Hello guys, when I first played Lissandra I started playing her as an AP Mid, a little tanky built, but as I began to understand her more she felt a little underwhelming to other mages due to their abilities to simply put out more dmg due to lower cooldowns. Then, I decided to attempt Lissandra support and it actually went better than mid lane from the very first game.

So if you, yourself want to try it out - go ahead.

Also before we start, many support players often wonder what they should do when their ad carry sucks, well the answer is definitely to try out Lissandra! She differs from other supports because her ability to deal damage is simply much higher as her ratios are particularly good!However, this doesn't meant to stop buying wards and just pure AP. As you may have noticed, her range on her abilities are quite low and you have to be in-their-face to deal damage, so buying a tanky item, which supports benefit from will only do you a good job.

In this guide I will present the pros and cons of Lissandra support, compare her to other supports and update whenever something new appears in the game in relation to supporting or Lissandra.

You can benefit from a few summoner spells as you're support, but the must-have is Flash due to its ability to initiate, counter-initiate, escape and chase. It simply works on almost every champion as it does on Lissandra.

Then it's the harder choice...
works against sustaining supporters and works well with the aggression you can put down, so if you adc plans on taking Barrier or Cleanse you may want to take this spell against a Soraka or Sona.
works well against burst supports such as Leona because you can use it while you're in some form of cc e.g. stunned. However, it doesn't work well against Ignite.
is a spell that can work defensively and to secure a kill. If there is an Evelynn or Kha'Zix on the enemy team that plans on making your carries life a nightmare then consider taking this spell.

Lets continue with the rune choices.
All supports benefit from Greater Quintessence of Gold, which allow supports to buy items faster and therefore become stronger, especially in late game. The extra gold stacks from Philosopher's Stone and Kage's Lucky Pick. As supports we buy GP/10 items because we allow our carries to farm the lane. For offensive marks I chose Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration because Lissandra has a decent range - 550 which allows her auto attacks to deal a lot of damage in the early game/laning phrase. If you're wondering why we take Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration instead of Greater Mark of Magic Penetration you can check the mathematical analysis here.

For seals and gylphs we will take some survivability as you are the person who has to be in melee range to put out your abilities. Greater Seal of Armor reduces damage from the enemy AD carry, and Greater Glyph of Magic Resist is useful when laning versus champions who do magic damage. Flat is stronger than scaling at level 1 (when laners with magic damage will try to poke you a lot) and level 6 (when champions get their ultimates).

If you do not have support runes you can always use your AP carry runes as Lissandra scales well on AP - magic pen or hybrid pen marks, armor yellows, scaling AP blues, and flat AP quints. Yes, you'll miss GP/10, but you'll have more damage to harass in lane with.

Having 9 points in the Offensive mastery page will let you unlock Arcane Knowledge which gives you more damage to harass with in lane and deal more damage in general. It scales well with building AP in late game and your will to dominate. When taking Heal, remember to unskill Summoner's Wrath and put the point in Sorcery instead to gain full effect of Heal.

Pros Supports are always underestimated 3 forms of Crowd Control New Champion Good Ratios on AP Strong initiator/counter-initiator Can peel easy for carry Escaping/Catching mechanism

Cons If initiation is slow, can pay with life Not easy to master Melee-ranged abilities Team mates may think you're trolling Useless passive lategame High Cooldowns

Every 18 seconds, Lissandra's next ability costs no mana. Cooldown reduction does not affect Iceborn, but the cooldown is reduced by 1 second whenever Lissandra impairs an enemy's movement with an ability (does not apply to movement-impairing effects from items).

This passive is so helpful when harrasing at early game, we can stay on full mana permanently if we use it wisely. less efficient late game.

Note:
When passive is available we can use our abilities even when we have lower mana than required.
I've seen some confusion about it, people thought that we need to have enough mana to cast the spell and the passive prevent the draining, but in fact we can have 0 mana and still cast the spell.