Support Lanes 101: Warding

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So we’re now at what I would consider one of the most important parts of the game, whether you play support or not. Warding. I always live by the principle “Warding wins games.” It’s not only important to see the enemy to know where they are, but that same info tells you where they aren’t.

I’m sure if you watch professional League play you’ll see teams making moves in the game to mirror or counter what their enemy is doing. This seems simple enough watching with both teams vision on your screen, but if you watch a stream or only one players view you’ll see how assumptions need to be made based on the enemies movements while visible. It’s easy to say that you’d rather spend that 75-100 gold on an item that will make your in-fight presence bigger, but that presence won’t mean anything if the enemy gets the jump on you.

Obviously, for supports, warding is an even more integral part of the game. As a support, you are the one in charge of wards in the game. You need to do everything in your power to spread vision around for your team, lord knows they won’t. How many times have you pinged for a teammate that someone was heading down their way only to see them stay too long and get caught out? If the area is warded and they see a fed mid laner heading their way, they will absolutely move because it’s tangible to them that they’re in danger.

Throughout this article I’m going to cover a bunch of topics such as when to buy your Sightstone/Trinket/Pink Wards, and warding areas at different points of the game. One thing I want to make sure I talk about though, because I don’t ever see warding guides cover this and I had to learn the hard way, is when to ward those areas. I remember starting out and seeing all of these places I was told to ward, but I would always die when trying to place them. Warding is complicated. You need your vision to be deep enough to be relevant to where the game is currently, but also not too deep that you get caught trying to place it.

Purchasing your Items

Trinket - Starting out every game you’ll almost always get a warding totem. Sweeper is useful, but the cooldown on it early in the game just isn't worth trading a free refreshable ward. Unless you know your jungler is going to camp bottom early, having a warding totem for lane bush vision is extremely useful. Outside of that use, if you run out of wards early, your and your ADC can cycle your wards and keep vision out in the river constantly.

Usually you’ll want to swap your trinket after your first back and you’ll absolutely want to swap it after your Sightstone is purchased. There’s no need to hold on to that free ward when you get 4 every time you head back to base. Pick up a sweeper and start paying attention to where the enemy is placing their own wards, if you weren't already. You've probably seen their support or ADC leaving the lane for a little bit, they’re probably going and placing a ward. Keep an eye out for when they leave and if you don’t see the ward actually get placed check one of the locations we’re gonna cover later on in the article. Chances are they placed it in a similar spot. Be aware though that it takes two full minutes for the trinket to be usable after swapping.

As for upgrading to Oracle Lens, that is a bit trickier. You see, you already have to wait until you hit level 9 to upgrade it. It doesn't change the cooldown or enhance the ability of the sweeping portion at all. It does, however, give you true vision around your champion for 10 seconds. Invaluable for searching areas like Baron or Dragon pits, and if the enemy has an assassin with stealth (Akali, Shaco, Rengar) or a champion like the demon spawn Teemo, who will place invisible traps everywhere. Even if you miss with your initial sweep, you’ll be able to pick it up as you walk around for a bit and clear a large area of enemy vision. Causing them to run right into you in some cases as they try and get it back.

Sightstone - Sightstone is going to be a buy on every single support, there is literally no reason to avoid it. Delay it, maybe, but it will always be bought. With the amount of wards you’ll need to place, this item is basically saving you an insane amount of money. It gives you enough wards to cover your full amount out at one time and then an extra one as well.

You’ll get all of this for the low low price of just 800 gold. Insanely cheap for the health you get in addition to the wards. You should buy this once you have the cash, depending on what you’re looking for in lane. If you delay it you need to realize that you have to continue to buy wards.

If you decide to spend the money on upgrading your support item, it can be perfectly fine. I usually do this on lane dominant supports because it gives me more presence in lane. Sona is a good example of this since she is all about poking and auto attack harassing her opponent down. Just remember to get some wards as well on your back. If you only have exactly 500 gold, do not only upgrade your support item and just go back to lane. Instead buy a Ruby Crystal and green ward. If not, get something cheaper and a few green and pink wards.

Upgrading to Ruby Sightstone is a lot less important, in fact maybe one of your final buys. It costs another 800 gold for only 250 health and an extra ward. Not worth the cost. That gold can be better invested elsewhere. Especially since you can only have three wards out at a time.

Pink Wards - These things are so powerful and people don’t realize it. A permanent ward that reveals all wards surrounding it and anything else stealthed as well. It isn't invisible itself, but it takes five shots to kill. I try and keep at least one on me at all times, even if I have one out already.

Pink Wards can be used in a bunch of unconventional ways. Placing multiple in one area can force the enemy to stay and clear vision for a lengthy amount of time. Placing one in an area you know the enemy will clear can bait them into death. If you’re intelligent with your placement too, you can get a lot of vision for a long time as well. Pink wards are going to be a special part of this article so we’ll cover that in more detail later.

Ward Placing

So getting wards is something decently simple to understand, but placing them is a whole other story. For a while now every summoner has been limited to three green wards on the map at one time and one pink ward. This is because in the older days, supports would generally get the burden of all vision placement, and they were basically used as roaming vision bots that had some abilities.

Now you have to be smarter with your wards. Each one will cover an area for up to 3 minutes and if you ward the wrong area you’re going to assume you’re safe when in actuality you’re getting jumped on. This can be even more detrimental than not warding at all sometimes depending on your playstyle.

When you ward you’re trying to get vision in an area that is important for some reason. Sure getting that ward over by the enemy blue buff is great and will give you an awesome amount of vision, but how deep are you going into enemy territory to get that ward down? Is the enemy even going to pass by that ward realistically? Could they collapse on you easily? These are all things you need to think about before you go to ward.

You can effectively ward defensively or offensively depending on the situation and it’s going to be different depending on what you need. You have to ask yourself, “Where do I need to see for either my team or myself to make smart and well-informed decisions. When you break it down to something simple like that it becomes a lot easier to ward.

Early Game

In the ultra-early game (I.E. before minions spawn), you might want to take a look at the enemy team and determine what the chances are for an early invade.

Blue Side

Here’s an example of how to handle an invade while on the blue side of the map. If the enemy has shown signs of trying to take your red buff, these are the places to ward. You’ll most likely only need to use your warding totem since it should last long enough to get you the info you need. If you know for sure that the enemy is coming you can place a ward on the red buff itself or in the bush to see them taking it.

Red Side

And here’s the same view and three wards if you’re on red side. Defending and warding blue buff is a much different task than red buff. Blue has a much smaller area to cover around it and if the enemy is trying to sneak in, there’s only one way to do it. Otherwise they’re just going to brute force it through the dragon pit ramp. Once again, trinket should be all you need here

Once you get into laning, and even further on in the game, both sides ward about the same areas, but the reasoning for warding the areas is different depending on which side you’re on. What I mean by this is depending on your side the same ward could be offensive or defensive. Let’s look at bot lane vision from the view of a blue side support.

Blue Side

Basically you’re going to want vision of the bottom bushes at almost all points of the laning phase. Whether this is with a ward or with your own person can be dependent on the matchup and strength levels at the time. You’re going to want to keep an eye on supports like Leona or Blitzcrank so vision here is crucial against them. Usually a trinket ward can suffice here in order to use your three minute green ward for more crucial and protective areas such as dragon or gank paths.

The river wards are going to keep an eye on any jungler that would gank you early. Keep an eye on where the jungler starts (Usually indicated by whichever enemy lane shows up late) and assume that the first possible gank could occur around three minutes. This is a problem if the enemy jungler started opposite from you as you’ll need vision in the river to make it safe to move up past that time. Generally, the deeper ward in front of the dragon pit is the better ward since it gives vision of the enemy sooner, but the one in the river bush is a quicker dirtier ward that lets you get back into lane faster at the cost of deep vision. If the jungler started on the same side as you you can hold off on that ward a bit longer to have the vision and safety a bit later

The pink wards are for when you have an aggressive jungler who wants to try and make plays early. You’ll want to keep an eye out for when the enemy support puts a ward down and put the pink near that area. These are general spots I’ve listed that will usually get warded at some point. Having a pink in one of these areas gives your jungler the go ahead that they aren’t wasting time being seen if they try and gank your lane and can be great at giving you a nice lead if you can get the gank off.

Red Side

Very similar thought process here. Bush wards we went over and the same with the dragon pit which, by the way, is a lot safer to reach from red side since you have access to the ramp. Warding dragon is less of a boon for you though on red side since most blue side junglers won’t be following that particular gank path so you should only ward dragon if you’re worried about them taking it when on red side.

If you’re constantly pushing up to the enemy tower it’s incredibly important to keep that tribush warded since that’s by far the most common place you’ll see the jungler coming from. It’s really risky to stay pushed up if you’re not keeping vision there. If the enemy starts putting a pink ward in that bush and taking your vision, wait until you shove them into their tower again and call your ADC up to help you take the pink. The enemy ADC will be forced to focus on getting CS under tower and you’ll have a numbers advantage in taking the ward, since the enemy support is stuck trying to defend it by themselves.

The reason I don’t encourage pinking anywhere but that river bush is that there really isn't anywhere else you can defend a pink ward consistently. If you place it in the tribush and you get pushed back a little bit, you’re losing that one immediately. If you put it on dragon you’re leaving it out in the open. The bush vision goes back and forth so often that you can’t rely on that either. This pink can clear out a decent level of wards for your jungler.

The blue circle is a very defensive ward that I place when I’m fearful of the enemy coming to try and dive me and/or my ADC under tower at any point in the lane. This is once again a time where the trinket ward can do wonders, since it’s usually a specific time that you’d be worried about a dive. This ward can save a spiraling lane from getting disastrous in some cases, letting you know when to back off and give up a tower rather than your lives and a tower.

Mid Game - Defensive

Blue Side

If after laning phase you find yourself on the defensive side and being pushed in, these should be your go to wards. You want to keep some kind of vision on dragon at all times, because this is when it is a highly-contested objective. The green wards in tri and lane bushes give you info on where the enemy is going after they push the lane up. If they keep pushing up, put up a green ward over in the bush by golems and see where they go from there.

When warding for dragon if you’re able to get the whole way around into the pit, which isn’t always possible, try and put your ward inside the overhang corner right on the inside. This keeps enemy pink wards from seeing it unless they get the pink ward inside the pit, which a lot of people don’t do. Otherwise, if you’re zoned out from the pit or think they may be trying to take dragon at the time, just toss a ward over the wall and at least get the timer on it.

The pinks are a bit situational. If you know the enemy is warding offensively in your jungle, get a pink somewhere in there. I find around mid game a lot of people put a ward on the upper bush by red buff. and in the “death bush” (The small patch in the middle of the river) by dragon (this one is a bit hard to protect though).These pinks usually spot out an enemy ward and even if they don’t, having long term vision in those areas is a great thing for your team anyway.

Red Side

Red side jungle near bottom lane just doesn't have as much to cover when you’re pushed back. That’s not to say that vision in those areas is any less important, just that it takes less wards to do the same job.

Just like with blue side you’ll still want dragon vision, and even still, you might want to do the same trick I mentioned before with putting the ward inside the pit to hide it from pinks. The nice thing here is that you’ve got access to the ramp from red side meaning you can get in and out a lot safer even if you’ve been pushed back. Getting a death bush ward is nice, but even getting a ward around the side bush is great for seeing if the enemy is moving towards dragon and it’s not checked by sweepers or pinks anywhere near as often.

If you want to try and put a pink ward further up, go for it, but realize it’s going to be a bit harder to protect since you don’t have a safe way to stay up there with towers down. The pink ward by blue buff is nice once your bottom tower dies since that’s the first objective that the enemy would look to invade and steal. If the enemy bottom lane is a lot stronger than you, they could tell their jungler that and coordinate screwing up the blue buff trade for your mid laner. That’s the correct way to transfer your power to your team’s power.

Mid Game - Offensive

Blue Side

When you’re on the offensive side of things from blue, you want to try and make use of the fact that the enemy has to take a risk by walking away from their furthest tower. Remember though, you’re further away from your tower at this point too. If you’ve got the advantage you can cover dragon and basically any avenue towards it.

Getting some sight on the enemy blue buff is a great way to push this advantage. You can turn your power bot lane into a power gain to your mid lane by taking control here and messing with the trade off. Similarly, placing some vision around the same bends as a defensive red side ward will let you know how the enemy is transitioning behind the scenes. Basically, you want to imagine yourself in your enemies shoes and think about where they’d likely walk.

Red Side

Red side is harder to take advantage of when you’re ahead in lane and get pressured. There are a lot of walls that you can’t go by without putting yourself in a dangerous situation. Even the far left ward on this map is pretty scary to do if you’re not certain on enemy positions.

If you’re ahead you should be able get vision on dragon pretty easily, especially since you’ve got the ramp like we talked about earlier. The pink in the death bush is easy to protect and a much more favorable position now as well.

Tribush and outer red buff bush wards are nice for keeping track of possible ganks or invades by the enemy jungler. Warding by wraiths is extremely useful and informative, but also risky if the enemy was walking that way or saw you go in, which is decently common, you’re caught on the way out.

Late Game - Defensive/Offensive

If you’re looking at this and wondering how the hell you’re going to ward all of this by yourself, good. Because at this point, and even before, WARDING IS A TEAM ACTIVITY. There’s a lot to cover here and you need to cover it well because you’re trying to claw your way back into the game at this point. You need to catch the enemy making a transition when they think they’re safe. Realistically, a lot of these could be pink wards as well. I just put a few of the ones that I personally prefer.

If you can cover both dragon and baron, then go for it, but realize that those are 2 of your three wards going to objectives that at this point in the game you’re giving up especially if you don’t have vision in the routes leading to these. Baron is important to cover and a much bigger objective, so I think keeping a ward there is useful. Usually dragon gold becomes pretty insubstantial, so I would forgo it and try and just keep a timer on it.

You’ll also want to prioritize your wards on the side that the enemy is trying to push and control. There’s no point in warding the bottom part of your jungle if the enemy is focusing on shoving in your top lane and controlling baron. Don’t just blindly ward, use the knowledge you do have to see where you need to focus your info gathering.

I consider warding late game to be one of the hardest things to do in this game, because it is a very reactive progress. At this point, your plan is pretty much as far gone as it can be in the game. Not only do you have a lot more ground to cover, but there are a lot more people with sweepers clearing out the little percentage of area you can cover.

You also need to keep in mind that at this point you’re going to need backup if you’re going to ward anywhere that isn’t immediately close to a tower. Supports get blown up easily so walking blindly around is a great way to get killed. Make sure you note where the enemy team is or isn't when you go into fog of war.

If you’re on the offensive side of things from red side. The only thing that changes is which sides of walls you place your wards. Your goal on that aspect is to try and extend your lead by taking what used to be safe zones from the enemy.

Probably the most important thing I could state here is to keep your vision relevant. You've only got a few wards you can place, so make them count.

Late Game - Offensive/Defensive

Pretty similar concept here. Only change is the flip of the map. You’ll be able to keep better track of dragon from this side, but baron can be a challenge if you’re on red and stuck on the defensive.

Concerning the topic of moving from offensive to defensive, it’s important to continually move your wards up with where your team is positioning. Don’t just wait until you’re sieging to try and get your vision down. A lot of times that can be too late. I always try and cover my teams flanks as we move up, especially if the enemy has someone split pushing or continually separated from their group.

When you’re going to ward objectives like baron or dragon try and ward your way to them if you’re playing from behind. If you just blindly walk over to those areas you’re sure to get jumped somewhere in between. I can’t stress enough how important the buddy system is for warding in the late game. That three minutes of vision is not worth your life!

Wrapping it All Up

I think that about covers everything. If there’s something I missed or something I didn’t go into enough detail about, please let me know. I’m always looking to learn more and debate topics in League, especially about supporting. I’m also looking for new topics to cover here. If you guys have more specific topics you’d like me to cover let me know either by commenting here, PMing me on Reddit, or messaging me on Twitter. @1000EyesLoL

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: To Dive or Peel
Support Lanes 101: Be the Annoyance

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By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis 

Support Lanes 101: Itemization Choices

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So last time we talked about picking a support to synergize with your ADC and counter the opponent. If you missed that one you can catch up on it here. Now I’d like to go over another integral part of any position in League, your item choices. Learning how to itemize in-game and, more importantly, learning how to adapt your build paths is one of the biggest steps in turning from an average player into an above average player in my opinion. The only things I’d consider higher are macro game details and warding, things I’ll go over later on.

So many times I see people that build items purely because it’s following directions on the suggested build or from a high tier player rather than actually putting thought into why they’re building that item and what it actually accomplishes for them. Take some time to really think about what you get for each item. One of the biggest parts of being a support is managing your itemization because your gold income is a lot lower than anyone else on your team. Your items not only have to be effective, but also cost efficient. Sure that Warmog’s is awesome to help tank, but by the time you get that finished, you’re so far behind in terms of stats and helpfulness, you’re a liability to your team.

So without further ado...Let’s get into it!

Starting Choices

On almost any support you have a choice of one of 3 starting items. Relic Shield, Ancient Coin, and Spellthief’s Edge. There are a few caveats to this, but we’ll cover that later.

Relic Shield: This is a no-brainer for anyone tanky. It gives health and lets you “steal” minions from your ADC and share the gold at the cost of a charge, which comes back every 60 seconds, and you can hold up to 2.

Your auto attacks will execute any minion under 200 health and heal you and the closest person to you for 40 health (A large amount in the early game) as well as giving them the gold. It’s important to note that only melee attacks will trigger the execute, however, if you kill a minion in any way shape or form and have a charge you will proc the gold and health transfer. Save your charges for Cannon minions as they give the most gold per kill.

The charges take a long time to build up until you upgrade it, so building it into its older brother, Targon’s Brace, is important to do early. Once you do that charges stack up twice as fast and you can hold 3 instead of 2. Targon’s also adds more health and health regen on top of all of this for 500 gold.

Your final item in this line is Face of the Mountain (FotM). In addition to more health, charges, CDR, and health regen, you get a nice shield to place on an ally that explodes after a set amount of time, even if the shield was destroyed. There’s multiple ways to use this shield. One, and probably the most obvious one is to place it on your ADC if they get dove. This keeps them alive as the shield scales on your health, and the damage it deals scales on 100% AD (In comparison to 30% AP) of the person you place it on. Second, you can use the shield on your assassin as they dive in, giving them more damage, especially if AD, and a little extra tankiness. Yasuo and Zed are prime candidates. Finally, and one of my favorites, baiting a fight by running in and using the shield as the enemy chases you down. So many times I’ve fooled the enemy into death by waiting for them to blow a cooldown on me only to shield the killing damage and walk off, leaving them defenseless.

This item is especially great for supports like Leona and Braum since they scale well with health and also lack any innate sustain. This lets you zone out the enemy and take some poke while also being able to keep yourself healthy in the process. If you’re really good you can feign like you’re going to go in and just take a minion instead, leaving your opponent to wonder when you’re actually going to be aggressive. Finally, using both charges on the first wave lets you shove and get a quick level 2, which as we learned last time is a huge advantage, and you’ll still have a charge ready by the time the first Cannon minion comes around.

Spellthief’s Edge: Just like tanks love Relic Shield, magey supports love Spellthief’s Edge. This item encourages being as obnoxious as possible in lane. Poke the enemy and receive gold for it. There’s a lot less going on here as far as stipulations, as long as you haven’t taken a minion recently and have a charge, you’re able to either auto attack or hit a spell and get extra gold. Be careful though, you can easily get caught out trying to poke and give your enemy a lot of gold in return.

Spellthief’s is very powerful in the early levels and can help zone out the enemy hard. If you’re running a long range auto attack support, like Zyra or Annie, take advantage and poke out the enemy. Biggest mistake I see in terms of this though is, DO NOT TANK MINIONS TO GET THIS POKE OFF. I’m guilty of this too, but attacking the enemy only to take return damage and minion aggro means you lose the trade. If you have to move past minions to attack the enemy, it’s not worth it. Wait until the enemy ADC goes to last hit and time your attack in unison with theirs. If they attack a minion they can’t attack you, at least not without blowing a spell or chasing you.

The upgrade for this item is great, although I’d argue not as immediately necessary as Relic->Targon’s. Your gold income increases, and your damage goes up, but come teamfights you’re not going to want more poke damage, you’re going to want more stats and more spells. If you’re behind, or you find you have the gold income, there’s nothing wrong with going for a Sightstone or Chalice over upgrading this item, especially if you find you’re not able to get a lot of procs off for it. Especially since the passive gold gain doesn't go up, and the damage it adds only increases by 5.

The final item in this path, Frost Queen’s claim, gives a nice boost in AP (10->50 AP) and some CDR in addition to letting you get procs off after taking minions. The active fires out a shot that explodes, does a miniscule amount of damage, and slows everyone hit by 80%. Great for chasing someone down, and even better at disengaging fights when you’re getting chased down. Do not forget this item when running, it’s instant cast and can save you and your team’s life.

Ancient Coin: Ancient Coin is in a weird spot right now, and it has to do with recent changes to it. Ancient Coin and its upgrades is meant to be the sustain line of items, in comparison to the poke and tank items we’ve gone over already. It gives mana regen flat, and some health every time an enemy minion dies in addition to gold. For more passive supports this was awesome. No need to poke, tons of sustain, and gold for just being around dead minions.

One of the simpler items in terms of gold gain and use, at least before final build. Just sit back and let the gold flow in. Upgrading leads to more health and mana regen, including health regen that doesn’t rely on minions being around, some movement speed to avoid getting caught, and one more gold per dead minion. Pretty self explanatory, keeps your sustain and gold flow moving. Upgrading this is really useful if you’re getting shoved in since you can get some nice health regen without needing to have minions die first, but similarly to Spellthief’s Edge, it’s understandable to try and get a Sightstone before upgrading if you need the wards and health immediately.

The active here is what makes this item, and honestly is the only reason you should ever build it. It gives a huge movespeed boost to you and everyone around you. This can be used in so many ways it’s crazy. In a game like League where positioning is key, especially in lower levels of play where positioning sucks, the extra movespeed can get someone where they need to be faster and save lives. Use it to engage fights, disengage fights, and during fights to reposition and regroup. Use it to quickly get to objectives.

The damn thing has a 60 second cooldown, use it a lot!

The last time I wrote about support items, this one still had 20% CDR at final build, and was one of my favorites because of this and it’s active. Well, Riot nerfed the CDR and placed some CDR in other items to compensate. While having other CDR options is always great, The fact that this item doesn’t give any type of lane dominance basically screws you in terms of trying to come out ahead in lane. You’re basically telling your opponent that you’re not going to try and do much in lane with this item over a Spellthief’s Edge.

One of my old builds I had been messing around with before was rushing this and Lucidity boots (CDR boots). This used to give me a very fast 40% CDR and I was able to cast a large amount of spells which, since supports usually rely on base values and using their abilities as much as possible, was great. Now with the CDR the same as all of the other items, it really has nothing over them outside of the great active. The other 2 items give more gold and lane presence, and have decent actives themselves. Until something is changed, this item is only going to be useful when bought fully completed.

Some off-builds that can work:

Doran’s Shield: For a while this was a preferred start for a lot of people, but with the nerfs that it received a few patches ago, it’s not worth sacrificing the gold gain for the stats it gives. It’s not bad if you’re planning on fighting hard early and often, but if you don’t get a lead immediately, you’re going to be behind on gold.

Ruby Crystal: This is actually a start I can get behind, especially on supports that don’t have a large preference on any of the gold income items, looking at you Thresh. Picking this item up lets you rush an early Sightstone, which means more wards earlier. Take control of the vision game early, once again a strategy I think is very viable in lower levels of play. You can warn someone that they’re in an unsafe position tons of times, but if they see that Jungler coming they’ll definitely back the hell up.

Doran’s Ring: This one is an old favorite of people who hate to support, but get stuck in the role. Zilean is probably the only person I could really recommend this on since he needs more mana regen, and builds a lot differently than other supports would, but even still you’re losing out on possible gold gain with this one. Basically don’t do this one, just go Spellthief’s over it.

Moving Forward (Base Items)

Ok, so you’ve got your first item and you’ve even upgraded it. Great! Where do you go from here?

Well in most cases rushing to the final build on your support line item isn’t a great choice. You’re going to need some other items in the meantime. By no means is this an end all, be all decision. Remember what I said at the start of the article? You need to analyze where your team is at and what they need and build accordingly.

Sightstone: This is a must-buy. I almost always get this item after upgrading my initial support item, or if I’m really behind, before that. Wards win games kids, and this thing will save you so much money in the long run, you may as well call it a gold income item as well. If you support and don’t think about buying this…..stop please.

I will say that upgrading this item isn’t anywhere near a priority though. The only thing you get from Ruby Sightstone is more health, and the gold you spend on adding that health is literally worth what you would pay for the health crystal itself. The only thing you actually get for your money’s worth when upgrading is an extra ward to place. This is great if you’re constantly moving around the map and dealing with sieges in multiple areas, but if you’re stalling this isn’t gonna help too much.

Use your head and decide when you need that extra ward, if you find yourself running out of wards and backing to base only to recharge the stacks on this, consider upgrading it.

Chalice of Harmony: If you’re a spammy mage, this is your item. Basically lets you disregard your mana pool and spam spells as much as you’d like. The magic resist it provides is also pretty nice, even if not ideal, since a lot of supports do magic damage and even some ADCs. Only one sensible item to upgrade to, but it’s a damn good one.

Sweeping Lens: I know this isn’t an item, but I want to talk about when to switch your trinket. I know a lot of people will sit on their yellow ward trinket for a long time. There’s no reason to keep it once you have a Sightstone, and I think it’s worthless after first back. You can buy any wards you need if you don’t have a Sightstone yet, and sweeping out the enemies vision is extremely useful.

Pink Wards: Please buy them.

Seriously though, let’s talk about the strength of pink wards and why you should always have some on hand at all times.

Pink wards have the possibility of being the most gold efficient item you purchase every game. The ward lasts until someone kills it and in the right place you can have extremely important vision and the enemy could never know. I’ll cover more on pinks in another article solely dedicated to vision wars and how to play them, but I always try and spend my pocket cash on pinks. I usually have 2 when I leave base, whether I came in with any or not. You can use them to clear vision, keep vision in an area for a long time, and even bait people out by putting them in easily clearable spots.

Here’s my philosophy on pink wards: Even if they go someplace that isn’t well traversed or they don’t last long, they give guaranteed information on where the enemy is or more importantly where they aren’t.

Boots

Sounds simple enough, boots make you faster and give some extra stuff once fully upgraded. The type of boots you buy though, especially as a support is extremely variable.

Boots of Speed: Obviously you’ll start here at some point, when you buy them is kind of a big deal though. As support your gold income is a hell of a lot lower than anyone else, so boots kind of become a second thought. You should generally have 21 points in the Utility mastery tree meaning you’ll have more movespeed inherently than other champs, but you’ll need them at some point to keep up. I’d recommend getting level 1 boots soon after your Sightstone, since that’s when you’ll start to roam around a lot more and ward areas. Getting them earlier isn’t a bad plan though, especially if there’s a Blitzcrank or someone else on the enemy side so you can dodge skillshots better.

Boots of Mobility: My go to option for upgrading boots, lets you roam around the map and ward efficiently, and by the time you are upgrading boots to 2nd level you should be doing exactly that. Plus they’re great when moving into mid-lane unexpectedly and pulling off some support ganks. Once you take tower you should strive to be where you’re most needed as quick as possible. You’ll generally be moving around the map a lot and these let you do just that. Plus they’re only 475 gold to upgrade, which is so much cheaper than all of the other boots.

Mercury’s Treads: These are always solid buys. The reason being that they are one of very few items with tenacity, which keeps you CC’d for less time. Tenacity is extremely high value in gold because of this. These are gonna be more useful on tanks and especially anyone that needs to slog through a bunch of CC laden champions in order to do their job. Usually this isn’t what you’ll be doing, but for some it can be (Leona, Alistar, etc) The magic resist they add is really just a nice bonus, and lets you buy the cheap MR item for quick resistance.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: These used to be my favorite boots on supports. They nicely fill in that 5% CDR that you awkwardly have from your masteries, but the reason they fell out of favor was all of the changes to support items that added CDR. We now have so many items that have CDR in them that it’s hard not to hit the cap already. Plus they don’t add anything special in addition to the CDR, like Mobi boots or Merc Treads do. Overall they’re great in concept, but you can get what they give elsewhere and receive other things in addition.

Ninja Tabi: These are always a game specific buy for me, even if I’m not on support. Generally they’re only really effective if the enemy has a lot of AD damage going on their team and they’re doing most of that through auto attacks. Just AD damage alone isn’t enough to validate buying these. These are a pretty rare buy for me but they have their place

Sorcerer Shoes: These are a very specific buy, basically only useful on poke supports with high damage outputs. Zyra is the only one I can think of offhand that would buy these regularly. If you’re going to run Lux support it could possibly work as well. Other boots provide more though if you’re a utility based support.

Finished Items

Here we’re gonna talk mid-late game items, basically what you could build past Sightstone, your support item, and boots. Some of these are more viable than others, and some of these may seem like good buys, but I’ll go over why they just aren’t cost efficient for most supports.

Since this is something that will be drastically different by tank or mage supports I’ll cover them in separate sections.

Mage Supports

Mikael’s Crucible: This is always my first item past the initial trinity of support items I get. Chalice alone is a great item for supports, since you’re very reliant on spamming spells, and the passive basically solves any issues with mana you’d have. Throw some CDR and tons of base mana regen on top of that and it’d be a pretty decent item.

The kicker is the active. This active basically saves your team from getting screwed. It’s a cleanse and a heal at the same time. Meaning if anyone is caught out and going to die you can save them. Plus the heal is based on % max health. Meaning it is even useful on tanks too. You can cast it on yourself, as well. Making it an amazing baiting tool.

At 2450 total cost it’s not cheap, but the components are easy enough to pick up, and useful enough that you don’t feel like you’re wasting slots till it’s finished. The active is well worth the cost though.

Twin Shadows: Another item I love for mages, and I think a severely underrated item, especially in solo queue. This thing gives a lot of AP some CDR and, most importantly, move speed. Move speed is not an easy stat to come by in League, especially outside of boots.

The active on Twin Shadows sends out two “spooky ghosts” that will look for the nearest enemy champion and make them visible as well as slowing them. A while back they added that if the ghosts don’t find a target they run back to you, and each ghost that returns reduces the cooldown of the item (which is very long at two minutes otherwise).

The active is very useful at scouting out areas, or even just showing the general direction of the enemy. Even if they don’t find anyone, they always go towards the enemy, showing their general direction.

This is another slightly pricey item at 2400, but for the amount of AP and utility you get it’s great late game when you need that extra oomph in your abilities and the ability to safely scout out areas from a distance. Definitely not needed until later on in the game though, and you should be able to scrounge up the cash by then.

Liandry’s Torment: This one kind of falls into the same category as Sorcerer's Shoes. You’ll only buy it on champions that are going to deal a significant amount of magic damage and rely on doing that damage for their job. Not gonna be a buy on someone like Nami or Janna since they don’t need penetration, and even if you wanted more damage you’d get more from getting AP and items with more utility focused passives.

Haunting Guise is cheap enough to sit on for a while and you get a nice amount of penetration when in conjunction with Sorc Shoes. Very niche item, but effective in the right use.

Now we’re looking at 2900 gold here for a completed item. Not worth it when you consider how much damage you’ll generally be doing, but there’s worse items to get for the gold.

Zhonya’s Hourglass: Speaking of items that are very useful in specific cases. Hourglass as an item is amazing, but for any support outside of Morgana or Fiddlesticks, it’s just a bad idea. Most of the time as a mage support you should be in the backline focusing on giving your teammates the heals and power to win fights. Not throwing yourself to the wolves.

Morgana and Fiddlesticks get good use out of it because they can keep their ultimates going throughout the duration of the invulnerability, no other support has an ability like that. Plus you’re gonna look to build a Needlessly Large Rod. Tell me when you get to go back to base as a support with 1600 gold to throw around.

Ardent Censer: This item has been the one I’ve built up to for mage supports. I don’t like this item. Not that the idea behind it is bad, or that it’s too expensive, but because when you compare it to other items you can get, it’s just…..lackluster.

First off let’s just look at pure stats. For 2200 total gold you get, 40 AP, 10 mana regen/5 secs, and 10% CDR. Okay, not bad. But let’s compare that to Mikael’s Crucible.

For just 250 more gold, you can get on base stats alone a lot more MR and more mana regen. No support has high enough AP ratios to make use of just 40 AP, so having the ability to crank out more spells and not dying is more important.

Now let’s look at passives. This isn't going to be as cut and dry.

Mikael’s gives a nice mana regen passive, which as long as you’re not button mashing should give you enough mana to rotate spells, and even if you do run dry you’ll get more back fast. It’s second passive is that great heal/cleanse we talk about already.

Ardent Censer gives move speed, which is a great stat, but this one is a unique passive, meaning if you get another Aether Wisp for a Twin Shadows, you’re not getting any more movement speed until you actually finish Twin Shadows, since they’re both unique.(I have been corrected on this thank you!) So I was actually wrong on that one. My fault, however, I still think you're going to get more from the actives and passives of Twin Shadows/Mikeal's for your team rather than Ardent Censer.

The shielding/healing effect is more interesting, giving attack speed to everyone you shield or heal, but you’re relegating this item to people who shield and heal right off the bat. On top of that, how many of those champs really only shield or heal one person? Taking the value of this passive down even further for those champs. Finally, and most crucially, how many champions on your team will actually make use of more attack speed? Extremely reducing the effectiveness. Why wouldn't you spend 250 more gold for a much more useful passive in saving people? If you want the AP and movement speed, get a Twin Shadows, since it’s double the AP and the movement speed isn't unique.

In short, Ardent Censer is an item that’s stuck in between being a support item and an offensive item and it really doesn't accomplish either very well when compared with other items. It could possibly work will someone who shields or heals AoE, like Alistar or maybe even Karma if you're willing to pop ult for it, but the vision and utility other items have just outclass it hardcore.

Ohmwrecker: I’m not gonna spend too much time on Ohmwrecker since it has a lot of similar issues to Ardent Censer in terms of not having a clear in-game use. It gives health and a decent amount of AP. Both of these are useful for dives yes, which the passive also assists in, but you’d want health on one champion and AP on the other, it’s just a really wonky item and other items do more in the same slot.

Tank Supports

Tank supports are a bit different in that they need to build to be tanky like a solo laner, but on a fixed gold income. There’s tons of great tank items out there, but you’re not going to want to build all of them because of gold value. What you need more than anything cheap stats.

Magic Resist Options

Locket of the Iron Solari: Probably the top MR item for tanky supports, very team oriented and perfect for supports. The stats it brings are a little bit gold inefficient until you bring into account the passive or the active. The aura brings 760 gold worth of stats to each allied champion. So if you’ve got all four champions near you that aura alone brings 3040 gold worth of stats to your team.

Now the way the stacking of these items works is weird. Except for special cases, you’re not going to want more than one on a team, so it’s important to let your team know you’re building it. We’ve gone over how it’s not gold efficient in stats on its own, and needs to have at least one person to give the aura to. Well, if you’ve got two people with the item, you’ll get it stacked twice on the people who have a Locket, and only once on anyone else, making it extremely gold inefficient around small groups.

By the way, because I never see people mention this, you get the aura as well. You’re getting 40 MR not 20, and you’re also getting the health regen.The base stats look like crap for a reason, because the possible value you can get from this item is immense.

Banshee’s Veil: Probably the best high MR item you can get. A bit expensive on a support budget at 2750 total gold though. You’re getting a lot of MR and if you have no self healing mechanisms (Braum, Leona, etc) you’re always going to want this over Spirit Visage.

Banshee’s has two unique passives and one is more prominent than the other. First off we have the shield. It blocks one spell every 40 seconds you don’t take damage from enemy champions. Basically a poke shield and a counter initiation shield. Very effective against skillshot initiations like Blitzcrank’s grabs since they can already be hard to hit and now you’re adding the fact that the shield needs to be popped beforehand.

The second passive helps more against poke. It’s basically a mega version of Spectre’s Cowl’s passive. Once you take damage from an enemy champion you get 45 health regen/5 for 10 seconds. In other words, you’ll get 90 health back, which is sometimes more than the damage you took, and it will reapply every time you take damage. This thing gives you so much in one package, it’s a great item.

Spirit Visage: Now this is the other high MR item you could buy. Interestingly enough, this item is actually gold efficient without it’s passive, giving 3203 gold worth of stats for 2750. Nice!

It’s less health than Banshee’s and similar MR, but you’re getting CDR and flat health regen with Spirit visage. First off, let me clarify how this passive works. You get more health regen on yourself, not on or from your teammates. Self healing is the only way to make use of this. It is a very selfish item in that aspect. It won’t affect abilities that grant health, this would be something like Lulu ult or anything else that is only temporary health.

(Side note, Lulu’s ult is also not affected by Grievous Wounds.)

One thing that always bugged me was losing the passive on Spectre’s Cowl when I upgraded the item. However, because you get effectively 24 health regen per 5 if you include the passive on the 20 health regen you get, it’s actually more than the Cowl’s passive and doesn't need anything to trigger it.

Armor Options

Frozen Heart: This is a monster defensive item. It gives 100 armor, 400 mana, and 20% CDR. All for the low low price of just 2600 gold. Even without a passive this item is giving you 3433 gold worth of stats. Glacial Shroud is also a pretty nice mid game item, considering it gives you armor and CDR pretty cheap.

The aura is similar to Randuin's Omen, which we’ll look at in a bit, in that it will lower attack speed, but Frozen Heart will lower the attack speed of anyone near you. Minions, monsters, or champions. It only won’t affect Dragon or Baron. The best counter to anyone who relies on auto attacks. Which, lo and behold, is every ADC. Really nice too on supports because of the massive CDR and mana it gives. I’d always get this on someone like Braum because the amount of stats you get for this item is crazy.

Randuin’s Omen: No mana or CDR here, but a nice bunch of health. This one is gonna cost you 3000 gold though. It’s actually not gold efficient in the slightest since in total you’re only getting 500 health and 70 armor. You do get a passive and an active on it though.

First up, let’s look at the passive. This passive is completely seperate from Frozen Heart’s passive and can stack. When you get hit by an auto attack, that person’s attack speed will lower by 10%. This can be great for divers that want to get on your ADC like Tryndamere, Jax or Aatrox. Get in their way and force them to hit you. However, it’s mainly only useful on people that dive themselves since it’s hard to force someone to attack you.

The active, however, can be very useful for peeling. It slows everyone around you for a specified amount of time. It actually increases the time with more MR or armor. It’s a great way to keep people from reaching your teams backline.

Sunfire Cape: Cheaper armor basically, once again better for diving champions not peelers. The passive here is constant damage around you, but considering you’re gonna be dealing with tankier people trying to beat their way past you it’s not gonna do as much damage since that bruiser would probably have some MR built on that would negate a lot of the constant damage.

The only champion you’d want this on maybe is Leona since she’s almost always diving in on the enemy, but even then it’s an iffy buy.

Iceborn Gauntlet: I’m kind of split on this item. It’s less armor and CDR than Frozen Heart, and you’re not really getting much out of Sheen on most supports since damage dealing shouldn’t be your main priority.

That’s enough of crapping on the item though. This thing is has awesome peeling mechanic in auto attacks, I could definitely see someone like Braum or Leona or Blitzcrank building this because of their synergy with auto attacks. Blitzcrank maybe not as much, but the amount of slows you could stack on Braum could be very nasty. I’d still rather see Frozen heart, but there are worse items you could build.

Thornmail: Basically pure armor. There’s a time and place for this item, but it’s much better on solo laners since they have more slots open (no Sightstone, support item, etc.) It’s not gold efficient on its own, and the usefulness in the back line is mediocre at best. Health would be much better usually since it would mitigate both magic and physical damage.

Warmog’s Armor: Too expensive on your budget. Gotta think about your gold income before you buy, and this item even if it is good, is just way too expensive to get. Health is an awesome stat, since it’s visible to the enemy and can intimidate and will mitigate all types of damage. Focus on getting health from other items in conjunction with some MR and armor.

Remember, armor and MR can increase your effective health multiplicatively, whereas when you buy health you’re only adding on to your pool of health.

So this basically covers all the itemization I wanted to look at for supports. Obviously every game is different and you'll want to focus more on MR for some games and armor for others. This should at least explain why you buy certain items over others. Stay tuned for the next installment where I go over everything about warding!

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: Warding

Support Lanes 101: To Dive or Peel
Support Lanes 101: Be the Annoyance

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis