ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hello! Actioner here. I'm here to teach you the fundamentals for the Support role. I will surely try my best. So I've been playing League of Legends since late Season 3. I've been always a Main Support and I'm more than happy to share this passion and knowledge with you. I'm currently a high Diamond player with highest ever reached: Challenger Top 40(EUNE) and Master(EUW). I don't main a specific champion on Support, I can play 20+ support champs, so I always adapt to meta and what works best for me during that time. My secondary role is Mid-lane with a pretty small champion pool, but I always get my primary role in my games.

I'm a fairly new Twitch Partner streamer and recently decided to stay consistent with it, grow a community and get into content creation!
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INTRODUCTION
This Guide will focus on explaining what is roaming in League of Legends. Roaming is one of the hardest skills in the game to learn and it requires patience, quick maths, various questions and most importantly knowledge. It is an extremely hard skill to learn due to the fact that you can't just learn it that easy on your own in just a couple of matches and on top of that you need to try! Yes it is one of those skills that can improve your gameplay, your knowledge on reading the map easier and faster as a support and of course the reasons why you won your next Ranked game. I will try my best to explain Roaming through questions, more like a FAQ to make it easier for everyone. So let's get into this, shall we?

1) What is Roaming?
What is roaming? Roaming basically means when you move from one lane to another. The time on roaming varies depending on the champion you are playing, the destination and the game's general state.
Roaming is usually done during early-mid stages of the game and mostly during the laning phase. You as the support, are able to roam since you don't really need to farm at all.
Keep in mind, roaming isn't mandatory! But it can give those extra numbers for your team that early in the game that can be crucial for a later outcome!


2) Why do I Roam?
The main reason for roaming is to help your allies achieve a victory over their laning phase. You leave your lane in order to create immense pressure in other areas of the map by gaining kills, tower plates and control areas of the map and objectives that are definitely useful for your team!
Regardless of your ELO you need to spend your free time on constantly controlling the map, so that means staying on botlane untill the end of the game cannot give a general pressure but only a push for that specific lane.
Think about it differently. There are three lanes (Top,Mid,Bot) all the lanes except yours consists of 1 player, why not sneak on those solo lanes and get advantage for your teammate. Just like junglers do, be smart and make their job part of yours.


3) Which Champions can Roam?
Any Support champion can roam! Most league players would say it's easier to roam with Supports that have tons of Crowd control skills such as Thresh, Alistar, Leona and so on. That is true but that doesn't mean you can't roam with an enchanter support like Janna and Nami or Poke supports like Xerath, Zyra.

Most of the supports if not all, have at least 1 skill that immobilizes the enemy. Yet roaming is not all about the CC – it’s about the element of surprise and being able to shove down a plates/tower or go for other objectives without the enemy being able to react quick enough to be able to do anything about it.
I would without doubt roam with any support, it is just a matter of how much ''free time'' I have and me be available to roam.


4) Where to Roam?
Generally you can roam anywhere. Yes anywhere!
Mid lane as it is the closest lane to Bot lane and Drake control! Due to the small gap between Bot and Mid you can do multiple roams in a match. This is where you can shine and be extremely useful for your team by constantly annoying the enemy team with your presence in their plans.
A good roam is towards the river to follow up your jungler's upcoming fight in the river, while he is attending a crab or a gank on Mid.


Top lane shall not be forgotten! This lane is hard to roam for you as Support because it's extremely far from your own lane. Keep in mind that the only way to roam top is when you are in base. That way the gap is smaller and noone will see you. Also noone wants to see you running like Sonic the Hedgehog from down town, up there!
It might be hard to roam for your Top laner but trusty me it's the easiest lane to get a kill as the lane is bigger than any other, a lot of top laners are immobile and do not have awareness of the Bot lane state.
To make it easier for you:
Bot->Mid->Bot
Base->Top->Recall->Bot


5) Roaming Routes?
I will demonstrate the paths you need to follow for successful roaming with an image below. Taking the river is always the most riskiest path but the fastest one especially if you have Waterwalking in your rune page. Through the river you can also have better warding for your team since you are closer to the enemy side jungle you can ward there and give more in depth details of enemies position for your own team.
Check the map information you have. A good rule is to check your team's position and enemies and most importantly your jungler's position and the enemy jungle. That way you can decide which path to take.
Any other path that is accesible to lanes but not drawn is not recommended. That's because it requires a lot of times to reach from one lane to another.




6) When to Roam?
1st Phase/Thoughts
As I mention earlier roaming can help you improve your macro gameplay understand the game in the long run and read the map faster for your next move! So before you roam you have to ask yourself some simple questions and you have to keep doing that the whole laning phase untill mid phase. As a general rule of thumb:
*Quote by the pros


- Is my ADC missing from the botlane?
In this case your roam has to be quick so you choose to roam Mid preferably since it's closer to Bot lane. Most likely your ADC is missing from the lane because is dead! If you are in a good condition, and you don't need to recall, you can roam or you can recall and then roam. Recalling and then roaming is a safer option because your opponents won't know your next move.
One more occasion is where you know that your ADC is about to recall and thus leave the lane. This is really rare occasion and hard to understand but I will give you an example:
Let's say you kill the enemy botlane and your ADC is in a good condition and you know he is going to get those 1 or 2 tower plates. Since he is in a good health state and there is a pretty good setup vision for him, you can recall before him. That way he can have those plates just for himself and you can roam from Base to Mid back to Bot at the same time as your ADC. (Yes your ADC is happy for having solo plates, Yes he is rich and doesn't know what to buy so he does need sometime during his shopping therapy).


- Can my ADC be left on their own?
So here is mandatory to know your ADC's abilities and your opponents. If your ADC has an escape tool he can most likely survive. A good example is
Ezreal and Lucian, they can dash away. So next you have to make sure the enemies do not have a Tanky Support such as
Nautilus that can dive your ADC.

✔️ Good example: You have Ezreal as your ADC against Lulu and Jinx.

❌ Bad Example: You have Aphelios as ADC against Nautilus and Samira.


Make sure to not overpressure on this, you do not want to put yourself in trouble or die especially at this moment, it's a potential lose of XP and death for your ADC.
Roaming while your ADC is lane is not recommended for lower ELO (Gold and below) unless you know you can rely on your ADC. Try to roam when he is missing. However, I highly recommended this type of roam in Platinum+ .


- Is the enemy Bot lane dead/recalling?
When the enemy bot lane is not in lane, either because they recall or they are dead, you can roam! Seriously, do not recall if there is no need. While they are dead you put a lot of pressure in the map by roaming around the river bot side, mid lane or even top side river.
The good part of this type of roaming is that the enemy bot lane can not reply to your roam(since they are dead), so you are safe to get your jungler and mid laner to do something on the map.


- Is the enemy ADC/Support about to roam?
Always pay attention to your enemies actions. If you see the enemy bot lane moving towards river, reply and start moving safely along your jungle's path. In most cases the enemy Support will be the one roaming but sometimes the ADC might follow up.
In case that happens you can still follow to counter roam even if your own ADC doesn't follow. Just by showing yourself next to your teammates that about to get caught can scare the enemies away or even disengage for your team and save them.
If you manage to save a someone from a potential death or even get them a kill, it means you successfully counter roam the enemy.

---

2nd Phase/Thoughts
So after answering all the questions above, what do I do next? Do I just roam?
Here come's the second phase where you have to checkmark a list to fully setup your upcoming roam. Ready, Set, Go!


- What champion am I playing?
Here depending on the champion you are playing and its skills you have to plan your roam accordingly. You should never roam with all champions the same way!
A quick and easy example would be: You walk in as
Thresh

from the side bush of the midlane to try and land a hook on the enemy midlaner. Depending on the enemy's position, vision and minions placement that sneak attack might be or not successful but its surely the correct way to do it.
Another example is where you decide to play
Soraka

! How do I even roam with this champion? Do I walk in to throw a Starcall.

to slow my enemy and Equinox.

? No you don't roam the same way as you did with Thresh.

. You stay in the bush next to the lane which you have checked with Oracle Lens.

if it is warded unless the teammate gives you that information OR on the side of the bush out of the enemy's vision and you call your teammate to start fighting. Straight after you drop in making that 1v1 a 2v1 and a potential death by healing your teammate and disabling the enemy.


- What's your lane's wave/minion condition?
Typically you want to roam when your ADC decides to freeze the wave towards your tower or you shove in the wave to the enemy tower and next wave of minions will slowly start pushing towards you. In the second scenario your ADC will have to stay safe and give up couple of Creeps untill you back in lane. (I will talk about minion management more in depth in another guide in the future).

Remember this is a risky decision but you can get a lot out of it. Make sure you always have vision for your ADC in the river bush(on your side) before you leave him alone in the lane.


- Is the lane gankable?
Generally its important to have a look on what's going on other lanes. Especially you as the Support since you are not farming you must pay more attention to the map and other lanes than anyone else.
You need to pay attention to the targeted lane you are about to roam and look at its state and your teammate. Check the wave position and enemy's position. If they are freezing the minions towards their tower its most unlikely you can gank. Depending though on your champion you might be able to dive, a good example is
Alistar

.
Keep a track on your teammate's ultimate cooldown and health/mana state since it's the only information you have on your screen. Look at your jungler, where is he? Is he about to help you with the roam? Go for it!


7) The extra benefits on Roaming?
While roaming you can get extra benefits for your team other than kills and towers. That is vision! Which is from the most important things in the game. Warding areas while you roam to control objectives and deny potential ganks for other lanes can be a huge impact in your games.
You can always think of vision as the main reason why you won your next game and with you holding the Support Ward item, makes you automatically the leader.




CONCLUSION
To summarise it, supports do struggle to carry games so then we have to look into promising options to have a large impact on the game and better chanse on carrying them. Obviously roaming is one of them and not just babysitting your Marksman.

There are also other ways to grab those trophies as a Support, such as shot calling, peeling, vision control but roaming is the most effective one in all League Divisions and Tiers!



Thanks for reading! :)
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