League of Legends (LoL) Question: how to carry as support

Tags: Alistar Bard Blitzcrank Braum Janna Leona Morgana Thresh 15,314

how to carry as support

Asked on March 15, 2016

i recently started playing support and im having a lot of trouble winning with support. can someone help? i play all the champions that i tagged.

Answers (5)

(86) |

You can't count on carrying as a support. At least not in the traditional sense. Your winning condition is preventing damage to the champions that carry, amplifying their own damage or locking down annoying enemy champions. Sure, you could define fights with a good ult, but someone else will be doing the killing.

Having said that, your best bet if you're losing too many games is trying to get better as a support. Try to identify whoever does most damage in your team and protect him/her. Also whoever does most damage from the other team, to focus your CC on them. During laning phase, try to un-**** up as many **** ups you can, while measuring your adc's skill to play accordingly (e.g. if you expect a bad adc to survive a 2v1 while you roam and he/she dies, it's partly your fault).

If this isn't enough, or if you have any particular questions, you can post them in Vyn's AMA thread.

(386) |

Worded differently, you're not trying to hard carry each single game. Instead, you are trying to push these close games in your favour by providing utility in any form. This will mean you can't have as much influence on the more one-sided games, but in closer games you're the one that can make a difference. Some examples:

Vision control around baron, either to avoid the enemy sneaking a baron which would've otherwise caught you off guard or to sneak a baron/set up a bait yourself.
Using your spells to set up teamfights or to keep your allies from harm. A lot of supports have tools that can change the outcome of a teamfight if used correctly. Especially in close games this can make a difference.
Getting non-selfish items to amplify your allies' damage or to prevent them from dying. A common error in low-rated games is the urge of people to 'need to carry', but this will result in a very out-of-balance team composition. Items like Locket and Zekes may not be great to carry with, but they turn close fights in your favour.

The result should be that even though you will of course lose games, you can average a steady 55-60% winrate and climb that way. It's a slow process (climbing as support generally is a bit slower) but with patience you'll steadily climb. If you're unable to maintain a positive winrate as support, chances are you're just not supporting very well.

Either use Blitzcrank or Kayle as support if you are having a hard time as support. You need to land your grab and stick with your team with Blitzcrank, though. However, you might can survive 1v1 or 1v2 (& get a some kills in progress) with Kayle if you have her items.

another champion i thing is really good if you looking to carry as a sup is blitz
because you can set up so many picks with him if you want land your q's effectively but keep in mind you have to have your team be aware what you are doing because if you grab someone and your team can't follow up then you might of just killed yourself

if your lane is doing well you want to ward the enemy jungle entrances so your entire team can see where the jungler is that is how you start helping other lanes and they wont die form ganks propelling your team ahead, you also want to gank other lans if ur adc is capable of 1v2ing if he is ahead you can also gank with the jungler just dont follow him around for too long or you will lose exp

(386) |

Not just ward the entrances, if you have pressure on botlane you can get wards at the camps itself and allow your jungler to invade. If you look at competitive play, the process is something like this:

1. Pressure advantage on botlane
2. Pressure advantage on botlane being used by the support to (possibly together with jungler) to get deep wards down at camps in bot side jungle
3. Enemy jungler is spotted; your jungler can invade the enemy jungler on that side. Bot lane cannot reply first because it is under pressure.
4. Enemy jungler will have to give up farm and pressure on that side of the map.

Now it's a bit of a utopian thought to think this works with complete random players, but it is surprisingly easy to execute when you can communicate with your team (dynamic queue)

Also, don't be afraid to lose out a bit on xp as long as you make the roam worth it. It's perfectly fine to be a few levels down on your team, especially if it means your ADC gets solo xp without being denied.

-4

I'm assuming you're either low elo or low ranked to be asking this - otherwise you shouldn't need to carry as support.

Try Volibear. He's a great carry support. Try not to kill steal, but if necessary, you can build up quite nice, especially if your adc is dropping the ball.