Since the major changes to support were announced, there has been an increased interest in “maining” support. Traditionally, supporting is a role that often took a backseat to the carries and tanks. Let’s face it, people simply had little desire in being a “ward-bot.” Well, that has changed.
I began supporting for one very good reason: no one wanted it. My thoughts were that if I got really good at one role, I would be able to consistently rise in the ranks. Now, I will admit that I am not a professional. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t put myself in the top tier of League of Legends supports period. However, I was able to effectively choose one role, one character, and drag myself from bronze to gold, and this is information that I feel LoL players would love to have. Therefore, without any further ado, here are my top 5 tips for supports stuck in ELO hell:
There he is in all his glory…..
5. Call support and play support often: While supporting is a role that has gained in popularity over the past few months, it’s still on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to position demand. If you’re looking to support your way from ELO Hell, it’s important that you call support and play it as often as you can. If you call support, you likely won’t have “pick order” called over you due to the fact that it’s not in high demand. Yes, it can happen, but not often. Also, typically at lower levels, those who are forced support are simply bad at it. (Not all, but many.) If you’re able to consistently give your team a quality support, you’re more than likely going to be able to win your lane over supports who were forced to be there.
4. Don’t waste wards: With the new trinkets, this isn’t as big of a deal as it was in the past. However, it’s still needless to waste wards. Warding on a mass scale doesn’t always make a good League of Legends support. There are periods of the game where wards simply aren’t needed at certain points. How do I ward? I ward for objectives: dragon, baron, and lane dominance. Warding is very situational, and the placement of your wards should be done so in a way to promote a secure objective.
3. Kill Secured: Yes, there are times where you should let your carry have the kill; however, it does no one any good if the enemy gets away. If I’m engaged in a 2v2 on bot lane, I do everything in my power to see to it that they die. Yes, if I see that there’s 0% chance that they’re going to get away, I give it to my partner. Otherwise, I’m spamming stuns, slows, and auto attacks in order to send them back to the spawning pool; there’s nothing wrong with a support having a little extra gold.
2. Time your opponents cooldowns: Let me give you an example. I main Fiddlesticks as my support. I win nearly 60% of my games with him, and more often than not, I generally cause havoc on bot lane. While Fiddle is played differently than conventional supports, he still heavily depends on enemy cooldowns. If there’s a taric bot lane against me, jumping in for a fear/drain will do me no good as he’ll simply stun me out of it. For that reason I watch him closely. Taric will engage at some point, or stun for no apparent reason. Once it’s on cooldown, I can comfortably attack.
1. Every support is different: When reading guides on support, people assume there’s a cookie-cutter method to supporting. While there are “best-practices” for the role as a whole, there area variety of champions who bring different strategies to the table. It’s for that reason that you need to become very dedicated and skilled with one champ. Yes, I understand the importance of having a good champion pool, but at lower levels of competition, a skilled player can beat their counter if their opponent solely picked for that reason.
The League of Legends support role isn’t as easy as many would assume. There’s considerably more to it than just placing random wards on the map. You are the field general for bot lane often engaging, warding, and otherwise controlling your portion of the map. There are other tips I can think of that I’ll likely feature in a future posts, but in the meantime, be sure to comment below discussing your favorite tips for support.