Support is often seen as one of the roles that other players can pick up without much issue. However, the best Supports have a wide range of technical knowledge that they apply effectively around the map, securing advantages for their team in small yet effective ways. Some of this Support knowledge comes from knowing the nuances of items, champions, and game states to win the game. We sit down with Jonah “Isles” Rosario to discuss five different tricks and advice for improving as a Support player.

1. Scoreboard Vision Tracking

Tracking someone on the scoreboard is a more niche trick that not many Supports do but can come in handy in scenarios where you want to have an idea where the enemy placed vision.

Isles: “If you see someone showing around vision, let's say the enemy Support shows around mid lane, and you hold tab, you'll see how many wards they have, right? If they go downwards for a second, then come back to mid lane and they have one less ward on the scoreboard then they had before, you can kind of track where they put their wards.”

To take advantage of this trick, you want to simply watch the leaderboard and the map. If you see the enemy Support leaving to roam, you can generally guess that they’ll be dropping wards along the way. But with this trick, you’ll know exactly if they dropped a ward or not simply by checking their items. It is something that you’ll have to check repeatedly while the enemy Support goes in and out of vision to track.

Keep in mind that there are Supports who are aware of this trick.

Isles: “There can be a small nuance to this, like sometimes (laughs)… I sometimes walk up to a bush and click S as if I've placed a ward inside, and I've seen people all the time just randomly sweeping thinking I've placed a ward. But obviously a good player can just check if you've put a ward down by seeing the scoreboard to see if you've placed a ward, it's a great way to identify where you should be sweeping.”

Now while your opponent may not be using the scoreboard trick for you to try faking like Isles, you can always take into account how players play around their vision. Simply appearing in areas will make players with sweepers want to sweep in the area, even if you did not drop any ward. You can adjust your warding habits to take this into account, considering when your opponent is most likely watching where you disappear onto the map. In general, a strong vision game is not only about lighting up the map for your team, but understanding the weaknesses in how your opponent tries to create their own vision and take out yours.

2. Mikael’s Blessing Cleanse Window

Isles: "Unlike Cleanse or QSS, Mikael’s has a cleanse period, rather than just cleansing one particular instance, so if you Mikael’s something preemptively right before it hits you, it will still cleanse the ability. That's because it has a duration where the cleanse is active rather than one specific instance. It's kind of forgiving, that's a trick you can do if you're about to get hit by an Ashe ult and cleanse the stun with Mikael’s before it hits.”

Mikaels is a long-lasting item in League of Legends, and more than likely is one of those items that you’ll never really see go away, much like Zhonya’s, Infinity Edge, and other iconic items. The cleanse window for Mikaels is approximately .2 seconds, and in an active buff during that window. You can cleanse any of the crowd control that hits if you time it correctly, which in a way is as if you had a window where you were immune to crowd control.

It also looks really cool when you do it, because the timing of crowd control windows always feels really tight. You generally want to use this trick as much as you can to mitigate how long your target (or yourself) is locked down, but keep in mind that this can be situational. In cases where your opponent may quickly use another crowd control ability in anticipation of Mikaels, the .2 window is very easy to bypass.

Also keep in mind general usages for Mikaels. It at the worst is a small heal that might be handy, which can also proc any of your effects that need a heal. In some odd scenarios, you may use it to activate Ardent Censer or Staff of Flowing Water.

3. What should Support players be doing more of?

Isles: “I think navigating vision and spending as much time in the fog of war that you can is just so important in league. Really good Supports know how to both manage moving around the map and getting experience, that's what makes them excel. It's kind of all down to your own discretion, and it takes experience and knowledge to understand your limits. It can become very nuanced, the more variables you're able to understand, particularly in high elo.”

Isles lists the following as some general guidelines.

Understand what matchups need the most attention from you and your team

You want to be able to identify what will give your team the best advantage through understanding who needs your assistance the most. As a Support, you are not only restricted to the bottom lane but can pressure other parts of the map. For example, if you know your carry is a fairly safe Champion that is not likely to be dove by the enemy team and have information on where the enemy jungler is, you can use that information to pressure top side or objectives on the map.

Understand how Champions interact with one another and their strengths in the game state

Understanding Champion interactions is more general advice, but is key to knowing the limits of you, your teammates, and what the opponent can do. You can study laning matchups across lanes, understand jungle pathing to know where your teammate and your opponent are most likely to path, and recognize situations where you can win or when you need to fall back. Much of this will come from simply playing the game, but top players take advantage of their knowledge to position themselves in favourable situations.

As an example, players know that understanding the opponent’s jungle pathing will make it easier for you to know when to play safely and what you can take safely. However, knowing where your own jungler is likely to path can let you set up lanes and paths in a way that lets you optimize your chances of succeeding in ganks and having numbers around important objectives.

Managing your time around the map wisely

Wards in seemingly weaker places can often last longer than common ones yet grant the information that you want to play the map accordingly.

Going back to the quote from Isles’ about navigating vision and time in the fog of war, you want to be in the mindset of constantly making decisions to snowball and win the game. Understand when you have free time to roam and how much time you have to take advantage of the map before your opponent can react and consider what you’re doing with the time.

Leverage your advantages

Most players in modern League across ranks will tend to ping the opponent’s summoner spells, particularly their Flash cooldown. At the same time, consider how many times where someone on your team has pinged that the opponent has no Flash, but nothing has come of it before they regain their Flash. Isles mentions that leveraging Flash advantages is crazy important, especially if the Champions in question are dependent on their Flashes to engage or survive ganks.

Also consider number advantages. Often, a singular extra Champion mixed into the fight is more than enough to swing the advantage in your favour. One extra Champion is an extra number that potentially can lock down Champions together with your teammates for enough time to kill them, and open up opportunities for winning skirmishes and taking objectives.

4. Managing your Free Time

Isles: “What I recommend people when they ask me how to get better at Support, when it comes to like outside of laning phase, it's just managing how you use your free time. If I was watching someone's games, or telling them to watch their games, I would tell them to look at all the time they have free time, and how they used it. How they pressure other lanes, what they offer, how they use their wards, this type of thing. If you maximize the most out of your free time, then you'll usually be doing something right, because Supports typically get quite a lot [of free time].”

We’ve mentioned managing your time wisely, but perhaps the most important thing to take from Isles’ advice is understanding what you need to do with the time you find yourself lost on the map. A Support player might find themselves roaming to ward, and they’ll gank the middle lane because it’s the closest without thinking too much about it. In a sense, they coin flip whether their gank will work. But a good Support player wants to analyze their own pathing in the middle of the game to position themselves in a place where you believe you can guarantee a useful impact. This can come from changing your pathing outside of normal warding areas, recalling out of vision to have your opponent unable to know where you’ll go. Your free time is not necessarily always the quickest and most efficient, but what kind of impact you’ll create.

Perhaps you might consider the times where you spend a long amount of time in odd parts of the map. To most players, it might seem inefficient because you are seemingly doing ‘nothing’, but from another lens, if your opponent is not aware of where you are on the map, they’ll play according to the lack of information they have. That time can be placing wards in places that give you the necessary information to know how you want to play the map, even if the ward is deep in the enemy jungle and takes time to reach. At the same time, consider when doing ‘nothing’ is actually doing nothing, and see what you could have been doing if nothing was seemingly achieved. You can analyze your replays where you’ve roamed the map to see when your opponent has lost track of your location, and see if they’ve changed how they play their lanes.

You want to be balancing what you are doing on the map, focusing not on what you can potentially achieve immediately, but if what you are doing is leading towards creating advantages for your team.

5. Sweepers at Level 1

Sweepers have two charges, and disable their vision-granting effect temporarily. Take advantage of this in lane to deny your opponent opportunities to damage you.

Isles: “I think one thing low elo Supports might not realize is how to use sweeper in the laning phase. One thing that changed in the past is that sweeper has two charges instead of one. If you start with a sweeper, you can sweep both wards in laning phase, [especially] if you play against a Champion like Sona which is really popular in NA. But if you sweep her ward in the bush right, she can't use Q on you, and even if the enemy duo has two wards, you can sweep both wards with both charges early game. This will help you negate damage, deny vision, and allow you to take less damage in lane, which can help you lead into a snowball effect. I think low elo Supports don't use sweeper very well, and that's one very basic use of it.”

Think back to how many games you may have simply taken your Stealth Ward as your starting option. It often is not the wrong thing, especially as you lack vision in the early game, other players likely are not bringing sweeper, and you need something to cover for the lack of vision before you get access to your Support item wards. However, sweeper is one of those more aggressive starts that enable a lot of little openings in the laning phase that you do not usually get access to. It is something that you may want to consider depending on what kind of matchup you are facing, and when you are playing Champions who benefit from it.

When should I take sweeper level 1 instead of a ward level 1?

Isles: “It depends, sweeper is good to start with if you can push lane and getting vision denial is helpful early game. Against Sona for example, Sona is a traditionally weak laner, if you can push and have sweeper, it allows you to roam more and create more engage angles by denying vision, but if you feel like you're going to get ganked more easily, it might be better to take a ward, or if you're playing a ranged matchup it makes sense to take the more traditional with ward start. I do think sweeper is undertaken as a starting thing in low elo.”

For example, consider Champions who benefit significantly from controlling the bush. Pantheon Support in particular relies on bushes to creep closer to the opponent for his Shield Vault stun. Most opponents in this matchup will ward the bush preemptively to make sure they can react and threaten Pantheon, but if you black out their vision in the bush, you have a significant advantage.

For the suggestion from Isles, this applies a lot to ranged poke that relies on vision for targeting. Consider Lulu, who often pokes with her Help, Pix! (Shield/Poke damage) into Glitterlance (Her main damaging ability), guaranteeing the hit. Denying vision with a sweeper denies her that guaranteed hit without you having to pop in vision.

While we have listed options above, also consider the engage/roaming angles Isles suggests. Oftentimes, the early game vision is severely lacking even in the higher ranks. This is due to the lack of access to wards and the purchasable vision wards in the early game, prime time to exploit all the open angles where the opponent cannot cover. You can use sweepers to not only deny the vision access, but inform you if your opponent knows that your roam is coming. Take advantage of this to make the most of your time when you roam, allowing you to make more successful ganks and force your opponent to play with less information.

Consider the impact of what usually is one sweeper from your jungler, and then consider having two which often can cover both bases of where your opponent can ward around the middle lane. A mid laner will only have access to at most four wards (a vision ward, trinket ward, and maybe their jungler pitching both), but realistically they probably only have one ward placed because they want money for their items especially early. While this may be a more coordinated effort, you can use sweeper on one side, confirm if they have vision on there, and retreat back to give your opponent a sense of safety. They may think that you’ve retreated because you got caught on vision, but it also opens up an angle for your team to gank on another side of the lane where you know they are likely lacking in vision.

Conclusion

Isles: “A lot of this stuff is just more technical, it's something that separates an ok Support from a really good one, you know? Not necessarily something that will get you out of low elo into high elo. There is a lot more laning and fundamental stuff that would be more important, I suppose.”

We can conclude our list of Support tricks with understanding that at the end of the day, there are many different factors to improving as a Support. The smartest Support players may struggle with laning matchups, the most mechanically skilled might often find themselves doing little with their advantages. However, you can use the advice given by Isles as a branching point to building your way to improving and knowing what high level Supports do to improve at their game.

Thanks to Isles for his advice in tricks for the Support role. If you would like to hear more of Isles, follow him at:

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