Playing As Support

Greetings Summoners,

Today, I wanted to discuss the oddball role of support (my personal main), and list all of the functions that you may be expected to perform. This is an important discussion since support is by far the most unique role in terms of gameplay. Playing a support like a normal carry champion is often a bad idea, and after reading this, I hope you will understand why.

First, I have to briefly define what "The Meta" is.

The Meta

When you hear summoners discuss "the meta", this is in reference to a top-level strategy for the team. In the broadest terms, the meta is a way to logically divide the gold an experience among your team so that everyone has equal opportunity to advance ahead of the enemies.

Usually, this means that you will have a carry in each lane, a jungler, and a support in the bottom lane. With this meta, each carry has a lane full of minions to themselves (assuming that the support does not interfere too much in their lane), and the jungle can use neutral monsters and ganks to level up. (Keep in mind that many players and Riot alike seem to encourage experimentation with the meta, and that this is only the current most common meta, and may change with time)

With this meta, the support is the odd man out, and must find other ways to obtain the gold and experience necessary to stay relevant later in the game.

Failure to play a support champion as a support means that there are two allied champions in a lane, competing for gold and experience with EACH OTHER on top of against the lane opponents. In a duo-carry lane, the rewards are divided, one or both carries suffer, and simple conservative play by the enemy will ensure that they are the victors in the race for gold and experience.

In short: if you are going to play support, then PLAY SUPPORT. Do not attempt to carry as a support. Your job is to ensure that the carry in your lane gets the most gold and experience possible, and becomes the wrecking ball that your team needs in the later game. If you are concerned about your own ability to accumulate gold and experience, here's how you can stay relevant as a support:

Support Gold

While some of these income streams may seem trivial, as a support who is not farming, they can be essential. Every advantage counts! Don't leave money on the table.

Runes 
    Greater Seal Of Gold - Each one equipped grants +0.25g/10s, maxing out at +2.25g/10s
    Greater Quintessence Of Gold - Each one equipped grants +1g/10s, maxing out at 3g/10s

Masteries
    Wealth - Grants an additional 40 starting gold. This is essential for my opening build of a gold-item + 2 x Stealth Wards, I could not afford it all otherwise.
  Greed - Grants 0.5 / 1 / 1.5 gold per 10 seconds.
Scavenger - You gain 1 gold each time a nearby allied champion kills an enemy minion (1100 unit range).
  Bandit - Melee: Champion kills and assists grant 15 bonus gold. Ranged: You gain 3 gold each time you attack an enemy champion. This effect can not trigger on the same champion more than once every 5 seconds.

Items
  Relic Shield/Targon's Brace/Face Of The Mountain - Allows a support to consume a stack to execute a minion, giving the gold and experience to both the support, and a nearby ally. This is great for tanky supports, and supports who receive benefits on killing minions. (Such a Nasus, and Gangplank - more on that shortly)

  Spellthief's Edge/Frostfang/Frost Queen's Claim - For AP supports, this will grant additional gold for each charge when attacking enemy champions or structures.

Ancient Coin/Nomad's Medallion/Talisman Of Ascension - Grants gold on nearby enemy minion deaths. This pays off quickly for supports with a lot of sustain, who spend a lot of time in lane.

Avarice Blade - The oddball of the gold generation items. This is the only one that you may purchase in addition to one of the above three item sets. This grants extra gold on minion kills, so it can be a great addition to a Relic Shield build, or for one of the minion-killing supports mentioned above.

Ward Sweeping - Destroying enemy wards grants gold to both the champion who lands the last hit on it, and to the champion who discovered the ward. This makes Sweeping Lens a profitable item after the first ward found.

Assists - Contributing to enemy kills without actually taking the kill earns allied champions assists. This can be especially useful for a support earning gold, as there is bonus gold for assists if you have 2 or more assists more than kills.

Hawkshot - While I personally prefer NOT to use Ashe as a support, I have seen it done quite frequently recently. Using her Hawkshot ability earns bonus gold on minion kills This can be especially profitable when combined with an Avarice Blade.

Parrrley - Like Ashe, Gangplank receives bonus gold when killing minions with his Parrrley ability.

Loaded Dice - Twisted Fate has a passive ability called Loaded Dice that works similarly to Ashe's and Gangplank's, but does not require any leveling, and grants a semi-random gold amount.

Pet/Summon Destruction - Many champions summon pets or items that can be destroyed for gold. These include (but are not limited to) Annie's Tibbers, Malzahar's Voidlings, Shaco's Jack In The Box, Teemo's Noxious Traps, and Rek'Sai's Tunnel entrances. These are typically acceptable for a support to destroy, especially the stealthed summons that require Sweeping Lens/Oracle's Lens to reveal.

Support Experience

Runes
    Greater Quintessence Of Experience - Each one equipped grants +2% to any experience income, maxing out at +6% bonus over 3 quints.

Masteries
  Inspiration - Grants 5 / 10 experience for every 10 seconds while near an allied champion with a higher level.

Zilean - Supporting as Zilean has the benefit of his passive, Heightened Learning which increases experience gain of all allied champions within Heightened Learning's range by 8%.

Finally, the functions you should try perform as support include the following. There is a lot of overlap here, so I will try my best to make a distinction between each function:

Support Functions

Warding - Although Riot has made efforts over the last couple of seasons to enforce the notion that warding is the responsibility of everyone on the team, the bulk of the work still falls to the support. This is especially true in the laning phase, when the carry should be converting as much gold into damage as possible, and vision is a secondary priority. Supports should be picking up the slack, and a Sightstone/Ruby Sightstone are a big priority in my build. This will help keep your carry safe from ganks in lane phase, and give your team better control over their objectives in later game.

Ward Sweeping - A conscientious support can improve their team's game by making efforts to track the placement of enemy wards, and doing whatever possible to destroy them. This makes your team safer, at the expense of the enemies, and can earn you a little extra gold. Personally, I rarely play support without getting Sweeping Lens/Oracle's Lens. My enemies do not get vision unchallenged!

Initiation - Depending on the champion you choose to support with, the bulk of fight initiation may fall to you. This is especially true for a tanky support and/or a support with many crowd control effects. This requires careful coordination with your carry in lane phase, your jungler during ganks, and your team later in the game. Whenever possible, try to make sure that your allies are onboard with fighting before starting the fight, or you may end up putting your neck out for no reason!

Peel/Interruption - A good support does whatever possible to ruin enemy attacks on the allied carry. This can include contributing damage in a fight to tip the scales in your teams favour, using crowd control to buy your carry space and time, and using heals to mitigate the enemy's damage.

Utility - Supports with crowd control effects, and abilities that benefit allies (shields, heals, speed boosts) should take steps to optimize their usefulness. This means making sure that these effects and abilities are available when needed. To improve their availability, a support can work to max out their abilities' level, and cooldown reduction, which means that such a support can cast their abilities just that more often.

Zoning - This is a bit of a psychological game, but when possible, it is a fantastic function for a a support to take steps to control the position of the enemy laners. An easy example is to hide in the enemy's bush and harass when the enemy approaches in order to keep them under their tower, and causing trouble in the rest of the lane. Or, it could mean making some space under your tower for your carry to farm in by harassing and intimidating the enemy laners. The ultimate objective is to allow your carry to farm, and deny the enemies farm.

Harassment - Short of taking kills away from the carry, it is great for a support to deal some damage leading into a fight initiation. The less health the enemy has, the better, right? Helps your carry win the fight, and helps deny the enemy farm.

Auras -  Building items with auras is perhaps the easiest to manage support function. Some great aura items include:

    Abyssal Sceptre
    Aegis Of The Legion
    Banner Of Command
    Frozen Heart
    Locket Of The Iron Solari
    Zeke's Herald

All of the above will confer some benefit to nearby teammates or a debuff to nearby enemies. In either case, it should make your team just that much more effective in fights.

Leadership - Arguably, support is in the best position to provide the team with leadership, and rallying calls for the team. Since you are not focusing on farm, and have the time to come up with basic strategies for the team, any efforts to organize the team are fantastic. Pinging targets before/during fights helps the team coordinate. Choosing objectives for the team, and warding to support pushes on it is also an incredible service to provide to the team. Support has a distinct ability to unify the team.

In conclusion, let the words of SivHD inspire you to glory! :D

Thresh Metal

Greetings Summoners,

Today, I pay tribute to Thresh, The Chain Warden. Below, is a compilation of some of the biggest plays that Thresh made possible in my recent games. Look for appearances by RoninFirefly, rekka02, CALO24, and kaji088. I recommend watching with the lights turned down, headphones on, and the volume and resolution turned UP. You know what they say; sticks and stones my break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.

Cling clang go the chains

Someone's out to find you

Cling clang go the chains

The Warden's right behind you

Quick now, the seeking chains

Approach with their shrill scrape

Don't stop, flee the chains

Your last chance to escape

Drag the chains, drag the chains

Will all the strength you may

Drag the chains, drag the chains

Ere they drag you away

Cling clang go the chains

There's no more time for fear

Cling Clang know the chains

The last sound that you'll hear

This video was condensed from nearly 50 minutes of video clips taken from 9 games played as Thresh. That is an indication of how badass this champion is. There were too many plays to choose from. One painful omission was a PentAssist I scored while supporting a random Varus. That will perhaps make another video soon.

Edit (25/1/2015): I've re-edited the video, and replaced it here, and it does now include the aforementioned PentAssist.

Big Plays

Greetings Summoners,

A few nights ago, I visited with my good friends rekka02 and Petite Ninja. We had a few good games that night, but my favourite was this match, were rekka02 played ADC as Jinx, Petite Ninja supported as Sona, and I played mid lane as Viktor. 

Many huge plays happened that game. Take a look for yourself:

Was our Jinx ever mean to that enemy Fiddlesticks?!?! Sona landed several enormous ults, Jinx sniped so many kills, and Viktor contributed some zone control and lazer damage.

This was a huge night, overall, and I'm excited for the next.

Farming And Wave Management

Greetings Summoners,

Because I didn't say it before; welcome to League Of Legends' season 5 revision of Summoner's Rift:

For those reading for the first time, this blog follows my efforts in the bottom lane of Summoner's Rift, shown here:

I wanted to discuss a topic that I have found difficult to communicate to newcomers, and that is, Farming, and Wave Management.

Farming

In the early game, or laning phase, enemy carries compete for the gold and experience necessary to overpower one another later in the game. In this phase of the game, one of the best methods of earning gold and experience is to farm, that is, to land the killing blow on enemy minions to collect the rewards. 

It is the job of the ADC to get as many minion kills, or the highest "Creep Score" (CS), possible (alongside enemy champion kills). It is the job the the support to facilitate the ADC in farming, by warding to prevent ganks, and harassing to deny the enemy farm.

3 types of minions will spawn before inhibitors fall, spawning Super Minions. The 3 early types are:

Melee Minions

Blue Melee Minion

Red Melee Minion

3 melee minions spawn with every wave, and are worth 19.8 (+0.2 / 90 sec) gold, and 64 exp.

Caster Minions

Blue Caster Minion

Red Caster Minion

3 caster minions spawn with every wave, and are worth 16.8 (+0.2 / 90 sec), and 32 exp.

Siege Minions

Blue Siege Minion

Red Siege Minion

Siege minions initially spawn every 3rd wave. After 20 minutes, they will begin to spawn every other wave. At 35 minutes, they will spawn with every wave, and are worth 40 (+0.5 / 90 sec), and 92 exp.

As ADC, it is your job to land the killing blow, or "Last Hit" on as many minions as you can, prioritizing siege minions over melee minions, and melee minions over caster minions to optimize your gold and experience income.

There are 3 micro-management techniques that an ADC can use to help farm successfully:

1. Stop Orders - When safe from enemy retaliation, the ADC can use the 'S' hotkey after every last hit to issue a Stop Order, which causes the champion to do nothing until the next order is received. This is great for dealing as little damage as possible to the wave. Simply resume the attack by right-clicking a low-health minion.
2. Holding the right-click button - Using the mouse, the ADC holds the right-click button, and moves the cursor to continually issue move orders. When a minion is at low health, hovering the cursor over it will cause the champion to attack, hopefully scoring the last hit. This is a great way to farm under pressure, as the moving target is more difficult for enemies to hit.
3. Alternating move and attack move orders - By rapidly issuing move (right-click), and attack-move orders ('A' + left-click), the champion can use auto-attacks at full speed, while simultaneously re-positioning after each one. This is great for pushing the lane, or for making an offensive retreat, known as "kiting". 

As support, it is your job to facilitate and enable the allied ADC to farm. There are a couple of support functions you should perform to fulfill your expectations:

1. Warding - Using Stealth Wards and Vision Wards allow your carry to farm more safely by giving vision and awareness of enemy positions, particularly when the enemy jungler arrives to gank the lane. Ideally, the minion wave should never be pushed past ward coverage.
2. Harassment - A good support will deal damage to the enemy champions whenever possible to discourage them from farming, allowing the allied ADC to farm without competition. Supports with good CC effects are valuable for this, as well as during fight initiations, and escapes.
3. Heals, Auras - Supports with heals in their ability kits make sustained farming easier, while building items with supportive auras take things a step further.

While supporting, it is usually preferable that you DO NOT contribute damage to the minion wave, allowing the ADC to farm in peace, and push the wave as comfortable. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, including:

1. Pushing the wave out from allied turret. Losing CS to allied turret benefits no one on your team, so it is generally acceptable for the support to help push the wave out of turret range.
2. Farming while the ADC is out of lane is acceptable, as this CS is lost to the ADC, anyway. Besides, the support still requires gold and experience to stay relevant, too! Just try not to push the lane out of the ADC's control.
3. While the ADC is obviously trying to push as hard as possible. Sometimes, it is preferable to push the lane, and pressure an objective, to farming. In these cases, it is helpful for the support to contribute some damage to the wave, so that the lane advances that much faster.

Supports still require gold and experience, however. The mechanics of doing so are just a little more subtle than that of the ADC. Here are some ways to get ahead as a support:

1. Gold and experience runes and masteries - Supports should have runes and masteries to help them keep pace in the resource race. There are a number of runes available that give gold, and masteries such as Greed, Scavenger, Wealth, and Inspiration are fantastic additions to a support's mastery-tree.
2. Gold items - There are a number of items available for purchase that can increase gold income, particularly for champions who are not farming. Relic Shield/Targon's Brace/Face Of The Mountain, Spellthief's Edge/Frostfang/Frost Queen's Claim, Ancient Coin/Nomad's Medallion/Talisman Of Ascension, and Avarice Blade can all be used on champions who are not farming or carrying for income.
3. Kill assists - Assisting your carry in killing an enemy champion can be a great source of gold and experience for a support.
4. Ward clearing - as support, I almost always purchase the Sweeping Lens/Oracle's Lens trinket. Doing so allows me to inhibit enemy warding, tampering with their vision, and awarding the support bonus gold on every ward destroyed.

With some farming basics in mind, we can move onto the more advanced topic of wave management.

Wave Management

Every 30 seconds after the 1:30 mark, each nexus will spawn a wave of 6-7 minions per lane. Left on their own, minions will meet near the middle of their lane, battle for a short time, and kill each other out, almost exactly evenly. This is an extremely delicate balance. Any action by enemy or allied champions that affect minions (ie. damage, heals, buffs) upsets this balance, and advances the wave, so that the minions will meet and battle further along in the lane. This is called "pushing the lane".

When farming in lane, it is important to remember this balance, so that you can control the location of the minion wave, keeping it where it is most beneficial to you.

I like to think of the lane as divided into zones. I've roughly marked out the different zones in lane here:

Keep in mind that these zones are hand-drawn, and especially in the case of the turret ranges, may not be exactly to scale. This should be enough to give you the idea, however.

Assuming that we are playing from the blue side of the map, there are 5 zones from left-to-right. If you are playing from the red side of the map, the opposite of the following is close to accurate,

The first, in yellow, is inside the allied turret's range. Farming while the minion wave is battling here is extremely safe, as you are not vulnerable to attack from the tri-bush entrance, in-lane bushes, or the river. The downside is that your carry will be at risk of losing farm to the turret, which benefits neither the carry or support, and should be avoided.

The second zone, in green, is arguably the best place to farm in. Getting CS while the minion wave meets here exposes you to minimal risk of attack from the tri-bush entrance, or the in-lane bushes.

The third zone, again in yellow, is akin to No Man's Land. Here is the default place for the minion waves to meet, and exposes both the red and blue teams to equal risk of attack from river and in-lane bushes.

The fourth zone, marked in red, is the Danger Zone. Farming here puts you at risk of ganks from everywhere. You can get attacked from tri-bush, from river, and/or from behind the enemy turret. What's more, you are the furthest you can be from the safety of your tower. Only the most aggressive or mobile of compositions should farm here.

The fifth and final zone, marked in orange, is inside the enemy turret's range. Farming here is as dangerous as in the red zone, if not more so, due to the tower, but does offer the benefit of putting the enemy team at risk of losing CS to their tower. If you are supremely confident of your character and lane control, and map awareness, farming here can be an easy way to outpace your lane opponent. However, expect retaliation from the rest of the enemy team.

Lissandra Support

Greetings Summoners,

Happy New Year! It has been a busy holiday, but I have managed to fit some League Of Legends in, here and there. Here's some of the action from a visit with good friend, RoninFirefly:

That was a short compilation of the plays from a match we had. He took Caitlyn ADC, and I took Lissandra as support. Despite a strong laning phase, including the great plays shown above, we lost this match. However, the game was immensely fun, and has intrigued me to the potential Lissandra has as a support. You may expect to hear more about her in the future.