Essential Skills to Master for Supports in LoL

Essential Skills to Master for Supports in LoL

The Support role is one of the most complex roles in League of Legends to perform at the highest levels. Unfortunately, the difference between a good Support and a bad one is night and day, and if you’re playing with a lousy Support, winning the game can be highly challenging.

If you want to increase your chances of becoming a better Support: a Support everyone wants to play with, and a Support that dominates the game, then you’re in the right place. In this Mobalytics article, we will discuss several things you should focus on and master to become a fantastic high-level Support that can dominate the lane and carry games.

This article is brought to you in partnership with our friends from ONE Esports, check them out for more awesome LoL content!

5 Essential Skills to Master for Supports

1. Positioning in Lane
2. Completing Your Warding Quest Fast
3. Roaming Around the Map
4. Warding
5. Positioning in Team Fights

1. Positioning in Lane

Positioning in Lane is very important for Supports. With poor positioning, it is going to be difficult for your ADC to survive the laning phase, and it will be hard for you to apply pressure and get kills.

Positioning too far back will leave your ADC vulnerable to auto attacks and all-ins as you’re not able to save them or fight back. Furthermore, standing too far back when playing as somebody who needs to play aggressively is not good either because you are not in a position to attack the enemy or land crucial spells on them. After all, you are too far back and out of range.

Your positioning in the lane depends on the role and the character you are playing. Utility champions like Janna or Nami should be stood in line or slightly behind them. Damage-dealing supports such as Zyra or Brand must always be in line with their ADC while constantly pivoting to play aggressively.

Tank supports, or champions that need to engage like Leona or Alistar must be positioned in line with or front of their ADC. Tank supports must be able to play aggressively and not stand too far backwards. However, you don’t want to be too close because you will take damage for free.

The whole point of positioning in lane is to put yourself in a position where you can play aggressively while not taking damage unnecessarily.

2. Completing Your Warding Quest Fast

The second thing you need to master is your warding quest. Completing your warding quest early on is very important as you can start providing vision for your team, ultimately getting them more kills and saving their lives.

As standard, try to complete your request as quickly as possible, but that is only sometimes possible in certain matchups where you are hard-counted.

For optimal gold income, try to use your basic attacks and as your abilities so you make good use of your mana. However, if you are hard-counted, just rely on your abilities instead. Look to harass the enemy after they use an ability as it will decrease their damage output when you walk forward.

For champions that need to kill minions to get gold like Nautilus, your optimal minion killing strategy should be as follows: melee, melee, cannon, melee, cannon, melee and so on. This starts from the first minion wave. Following this pattern is key as you complete your request fast if you do as stated.

3. Roaming Around the Map

The next thing you need to work on is your ability to make plays elsewhere on the map and roam and help your allies. Roaming is key for climbing in LoL and it is an important skill to master if you want to climb.

We’ll stick to basics here, but we’ve written a ton of information about roaming, when to roam, how to roam, the most effective ways to roam and much more in our in-depth roaming guide, which I highly recommend if you want to learn more.

Here are some basics of roaming that will help you get started:

• Don’t roam if your ADC will die: it’s counterproductive.
• If your ADC misses out on XP and gold or is forced to recall, it makes the roam less effective.
• Only roam if you’re going to get a reward for it.
• Look at the map before roaming. You don’t want to roam mid if your ally is pushing the enemy into tower and you’re not tanky enough to dive. That’s a waste of time.
• If you can’t use your Ultimate in the lane to get kills, try and roam around the map to get kills instead.

The best champions to roam with are champions that have CC. Leona and Blitzcrank are good at roaming as they have CC whereas champions like Soraka and Karma are less effective.

4. Warding

Warding is a crucial skill to master for Supports. If you have poor vision control, it will be hard for you to win games. We’ve already discussed how to do your quest quickly, but nows the time to discuss warding.

We’ll try to keep it simple here, so here are some easy-to-implement things you can do to improve your warding game. We’ve also made a much more in-depth article on warding which you can find here. I highly recommend reading it as it goes into warding much more in-depth.

• Buy one control ward early on. Then buy more control wards as the game develops. Avoid spending a ton of gold on wards, as you’ll fall behind on your core items.
• Only place control wards in areas where they will survive for a long period of time. If you’re constantly pushing, an aggressive control ward is quite safe, but placing an aggressive ward is worthless if the enemy has good pushing potential.
• If you’re getting pushed under your tower, place a control ward anywhere but in your lane as the enemy can destroy it quickly.
• When you complete your warding quest, change your warding trinket to start denying wards.
• Recall when it is safe to do so to replenish your wards. This will let you place more vision.

The new Wardstone item is an incredibly powerful tool that you can get in the mid to late game which will help increase your warding potential. Every Support can buy it, and you’ll usually find it brought 5th or 6th.

All in all, warding is crucial to the Support role, so you must master it. Check out the in-depth warding guide for more tips to master it.

5. Positioning in Team Fights

The last thing you need to understand and master is your positioning and role in team fights. Each champion belongs to a certain role and archetype. For instance, healing Supports like Yuumi and Sona are utility champions. Taric and Tahm Kench are tank champions, and Brand and Zyra are damage dealers. Depending on your champion, your role will change.

For healing Supports, you need to be positioning behind your carries so you can empower them and keep them alive for longer. You do not want to be stood too far forward as you’ll get killed instantly as you’re really squishy.

For tank Supports, you’ll usually be want to stood near the front of your team, while constantly pivoting forwards and backwards so you can peel for your allies. Most tank Supports need to engage or use their hooks (like Blitzcrank or Thresh), so you need to be stood in a position where you can do that too.

When playing as a mage Support, you need to be in line with your other carries so you can dish out damage. Think of yourself as a secondary carry when playing as an AP Support. You don’t want to be stood too far forward or you cannot dish out damage.

Conclusion

Mastering the Support role is quite hard, but if you’re actively improving on these things and use everything in this guide, then you will see yourself climbing in no time. If you have any suggestions for other articles or guides you want to see, let us know!

If you use everything we have talked about in this guide, then you’ll start to climb in no time at all. Remember to check out our friends at ONE Esports for more awesome League content.