Which support in League of Legends is best to main?

League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games.
League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /
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If you’re wondering which support you should use to climb in League of Legends, the statistical analysis of our tier lists can help!

As we’ve done before with top lane, junglemid lane, and ADC, we’re giving you our ranking of every support to ever be on one of our League of Legends tier lists (even if it was just one patch), giving them an average rank. However, we also looked at how much champions varied in their ranking from Patch 8.24 to 9.10, to see whether they get particularly stronger or weaker with changes to the meta.

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Once again, we don’t recommend champions with have high variance in their rankings, even if they are strong because they can get much weaker if they are nerfed or if the meta changes. Instead, we recommend champions who have remained around the same strength (and are strong on average) throughout the last 12 patches. While this is not a guarantee that these champions will always be OP, it’s a decent indication that they won’t fall completely out of the meta.

As with the other roles, we looked to see how many times those champions received direct buffs or nerfs to see if they are either at risk for big changes in the future. Champions that get a lot of adjustments cause us to be wary, especially if they have high variance. However, champs with a low amount of changes that are weak would also concern us, because that indicates that Riot has forgotten about them, perhaps until they are reworked.

To that end, we created a graph showing where each champion stands as far as its strength and volatility. We’ll provide more context as to which tier they fall into and how much they’ve been buffed or nerfed, but in very broad general terms you can see which champions are good and bad to main by looking below. Please note, this is based on data from Platinum plus, meaning that these rankings will not necessarily be as strong for players below Gold elo.

The Blog of Legends support main guide chart.
The Blog of Legends support main guide chart. /

As you can see, those supports in the upper-left quadrant are those that have both a solid average rank over those 12 patches, with very little variance. These champions would be those that would be considered good to main, particularly those that are higher up and closer to the left-hand side. Champions in this quadrant include:

  • Thresh (S tier)
  • Nami (A+ tier)
  • Soraka (A+ tier)
  • Zyra (A tier)
  • Sona (A tier)
  • Pyke (A tier)
  • Janna (A tier)
  • Blitzcrank (A tier)
  • Zilean (A tier)
  • Bard (B+ tier)
  • Lux (B+ tier)
  • Leona (B+ tier)
  • Fiddlesticks (B+ tier)
  • Vel’Koz (B+ tier)
  • Taric (B tier)

Moving along, in the bottom-left quadrant are those champions who are weaker than most, and tend to stay weak. These would be champions we don’t advise you main because they have been consistently weak for the 12 patches we have tracked (some have even received buffs and remained weak). They include:

  • Xerath (C tier)
  • Karma (C tier)
  • Shen (F tier)
  • Malphite (F tier)
  • Annie (F tier, not consistently in meta)

Next, in the bottom-right quadrant, we have weaker champions with high levels of variance. These are champions who can swing wildly from strong to weak, but overall tend to have big issues. They might get multiple buffs or nerfs or are only in the ADC meta briefly (as most of these champions, like Cassiopeia, Yasuo, and Pyke are) but overall they are not consistently viable in the mid lane.

  • Braum (C tier)
  • Rakan (C tier)
  • Nautilus (C tier)
  • Gragas (D tier, not consistently in meta)
  • Veigar (D tier)
  • Teemo (D tier, not consistently in meta)
  • Neeko (D tier, not consistently in meta)
  • Tahm Kench (D tier)
  • Maokai (D tier, not consistently in meta)

Finally, we have the upper-right quadrant that has high volatility and high strength champions. These champions are ones that would be fine to learn and know, as they’re usually quite strong, but when they will also have patches where they are incredibly weak. These champions tend to be targetted with more buffs or nerfs than average.

  • Morgana (A+ tier)
  • Brand (B+ tier)
  • Alistar (B tier)
  • Lulu (B tier)

Next. How to best use tier lists. dark

Any of this information interesting to you? Do you plan to main one of the best champs like Thresh, Nami, or Soraka?