Support Lanes 101: Be the Annoyance

(Artwork by ClandestineKnight)

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

In lane, a support’s job is to help their ADC farm in a safe fashion. There’s different ways to accomplish this based on what support you’re playing. Some supports excel at making the laning phase hell for the enemy. Sona or Zyra are great examples of this. Others just want to survive and make more of an impact in teamfights, a la Braum or Soraka. Finally, you’ve got your old-fashioned kill lanes. These lanes want to get in the face of the enemy and just fight fight fight. Leona or Annie can accomplish this pretty well; this is also where a lot of non-meta brusier supports fall too.

Poke Supports

To start, let’s look at the first category, the poke/harass support. Keep in mind I’m looking mainly at laning phase strengths. Supports that fall under this category are the following:

Excel in the Category

• Sona
• Zyra
• Vel Koz
• Karma
• Lulu
• Zilean
• Any and all mid lane mages (Xerath, Ziggs, I don’t know what weird stuff you play.)

Can accomplish it, but not the best

• Annie
• Nami
• Morgana
• Fiddlesticks
• Soraka
• Janna

If you’re playing a poke support, you’re going to want to know the range of your enemies and your lane partner. It’s easy to know your limits, most people are able to pick that up after playing a champion a few times. To really excel at playing a poke support though you have to know your enemy’s limits. There’s a huge difference walking up to a Janna and walking up to a Taric or Blitzcrank that can punish your misposition hard.

Make good use of your auto attacks. Never let the enemy get something for free. If you watch your own minions and see when the enemy goes up to last hit, you know they’re committing that auto attack to that minion. They can’t retaliate if you sneak a little hit in. Just make sure you’re not agroing minions in the process either.

This is where it’s nice to get experience on a lot of other supports even if you want to focus on one. You’ll get a better feel for the cooldowns after using the abilities yourself than just watching. Take Blitzcrank as an extreme example. He’s extremely scary until you realize that one missed hook makes him a lot less useful as a champion.

This is really what will separate a good poke support player from a bad one. It takes a lot of awareness on all accounts. You have to keep 4 people’s cooldowns and ranges into account while only being able to see one set of them. You have to keep your position as tight as your ADC because with most of these champions, if you get caught out in the wrong spot you’re going down. Take note of if you have a heal or not because this can play a part in your ability to poke someone who could possibly poke back. One of the worst things is to trade with someone and put yourself low in the process when you have no way to heal it off.

If you’re playing Sona vs Janna, you can be a lot more aggressive in trades than you would with a Zyra or Lulu, Sona can heal off that damage immediately, while you only at best have a shield otherwise. Of course, these other supports usually make up for it in CC abilities.

Engage Supports

Next up we have the engage support category. This is the kind of support that can do basically two things. Fight or zone. They’re either going to get your lane really far ahead or fall behind so it’s important to try and make some kind of play with these. Here’s your list:

Excel in the Category

• Blitzcrank
• Leona
• Annie
• Morgana
• Thresh

Can accomplish it, but not the best

• Nami
• Taric
• Braum
• Zyra
• Alistar

Engage supports are generally binary in their success as a whole. What I mean by that is either they dominate their opponent in lane or do almost nothing. It’s possible that you can use some of your stuff to peel as well though, so keep this in mind when a 2v2 brawl starts and you aren’t the initiator.

These types of supports are generally tanky and are actually pretty great in solo queue. Because of their inherent tankiness, they are pretty forgiving if a miscommunication happens, and that’s not as often as other types of supports since they’re pretty obvious when they either go in or make a pick.

These are also the supports that are going to roam a lot more. Roaming is a great habit to get into, but it takes a lot of communication between you and the rest of your team. Your ADC has  to be aware that you’re leaving them for a while and that they need to play accordingly. Tag team a gank mid with your jungler. You can have the jungler chase them down into you when they head towards river and get a nice easy kill.

The weakness of these supports is that they are pretty cookie cutter in their impact, and if that strategy doesn't work, you’re in a bad spot. It’s also important to note that some of these supports will fall off later on in the game because they focus on bringing a lot of damage in early engages. Once a team starts getting some resistances, your damage will fall because you’re not primarily focusing on building it. Annie and Zyra are examples of this.

Finally, in lane you’ll want to have a control on vision, doubly so if you’re a champion that wants to force fights with skillshots. This would be Morgana, Blitzcrank, and Leona possibly. If the enemy can’t see you, you get a nice surprise on them to hit your shot. Also, having their bushes warded makes it easier to hit them obviously.

Teamfight/Utility Supports (Mostly No Lane Pressure)

Excel in the Category

• Alistar
• Braum
• Janna
• Soraka
• Thresh

Can accomplish it, but not the best

• Morgana
• Nami
• Taric
• Lulu
• Karma

The basic gist here is that these are the supports that bring power to their teammates. Some of them do it by buffing, others do it by being a tanky wall and standing in the way. A pretty common theme in these supports is not only their ability to protect, but also a lot of them have a very large lack of lane pressure. Let me state, this doesn’t apply to every champion in this list, just most.

Strategizing with these supports often involves sitting back a bit more and using the unique abilities you have to help your carry and/or team win in fights. These supports synergize best with late game focused ADCs and are at home sitting on top of them.

When picking a lot of these supports you have to realize that your laning phase is going to be a bit lackluster when compared to a support like a Sona or Leona. Your kill potential is low and you don’t have a way to retaliate poke most of the time. Granted some supports that bring a  lot of teamfight potential also are a boon in lane. Thresh and Taric can bring some decent engage potential to their ADC, Karma can poke people out pretty nicely as well.

Of course, don’t mistake this ability to bring some of the other categories in as reason to call that their strength. While Thresh and Taric do bring some nice engage, let’s take a look at what they can bring in a teamfight setting.

Thresh can push multiple people off and slow an enemy group while also grabbing a teammate and pulling them to him. Taric is able to bring extra armor to his team and can trade that off for armor pen for his team if he hits an enemy (very useful for an ADC getting chased by a tank). His ult is also one of the most undervalued abilities in the game as it brings free stats to all of his teammates near him and it’s on an outrageously low cooldown.

The idea here is that while you might have some ability to pressure in lane, your real strength is your utility after laning that you can still bring to the team. You give stats and peel to your team that isn't available to a lot of junglers or solo laners since they need abilities that can do damage.

One strength in lane that I do want to mention though is turn around potential. Since these supports are almost all focused on keeping people alive and giving them some extra oomph, they all have a great ability to turn fights around. Whether it’s through shielding damage, healing teammates, AoE CC, etc. you can make a lot of clutch saves for your team and pull out some great wins from losing fights. This is a counter-gankers best friend.

If you’ve got a jungler who wants to try and help you snowball, tell them to sit bot and that you’ll play really aggressively. If they wait a bit they can counter engage, and with your superior utility and safety, you’ll generally come out on top through buffs and debuffs.

Wrapping it up

Overall, it’s important to recognize what you’re able to do in lane as whatever champion you’re playing. Fully understand the weaknesses and strengths of what you can do and make sure the rest of your team is aware of this as well. Forcing yourself to play a champion in a laning style that isn't conducive to what they’re best at can not only hurt your chances in lane, but snowball the enemy team ahead to a point where your late game power spike will only be a spike to catch up. They say laning in solo queue is huge, so make sure you know what you’re doing.

Be sure to check out my other articles:

Support Lanes 101: How to Pick your Support

Support Lanes 101: Part 1.5: (Pocket Pick Supports)
Support Lanes 101: Itemization Choices
Support Lanes 101: Warding
Support Lanes 101: To Dive or to Peel

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by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Final List of the 16 Teams Going to Worlds

North America

Team SoloMid (TSM) #1

Cloud9 (C9) #2

LMQ (LMQ) #3

Europe

Alliance (ALL) #1

Fnatic (FNC) #2

SK Gaming (SK) #3

Korea

Samsung Blue (SGB) #1

Samsung White (SGW) #2

NaJin White Shield (NJWS) #3

China

EDward Gaming (EDG) #1

Starhorn Royal Club (SHRC) #2

OMG (OMG) #3

Southeast Asia & Taiwan

Azubu Taipei Assassins (TPA) #1

Ahq e-Sports Club (AHQ) #2

Turkey, Russia, & Oceania

Dark Passage (DP) #1

Latin America & Brazil

KaBuM e-Sports (KBM) #1

MonteCristo Criticism : Legitimate or Schadenfreude?

By Jodi 'PunkLit' McClure

The first time I saw MonteCristo, I was surprised by how fragile he appeared. He was tissue thin, like if someone sneezed on him, he would instantly crumble into a tiny pile of bone and ash. He knew League though, and he was beautiful, and those two things quickly off-set any preconceived notions I had about his size. From regular appearances on the LCS, I grew acquainted with his smoldering bedroom eyes, his perfectly chiseled features, and, more importantly...his notoriously imperious attitude. Being American (and a stalwart TSM fan,) I was quickly perturbed by his continuous bashing of NA and EU teams. Who cared about the Koreans and how much better they allegedly were than us? How dare he come into our house and run his fancy white-gloved finger across the dust. But, unfortunately, time and again, Worlds proved him right. And eventually I had to admit it was true. Somehow, we were lacking.

I don't recall at what point I stopped hating MonteCristo and starting hanging onto his words like he was Jesus, but it was probably somewhere around the start of Season Four. I found myself valuing his keen, experienced insight. He never failed in his predictions. Clearly, he was all-knowing. And even when he was delivering venomous swipes of his knife, he always remained so angelically calm and soft-spoken that the poison was practically negated. But he did like to swing that knife, frequently and sometimes cruelly, at every kid who played in the LCS. It's a habit that has caused him to have a fair share of haters, (with many a pro player among them).

So it was with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction that his many adversaries watched CLG go down to Curse in a fast 3-0 during Playoffs, and the german term, schadenfreude, applied. Lord, they were quick to swarm social media sites and jump on Monte's ass, thrusting fingers in his face, gleefully cackling, "You said everyone else was bad, and yet, your team has failed. Where are your Korean Gods now?"

For MonteCristo, whose skin is as thick as his ego, these words have little effect. He is a consummate professional, and is fully capable of taking what he dishes out. Having bullets fired at him comes with his job and like Superman, he stands there smirking while they bounce off his chest. But for his team, whose hopes and dreams rode on his wisdom and guidance, it's was hard not to feel the sting, and I don't doubt Doublelift wasn't the only person on the team who considered retirement in the uncomfortable days that followed. So, we can't help but ponder the possibility...did MonteCristo actually fail them? 

A coach must be equal parts teacher, mentor and drill instructor, trying to find a way to bring out the best performance in each and every one of his pupils, and I don't double Monte tried to be those things. According to him, he spends hours and hours each day watching films and working with his team over Skype. But I have a quote from him that's sat on the left sidebar of this site forever. "'Potential' is bullshit. Results are the only thing that matters."   

Monte focused his coaching on changing how the team communicated and having them understand strategy at a very high level. He felt he had a better grasp of what champions were coming up and what strats were being used. Big picture tactics, as he called it. But he probably sees a much different scene gazing out his big picture window in Korea than one might see from Manhattan Beach, and it's possible that by asking his team to look out his window, he took them too far from the reality of their own. 

  

Opinions on Reddit and Twitter seem to vary. There is the more base, raw emotion of 'He talked shit about other teams, he deserves it,' to the reasoned, 'He's not a bad coach but he needs to spend more time with his team,' to the extremely forgiving, 'He can only do so much. It's up to the players to perform.' But the truth probably lies somewhere between all these. Dexter admitted stress was an issue, and expressed nothing but relief when their playoff game was over. It's possible that by taking the team to Korea, Monte put his boys too far into the center of our cross hairs at a time when they needed less stress, not more.

At the end of the day, at least for now, we can only speculate. MonteCristo once said, "There's nothing that effects me in eSports more than whether CLG wins or loses," but the repercussions from this - their most devastating loss - still remain to be seen.

Visa Issues Screw Gambit For Wembley

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

Due to visa issues, four core members of Gambit will be unable to attend this weekend's EU LCS in Great Britain. Three to six weeks are required for Russian citizens to acquire that visa, and players cannot be abroad during that time, as they have to leave their passports in a consulate.

Gambit learned about the London trip on May 22nd, and could not even apply for an emergency visa without missing two weeks in Cologne. The team stated in a Gambit press release that they are the innocent victims of "organizer's careless actions." Had they been notified in a timely manner, they could have acquired the visas during the off-season without any obstacles.

Riot declined the team's request to reschedule their games and Gambit is reasonably upset about the situation, as it puts them at a great disadvantage. Organizers did try to remedy the problem, but it was too late to find a solution, so now, Gambit can only express condolences to their disappointed fans. 

Their make-shift line-up for the Wembley event will be:

Top - Cabochard 

Jungle - Loulex 

Mid - NiQ

ADC - Fury III

Support - Hiiva 

The temporary members have been added to Riot's Fantasy LCS Website with estimated points.   

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