A lot of people hate being filled in as the team’s support thinking it’s a sentence to do little of value for the next 20 or so minutes. A bit of a silly assumption. When played right, the support can provide so much to their team and could easily be the primary reason they win the game. Winning games doesn’t always have to equate to a high kill count and flashy plays, after all! Support is a lot more than just “watch out for the ADC all game” like a lot of newer, less experienced players believe it to be. The full role of a support is being player that provides the team with information, buffs, peel and crowd control as needed to help control the map and the flow of the game in your favor. In this article, we’ll be going over a quick summary of each your duties and pointers on how to get them done.

Just a little evidence to show that I have a decent idea of what I'm doing in the role. You can trust me!

Laning Phase: Protect the Carry

The first thing to talk about is what you’d think about when you get assigned support in the first place: going to bot lane with the ADC and making sure they get through laning phase as with the most CS and KDA as possible. This sounds like a no-brainer, but there’s more to that goal than just sitting in the lane mindlessly poking when you get chances to. Rather, to control the flow of the lane, you should be warding the lane to avoid being ganked, harassing the enemy to apply pressure, and generally making it so your carry has a good situation to farm minions and get strong as soon as possible. In the meantime, you yourself are going to building up your support starting item. This nifty item gives both extra gold and turns into warding devices when fully stacked on their passives, giving you naturally the most wards out of everyone else on the team. This is extremely important, as it lets you have more wards to place vision around for free; build it up as soon as you can!

During laning phase (or early game in general) your sphere of influence is mostly down to your lane, the bottom-side river, and the dragon pit. The best way to make the most out of that influence is to maintain your control by placing wards to provide vision for your team while pinging anything you notice worth noting (enemy member locations, blown summoner spells, if a character is close to a power spike, etc.). Don’t be afraid to ping information should you notice it on your mini map.

For example: if you spot the enemy jungler near dragon, or the enemy support just disappearing from the lane and he didn’t die, immediately ping it out so everyone knows what’s going on and isn’t caught off-guard. Along with that, never pause to speak up if you think your carry is being too passive or aggressive for the situation at hand; you’re in the lane as well, you don’t want to risk handing over two kills from doing something careless! Lastly, should something unfortunate happen, don’t be afraid to make compromises if it’ll be better than the worst thing to happen. If you must take a death to avoid giving bounty gold to the enemy or leaving your teammate to their death while you escape (especially if it’s their misplay), don’t hesitate to do so if it means the enemy gets less gold out of it in the end.

Warding: Eyes Open on the Rift

This map of the bottom area of Summoner's Rift is your general area of influence from early-mid game. The dots represents good warding spots colored on how dangerous each spot generally is, with blue being pretty safe as it's in the lane, yellow being a bit riskier as it could lead to retaliation, as typically these can be seen as aggressive warding if you're pushing past river to do so, and red being dangerous as they are typically deep warding spots.

Vision control are often ignored a lot by a great number of players on the Rift, usually because they think aren’t important enough to warrant the placement or just forgetting about it. I can assure you right now however, that warding is a big reason for most of my victories in League. Warding is your best means of knowing just what is happening in that fog of war on the mini-map, and for that alone it is very important. As support, one of your expectations is to contribute to vision control. Vision control is both placing wards in locations that gives useful information to you and your team as well as destroying enemy wards, denying vision. Another thing a lot of people ignore or forget about is making use of the Scryer's Bloom. Making use out of them when you come across them eases the expense of using your trinkets or simply denying their use from the enemy. This is especially smart to do if you want to make absolutely sure no one sees something you don't want them to, such as sneaking an objective or a teammate that's roaming.

Control wards are a major factor to vision control. Everyone who plays League should always consider buying one at almost any point of the game; it's that important! A great habit to do as support (Or any role, but support is the best role to practice this) is to never leave base without buying one control ward if you have the slot open as well as the gold. For a mere 75 gold, you get an item that both permanently provides vision until it's destroyed or moved elsewhere while disrupting all wards around it. That means you could play it on objectives and deny say a jungler from seeing the dragon’s HP to attempt a steal. 75 gold isn’t going to twist your arm.

In lane, these are good warding spots you can pull off while staying in close proximity to the farm: the brush in the river, the brush in the lane (always put it closer to your side of the map so you can force the enemy to step closer if they want to get rid of it, risking getting caught out), and small patches of jungle brush by each outer turret of the lane. There’s also always the mouth of the dragon pit, or just barely inside it; allowing you to see enemies passing through that area, trying to be sneaky with the objective.

Deep wards (wards going into the enemy territory) are more dangerous to attempt as you can easily get caught and punished if you’re careless about it, but the insight you get on what the enemy is doing on their side of the field is a huge perk. I’m a fan of putting my deep wards near the Raptor or Red camp if I’m on the red side of the map, while placing a ward in the between Gromp and Blue camp if I’m blue team (Check the image above for a visual on each warding spot represented in red!). There is also always the brush in the river, which is a great spot to see if someone is cutting through the river to get somewhere. These placements are extremely good for getting a peek of what the jungler is doing and where he or when the mid laner is running toward your lane. You can’t be surprised by a gank if you see it coming before they even know they’re spotted, right? Plus, your jungler will greatly appreciate the help with his job. Try it sometime!

Roaming: When is It a Good Idea?

Now we come to something a lot of players are either far too eager to do or too afraid to try out. A roam, to put simply, is when a laner decides they’re time is better used elsewhere and just up and leave to take care of something. For a support, this usually means placing deep wards, helping their jungler clear or invade, and providing a gank for mid or even top! Roaming as a support has a lot of guidelines about doing so without just dying a stupid death or causing your ADC to be jeopardized. You don’t want to be called a troll because you ran into a 4/0 Rek ‘Sai while trying to gank mid in an obvious fashion, without knowing where she was on the map. To even consider performing a roam in the first place, consider a few things first that answer the big question: Is the roam a good idea to begin with?

Is my ADC going to be okay on their own until I get back? The easiest way to make sure they’ll be fine until you’re back by their side is to simply wait until they recall back to base. The chances of them being killed on their way back to lane is extremely low, and most likely by the time they’re farming again in lane, you are on your way back from base to lane after the roam. However, you can still go if you trust that your ADC will be fine until you come back usually when one of the enemy laners are away (or dead, potato, patato) or your carry is already ahead. Just make sure to mention you’re heading elsewhere with a ping, so they know not to start something outnumbered.

Can I get anything important done outside of the bottom lane? There's no reason to leave the lane if you have no idea what you could do if you started roaming in the first place, is there? You can either gank another lane, set objective control, or establish jungle vision as support. If you can see that the enemy laner is overextending and ripe for punishment, there's a gank opportunity. If you notice that the enemy jungler is topside while your jungler is clearing camps near you, you could always ping dragon and place a control ward in the pit; ensuring no one see the dragon anymore and attempt to steal it.

Where is the enemy team right now? This is yet another reason why vision is so important to the game. If your team has been warding, you can just find the answer on your minimap as the game goes on. If you know for a fact that the enemy jungler was last seen top side, the enemy bot lane went back to base or even both, a roam is a pretty good idea seeing as there’s no one there to spot you and punish you for it. If you have no idea where the enemy champions could be, then that’s a dangerous game to play roaming straight into unknown territory. Walking into the jungle or bushes blind is a very easy way to make yourself an easy target. The enemy could be right there when you decide to walk into the river! Always practice caution when heading into unknown turf!

A good example of objective control by sneaking Infernal Drake under the enemy's nose. Note the control ward Yuumi placed in the pit, so the enemy team couldn't see it long enough to know how close to death it was to attempt a steal.

If all looks good, then great! It’s a decent time to roam into the jungle. Always be quick about what you intend to do during this time. No wandering around or just looking for trouble. If you wanted to plant a ward somewhere, do it and get out of dodge with a recall in a bush (preferably one you know isn’t warded) or under a tower. The longer you waste time, the more you make yourself a target and less experience and gold you could be making back in lane.

General Practices to keep in Mind

There’s still a few more things you should keep in mind if you want to improve on being a support. For starters, remember that you are, well, the support. Not just for bottom laner, but for your entire team. If you notice someone in trouble that you can reach in time to make a difference, always try and help. If your jungler gets attacked in lane, or is heading for an objective that coming up soon, you could always ping to your ADC that you’ll be right back and lend a hand rather than just sit there in lane while your jungler dies from the enemy swarming him. Once laning phase is over, you aren’t sticking to just the ADC anymore. Rather, anyone who is a potential carry, you should be protecting. If they’re doing damage in a teamfight and are in trouble, you should be making sure they stay that way to finish that fight; don’t just stick to one person, especially if nothing’s attacking them that they can’t handle alone.

The other important note about support is that you’re not a carry. Supports don’t need the extra gold from kills, nor do they usually have the stats or kit to go seeking them out a lot anyway. Unless you happen to be playing Pyke where his ultimate executes and shares the gold of kills, never actively seek or steal kills. The carries of your games should be getting the bulk of the gold and you’ll have plenty of gold to work with from your support item and assist gold.

Lastly, always try to communicate. Be it strategy, information or just being friendly. Any role makes use of this, but as a support, I feel being capable of opening communications goes a long way in this team game. Being shy or quiet when you have an idea what to do doesn’t help anyone, including yourself. Just try not to rude about it, okay?

With all these factors under your belt, support can become much more of a thoughtful and fulfilling experience than a lot of people take for granted. Good luck on the Rift and guide your team to victory!