Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Support Lanes 101: To Dive or Peel



by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Choosing when to dive or peel is probably one of the biggest mistakes made in low ELO support. A lot of supports have kits that function well for both diving the enemy and keeping their carry safe. Doing the wrong one at the wrong time can cost your team the game. The full answer isn't as simple as “Oh, you’re Leona, you dive.” It requires an analysis of your own team, the enemy team, the status of both team's carries in terms of power and what cooldowns are available.


First, take a look at your own champion before anything else. What kind of support are you? Tanky supports have a better time diving the enemy than mage supports, but that alone doesn't decide it. Keep in mind, just because it is easy to dive doesn't mean you should. There are champions like Leona and Alistar that are great at diving into the fray and being a huge nuisance, but they sometimes have to sit back and peel. That being said, there are mages that can effectively “dive” or at the very least use their spells to interrupt the backline. Janna is great example of someone who fits that bill. She can throw tornadoes back deep and even flash ult if she wants to sacrifice herself to disrupt a fight in an extreme way.
Once you’ve established what your champion is best at, look at your team composition. Every decent team comp will have an ADC, the same one you helped grow and feed. Is this an ADC that needs to be protected and, if free from enemy interference, can win the game for you? An example of this kind of ADC would be Vayne or Kog Maw. These ADCs absolutely require help from somewhere if they want to stay alive long enough to output damage during a fight. Others, like Caitlyn or late game Tristana, are a bit safer in their range and escapes. They still are the backbone of damage on your team and need to stay alive.
Of course you could make the same argument for any ADC, so it’s kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of it all. What is more important is looking at your solo lanes and junglers. Do you have an assassin or traditional mage in mid? Keep in mind that you’ll have a larger backline to keep safe in a fight if you have a mage, while assassins will need help creating picks and killing off the enemy. If you look over at top lane, you can have a multitude of different champions, and the same goes for jungle. There’s hyper tanks, bruisers, assassins, mages, supports, etc. Overall as a general rule, the more big bodies you have to clog up the middle of a fight, the more reasonable it is for you to dive. At least when looking purely at your own team's comp.
The reason for this is that you’ve got a much more cluttered area going on in the middle of the scuffle and as each of the team's tanks and bruisers are trying to get past each other, both ADCs will be outputting damage.
Next up, you want to take a similar look at the enemy composition. Pick apart what their strengths are. Have they got an assassin like Zed that can jump into your team? That’s a point towards peeling in that case. If they have an Anivia, however, you can go in the other direction and try and get in her face.


Finally, what I could consider the most crucial part is evaluating the gold distribution. Once the teams have gotten into game a bit it’ll become clear who on the enemy team is a threat, and who on your team is dangerous as well. Going back to the Zed example, if the enemy Zed jumps on to your ADC in a fight, but he’s 0/4/1 and doesn't have any of his spike items(brut/botrk) he isn't going to do anything. If the carry is someone like Lucian or any other ADC with mobility, they can just kite him around and be fine. If the same Zed jumps in but instead of 0/4/1 he’s actually 3/0/2, then he is a problem and kiting him out most likely won’t be enough. You’ll have to sit back on your ADC and keep them safe.
You still want to do the same for your own team, too. If the enemy team wants to dive deep into your team to kill the 1/6/2 ADC while your solo laners go to town in their backline, don’t make the mistake of trying to help the ADC. While it’d be nice to have that ADC get back in the game, they are currently your weakest link and you need to play to your strengths. If you help the ADC rather than helping your solo lane bruisers/assassins you run the risk of having a lose/lose situation where both the ADC die and your solo laners didn't do enough. It’s a similar concept as when a jungler ganks a lane that’s already winning but a little bit. You put your eggs in the basket that looks like it’s gonna win.
As you can probably tell, trying to do this decision making on the fly is pretty hard. It’s one of the things that makes the professionals a cut above the average player. After you break it down a few times it gets more and more doable, eventually to the point that it becomes second nature. Learn your matchups and use them to help you understand what to do when, and don’t flounder in making your choice.
TL;DR:
Look at your champ’s skills (Better at dive or peel?)
Look at your team’s skills and needs (Need lots of peel? Can dive free?)
Look at the enemy team’s skills and needs (They have a lot of protection? Want all over your carry?)
Look at how gold is distributed (Assassin fed, Carry not? Vice-Versa?)


Be sure to check out my other articles:

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis 
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