Hey everyone,

welcome to my guide on how to support.

Recommended: Optional:

Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration

By far the most common masteries supports take is shown below.



Summoner's Wrath is good for upgrading Exhaust (or Ignite if you took it).

Durability , Hardiness , Resistance and Veteran's Scars give good boosts to your defenses.
Safeguard is always good to have, you'll always end up tanking a tower one time or another and this really helps negating damage.
Unyielding and Block are very effective early game, and pair well with a Doran's Shield.

Summoner's Insight and Mastermind give good upgrades to Flash, as well as your other summoner spell.
Meditation is better than Wanderer , since mana is always useful to have and the MS boost is so small.
Artificer is really good if you're taking a lot of items with actives, otherwise Expanded Mind would be a better choice.
Greed and Wealth give you some nice bonus gold. Since supports don't usually end up with a lot of gold, they're really useful.
Biscuiteer give you some nice sustain, while Explorer is good for early game jungle invading/covering.

I'm personally not a fan of those masteries, and I run the following instead:



Relentless is good against a team comp that relies in slows.
Tenacious helps you in staying mobile.
Juggernaut gives some nice bonus health, which you'll be buying a lot of.

I don't take Unyielding and Block , since 5 damage mitigiation is not that much (and I'm probably not buying a Doran's Shield anyways).
Wealth is very measly, almost any mastery beats it when you look at gold value.
Biscuiteer is easily replaced by Health and Mana Potions.
Explorer has the same value as Wealth and is therefore not that good.

Exhaust is really good for shutting down the enemy ADC, it will reduce their damage, attack speed and movement speed.

Flash allows you to escape from nasty situations, or go in offensively.

Those two are pretty standard, optional others are:

Ignite is a good spell if you are up against a Sona, Soraka or any healing champion, particularly if you want to play hyperaggressive.

Heal is nice if you're up against a poke lane, and/or if your champion doesn't have a healing ability. Examples of poke champions in bot lane are Ezreal and Lulu. It has most use in team fights though, since you can give everyone an HP boost.

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I recommend taking any combination of the following items:


Sight Ward


It's essential you take at least 3 wards.

My personal preferred start:

Sight Ward Sight Ward Sight Ward Sight Ward

It doesn't really set you back as the vision this gives will pay for itself, and you will probably have enough wards to hold out until you can buy a Sightstone.
Trading a Sight Ward for some more potions works too, it all depends on what you're expecting from the game.

Absolutely essential for any support, in at least 99 % of all games. The ONLY reason you might not want to get it, is if you're facing a jungler with a stealth mechanic. The most obvious example is Evelynn, but Shaco or even Twitch are options too. In that case just buy a lot of Vision Wards.

A necessity on 99 % of all champs, excluding Janna.

Assist in taking objectives or forcing lane control, and are particularly useful when an Oracle is too risky or too expensive to buy. Of course, they also allow you to clear brush without having to facecheck it, or spot ganks from stealthed champions.

No matter what, during the mid game YOU are responsible for carrying this around. It's crucial that you deny the enemy vision, so your jungler can gank, or so you can take an objective without the enemy even knowing it.

It can be really effective to buy this. Not really my cup of tea but I can't deny it's good in situations where you're up against a lot of champions who rely on autoattacking, or if you're getting harassed a lot. The stats it gives also aren't bad to have :)

It's great because it gives gold, damage and builds into Shard of True Ice and more importantly Twin Shadows.

Kage's Lucky Pick

Philosopher's Stone

It's okay because it builds into Shurelya's Battlesong and Mikael's Blessing, but the stats are a bit unnecessary.

Usually, you'll take Mobility Boots so you can roam around and clear wards. They're also useful for initiating since you can get to the enemy faster. However, if things don't go well, Ninja Tabi are good against AD heavy teams, and Mercury's Treads are a must have against a CC heavy enemy team. Enchantment: Homeguard are my personal preference, but if you like, you can take Enchantment: Captain instead.

gives an aura that grants MR and HP regen to nearby allies, and a shield to nearby allies as an active. On top of that, CDR, HP and Armor! This is exactly what any support wants besides wards and mobility, right? Besides, it's not THAT expensive, and it's incredibly cost efficient.

has a really great active, and builds out of a Philosopher's Stone. The CDR is of course also very nice :)

is really good for chasing, if 1-2 enemies got away with low hp this will give their position away, and it will slow them down. It's really good for disengaging too, if your team wants to run away after getting hammered this will slow the persuers down. It also builds from Kage's Lucky Pick.

has a very nice active, and builds out of Philosopher's Stone. However if you don't have any mana issues, the stats are pretty much wasted.

is great if the enemy has a lot of auto-attackers in their team such as any ADC, Jax, Irelia, Tryndamere, etc.

is awesome against teams with a good mix of AD and AP.

is great against one-hit-wonders such as Nidalee, or against champions that rely on a combo such as Lux and LeBlanc.

is good if you are melee and you aren't facing enemies that rely on AS.

is really good to have with an AD based team comp. The stats are also great!

Zeke's Herald

is also good against AA-reliant teams but the stats are not as good as Randuin's Omen's.

is okay, but I consider Twin Shadows better.. It does build out of Kage's Lucky Pick.

Only buy those when there's absolutely nothing else to be built. They give some nice bonuses but they're not worth the sacrifice in items and especially wards.

Per support champion.

You can't just throw a ward in a brush, if you place it in a bad spot it's not effective. Here are some screenshots that show the optimal way to ward in certain brush (note that sometimes you want to achieve a different goal, so there may be more ways to optimally ward a certain brush):

This video has tought me some things I didn't know yet, it's a really good watch :)

Always remember: Green cursor = IN brush, blue cursor = NOT in brush.

If you have any suggestions to add to this section, be my guest and leave them in a comment down below, I'll be sure to add them in the guide and credit you if I feel the tip(s) is/are good enough.

What do supports do at what times?

First off in this section, I want to give MASSIVE props to Vynertje, for giving a large amount of feedback. I know he's working on a support guide as well, so when it's out I'll link it here for more/other insights.

That's about it, thanks for reading!