How to Play Support in League of Legends

Want to play as support in League of Legends?

For every strong carry, you’ll find excellent support enabling them to succeed. This is true in the professional stages and should also be the case in pub games. Supports are also the guardians of the team, and without them, winning is difficult. 

How many times have you played a public game without any support? It’s hard, right? 

Unfortunately, only a few players in League of Legends are really willing to play the support role on regular games, particularly on low ranks. 

You’ll notice a team easily dominate a game in the lower ranks if they have decent support. 

While players pick support champions, they don’t really play as support that enables carries to farm and pick up items fast. Playing as a support doesn’t mean picking a support champion but actually playing the role. 

In this guide, we’ll show you how to play as support in League of Legends. 

Let’s get started!

Champion Selection

Tanks

There are two categories for support champions. You can either go with tank supports or enchanters. When it comes to tanks, they are mainly picked for their engagement abilities, allowing carries to secure kills easier. 

However, tanks with little to no crowd control abilities are not advisable. Since you don’t earn that much gold, tanks with no CC can’t afford items to offset their deficiency. 

Instead, tank support champions should have enough health to charge enemies with their crowd control abilities. Typically, tank supports will prioritize buying items that will help protect the entire team. 

Enchanters

Enchanters are picked mostly for their ability to keep their carries alive. It can be healing effects, debuffs, or shields. They work best with strong carries that draw attention from the enemy during hand-to-hand combat. 

Enchanters can then take advantage of their shields and heals to keep carries alive while damaging opponents. 

They also often have peeling abilities that can keep enemies from getting on top of their carries. 

Summoner Spells

When playing support, you can pair Flash with Heal, Exhaust, or Ignite. If you plan on playing aggressive in your lane, you should go with a Flash / Ignite combo. This should also be the spell choice for tank supports. 

On the other hand, Heal is an excellent choice if you want to sustain your carry longer in the lane. This should be helpful during the laning phase if your enemy team manages to harass your ally. 

Instead of going home, your carry could stay longer in the lane without losing EXP and Gold. 

Lastly, Exhaust can be great for preventing enemies from reaching your carry right away. It can also be useful when chasing down opponents to secure a kill. 

Playing the Lane

As most bot laners are AD carries and support lack damage, the primary form of trading in the bot lane is auto attacks. This means you should know when to take advantage of your attack range against your enemies. 

However, the bot lane is the most difficult lane to track attack ranges since there are four champions in this lane. 

When to Trade Damage?

Since you’re a support, you don’t have to worry about last-hitting minions. This allows you to focus on trading damage during the laning stage. The best time to trade damage is when your ally minions are low on health. 

This forces your enemy to choose whether to engage or focus on killing the minions. 

If they opt to engage, they’ll miss last hitting minions in exchange of damaging you, which doesn’t really affect the course of the game. On the other hand, if they focus on last hits, you can freely hit the enemy’s carry. 

Nonetheless, they’ll lose something, whichever they choose. 

When it comes to your end, you’ll want to ensure that your bot laner can follow up on your trades. You have to remember that going for trades with your enemy can put your carry at risk if they decide to be aggressive as well. 

Warding

As support, keeping a good vision on the map is your primary responsibility. Your team expects you to put down Vision Wards on the map at all times in addition to Warding Totems and Sightstones. 

Ward Placement

Putting down wards in League of Legends is a straightforward process but knowing where to place them is another thing. 

The most important ward locations in the bot lane are the tri-bush and the river bush. If you’re playing on the blue side, you’ll want to place a Vision Ward in the bot tri-bush. On the other hand, red side players should put down a Vision Ward in the bot river bush. 

This should help your jungler farm freely and avoid hunts from the opposing team. Putting down wards closer to your side of the map should also allow you to defend them easier if they get attacked by enemy champions. 

Warding the bot lane bushes can be helpful in the laning phase as well. Putting down a Warding Totem can prevent your enemy support from starting trades or setting up engagements that can put you in a difficult position. 

Placing Vision Wards in your turret side bush will allow for easier lane ganks with the help of your jungler. 

Wave Management

Being support, you’ll have to communicate with your carry about how they want the waves to be managed. Since you don’t have much damage to clear waves, good coordination with your bot laner is crucial. 

One wave management method you can use in almost any game is the race to level two in the bot lane. To reach level two along with your carry, you must secure every last hit for the first minion wave and the three melee minions in the second wave. 

To assist your carry, you can try to get the minions’ health as low as possible without last-hitting them yourself. 

If you manage to hit level two faster than your enemies, you can attempt an extended trade or try to kill your opponents. 

You also have three things to your advantage at this point. 

Upon hitting level two, you and your AD carry have unlocked a second spell. This should give you a trade advantage against your enemies. Second, your level two bonus stats are passively applied. 

Lastly, your minion waves should also be bigger than the enemy since you killed their minions faster. 

Additional Tips

• During teamfights, you want to save your shields and heals for your carries. 

• In lane, you can use your shield to yourself and make a short trade with the enemy’s carry while your bot laner continues farming the wave. 

• When placing wards, try to identify the routes your enemy usually takes during ganks and rotations. It’s important to place the wards at the right spot to give your team the best vision on the map.

• Don’t hesitate to Flash away from teamfights as a support. Remember your main role is to keep your carry up and not to deal damage to enemies. 

We hope that this guide helped you play the support role better in League of Legends. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below, and we’ll do our best to answer them.