Hi guys,

I am Jukkiej, a Silver league support player on the EU west server. I have been playing support as long as I can remember, My main champ is Leona. It's not like I am the most awesome support player ever, but more often then not when I play ranked, I come up against an unexperienced support, who was forced into picking it by his team. For this reason I wanted to make a guide for those kind of players, who can then learn the basics of the support role. This is the first guide I've ever written and if you guys downvote it I would like to know why, so that I can adapt my guide.

In my opinion is the support role the most fun and challenging role in the whole of League of Legends. As an support it's your job to do everything to give your team the easiest time winning, you gotta protect your ad carry so he can farm up and wreck stuff lategame, it's not just protecting in lane but also in teamfights. It's your job to ward and buy items that help your team, like Aegis of the Legion. If you want to know the opinion of pro players on the support role, then you'll find this video rather amusing. Definition-of-a-support-role.

In the support role there are in my opinion too much variables to talk about real straight out counters but there is one way which you can use to counter every support, it's like a triangle. Aggresive supports counter sustain support, sustain supports counter poke supports and poke supports counter aggresive support. Of course there are some exceptions (there always are in this game), like the matchup between Sona and Blitz which through the triangle Sona should win but in the rift it's Blitz who beats up Sona.

The summoner spells I take on supports are these:

Because flash is overpowered, even after the nerfs.

Because It gives you a good way to turn early engages in botlane, also it's awesome in teamfights

Because you can easily shut down the enemy adc with this, also it comes in handy when u want to protect your adc.

This is usually for aggresive lanes for more damage during engages, personally I don't recommend it because it may take kills from you adc

The recommended runes for each support named above are there, but if you want to make a runepage for diferent supports there are two common ways of building your runeset, for aggresive supports i usually do:
The runes that i usuallly use for poke and sustain support are these:
Personally I don't think that since the S3 patch gold quints are still a nessecity. This is becaused they lowered the gold per minion kill and increased the gold per second, which is benificial for supports.

There are lots of ways to set up your masteries as a support. As an support the utility masteries are the best choice cause they give a support the bonus gold and such that they need. There is one set of masteries that I use often since I've found them recently, these are 1/13/16 and look like this:

The items that are most used on supports are items that give gp5 or have supportive effects, but of course there are also some aggresive choices, here are some of the items I would recommend on each support: Of course there are always other posibilties. or

In this paragraph i'll tell you some handy tips to improve your support play
1. If your ad carry doesnt have enough ad to lasthit the ranged minions under tower you should help him by hitting the ranged minions once before the tower hits them, in that way your adc just has to do one auto-attack to lasthit them.
2. Try to summarize if your enemy's have summoner spells up, just so you know: flash has a 300 second cooldown, which is equal to 5 minutes, so when someone pops his flash at 1:55 you can note down in chat that his flash will be back up at 6:55, the other cooldowns are important as well but flash is the best one to keep track of.
3. Always try to look at the minimap every 3 seconds, and if you see like the enemy jungler going to toplane you should tell him by pinging or typing in chat. this of course only works wel when you have wards, cause as we all know Wards win you games.

Warding is the most important thing you do as an support, I've seen so many games be turned completely by one catch that ws caused by a well placed ward. Of course you dont get as much gold as you would like, and then u also gotta buy wards, this can sometimes leave you really poor. When this happens ask each member of your team to buy 2 wards and then you will have alot of vision at the important points of the map. As a guide where to ward I recommend this video made by Yannis Ziakas and is voiced by Jhoihoi.
The Mobafire Warding video

The first champion I decided to make a champion-specific guide for is Leona,The rest of the guides will be added in the future. Leona is an aggresive engage support who is often paired up with aggresive ad carry's like Corki. her abilities are:
This is Leona's passive, it gives bonus damage to anyone attacking a targer that has recently been hit by on of Leona's abilities. She can't proc this mark herself and the marks don't stack, because of this you need to space your abilities out so that your ad carry can land an auto-attack inbetween them. this results in Tons of Damage.
This is Leona's q ability, it's an spell that should be activated and then has its impact on the next auto-attack. The same as Nasus's Q , When you land this auto-attack you deal bonus magic damage and stun your target for 1,25 seconds at all ranks. This skill also resets your auto-attack timer so try to use it right after an normal attack to increase your damage output. This ability should be maxed second for the reduced cooldown.
This is Leona's W and also her bread and butter ability, On activation it gives you and armor and magic resist buff for three seconds, which stays active for three more seconds if you hit the damage component of it, the damage part is that after the three seconds the shield will explode and do AoE magic damage around you. This is the ability that you should be maxing first for the increased armor and magic resist.
As Leona this is one of your two important skillshots, when you use this ability it sends out a blade in a line that when it hits and enemy champion will deal magic damage and briefly roots him. It also teleports you to the last enemy hit. This is your most important way of closing the gap. Always remember it teleports you to the last enemy hit, which you can use to escape some tricky situations.
This is Leona's ultimate ability and also the most tricky one. It's and AoE skillshot with and inner and an outer circle, people hit by the inner circle take magic damage and are stunned while the ones hit by the outer circle will only be slowed. It's best to aim this abit ahead of someone to hit him in the center but that takes alot of practice. In Teamfights you should hit as many people as you can with this or stun the high-value targets.

As Leona you want to play very aggresive in lane, but there are rules for engaging, Always when I think about engaging on any support I go through this checklist in my head which contains these points:
#1 Does the enemy have important abilities or summoner spells up?
#2 At what position is the lane? mostly you only want to engage at your tower or in the center of the lane, also keep minion damage in mind.
#3 Has the enemy jungler been gone for a while or is the midlaner missing?
#4 Is your ad carry in a good position to follow up?

If the answers to these questions are positive you can start looking for an engage.
On leona there is one combo for pre-6 engagements and two for post-6 engagements. The combo for Pre-6 is: W >> E >> Autoattack >> Q. This is used to get the most damage in cc out as quick and effective as possible, dont forget to keep autoattacking. Also if you are not an too experienced leona player you should turn W after you hit E instead of before because you're not too sure if you hit it yet, this helps to not waste cooldowns.
The combo's after 6 are almost the same as above but with Solar Flare involved. You can use solar flare to engage from long range if you are sure you can hit it, otherwise you can use it right at the end of your q stun for the CC-lock. The build, runes and masteries I use on Leona you can find in the top part of the guide by clicking on her portret.

This guide is about Lulu, Lulu is an pokey support, with alot of utility in her kit and she brings good kiting for her adc. She works really well with any adc, but the ones that I found notably good were Caitlyn and Vayne.
Pix,fairie companion This is Lulu's passive which makes her little fairie Pix fire 3 bolts after every auto-attack. That's the reason why you want to be auto-attcking your enemy alot when playing Lulu, cause in the early game this deals some pretty high damage.
This is Lulu's Q which is an awesome ability, it sends out a skillshot from Lulu, and one from Pix. These bolts can hit separate targets but a target cna only be hit by one glitterlance. This abilty has quite some range and makes Lulu one of the best poke supports in the game, I usually max this first in easy lanes and second in harder ones, in which I max the shield first.
This is Lulu's famous polymorph ability, which can change someone into a dragon, a cat, a cupcake or a squirrel depending on the skin. this polymorph is a stun, but people can still walk but not auto-attack or use any abilties, they are also slowed. But if you use this on an allied champion they will get a movement speed bonus aswell as an boost in AP. this allied effect is of course great when used on allied mages.
This ability is Lulu's E which has an different effect when used on an allied or enemy unit. When used on a allied unit Pix moves to this unit and gives him a shield, also it moves the passive bolts from Pix towards the allies autoattacks. when used on a enemy Pix also travels to them but instead of a shield he gets damaged and revealed. Pix still moves to him but doesn't get the passive of course.
This is Lulu's ultimate which enlarges the target, gives him bonus hp and knocks up and slows everyone around the target, this can be put to great use while protecting your adc, but you can also use it on your initiator right after he went in for the extra cc.
If you are looking for the builds and rune and masteries you can see them above by the cheat sheets.

Well guys, this was my guide to playing support. I hope you enjoyed it and learnt from it. If you downvote please tell me why so I can make my guide better. I also want to thank Jhoihoi for her very helpfull guide to making guides, it really helped me out. Another person I want to thank is my friend Lyfeline for inspiring me to write a guide. Furthermore I hope that next time you go onto the Rift to play support you will do better because of the information out of my guide.

Thank you for reading,
Jukkiej