At first I didn’t really enjoy the support role all too much coming from the ADC role since it used to be very underwhelming. However, after a change of mind and the new support changes support became one of the most important roles in the game. To be quite honest, a support has to be 110% focused on positioning and vision control throughout the entire game because of how fragile you are and how important your CC is to win a crucial teamfight.

Being a support player you NEED to not be quiet, ever. Support requires an immense amount of communication being relayed to all other teammates. You must communicate with your lane partner so that you’ll be able to get them through lane trading while at the same time saying when you’ll use your spells to trade and when to back off, alerting your ADC when the jungler is near because he’s focused on CS. This is what I do with Doublelift every single game we play together because it greatly benefits us whether it be getting through lane with a terrible early game ADC such as Vayne, or allowing us to have a chance to snowball with coordination on killing the opponent.

With Dexter after laning phase I am ALWAYS talking to him about where we need to get vision control where we need to ward because it is super important to not walk by yourself into enemy territory when you don’t know where they are on the map. If you do know, you can go by yourself to ward, otherwise you should always take a friend. Discussing where you need to ward during the game is crucial to being successful with your team composition and/or game plan that you are trying to execute. One of the main jobs of being a support midgame is setting up the wards for your team to be successful and to allow your teammates to be able to make the risky plays with a higher chance of success than they normally would have without the wards.

It’s more optimal for everyone else on your team to be farming *MOST* of the time unless you’re going to contest an objective. Even then IF you can get vision control ten or thirty seconds before the objective you know you’re going to contest then you have a much higher success rate at obtaining that objective for your team. This is the supports job at any objective you know you’re going to contest. You HAVE to be there before the opponent and control vision around that objective or side of the map. Never go alone. Support should always be communicating with teammates and if someone can come help you ward or if a laner is reacting to you, it needs to be communicated how you’re going to deal with a situation before it happens.

On CLG, Link and I are the main plan coordinators and we decide what objectives we should go for, how we should trade, if it’s a good idea, if we should fight a certain fight, and where we need to get vision control over to enable us to have the highest success possible to win the game. Supports are much more suited to this type of role in League of Legends because you aren’t really farming and you have a much higher sense of awareness of game-flow and can see where the opponent is putting pressure and where you need to put pressure to have the upper-hand.

Being the support player on CLG I assess our teams strengths and weaknesses, discuss the next plan with my team on what we should do next, and then we execute it as well as making sure Doublelift has a successful laning phase. Being a plan maker for your team is probably one of the most stressful jobs of a support. You have the CC + initiate + wards and it is the support’s job to use all of those skills correctly in the right situation at the right time to secure a victory.

During CLG’s games in LCS, I am usually talking the most. It is super fun to play support because I feel in control of the game and if we lose I am okay with it being my fault since I know I can improve every aspect of my game when I feel in control of the outcome. Whether that is making a different decision in a certain situation, warding better, or individual mechanical skills, I prefer to be in control of our decision-making as a team and the support role allows me to do that to my fullest ability without having to focus on farming for the entire game.

You see most successful League of Legends teams have a world-class support who influences every part of their game-flow in order to enable their teammates to have the highest success possible. You have Poohmandu, Mistake, Mata, Xpecial, Yellowstar, etc. all world-class supports that influence team vision control and objectives every game.