might try to freeze the lane against you, just like what happened in the SPL match where SoaR, playing a Terra/Jing Wei duo lane, kept the opposing Freya on Enemy from hitting level 5 until 6 minutes. If this happens you will need to get some help from the jungle and call for some ganks to help alleviate the pressure in that lane.

Hopefully I have helped you guys learn what makes a good aggressive and a good passive duo lane, now go out there and show everyone what you’ve learned!

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