Solo queue is a wild place, and oftentimes you’ll be thrown curveballs and changeups that you may have no idea how to handle. And if you’re a player that likes to hard commit to one Champion and one-trick, that can sometimes be your disadvantage. So, today I’m here to walk you through as to why I believe every Support should have a host of diverse picks to pull out for climbing ranked!

And as an added bonus, I’ll throw in some picks based on skill level that you can employ to center yourself a bit more easily if you’re struggling with establishing a consistent pool of Champions!

Why it’s good to have a diverse pool

You’re never going to know what comps flesh out in Solo Queue, and if you’re a one-trick, sometimes your Champion might be the most glove-like fit for every situation that gets presented to you.

So, it’s always best to be able to flex off your main into a pick that might make your team composition click. And since, oftentimes, the playmaking and juice for big fights comes from Support, it’s best to adapt your pick to suit what your team is lacking.

How many Champions should be in your pool?

Three to five is the magic number. Typically you’d like one Champion that you feel comfortable blind picking should you ever be first pick, another Champion that counters that style of play, and then another that counters the counter. Essentially try and create a paper-rock-scissor paradigm with three Champions of which you can rotate freely depending on the situation at hand.

When expanding out to 5 Champions, you can double down on a particular style from the primary three that appeals to you. So, if you enjoy the play patterns of Blitzcrank, you can double down on this style with Nautilus, for example. But hard limit yourself. Practicing beyond your five will reduce muscle memory on your core and you will perform comparatively worse should you have kept to your main rotation.

With that said, what Champions should you focus on?

Naturally, I’ll lead with ‘Play whatever you enjoy’. But, there are Champions that are more fit to abuse or promote growth across all ELOs. We’ll start off our first list of suggestions for you players that are Iron through Silver!

Iron to Silver: Alistar - Zyra - Sona

We keep our focus small here. At these ranks, most players have yet to really grasp the game’s core fundamentals, and it’s important to put them on Supports that are excellent at teaching those fundamentals.

Alistar - teaches lessons on proper positioning AND promotes an understanding of when and how to engage based on cooldowns. His all-in nature also forces players to focus on health and mana and consider these factors into their engage. And though his combo can be a little slippery at start, Riot’s made it easier over the years and if you can get Alistar’s timing down you’re well on your way to improvement.

Zyra - punishes positioning mistakes made by her enemies with massive damage. Though she supplies excellent disengage for fights, understanding how to use her ult, root, and slows for those situations is a bit advanced for these early ranks. With her ample damage though, she more than gears players into the mindset of hunting for slip-ups and misplays.

Sona - I’ll preface that I’m extremely biased here as a Sona main, regardless though. She’s easier Seraphine (Not like Sera is particularly hard, but everyone needs an entry point, right?) Sona’s auras and defensive positioning reward the lessons learned through scaling and passive play. She also rewards proper spacing and combo focus in fights since each of her power chords offers a unique fight advantage. I always suggest Sona for newer aspiring Supports to try. We always need more Sona players out there on the Rift.

Gold through Platinum: Nautilus - Seraphine - Swain

We up the stakes at this ELO. Gold through Plat is where players have really begun to refine their mechanics and have started to grasp a bare bones understanding of how to properly play the macro game. Though much of this ELO is dictated by Baron throws and an over-emphasis on Dragon play, we can play around this nature and evolve our previous picks to fit this style of meta.

Nautilus - This guy fits our high engage and hard CC profile that we had with Alistar previously. Unlike Alistar though, he has much more than a single combo of CC to bring to a fight. He rewards though that can effectively utilize his passive and correct target priority of his ultimate. So, he’s all about engaging and proper target selection there after. Additionally, he can flex his goals to more defense oriented designs and play peeler with all the CC he comes packaged with. He’s definitely a fine Support to climb your way out of Gold and Plat with, and can take you far. As long as you don’t pick him into Morgana, of course.

Seraphine - Sadly, in many ways, Sera is just better than Sona. But where she’s different is that all of her abilities, minus her W, are skill short oriented. So, as such, Riot rewards her with a bit more damage for properly landing her abilities. But, her damage and range isn’t what is important about Seraphine. Remember when we said fights in and around Dragon and Baron turn things at this ELO? Well, Seraphine is great at making great situations go bad for you, or good situations go even better. With her ult’s ability to extend off of allies and enemies, Sera can play in the back or middle of a teamfight and still find a way to single-handedly turn the whole thing in the favor of her squad. And when packed with all the standard support items, she’s more than capable enough to be just as effective as Sona is in these close knit fight areas.

Swain - Though Zyra works well beyond Iron through Silver, I think Swain amps up the lane tyrant playstyle even further. He punishes poor positioning just as well as Zyra, but he also brings a level of scouting and vision control not present in her kit. Further, his kit is far more rewarding to those that play aggressively. Zyra has big disengage potential, but Swain really lacks that utility. He brings a little peppering of vision alongside big damage, so he really teaches one how to go hard and stay ahead early.

Diamond and Beyond: Bard and Thresh

At this point, you’ve either gotten to Diamond by playing what Champion you know best, or you’ve worked your way along the ladder with meta picks and careful play. So, it’s really hard to shoe-horn you into a set of Champions based on your ELO. Really you’re just taking the concepts you’ve already mastered and trying to push them further and further beyond.

But, refinement of macro comes into focus even more so in these ELOs since mechanically everyone is, typically, pretty darn good. It’s all about how you take and apply your lead, and so, your suggested Champions here are those that can be everywhere and really shine through high mechanical usage and excellent macro play.

Bard - Is the best roaming Support in the game. Even trouncing the high impact roams of Alistar and the sneakiest of angles from Pyke. The reason why? Bard is capable of doing it so much earlier than those two, the playstyle is literally baked into his kit, and he can enable others to move about the map just as easily as he can.

Bard’s entire kit encourages him to maintain an active roaming playstyle. Within his passive is all of his damage potential and scaling. Without his Meeps alongside, Bard’s presence in the game starts to deteriorate as the game goes on, and his ganks become significantly weaker if he doesn’t elect to prioritize these guys as he roams about. Though you can technically collect these at any point, you want to prioritize them early as for every 5 Meeps, Bard gets a boost in power. Secondly, the shrines from his W are long-lasting and easy to access heals and speed boosts that he can drop by for himself, laners, or Junglers to help them sustain through rough matchups, recover from ganks, or enable their speed for big engagements. His E, Magical Journey, is literally one of the slyest movement tools in the game. By creating a tunnel all the way through terrain, Bard can create engage and escape angles for his team to employ around neutral objectives or for ganks, or more skillfully, use these tunnels as a way to bait opponents into out of positioned spots for fights. Lastings, his ultimate is literally a Zhonya’s effect that he can chuck at people. It disables turrets, locks up neutral monsters, freezes Champions both enemy and allies, and the skill use of this ult can make it the best engage and disengage tool in the entire game when used tactfully

Bard’s entire potential shines in the hands of those with high mechanical potential, and he’s always worthy of consideration especially for those that are really looking to ascend their macro play to the next level.

Thresh - You can’t talk about high mechanical execution and pristine macro play without mentioning Thresh. Perhaps the most perfectly crafted Support in League of Legends, Thresh rewards those that can perfectly embody all of the various styles of Support gameplay. He roams effectively like Bard, his CC potential is extremely high like Nautilus’, his disengage potential can match that of Janna’s, and his ability to punish positioning mistakes and translate them into kills rivals that of deadliest of Mages.

Like Bard though, he’s got his own collect-a-thon to take part in though. Thresh scales into the Mid to Late game via his passive soul count. But unlike Bard, his passive doesn’t randomly spawn around the map. Instead, souls drop from dead units that are near him and he needs to collect these to increase his defensive stats. Again, differing from Bard, Thresh’s collection is defensive in nature and allows him to become a full-fledged tank should he be diligent in his collection.

But Thresh takes time. He takes a focused hand and mind. He isn’t a Champion to play willy-nilly. And though you can play him in one of the various styles, it’s when you start to click with multiple play-patterns that Thresh really turns online and becomes the deviant monster that can hard snowball games in your favor.

So, What’s the TL;DR?

1. Establishing a flexible and diverse pool of Champion at Support will help you adapt to your teams and overcome situations where one-tricking might limit you.
2. Select 3 to 5 Champions. 3 to start and then as you recognize your inherent playstyle, adopt two more into the pool that fit that style. (Blitz to Naut, Naut to Thresh, for example.)
3. When learning in low ELO focus on Champions that demand good fundamentals - Sona, Alistar, Zyra
4. In Mid ELOs of Gold and Plat gravitate towards teamplay picks that reward the fundamentals you establishing but also reward you for playing at a higher skill level. Nautilus - Seraphine - Swain
5. As you approach Diamond or aim to surpass it. Emulate the Pros and master how you apply your lead to a map by playing the most well-rounded or macro focused picks like Bard and Thresh.

All-in-all, I hope you guys find success with these picks! And if the picks aren’t your flavor, I hope the narrowed approach promotes your successful climb! Season 11 still has a long way to go! So, keep your head high and always have your eyes on the next big play!