Information wins you the game, not the beauty of the guide;)I know the guide is ugly, but the information is far more in depth then the guides of other people;) It is under construction,I will hardly give my best to make it more better.
This guide is so long, but at least lets highlight some golden tips for being support
Don't die
Take the support role serious, don't troll
Your adc does most of the damage, not you
If you don't know where to go, go with your adc
Numbers advantage wins you the game
Picking a support buffs your whole team
Picking support to help your team
Have you ever felt like you are always winning your lane and playing well, but still you are not winning games? Blame your team! It is probably their fault. But it still sucks to lose So what canwe do about that? You help your team.
Most of the time in hero selection there are some guys who main mid, if you are lucky 1 who mains adc and everyone canplay top or jungle if possible. At highest 1 in every 10 games someone shouts:"please I want to play support". They are probably premade and suck anyway. Conclusion: If you want to take the role thats left you want to pick support.
What is the advantage? Everyone plays much better on their main role.
If your team does not go afk, does not flame, has a decent teamcomp,and everyone plays at their best level the chances are very likely to win. Already if you cant play well in the role thats left you must have a winrate higher then 55% because everyone else will play their game on the highest level possible. So if you main support you boost yourteammates performance, without having to carry the game yourself.
Team composition(teamcomp)
I think in soloqueue at least 1 in 5 games is already lost in hero select. Besides the facts mentioned above, you often find yourself with a wrong teamcomp. These are the main fails and the way you can counter them as support:
Full AD
You got the most horrible teamcomp ever, If the enemy builds armor you are screwed.
(top ad or no damage, jungle ad or no damage, mid ad and adc botlane.
(counter) Go heavy ap support like Angela and Nana are strong support to play which can easily deal a really high amount of damage in early game . If your enemies don't build any magic resistance you can transform your support into another carry by instakilling targets or dealing very high amounts of damage,while still being able to protect your allies.
If you really think you are pro you can just go for winning as fast as possible so they can't build armor.
No tank,
Happens very often. You can have 4 great carries on your team, but if you don't have any tanks on your lineup they will die very fast and will not deal that much damage. Better go tank yourself (also recommended for any other role).Since your allies are very likely to deal a high amount of damage, build no damage at all. Support damage scales very badly and your investment to stay 1second more alive will boost your allies damage more then if you would have build damage yourself. Recommended champions:
Diggie,Lolita,Minatour and any other tank you feel can support.
A tanky Diggie or Rafaela can be very anoying and suprisingly tanky. It might take time for the enemy to kill you..
Your team has noinitiation/ disengage:
(counter) Hylos,Ruby is great for engage
Lolita and Hylos very good for target picking, which might be a good alternative for hard engage while
Rafaela,Diggie are for great disengage. (Pokecomps often need good disengage since they do not want a straight 5vs5 fight)
Heavy dive champs, but they probably can't stay alive:
If your team has dive champs like gussion, Fanny lancelot, they need to stay alive after killing a hero and you must assist them from preventing them dying or bad situation.
Use Angela,Estes and tanky hero for great potential of survival.
End game oriented team.
Your teammates have great hero, but they are really endgame focussed. Do not take a support that can be weak early, or a carry support. Take a strong lane support. This could be pretty much any support, since if you are good with them you probably are strong inl ane. But a Estes,Rafaela or poke only support could be very ugly. If they fall a little bit behind they are totally useless and your adc will feel like playing without a support
Diggie,Lolita,Hylos would be good support to help a weak early laner.
Of course the best thing is to cooperate if you want to evade weak laning phase.
Are you the type of MLBB player that fits the support role?
I would recommend being support if you are a teamplayer. You shouldn't mind giving away kills, not being the strongest in your team, having bad stats, doing no damage and all the other stuff selfish people don't like.
You need to be able to work with other players, the jungle and your adc, if youlike to play a more solo oriented game go play something else. If you like to work together , your benefit will be the greatest botlane.
If you are really horrible at farming, but feel like your gameplay overal is good, go support.
If you are a pro at zoning, be support.
If you are more smart instead of mechanically pro, go support
If you are not that good in 1vs1, go support.
If you are a allround player that doesn't excel in anything in particular, go support
When don't you go support
If you are really good at outplaying people 1vs1, don't be support. Go hardcarry!
If you are crazy good at farming, go main epic hero like lancelot,kagura,lesley, not support, you waste your talent.
If you are way better in other roles, do not go support.
Check your winrates after you played some games, they tell a good story whether you should keep on playing or get another role.
Why is playing support fun?
You can poke all day, just ignore the damn creeps:P
Zone control.
2vs2 has most action.
Baiting people all day.
1vs2 people as support is hilarious.
Early game really strong.
Winning is better then losing, being a good support boosts your winrate!
To pick a hero. It does not matter which one, they all got their strengths. If you turn out to be pretty good on them, play them. Just try to play a few normal games or rankedgames with them till you think you
have mastered a reasonably level with them. If you then win everything, stay with them. If you lose while you think you are playing mechanically good, maybe another hero is better for you like i pfefer to play Diggie a lot than Angela since i play mechanically better with Diggie than her. Try to find the support who supports your playstyle. To name a number of play style and supports who are good in it:
Safe lane:Rafaela,Nana,Estes,Angela
Tanking:Hylos,Minatour,Lolita
Really aggressive:Nana,Angela,Lolita,Hylos
Setting up for ganks:Hylos,Lolita
Hard engage:Lolita,Hylos
Disengaging:Rafaela,Diggie
Heal:Rafaela,Estes,Minatour,Angela
Shield:Angela,Lolita,Diggie
Allrounder support:Angela,Nana
For example I love to be able to do nothing all game, and then just spam skill and winning my lane, so Diggie and Angela are my favorite, you can just flash and spam skills,ez win.
How to win your lane
There are some strategies to use which can win you the lane in case the skill levels are equal. In all other cases:
*Outplay them
*Push hard
*Picks
*Don't push and wait for ganks (Best Strategy)
*Zoning
*Pokergame
*Focus the adc unless you can instakill the support
Outplay them
If you can outplay them, you probably don't need to read this guide. There are1000 tiny things that helps you outplay them, but the main thing is you just have to be better.
Many people don't have tank or support emblems so they dont have advantage in hp and mana regen(except mage). You can change these for yourself to be able to sustain some damage and not burn through your mana really fast.Often you can just trade with the enemy till the point where they don't have mana and hp and win the lane after. This is especially easy with hero like marksman and mage who rely on mana. Just stay alive till they are out of mana and you can win. If you wanna use this strategy tell you adc or teammates to not spend all his mana. After they run out of either mana or health you can snowball the lane. Tigreal are notorious for wasting their mana.Playing against them don't worry if they push really hard, by the time they have 10 cs advantage they can't do anything cause they are out of mana, they either have to recall losing their advantage or stay and lose even more.
Push hard.
Denying your enemy adc cs by letting their tower kill the creeps can be a way to slowly win the lane.Just push hard. You might wanna wait a little till you have a double minionwave which can collapse on the turret for extra turret damage. Don't forget toget a perfect cs score cause if they farm harder you will 100% lose the lane.If you do this there is little chance of killing them and the chances are veryhigh that you get ganked and killed. So you have to win the lane by taking atower or out farming them very fast. Zilong,Lolita and mm's classes are the heroes for this strategy.
Picks.
Often the first one who puts down the crowd control on the right target wins the fight. If you can get some good picks this can win you the lane. Go for the adc and don't forget about creeps and junglers. Man advantage is important ifyou get a pick. Your cc only last for a very short time so you need to win the trade in these few seconds.
Don't push and wait for ganks,
This is the best strategy(for me). The gains from pushing are very small. The gains from a kill are very large. After a kill you can get some free farm, maybe kill the tower, and you get the kill and assist money. By not pushing you deny the enemy the chance to kill you and get these advantages. The chances for yourself greatly increase,because it's much easier to gank your lane if you are pushed against a turret.Just wait for your teammates to come (and they will!) and you win the lane after that. So every time you wanna use that skill 1&2 Rafaela, Diggie and Lolita skill 1 & ult or any other hero skill that kills minions,DONT KILL THE MINION IT LOSES YOU THE GAME! An underrated aspect of this is getting attacked by minions. If the enemy minions attack you instead of your creeps, your creeps will kill them first and start pushing the lane.
Zoning
If you win your lane, youcan start zoning the enemy. Zoning means you deny the enemy to come close. This way they can't farm or damage you. Every time you encounter them you punish them by doing more damage to them then they did to you. After a while they don't want to come close because they just lose more then they gain. Often players will be zoned though they can still win the trade. Try to poke them a few times and see if you get damage back. If they don't do damage on you zone them. get damage. Enemies will be zoned though they are not even behind easily.Building a support with high sustain means you can zone easily cause any trade you do with your enemy will cause them to lose damage while you will just regain that lost hp. On the other side if you just poke them to death really hard so they will also be zoned suitable for hero poking like Rafaela,Angela and Hylos .
The pokergame
Try to read your enemies minds and let them read your mind in the wrong way. Try to make them think youare strong by just healing and poking them early so they think they can win the game . Try to make them think you always go in very stupidly, so that they believe they can kill you when you go in. If your teammates comes in you can easily bait the enemy for a kill cause they think you are just a ******. Whilegoing in kinda stupid you can still damage them and maybe you don't even get damage yourself. If they do punish you of course stop the strategy. Another mindreading game is to look whether enemies change behaviour. If they suddenly go more forward or backwards its probably because you are about to get ganked.Just run when they suddenly change behaviour. It worth it.
Focus the adc unless you can instakill the support
Focus the adc unless youcan kill the support without either of you being killed. The adc does so much more damage and can often kill you both if you commit to hard onto the support.If you poke, focus the adc. If you fight, focus the adc. If you are going to die both, try to kill the adc in return. If you die, give the kill to the jungler or support. No matter how hard they win the lane. If the enemy adc is not fed you haven't lost anything yet.
Other tips:
Laneswapping
You main support, they don't. If you want to carry your team, get normal lanes. Unless you really know what you are doing in soloqueue and your team members know what they do as well, don't laneswap.
Basic rules for laneswapping, do it when you think your duolane or solo laner is at a really big disadvantage in straight up lanes (1vs1, 2vs2), which would disapear after one of them gains a few levels.
Baiting
Your power as support is not in your damage, but in your baits. Some ways to bait your enemies:
ADC is low, but you can heal/shield them forever
You have a tower, where you can hold them under forever
Your jungler is comming
You still got all your escape skills.
Its a teamfight
If you can bait the enemy to burn everything they have just to get a kill onto someone, but instead you can make them survive, then the enemies are very vulnerable. Also in teamfights if they need everything to kill Angela,Rafaela or the tanky Hylos/Lolita. Your team will probably 4vs5 them cause they don't have any skills left.
Thats all from my guide ^^
It would be pleasure if someone feedback at my post
ps: i get these useful informations not only from the game but other web as well