[Role] Support

In the current metagame, a support is a champion that goes bottom lane and helps protect an AD carry. The support generally does not take any lasthits and instead, relies on passive gold generation to get items. Support champions are champions that do not require large amounts of farm nor levels to be effective.

Supports generally start the game by buying wards and a faerie charm. Their job is to ward around the bottom lane in order to keep safe from ganks and to help either defensive, offensively or both in the bottom lane. The degree to which you can do either depends on which support you happen to be playing. Later in the game, supports in conjunction with the jungler try to keep vision on map objectives and deny the enemy vision of the same. In a 2v2 situation bottom lane, the support is the playmaker in most lanes, either initiating with a stun/knockup and providing an opportunity for the AD carry to follow up on. The support is also the one responsible for getting the AD carry out of such messes via the same disables.

The most common support champions that you will see are:

Alistar
Blitzcrank
Janna
Leona
Lulu
Nunu
Sona
Soraka
Taric

Other more unconventional supports that can be seen from time to time.

Lux
Karma
Morgana
Yorick
Ashe
Fiddlesticks
Nautilus
Zilean

Quintessences:

Avarice - Gold as a support is difficult to come by and these help you get it
Swiftness - Used primarily on aggressive supports such as alistar in order to set up opportunities to get a kill

Marks:

Resilience - As a bottom laner, the primary form of incoming damage is physical and armor helps mitigate the damage
Magic Pen - Used on poke oriented supports such as sona. You are stronger offensively but weaker defensively

Seals:

Resilience - The most cost efficient slot to get armor on. Defensively speaking, the strongest rune you can get as a support.
Avarice - Additional gold per 10. If you use gp10 in this slot, you must have armor in the marks slot or else you will be too squishy

Glyphs:

Shielding - MR/level is very common on any champion that does not face magic damage early.
Warding - Flat MR is very good against champions that rely on magic damage in lane since it's stronger when the magic damage you take is strongest, in the early game. Champions such as corki, tristana and ezreal deal a hefty amount of magic damage in the early game.

0/9/21 is the most commonly used set of masteries on a support champion. The masteries in the defensive tree are pretty standardized but the masteries within the utility can be varied depending on whether you want mana, movespeed, or a myriad of other combinations. The most contentious mastery point here is scout which grants 5% more vision range on wards. The other options you can stick the point into without changing much is improved recall, good hands or movespeed. Feel free to experiment.

Chexx has provided some images of common ward locations and the extra vision granted by scout.






An alternative is the 1/15/14 mastery split on supports in order to get summoner's wrath in addition to being tankier than the other setups. It's very good on taric, leona and alistar in particular since having armor+MR shred means that your AD deals very close to true damage in the early game with autoattacks if you can all-in.

Other mastery setups are also viable, however, if you put fewer than 14 points into the utility tree, you begin to lose out on starting gold and passive gold gain, two things that get increasingly hard to make up as you get better at the game and your opponents make fewer mistakes.

A final mastery setup that will be touched on is 9/0/21. This is a more offensively oriented setup that relies on being able to 100-0 someone at level 2-3 or at level 6. Good combinations to do this with are alistar+tristana, leona+corki and taric+graves.

In general, when experimenting, do not put over 9 points into offense. It's a waste of points since you do not get the items to utilize those points effectively.

Flash - Always get this. It's by far the most useful summoner spell, allowing you to initiate, escape and make plays. Even in lane, it's useful in extended trades because by flashing when at low health in a trade, you can bait the enemy AD out of position to secure a kill for your AD carry.

Exhaust - Currently the preferred spell to have on a support. If either side initiates, your first priority is to exhaust the enemy AD before they can blow their front loaded burst (buckshot, boomerang, phosbomb etc). Lowering their damage can save either yourself or your AD and allow your duo to trade back while the other duo is waiting on cooldowns

Clairvoyance - Not as useful as it once was. With the new jungle, many jungle routes opened up and casting clairvoyance is much more of a crapshoot. Good warding has largely replaced CV's in importance as to determination of the enemy jungler's location. It is however, one of the strongest lategame summoners for positioning around baron.

Promote - This is actually surprisingly good later on in the game. It's somewhat useless in laning but can be good if you HAVE to back but you're getting pushed in. After laning ends, this grows far stronger since if you promote a bottom lane creep, someone HAS to go to stop it from taking a tower. It can also stop large creepwaves by itself, meaning you can send a supercannoncreep from spawn to bottom lane and push a wave back without ever showing yourself bottomlane. It works best against champions not taking teleport and not named shen.

Ignite - Can be useful if your AD carry is not running it in order to secure kills but given that the support is generally the lowest level character in the game, it's not as good on a support as it is on top/mid/AD

Heal - Not particularly good compared to exhaust on a support since healing your AD is 1/2 as effective.

Faerie charm + 4 wards+1pot
A safe opening with the maximum number of wards possible. This is the best option for passive lanes where neither side has a particularly high chance of killing the other without help from other lanes/jungle (example would be janna corki vs soraka graves)

Faerie charm + vision ward + 2 wards + pot
An alternative opening that allows you to deny one point of vision to the enemy team. The vision ward should be used to deny vision of tribush, the near lane bush or river. You want to deny vision along a gank path for your jungler

Faerie charm + 3 wards + 2 pots
Without the +40 gold from the mastery, this is a normal opening. The extra pot lends itself to trading in lane.

Regrowth pendant + ward or pot
This opening gets you the quickest possible philosopher's stone. You will have to use that one ward smartly or base the second you have enough for a philo + 2 wards.

boots + 1 ward 1 pot
Used only on aggressive supports, espcially supports that lead invades. Alistar, blitzcrank, leona and taric are the champions that use this the most. It is the second least safe opening but has the most kill potential due to being able to position for and follow up on opportunities to kill.

boots + 3 pots
The most dangerous (read: stupid) opening by far. You have to make something happen or base early or else. In any normal game, the jungler will make a point to go and kill your lane until such a time as you decide that buying wards would be a good idea.

Ruby Crystal + pot
Used if you know for sure that the enemy jungler isn't going to gank before level 4. You will base the moment you have enough for a HoG + 2 wards, which should be right around the 4.5-5 minute mark, the time around when the level 4 jungler is looking to gank. This is more danagerous in some aspects than the boots opening as you cannot run away quickly.

Philosopher's stone: Gives mana and health regen in addition to gp10.
Heart of gold: Gives a large amount of health and makes you tankier in lane
Kage's Lucky Pick: Seen only by supports that get far ahead. Generally bought if buying a shurelya's at that point in the game will not benefit the team meaningfully
Boots of Speed: Essential item usually gotten immediately after getting a philosopher's stone. Allows you to chase or run away quicker.
Sight Ward: The single most important support item. Vision allows you to avoid any traps, take only favourable engagements and know where enemy champions are.
Vision Ward: Similar to a vision ward but can see invisible characters and more importantly, enemy wards. Used either for bush control, dragon control or for setting up ganks.

"big" support items - These items are possible end game goals for a support.
Shurelya's reverie - The active gives everyone around you a speedboost and is important for initiating an engagement or retreating.
Aegis of the Legion - Makes yourself tankier and grants nearby allies a good amount of armor and MR. If the top laner or jungler builds it, it's not quite as useful to buy early but is still very good on tanky supports such as alistar, leona and taric.
Locket of the Iron Solari - A good last item on a support, gives a small shield to everyone around you. The shield itself isn't very large, about the same as a level 1 soraka ulti but it's enough to keep everyone alive an extra second or so.
Soul Shroud - Gives a hefty amount of health for yourself and an aura that grants everyone near you 10% CDR and a minor bit of mana regen. CDR is good in every scenario but especially so if your carry is kogmaw since so much of his damage comes from having W up.
Zeke's Herald - This item gives any autoattacker on your team huge amounts of lifesteal in addition to extra attackspeed. It's best bought when three people benefit from autoattacks (AD carry+toplane+jungle). It is especially good when paired with champions such as olaf, irelia, nocturne etc. The lifesteal means every one of those is much tankier than they otherwise would be and the extra attack speed helps mitigate some of the loss from frozen hearts that are so common nowadays.
Oracles Elixir - Gives you the ability to see invisible units and wards. It's very useful when posturing around either baron or dragon. Without vision, it's difficult to determine when and if it's safe to go anywhere.

Tier 2 boots - These should be bought AFTER one big item has been completed. :
Mobility boots - Very good on supports that are passively helping their team just by being around or can initiate/catch people with the aid of these. alistar and soraka are good examples of supports that use mobility boots extremely well.
Ionian boots - CDR boots are good on any support. Shurelya's in addition to CDR boots puts most supports near the CDR cap of 40% (Usually between 35-39%). These allow you to cc more often, heal faster, etc and are generally a good pick on any support.
Ninja Tabi's. Less common but can be seen on alistar/taric/leona/blitzcrank from time to time. Their tendency to be in the middle of the fight also means they get focused a lot and anything that helps you live longer against focus is good.
Mercury treads: Same idea as above but it helps you with CC and magical instead of physical damage.

Playstyle changes depending on which support you play.

As much as I'd love to write about how to play each particular support, I feel linking their respective threads much more productive. Instead, I'll discuss general things for all supports.

Alistar
Blitzcrank
Janna
Nunu
Leona
Lulu
Sona
Soraka
Taric

In solo queue, it's rarely worth it to ward anything prior to 2 minutes. If you do intend to do so, good spots are the enemy wraiths and a defensive ward at the buff your jungler is not starting at.

At 2:00, watch mid lane and see where the enemy mid enters lane from. From that, you can determine which buff camp the enemy jungler started.

In lane, when you place your first ward depends first on your lane. Against an aggressive lane that pushes the lane towards you, be prepared to lose control of your near lane bush. Before you lose control of it, place a ward inside the bush. Once you've been pushed in, if your AD plays correctly, it will take three or more creep waves before the wave pushes out. If the bottom duo is forced to overextend for that long, they're vulnerable to ganks.

Placing a ward in the river depends on the enemy jungler that you're facing. Junglers such as maokai, amumu cannot gank before hitting level 4 without gimping their jungle. Hitting level 4 on those champions will take until 4 minutes into the game and they will finish at either wraiths or wolves. If you are on purple side, you aren't in danger of getting ganked until ~4:30 into the game and do not need to throw down a river ward until then. Similarly, if the jungler shows top, it'll take the jungler at least 90 seconds to make it from top to bottom if they don't skip any creep camps.

Avoid placing any wards if there's a 0% chance of seeing anything useful with that ward. If you know where the enemy jungler should be at any particular point in time, or if you've seen the enemy jungler, you have a good idea of how long it'd take for the jungler to get to your lane. Make use of that knowledge to be efficient with your wards.