Morgana is an incredibly strong hero with many options to shut down the opposing team. This build was designed primarly to address the fact there aren't many high ranked support Morgana guides on the site; and I believe that Support is by far her best role- providing you with a busy and fun playing experience whilst frustrating the enemy and racking up kills.

This guide is a fairly large one to read so feel free to skip the chunks of text- I just try to add some reasoning behind some of my choices.

I feel that LoL is one of those games that is best played not to somebody else's style, but your own. I don't like guides that act like they have the definitive answer for a character because there isn't one. This guide won't be perfect for everyone but hopefully it should be detailed enough so that most people can find something they can benefit from.

Feel free to offer corrections or advice to this build because I just want to see a well rounded support guide and the more people offering tips the better :D

Pros
- Really fun to play
- Has a wide variety of tools at her disposal
- Regardless of your build, she has the best shield in the game hands down
- Amazing ultimate, theres rarely a bad time to use it
- Great laning partner for nearly every champion
- Can also mid very well

Cons
- Cooldowns on all her abilities are fairly long
- Hasn't got alot of speed (but her abilities should offset this most of the time)
- Her shield doesnt stop right clickers
- Her full nuke gank is usually limited to 1 person only

Pros
- Gives you the best of both worlds in terms of survivability, support and damage
- Allows you to be flexible with item choices
- Gives you a strong laning/ farm fairly early
- Allows you to be effective regardless of your skill or your start to a game

Cons
- Doesn't give you the full power of pure AP
- Not a build for Solo Queue

Greater Mark of Insight

The magic Penetration from these runes allows you to hit harder early game and get that crucial first blood. These marks are a straightforward choice for me as thery compliment your Tormented Soil

Seal of Resilience

Some might find a bit of abilty power better here but I have to disagree. With ability power you are losing a chance to make yourself a bit tougher early game- with the spell shield protecting against magic damage it seems obvious that we should insure ourselves from any right clickers we might come up against.

Greater Glyph of Celerity

Whilst playing Morgana you'll more than likely find that you need/want to be pinning people much more often than you are. These runes are golddust for Morgana and her team- this one is a no-brainer.

Greater Quintessence of Fortitude

Once more this makes you a bit tougher early game before the Rod of Ages/ Rylais come in to give you the health you need. Ability power is an option too if you wish to play more aggressively early on but- as I'll explain later- your laning partner should preferably be the hard hitter.

Some people like to buy a Doran's Ring early on for the extra ability power and good mana regen to help you stick around in laning.

In this guide I have chosen a Sapphire Crystal and a couple of Health Potions, primarly because you can start building into Rod of Ages asap, and secondly because if you have Clarity as a Summoner Spell then you shouldnt need the regen early game. This choice is entirely up to you but I prefer getting Rod of Ages reasonably quickly

Morgana isnt a fast character- and thus on your first return to the shop you'll want enough money to at least buy Sorcerers shoes and if possible a Mejai's Soulstealer. You can buy Ionian Boots of Lucidity as this would make you even more support orientated by allowing more cooldowns but for me the runes should ease this problem a bit and in the early stages of the game you'll want to have a decent burst damage output for those small windows of opportunity we like to call ganks- so its Sorcerors Shoes for me

Why Mejai's for a support build?? You sellout...
Even for a support build, Mejai's is too good for Morgana. You'll find yourself hardly dying, getting huge amounts of assists and racking up hopefully 15 kills a game. Getting full Mejai's stacks is so easy for Morgana, and that ability power allows you to hit really hard on top of your supporting role and gives her more options offensively :)

Anyways, Rod of Ages, Rylais Crystal Scepter and Abyssal Scepter are all items that make you tougher whilst still boosting your AP. You should have plenty of health and mana and there arent many champions who can individually hunt you down. Master Yi won't know what hit him :)

Voidstaff allows Morgana to keep her damage lategame once the squishies start panicking and try to fend off your pin with Magic Resist items :)


Note
Voidstaff and Abyssal are interchangeable with a few other items depending on the situation; if the opposing team has no magic/ or have been underfed/ or just suck with Veigar ;) then feel free to think about these items:

Rabadon's Deathcap- You'll have enough AP from the other items to make Rabadon's hit hard. If you've done well keeping your deaths low then you should have full stacks fairly quickly and this item can help you level a team fast.

Archangel's Staff- More Mana, more ability power, this item is also excellent for those long fights, but you are losing out on some abilty power compared to Rabadon's.

Frozen Heart- If your tank sucks or if you went solo queue and everyone locked in, demanded somebody else go tank and in end no one actually did, then you can think about this as a tanky item, lower cooldowns, armour and mana? Best item for a tanky Morgana- and for the record- tank Morgana is a fearsome being!

Thornmail- Maybe not the ideal item for Morgana as you can't take so many hits that Thornmail requires for it to start being a gamechanging item choice. However it isn't entirely out of the question to get this item if most of the opposing team went right click.

Will of Ancients A decent support item if you have teammates who would benefit from the spell vamp, as well as some useful AP.

Right Click?
Right clickers are characters who build towards making their Normal Attack very strong- Ashe, Caitlyn, Master Yi are examples of characters who usually build Attack Damage (AD) items to give them excellent DPS in team fights and the ability to backdoor towers.


Note
Because you are in a supporting role it means that you should take responsibility to buy alot of the team support items, such as Sight and Vision Wards, aswell as an Oracles Elixir unless there is somebody better suited- i.e. Amumu is a fantastic choice due to his bandage toss and fantastic survivability coupled with his stun ultimate.
Your pin means that stealthed characters need to be very careful around you, and because you should nearly always be near your teammates they will find it hard to gank you. Coupled with your tankiness and your pin/ultimate, alot of Eves and Shacos will find their entire game ruined :).

Pretty straightforward- support characters favour utility masteries and the 9 point offense abilities are too good to pass up with that magic pen masteries.

Clarity allows you to spam a bit more early game and if you're with an AP laning partner then it'll help them out too. Unlike other characters, clarity is useful for Morgana throughout the whole game.

Ignite is nice for Morgana because it helps to add that bit of extra damage when you're trying to gank; Tormented -> Dark Binding -> Ignite -> Soul Shackles should get you over the edge when it comes to taking people down.

Spells that are also viable

Ghost Morgana can suffer trying to get away from a bad situation, even with her pin- a clever chaser (or multiple chasers) wont have difficulty catching up.
Teleport Never a bad spell for a support- helps you get near to teammates in lane and also gives you chances to buy in laning phases without costing too much tower damage, if any.
Clairvoyance If you're supporting, then why not? Not exactly the best spell for Morgana but its always a nice team spell.

Passive:Soul Siphon: This passive gives Morgana a spell vamp of 15%. This is one of the best passives in the game and one which you benefit from throughout the entire game. It'll help you keep your health up whilst in laning phase and once you get powerful late game you'll still notice the healing that it is giving you.

Dark Binding: This is Morgana's pin- not a stun- thus opponents can still cast and attack you (if you're within range)- this is one of the reasons why Morgana can struggle vs ranged physical carries. The has 90% AP scaling which is very decent- and can pin from 2-3 seconds as you level. This move is good for ganking, anti ganking, tower diving, anti tower diving....its just good.

Tormented Soil This, combined with her pin does a decent amount of damage and is an excellent move for denying/ punishing people who want to creep farm. Putting this move down first followed by the pin is good against those melee characters who will begin to start taking risks in your Tormented Soil just to get that extra minion kill, as the move gets exponentially more painful due to the magic resistance decrease each tick. This means you can put the move down, let it tick one of two times and then go for the pin to inflict the full damage on the opponent.
Against ranged characters who are more mobile you'll want to get that pin first followed by the pool- as they do not need to take many risks by standing in the pool to start with and so you'll find you are wasting mana and potential harassment this way.

Black Shield One of the best support shields in the game, although it only shields vs magic damage- it can prevent stuns, suppressions, slows, damage...it is absolutely brilliant.
I'm going to give a quick rundown of things that it can beat out- and I'm sure you can all think of a few other things the shield is brilliant against:

Warwick's Ultimate- Completely denies the suppression and wastes his ulti, ruining his ganking ability
Malzahars Ultimate- See above- also cripples his other nuke abilities
Karthus Ultimate- Cripples the damage- if he wastes his ulti by not killing someone then thats a huge success!
Nunu's ulti- With shield up you can quickly wander out of the ulti as you are immune to the slow
Brand/ Anivia- Ruin's their combo moves i.e. Conflag- Sear wont stun you as the combustion passive does not proc with the shield up- same for anivia's combos
Ashe's Ulti- Cripples the damage and stops the stun
Mordekaiser- The shield beats out his Ultimate, preventing a fight turnaround (especially if Morde is hunting a carry with his ulti).

Soul Shackles A brilliant ulti- and with support Morgana you are tanky enough to wander in the midst of a teamfight after the tank and offtank and cast it on the team. It serves as an effective nuking spell, but the ability to slow AND THEN stun is a fantastic support move. You can initiate with it for an easy ace, or save it to chase down the mobile characters or save weakened teammates from a chasing team.
You do have to get pretty close to use it but if you hit 3 or more people with it in a teamfight then its pretty difficult for your team to lose (although solo queue says otherwise...)

We take Pin straightaway so that we can help our laning partner with early kills if possible (or save them).
The next choice depends on your laning opponents. Usually laning opponents must fufill these criteria to change my skill approach:
a) Have magic damage
b) Have a stun- that counts as magic damage

Then we level up spell shield once so that we can shield ourselves from magic stuns and other annoying CC moves, and just rely on our laning partner to do a bit of the damage for a bit.

Then we rush tormented soil up to level 4 so that it does enough damage to kill the 3 caster minions at the back for farm.
Its then up to you to go for extra pin damage or extra shielding depending on the situation; just remember the shield only stops magic damage so ranged physical characters are a nuisance for morgana.

Laning Partners
I know its an easy statement but Morgana is good with just about anybody- although she is better paired with a character (or player :) ) who likes to get stuck in, or ranged characters who really benefit from an immobile opponent.

Good Laning Partners
Brand: Although its a magic lane, its even easier for Brand to combo and currently he hits like a truck and can outdamage most opponents.
Evelynn: Pin-> Soil followed by Eve's stun is huge damage and causes them to sit on the pool for a long time... strong stuff.
Sion: Another stun, nice melee damage, can really dominate lanes with this combo.
Pantheon- As he stuns, fire your pin, it should hit as Panth's stun end and will allow his heartseeker strike to annihilate opponents for the full duration.
Tryndamere
Xin Zhao
Rumble
Rammus

This just gives a few examples of course- alot of the time it depends on the player you are with.

Bad Laning Partners:

Any other support char

Two supports in one lane can be easily bullied out, but as Support Morgana I haven't found anyone who suffers from having a pin, a shield and a good way to deny enemy farm in their lane.

Laning Opponents

From my previous discussion this should be fairly easy to determine:

Good laning opponents
Veigar: Shielding a Renekton/ Xin as they close the gap on Veigar is a beautiful sight- no more Stun-> Nuke -> Flee tactics from the Tiny Master of Evil.
Anivia: If for some reason she isn't mid (see solo queue) then her damage is completely crippled- her slow aoe does not work and she cannot really do much to anyone.
Malzahar: With your shield he cannot do much to your onrushing laning partner apart from run- this is a funny matchup :)
Nunu: His harass is annoying early game but with the shield his risks can get him killed. You and your partner's risks are eased by the shield getting you quickly out of his Ulti.
Ryze: He likes to nuke and stun. Morgana likes to cripple damage and provide stun immunity.
Singed: The shield makes you immune to throws, allows you to run through poison and gives immunity to his slow pool. Poor poor Singed...

We can also add melee characters who cant close the gap well, like Trundle, Rammus, Garen, Nasus...

Bad laning Opponents

Basically ranged physical carries and those melee chars that are adept at closing the distance

Ezreal
Ashe
Caitlyn
Tristana
Miss Fortune
Xin Zhao
Jarvan
Nocturne (especially with that spell shield!)

are just a few.

Early Game

As mentioned- use your pin to let your laning partner harass and combine that with tormented soil later. Remember to use your mana wisely- denying enemy farm and giving yourself farm is important, but so is harass. Therefore try to save your harass mana for one of your opponents, not both. Focus one down- and when he has to recall try and use both barrels for his weakened teammate. Remember to get the 1 point in Shield at level 3 to stop ganks and to help your opponent rush through their CC.
At level 6, look to situations where you ulti will beat people down. If they have a ranged melee in your lane. Pin and rush the ranged with your partner, wait for the melee to charge you and ulti them both. Use your ignite carefully on the first target so you can let them burn out whilst you focus on killing or escaping the melee (it should be the former).
If not, look to other lanes- your ulti guarantees a kill in nearly any lane, use your shield on yourself (unless you are accompanied by a good rushdown char nearby) and get close to your opponents to ulti them. You will take a battering but by now you should at least have Catalyst the Protector and so you should be completely fine.

Mid Game
Go round popping Tormented Soil on nearby minions for easy farm and start following your team- as Support Morgana its much harder to gank alone, unless you've had a good early game and have a few Mejai's stacks. Use your pin to initiate, save your ulti if you can, but if your opponent looks like they'll run then use it. Don't waste your ulti if you don't REALLY need to. If the kill is going to happen then you might aswell save it for a better scenario :).

Start taking towers with your teammates- Morgana is good at pushing towers with the right tank in the team. Use your pool to wipe out enemy minions, then look for a pin on any tower hiding opponent. You are even tanky enough to take a few sneaky tower hits whilst your teammates dart in to nuke the pinned opponent. If your tank gets brave on the tower then follow him and ulti anyone foolish enough to defend it. With the tank taking the tower hits use this precious time to nuke the enemy team down.
Tower diving is never a smart fighting choice but it does happen an awful lot nonetheless, and getting it right is crucial. As your tank gets lower he'll want to back out. Keep using your shields on the focused players and retreat- using your pin whenever necessary to allow a safe retreat.

Late Game
With the nice amount of kills you'll be getting from your ulti and pool, along with the mountain of assists- your mejai's will be fully stacked and you'll hit very very hard for a support char. Keep initiating with your pin and focus the hard hitters in the enemy team. Use your ulti on as many people as you can to ensure a big stun on several opponents.

In a team fight- you need to be very selective with your spells- try not to just randomly shield somebody in hope that they will get targeted. Assess the situation and stay on your toes.

Where is that Assassin? Have they peeled off somewhere- better make sure I use my pin wisely incase they choose to flank us.

Is our Nunu preparing to ulti? Better save my shield so even a double CC (assuming they are a good Nunu and bought Banshees)wont be enough to stop him.

That Annie keeps getting brave with her Nukes? Save your pin until she goes to the well one too many times (so many casters do this).

Essentially you need to be fully aware of the situation- this goes for any supporting character. You need to be the more reserved and steadfast one- the one who knows when to go in and provide the extra nuke- and the one who realises that the fight could turn any moment, and has saves some crucial spells to help the team get out- especially a team who have flung everything they can at the enemy and have nothing to get themselves out- this is where they need you to disable and scare the enemy off.

So often have the enemy started to chase, I pin the melee, let the ranged carries run past their protection to get the kills, and then I drop off and pop my ulti. My tankiness allows me to offtank for the short time it takes for my teammates to turn around and finish the job.
Of course this would not work in every situation but quite alot of the time the enemy fail to realise how quickly Morgana can turn a fight.

You will often find yourself focused alot- your tankiness will help but make sure you are ideally positioned so that any stupid push to take you out of the fight results in them getting annihilated. I'm sure we've all had fights where the enemy has tried so hard to take you out of the fight that even if they do kill you, its a 1-5 trade :)



P.S.
You cannot do much to tanks apart from pin them. Don't even bother trying to kill them unless the team have a reason to focus him. Even then- disabling the tank's backup is probably more effective- and you can pop a tormented soil under their feet if you still wish to help reduce their magic res a bit :)

Hopefully by now you'll have an idea on how to play Morgana in a supporting role. It is true that pure AP can hit really hard but her talents are wasted by going nuke- there are plenty of other characters who do that job so much better- especially with the recent introduction of Brand.

You'll find yourself pretty tanky with over 3k health, with a decent amount of AP (depending on your personal item choices that I provided) so that you can support your team well without taking away her damage to an extent that you can't defeat people 1v1. I've had full hp Yi's lose to me using this, and then start running away from me when I go to gank them- so don't worry if you felt you were losing too much AP to have fun.

This build allows you to take more risks and play a bit more aggressively late game. It also gives you a chance to pull off some ridiculously good ultis and escape intact.

You'll know this guide is working well for you if you find yourself with a nice amount of kills, a truckload of assists and very few deaths.
I hope this guide works as well for everyone else has it has done for me.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Any tips and tricks from you guys will be displayed in it's own individual section and you will of course be credited.
Thanks :)