League of Legends: How to carry as a Support player

As the new season of League of Legends approaches, we take a look at how you can carry games from the “least impactful” role, Support.

Up until the most recent League of Legends seasons, support was by far the most unpopular role in the game and was often left to last pick in the old champion select system of “pick order”. Nowadays, with the influx of interesting, new support champions and the reworked support item system, the role has become sought after with huge potential to impact the outcome of the game, particularly in high elo.

As the competitive support champion pool shifted from mages to tanks, and AD Carries received huge nerfs that saw them disappear from the meta entirely, the player base began to realize that supports aren’t so useless after all. The ideology that supports were capable of controlling the bottom lane 2v2 slowly trickled down the solo queue ladder and thousands of support mains appeared from nowhere, something that was unthinkable just three years ago.

So, what’s the secret? Why have players started flocking to the support role and how do they manage to carry games until they reach the upper echelons of the solo queue ladder?

Here are our tips for carrying from the support role in solo queue:

Pick Playmakers

This list of helpful tips starts at the very beginning of your solo queue experience: champion select. Forget about your Jannas and Lulus, ignore Senna and Zilean, bypass Vel’Koz and Fiddle. Instead, head straight towards those playmaking supports in order to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and force it to give you the win.

Pyke, Nautilus, Leona, Rakan, Alistar. What do all of these champions have in common? The ability to change the outcome of a game with well-timed and well-placed crowd control abilities to kick off a team fight or find a key pick on an enemy carry.

During the laning phase, Leona is perfect for setting up kills in the 2v2 with her endless CC chains to lock down an opponent. This is particularly effective when paired with a high-damage, early game focused AD Carry, but Leona is still a menace even without the help of her marksman.

As for the late game, this is where you can truly make the win yours single-handedly by landing the perfect Solar Flare or Headbutt-Pulverize to lock down multiple targets for your team to finish off. Or, if you can’t rely on your teammates to apply significant damage, just do it yourself with Pyke and his terrifying Death From Below execute.

Establish yourself as the primary engage tool for your team, dictate where and when the team fights occur, make a play, and the win is yours.

Play around your Jungler

Why risk losing the bot lane 2v2 when you can simply win the 3v2 instead? Rather than permanently engaging on the enemy bot duo and hoping to out-damage them, why not farm it out until your jungle paths down to the bottom lane, apply your CC, and pick up two free kills. It couldn’t be easier!

Help your jungler by controlling the minion wave and maintaining vision control on your side of the lane, either for a river gank or lane gank. After that, it’s pretty self-explanatory. When your jungler pings for an incoming gank, engage, lock down the carry, pick up the kill, and reap the rewards.

However, ganks aren’t the only reason to partner up with your jungler. Whenever possible, look to roam from the bottom lane and meet up with your teammate to either gank mid or place deep wards in the enemy jungle to track the opponent and ambush them if the opportunity presents itself.

This also applies in the later stages of the game when you should spend most of your time by the side of your jungler to control vision around key objectives, like Baron Nashor or Elder Dragon. It’s dangerous to face check and place wards alone, so take a teammate!

Ward Effectively

Believe it or not, wards DO win games.

As previously mentioned, find opportunities to place deep wards in the enemy jungle throughout the game to track the opponents and control objectives. Being the only champion on your team with a “Sightstone” means it’s mainly your responsibility to place wards around the map, occasionally being supported by your teammates’ trinkets.

Obviously, it’s not just as simple as “place wards win game”, so take the initiative and examine a warding guide to learn important positions on the map to place wards and catch out opponents in their route through the jungle. Dropping wards in high traffic areas is the perfect way to create advantages in any stage of the game due to your team having near-perfect information on the whereabouts of the entire enemy team.

Peel for your AD Carry

This tip would have been completely useless about eighteen months ago, but now crit AD Carries are back and it’s time to peel for them in late game team fights all over again. If an enemy assassin or bruiser is attempting to dive on your squishy carry, then it is your job to shut them down.

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Imagine you’re a support player and an enemy assassin is about to jump on your ADC. First of all, stand as close to your teammate as possible to force the opponent to misplace a few auto-attacks in the fight, reducing their DPS. Then, layer your crowd control to limit the enemy’s mobility for the maximum duration, delaying their damage output by a few important seconds. Finally, take down the assassin and start all over again as a bruiser attempts to shut down your marksman.

There are times when you should act as a playmaking support and times when you should act as a peeling support. Knowing the difference between these two and applying that to your game is the difference between being a good support player and a great support player. The only way to develop this skill is with experience on the Rift. So head out there!

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Are these tips helpful? What is your favorite “carry support” champion? Let us know in the comments!

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