[Questions] Supporting

[Southpaw4Play]

Hello SP!
I'm happy to tell you that I began playing in the LAS server! I wasn't really excited about playing (mainly be cause I start to get nervous and I make a lot of mistakes), but I started playing the last weekend with my younger brother and some friends.
I played the support role using Sona and I loved it, her buffs are really neat and have a really fun experience.
After this short story, I leave my doubt:
Should I stick with Sona? or I should try to play another character (Support)?.

[Corn]

While Sona is extremely strong at the moment, there's some cases she can't handle and it's ALWAYS better to have a wider pool of champions.

Ex. if you're against an aggressive support, you're screwed. I would recommend learning Janna and a couple of aggressive supports (Blitzcrank, Thresh, and Leona, just to name a few).

[Dredragon]

I tend to prefer supports who can go ham on my team. Even if you mess up in lane, leona or zyra's constant cc will keep you relevant <3

[VerrKol]

Sona is a great support and an excellent start! I'll echo the others and recommend you pick up Leona, Zyra, Blitz, and Thresh eventually, but don't feel like you have to learn everything all at once. Especially since you just started, you should focus on learning the role and 1 or 2 champions skills because there is a big learning curve for LoL.

[Nion]

There are herbivores and carnivores depending on your playstyle. You seem to be a herbivore but if you want to switch...
Blitz and Thresh are game changing in my opinion. Here is an example:

[PeePeeAyeDeeKay]

Definitely learn others as well. That way, if you go up against them, you'll have a better idea of what they're capable of.

Sona is a great support to start out with, and she's still very popular.


I'd suggest learning ones with a good amount of crowd control/status ailment effects, generally those tend to be pretty dam game changing when teamfights come around.

I main Janna and Leona myself as a Support main, but definitely look into Blitz & Thresh as well. Blitz & Thresh can be very game changing early on, however, fairly often banned in Draft Pick/Ranked due to it.


For Support role itself (if you're just starting out), I'd say focus on learning warding, protecting your carry, maybe harassing and zoning, and of course getting your carry fed if possible. When you start playing PvP (against other people), wards literally save lives and help you win.

[DrRusty]

I played almost exclusively support all the way up to gold 2. Here's some tips I can give you. You're new, so you won't be seeing the other team's picks for a while, but when choosing a support, this is usually my thought process.

-If they have at least 2 hard engage champs (J4 + malphite) or they have evelynn, I pick Janna. She is the hardest support in the game to gank by far. She also has the highest win rate of any champ at the moment.
-If they manage to pick up vayne, or sona, I will almost always play leona. Leona craps all over vayne and sona
-If there is not a sona support on their team, I will pick Zyra. She does the most damage of any support by far. I've won more than just a few games where I had the highest damage dealt as support zyra. This is the support you want to get good at if you feel you need to carry your team
-If they get zyra or Janna, I will pick sona. Sona hard counters shield supports and poke supports, but sona is hard countered by hard CC or all-ins (thresh, blitz, leona)
-When in doubt (ex - you're first pick) pick sona. Thresh and blitz are almost always banned, and they're the ones who counter her the hardest.

Other tips
-Double gold per 10 on AP supports (janna, sona, zyra) or just philosopher's stone on tanky supports (thresh, leona, or alistar). You also need to buy a ruby sightstone as early as possible. At least 1 gold per 10 item + ruby sightstone is a must have for any support. Hold on to your gold per 10 as long as possible without upgrading it. Most items they build into, will stop giving you the gold per 10.
-Try to come back to lane with 1 pink ward every time you back. You should not use it unless you know the enemy has placed a ward somewhere. Do your best not to pink without a guaranteed ward kill.
-A pink ward trick you can do is to use your free ruby sight stone wards to "bait" them into using a pink ward. Then you place your own pink ward to kill their pink.
-Vision wins games. Vision is the difference between a bronze support and a diamond support. Doing nothing but playing Janna, buying double gold per 10, and spamming the map with pink wards will get you easily into gold or at least silver 1.
-Since you are not focusing on last hitting, try to draw your attention to the minimap. Ping to your team when the enemy is missing or you see them moving towards an objective. Map awareness is key to winning games
-Pay very close attention to your positioning. You can stand near the bushes bottom lane, peak your head out to auto attack, then go right back in the bush to prevent them from returning damage.
-A neat little trick you will learn soon is that you can check to see if the enemy support has warded a bush by standing in the bush when a creep wave walks by. If it's warded, the creep wave will see you and start to attack you. If it's not warded, they will walk past you.

[0shikuru]

No mention of Taric? Did he fall out of grace or something? Just curious is all, because I still wreck face with him more times than not in lane with a halfway decent adc.

[VerrKol]

No mention of Taric? Did he fall out of grace or something? Just curious is all, because I still wreck face with him more times than not in lane with a halfway decent adc.

Taric is a very mediocre champ. He has decent stun, decent burst, decent heals. He's the jack of all trades and master of none. The only times I run Taric are when I want to be versatile about my play style and adapt to the enemies aggression or passiviness. I definitely think he's still viable, but he doesn't carry like other supports can (Zyra/Leona/Thresh especially).

[Corn]

He fell out of favor. He still may be incredibly good at Bronze though.

[DrRusty]

Taric is very weak at the moment after the nerfs. He could be good at lower elo due to his very easy to land stun and armor aura. Well... maybe not VERY weak, but he definitely gets outshined by high damage zyra, high CC leona, or high sustain sona.

[Derosis]

It's not that Taric is terrible. He's just not competitive good anymore. He's still incredibly good and versitile against pure AD line up or double AD line up. Taric just requires some knowledge on how to kit and how to setup ganks with and some people don't even know how to build him.

-When to start with Heal[Q]: Enemy is a high burster and packs a punch, you would generally max Heal and put points into Armor Aura[W] with a point into your Stun at Lv 3.
-When to start with Armor[W]: Team is a high burster, but is realatively squishy Pre-6. Start Q -> W -> E then put points into W. Especially useful if your Jungler is AD or your AD is a little ahead CS wise. Makes ganks really easy. May have to burn Exaust or Flash to make this work really well.
-When to start with Stun[E]: Lv 2 ganks. No other reason really other than you seeing them do something really stupid. I would put points into stun at lv 2/3 depending on the pressure the other lane is giving.

Since S2 is long and gone, and Heart of Gold is in the shelves. Most people rushing Philo stone. I don't rush philo stone much anymore because I like having wards in my pocket and having some change for HP potions or parts to philo after.

A good build for taric would be:

- (Mastery tree Cookie and Ward), 1 Vision Ward, 3 Sight Wards, 5 potions of your choice (I either run 5 reds or 3 red 2 blue, your preference).
- Be there to peel for your carry, but remember that you are not ranged and can't provide poke, but that's okay. You can just walk up to them and cause instant pressure by stun and slapping them a few times. He's tanky from the get go and is pretty hard to burstdown unless the opposing ADC is Sona & Draven or something like that. Where their burst does 50% hp. But otherwise you're good against most others.
- Tell your jungler to come visit and set up ganks for him. A flash for a kill is always better. And then they lose XP and Gold is even better. Think long term when you play Taric. And Make sure you help deny their ADC. I stun him sometimes if I have a lot of excess mana to stop him from CSing so my ADC can get a head in Gold, and sometimes XP.

I'll post more later. I can also write guides for any support except Leona. I hate Leona. :(

[SoR0XaS]

I can do one for Leona. If OP wants one.

[Foxino]

heimerdonger support never fails.

[Southpaw4Play]

I'm truly sorry about the so late reply, I decided to log out from Internet (I really needed it), but I'm really grateful about all the information you gave me.
Before disconnecting, I search about all the "support" champions you suggested and the only thought that crossed my mind was: "They are so many! and I have to know almost everything about them...". So I was really happy and excited about playing them, but then I have a really big problem, I don't have an own PC (I will/want to explain that in the angry dome). I'm writing this from a Desk Computer that have everything to be perfect, but have the strongest fail: doesn't have GPU, and then I have a second option, a Laptop, is the most powerful thing in this house, but I don't want to do any damage to the keyboard (This two computers are property of my girlfriend).
To make the point, I'm still interested in playing LoL aside from having technical problems and thanks to all your help I really want play and have fun.
Thank you everyone!