The Support role could be argued to be the one of the most important roles in League of Legends, as the Support’s task is to keep the ADC alive whilst they build themselves up, and to keep everyone else alive when team fights occur; a well-timed Heal spell or a prioritized Intervention could be what turns the fight into your favor.
My main role within League of Legends is Support, and I’ve been told I do an incredibly good job at it – saving team members with twitch responses that nullify any sort of lethal damage; if I had $5 for every time my friends told me they loved me for saving them, I’d be able to perhaps buy a full-price triple-A release. From one Support to another, or someone who fancies trying the role out, let me pass on what I’ve learned to you, as it may save you a lot of grief when playing League of Legends outside the comfortable circle of friends – we all know that League of Legends is dark and full of terrors on good days – and may improve your standing with the role.
There are a few things to consider when playing or preparing to play as a Support, two of them being your Runes and Masteries. Runes and Masteries, for those who don’t know, add additional values, bonuses or buffs to your champion’s statistics, such as their Attack Damage, Ability Power, or whether or not they start with extra gold at the beginning of a match. Finding the right combination of both can really give that early-game advantage if you know what you’re doing, and can potentially make you a formidable force during the mid- and late-game. Personally speaking, as a Support, you should be concerning yourself with three things when building your Runes and Masteries: mana regeneration, Ability Power for your Runes and Utility for your Masteries. Other things you have to think of are Ability cooldown reductions and Summoner Spells, both of which I’ll get into later.
Mana regeneration speaks for itself; the more mana regeneration you have, the faster your mana can restore itself. You need mana when you’re playing as Support, as your supportive Abilities can consume a lot of mana. Having a high mana regeneration rate means you can sustain yourself and your ADC / teammates with your supportive Abilities for much longer before you have to wait for it to fully restore. As it’s your prime concern during the early-game to keep your ADC alive, a high mana regeneration rate means you can cast your supportive Abilities unto them more frequently before running out of juice, and hopefully keeping them alive in the process.
A lot of your supportive Abilities will benefit from additional Ability Power on top of your base AP stat, meaning that a healing Ability that heals for 100 health can heal for 100 health plus an additional bonus relative to how much AP you have. Coupling this with a high mana regeneration rate means that you will be able to cast supportive abilities with a higher output relative to its mana cost, which can result in a very efficient system: you will be outputting more potential for the same amount of cost.
The last thing to think for this part for your preparation is Utility, which will give you a good kickstart into the beginning of the match as a Support. With the majority of your Mastery points in Utility, you will receive additional bonuses such as reduced Summoner Spell cooldown, additional gold every so seconds, plus one gold for every minion killed within your proximity, plus experience when near a higher level teammate, and additional starting gold among other things. All these things can really help when starting a match in League of Legends, and the majority of your Mastery points should go here. The the final four Mastery points should go into Ability cooldown reduction, which is another thing that’s essential to you as a Support.
Cooldown reduction reduces the time it takes for you to use an Ability again once you’ve spent it. The highest amount of reduction is 40 percent. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but every percent counts when playing as Support. The higher cooldown reduction you have, the quicker you can use your abilities again, and the more times you can cast supportive abilities to your teammates in times of need.
You’ll notice that I’m not going into any specific means on how to build your Runes or Masteries. This is because I’m only giving an overview of what you should focus on when playing Support, giving you the freedom to build Runes and Masteries based on your own playstyle, or however you see fit, with my advice in mind should you decide to take it.
When you’ve finished building your Runes and Masteries, you should consider building an Item Set to compliment them and your playstyle. When building your Item Set, you need to focus on a few things, mainly Ability Power, cooldown reduction and mana. Building items that give your Ability Power, like my explanation for choosing AP for your Runes, will significantly boost your output when you cast supportive Abilities; building cooldown reduction items will get you that 40 percent cooldown reduction quicker, thus allowing you to use your Abilities much sooner after they’ve been cast; and building mana items will give you a lot of ammunition to use your Abilities with. Coincidentally, there are certain item within League of Legends that bounce off each other, meaning one item can benefit or increase in output from another. For example, there are a few items that grant more Ability Power per X percentage of mana. This means that the more mana you have, the more relative AP the item will give you.