My goal for this guide is to be as in depth as possible about Rakan and the Support role. I've been playing on and off over the years but I'm still around to keep it updated. Not much changes through each patch with Rakan.

I play Rakan as a hard counter engage champion. Unless I have an engage champ on my team then I follow up with them once they dive in. But I personally prefer to force the enemy to engage on my team, so I can turn it around in our favor very, very quickly. It's also much easier to play as a counter engager vs an engager. Since you get to decide who does what, and who to lockdown without risking everyone instantly turning on you to kill you, flashing away, or hard ccing you.

However, if you're playing as a pre-made. Then being the engage initiator is viable. But since most people solo queue, or duo queue, it's far more strategic to wait for the opportunity since you can't rely on your teammates awareness all the time!

There are a lot of item & rune pages. They should all have notes. Make sure to read over the notes for each set to understand the reasoning for all the listed information!

Overall Rakan is a very strong support and has the ability to setup kills for your team. While he does have his weaknesses, he has more strengths that he can utilize to turn just about any fight into his favor.

Bulwark of the Mountain: Standard source of income and vision. Great way to secure cannons for your adc during laning phase. You'll always go for this.

Shurelya's Battlesong: Since your travel speed on your Grand Entrance scales with movement speed, this will help ensure you land vital cc on mobile targets, it's also good as an escape tool if things go really bad.

Zeke's Convergence: Because of the way your The Quickness and Grand Entrance works, you will be able to trigger the effect easily, activating an 8 second debuff on the enemies you Immobilize, giving your adc extra damage.

Vigilant Wardstone: Being a support you have two jobs. Keep your adc alive and supply your team with vision. This item gives you more control over placing vision.

Mobility Boots: These boots are great if you're going to be roaming often and won't be getting hit before connecting with an enemy. Otherwise Boots of Swiftness would make for a better choice.

Mercury's Treads: These will be your default option for boots vs any team composition that is heavy on Crowd Control.

Plated Steelcaps: If the enemy team has a lot of auto attackers such as Vayne or little to no Crowd Control, and you're not planning on roaming, these should be your boots of choice.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: If you're going for a high CDR support build to fly in and out of fights, supply teammates with endless shields and offer lots of cc, these are the boots for you.

Boots of Swiftness: This is a pretty viable choice if you plan to roam often, mobility boots are much faster but getting hit once will reduce that extra movement speed and significantly slow you down, this would be the safer boot roaming option.

Ardent Censer: A Traditional Item taken by supports who can shield allies. This does not include regeneration effects or effects on yourself.

Redemption: Great item for extra shields and long range zoning\team healing or just to force vision on an objective by using the active on a location to reveal the area momentarily.

Locket of the Iron Solari: This is a great item to have if you're up against a lot of burst. You can essentially have your Guardian proc on an ally, use your Battle Dance on them, and then activate this item for massive damage reduction.

Frozen Heart: This item gives a lot of armor, a lot of cooldown reduction, and a nice chunk of mana. It's perfect if you're against really fed AD champions, or if you're planning to go full tank.

Gargoyle Stoneplate: Very easy to get full value out of by engaging with your Grand Entrance and then activating this item when you get around half health. Recommended only if you're going for a full tank build with Aftershock.

Mikael's Blessing: A must have if you're up against champions like Morgana who can root a target for 3 seconds with her Dark Binding, inevitably causing their likely demise.

Spirit Visage: This is only if you're going for a tank setup, you will heal yourself more with your Gleaming Quill and gain a nice amount of bonus health and cooldown reduction. It's best paired with Warmog's Armor.

1. Having control over the map ensures your teammates safety.
2. It gives them freedom to move around without getting surprised in a bush that fed Annie was hiding in.
3. It gives you and your teammates the ability to know when it's safe to push that lane in without worrying about getting ganked.
4. You have more control over objectives like Drake , Rift Herald , and Baron .
5. You can punish an enemy for over extending without being surprised by their team who may have been nearby.
6. Knowing where the enemy is means you can do objectives on the other side of the map safely without them contesting.

Stealth Ward: Consume a charge to place an invisible Stealth Ward which reveals the surrounding area for 90-120 seconds depending on the average level of all champions.

Store one charge every 240-120 seconds depending on the average level of all champions, up to 2 maximum charges.

A player may only have 3 Stealth Wards on the map at one time. At level 9 this can be upgraded into Farsight Alteration.

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Control Ward: Places ward that reveals the surrounding area. This device will disable and reveal nearby wards and Camouflaged units will also be revealed.

Limited to one Control Ward on the map per player.

Can only carry 2 Control Wards in inventory.

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Farsight Alteration: Places a visible ward with 1 Health from 4000 units away and reveals the surrounding area for 2 seconds (148 - 99 second cooldown depending on the average level of all champions). Wards placed by the Farsight Alteration trinket last until killed and do not count towards your Stealth Ward limit.

The Farsight Alteration trinket cannot be purchased before level 9.

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Oracle Lens: Sweeps a 750 unit area around your champion for 10 seconds, warning against hostile units, revealing invisible traps and revealing and disabling invisible wards. (90 - 60 second cooldown based on the average level of all champions).




The below picture is a general guideline on my personal warding preferences. And yes, the picture is outdated and doesn't show alcoves because I couldn't find a picture of a map that has it yet. But the locations are still the same.



Dark Red Star = Prime Control Ward Locations.
Red Star = Important Ward Zones, use Control Ward or Stealth Ward here, make sure you always have vision control while an objective is up!
Yellow Star = Prime Stealth Ward Locations.




NOTE: This information is a combination of lol wiki & Riot Staff posts from lol forums. The source for both is found here and here.

In short, Vision Score = (1 point per minute of ward lifetime provided) + (1 point per minute of ward lifetime denied).

Ward Lifetime Provided: Each minute of ward lifetime grants up to 1 point, depending on how effective the ward is.

Ward Lifetime Denied: Scoring a ward takedown (earned gold from a ward's death) grants 1 point for every minute of lifetime remaining on the ward (permanent wards are assumed to have 1.5 minutes of lifetime remaining).

Vision Mechanics: Various vision-providing mechanics have a baseline score on-use (usually 0.1 to 0.5), and can also give bonus scores if revealing unseen champions or epic monsters (usually 0.1 to 1.0). This includes Scryer's Bloom, trinket activation, ward placement, Rift Scuttler , and all champion's abilities that grant Sight and True Sight.


Example: A Hawkshot that reveals a full Baron attempt will give much more than a Heightened Senses that reveals nothing (which will still give some score).


An allied ward's point generation can be reduced under certain infractions. The reduction is applied to the score generated within the duration of the infraction, and stacks multiplicatively (e.g. -50% for 6s nets -0.05 points).

A ward that hasn't seen any interesting units (enemy champions, wards, and epic monsters) in a while will gradually go down in point value, starting at -0% at 60 seconds of staleness and worsening to -50% at 120 seconds of staleness.

While a ward is near other friendly sources of vision (allied wards, structures, and lane minions), its point value will be reduced, starting at -25% for 1 redundancy and worsening up to -75% for 3+ redundancies. Lane minions don't count as redundant if the ward is in brush.

A ward that's very close to your base can give less score, starting from -0% score around your buff camps and worsening to about -50% score at your base walls.

A ward that's very close to a friendly structure or inside your own base will have a -100% modifier to its point value.

If a ward is quickly killed by enemies, it will still give lifetime score as if it survived a minimum of 20 seconds (0.33 points).




1. You can place a ward while using recall .
2. You can ward over walls and obstacles. If you can place the ward more than halfway into a wall or obstacle, it will appear on the other side.
3. Don't always ward in a bush, most players will assume a bush is warded and use a Control Ward or Oracle Lens and kill your ward. Try placing wards in unsuspecting places that still give you vision over an area. Ex. Placing a Stealth Ward in the river, or a path that leads to objectives, but is not directly in or near a bush, still giving you vision of a targeted area with less risk of being destroyed.
4. Farsight Alteration is a powerful trinket that can be cast with great distance to give you vision in areas that may be too dangerous to walk into.
5. If you have multiple Control Wards in your inventory and the one you have placed is being killed, you can deny the enemy gold and vision score by placing another Control Ward before the first one dies.
6. Wards yield gold and experience if you kill them.

List of things still to come.

In no particular order..

1. Rework to Threats & Synergies including every champion in the game.
2. Details of the role of support, including how to play a champion like Rakan who is meant to only be a support.
3. In-Game clips of ways to utilize Rakan as well as combos and ability showcase.
4. Clean-up of long walls of text and hard to read chapters with more visual images and better coding.

If any credits are due and have not been posted in the above chapters, they will be given here as well as the source for the information provided.

Map of Summoner's Rift: Oliver Chipping - Riot Games Senior Artist.

Oct 4th 2023 - Updated items to stronger options.

March 6th 2022 - Updated the items yet again, cleaned up more text.

March 3rd 2022 - Updated some of the items again, adding Fimbulwinter to the list, and cleaned up a little more of the chapters as well as updating some more of the outdated information.

February 14th 2022 - Updated the items, Abilities Page, and Core Items & Situational Items page to match the new\updated items\abilities.

April 1st 2020 - Cleaned up some of the walls of text.

March 6th 2020 - Added the following chapters: Eternals.

February 26th 2020 - Added the following chapters: Rakan's Spotlight and Cinematics, Credits, and More to come.

February 25th 2020 - Added the following chapters: Pros and Cons, Vision and Vision Control, and Core Items & Situational Items.

February 24th 2020 - Added the following chapters: Abilities.