Comprehensive Support Guide S5 (patch 5.21)

Welcome to this guide, I'm SmoothHomie and I've been maining support for about 10 months now. In this guide I'll try to explain fundamentals, general match ups(writing specific match ups would take too much time so I might do a video on it in near future), wave management, rotations, objective control, late game team fighting, build possibilities, and a personal tier list for ranked supports. Guide is mainly directed towards conquest players, from beginners to those that already have experience in it. I also encourage you to discuss any parts of this guide and any recommendation or critique is welcomed.

5.21 - Nothing changed, patch before the worlds.

We will quickly go through the fundamentals mainly because everything else is going to be discussed later on. They come down to: map awareness, understanding your role in your current team composition and warding.

Map awareness

This is going to be your bread and butter, depending on it you will be making most of your decisions, mainly including: how you play your lane before level 5, general warding areas, rotations and counter rotations, objective calls and etc. My personal advice if you find yourself lacking in it to set a timer that will beep every 5-7 seconds in order to remind you to check the map.

Understanding your role

Support gods can be classified in two general categories that have some small subcategories. They are engage and peel supports, but that doesn't mean that engage supports can sometimes peel and vice versa. Perfect example of that would probably be Athena, you can save your taunt for either offensive or defensive use depending on your team composition. An example of when Athena could probably peel is when you have an engage solo laner and jungle that can dive enemy background, mainly it would be something like Cu Chulainn solo and Ne Zha or Hun Batz jungle.
Your job is to be aware of your compositions flaws and benefits and look to play in the way it's going to be the most effective.

Few examples of peel support would be: Geb, Ganesha, Khepri, Kumbhakarna.
And those of the engage: Ares, Sobek, Bacchus.

Warding

Warding is your bread and butter in every single role and even more so as support. It allows you to be safe from gank and make proper decisions depending on what information you have from them. We will divide it in early game, mid game and late game warding.

Early Game Warding

Early Game Warding

Red wards are the wards that you usually want to put down in order to get the information of a possible red buff start, it will spot the junglers early route and keep you safe from level 2 gank, you can also place the ward straight on the buff as well.

Green wards are your standard aggressive wards, it allows you to play aggressively without worrying of any possible rotations to the duo lane from mid and potentially look to get some early invades going.

Blue Wards are the gold fury ward in case if they decide to cheese the early gold fury. The other one is merely there in order to establish the control of mid harpies by getting the timer and preventing any possible plays from enemy jungler with either Blink Rune or a jump over the wall on your mid.

Yellow wards are your typical defensive wards, in case that your mid is losing pressure they will detect aggressive jungle pathings and potential invades on your buffs.

Mid Game Warding

Mid Game Warding
Depending how the game progressed so far, which lane is winning or struggling and which objectives are up we can look to ward as per following:

Red wards are your extremely aggressive wards, in case if you have huge amount of pressure in mid or if you were able to pull out multiple invades through the early game and can safely continue with them in mid game.

Green wards are also aggressive but not so much, it involves the most common traffic choke points, it will spot most of rotations on the map and keep everyone safe.

Blue wards are your standard objective wards and as mentioned in early game mid harpies control wards.

Yellow wards are your once again defensive wards, I'd recommend having sentries at the entrances to the mid lanes in order to prevent the enemy team from knowing your rotations.

Late Game Warding

Late Game Warding

Gold Fury is no longer an important objective, we have reached a point where everyone is or is close to reaching level 20, everyone has their 5th item completed and are grouping in order to fight around the fire giant pit or sieges are about to happen.

Red Wards and orange wards are your sieging wards, you're denying enemy vision in order to keep them on their toes and guess what your next move is while they're hugging their last remaining structures. Orange wards near the fire giant pit can also help you determine the pathing enemy team is taking while you're taking the fire giant thus making it easier for you to zone more effectively.

Green wards are your standard aggressive wards while fighting over the fire giant, it allows your carries to poke enemy team while also allowing your jungler and solo to know exact location of enemy carries in order to plan their dive.

Blue wards this time are again Fire giant ward and mid harpies ward, plus the ward over the fire giant wall. It allows you to potentially spot any possible flanks or even an attempt to steal the fire giant over the wall.

Yellow wards are your defensive wards once more, this time they allow you to walk into the fire giant pit without worry of someone being around the corner. Without team it is really risky to contest fire giant so I'd definitely recommend to have them up.

Purple wards just like red wards are the sieging wards. It allows your carries to poke enemy team and also prevents vision from enemy team over the wall making their siege more difficult.

Types of Match Ups
Match ups can be divided into three categories: beneficial, even and losing ones. Here we will cover how to play each one, how to push your leads and how to gracefully lose the lane. Be aware that pressure in lane in most cases depend on the support, but don't forget to keep in mind adcs as well, those such as Rama, Ullr, Izanami, Anhur have a huge amount of either wave clear or kill pressure and others like Cupid or Jing Wei not so much.

Beneficial

Beneficial or winning match ups are considered ones who have almost guaranteed chance to win the pressure in lane, few of high pressure supports are: Sylvanus, Ymir, Ne Zha, Cerberus, Artio. Winning a lane doesn't necessary mean that you have to get kills, it also involves being able to out push enemy duo lane and invade their buffs off the cool down, generating an experience and a gold lead. Important opportunity for snowballing the lane is once you hit the level 2 and 3. Exact moment when you hit level 2 in lane is: after two waves and one more melee minion, after two waves plus small creeps on a buff(a huge opportunity to turn on enemy duo lane in case they decide to contest the purple) or a wave, a buff and two melee minions. Having another two abilities up over the enemy duo lane gives you a decent amount of kill pressure or an opportunity to force the enemy either to back to base or consume their potions which in return allows you to continue your pressure against them. Another important snowballing opportunity comes by hitting level 3. You can deny enemy team hitting the level 3 sooner if they decide to go for their purple by freezing the wave and denying creep experience(note, if by some chances one of you miss a creep somehow calculating exact time when you're going to hit level 3 gets a bit harder!)Be aware of the possibility that enemy jungler did a red buff start! Best way of noticing that is to keep the eye on enemy solo laner, whether he goes for his blue buff after the first wave or not. In case he goes missing on the map there is a possibility for the early jungler gank.

Even
Even match ups are those where you clear the wave at almost the same time, having a complete wash, in these scenarios it's mostly the best idea simply to secure your own purple buff unless you have an opportunity to poke enemy duo lane depending on your match up, whether you have an early game adc such as Anhur or a late game carry such as Rama or Artemis is the most decisive factor, most of the cases forcing early fight with late hyper carry is an unnecessary risk where you could farm and out scale the enemy team in mid to late game depending on your power spikes.

Losing
Losing match ups are those where you are guaranteed to get out cleared and/or are in risk of getting killed, an example is support that has barely any wave clear in the first couple levels such as Geb, Bacchus and Fafnir. The best possible way to play it out is to look for an early poke on enemy duo lane, depending on the match ups. Forcing them to step back a little bit and allowing you to be the ones who will start hitting the wave first. In that case you can either out clear or make the first wave push even. Allowing you to even secure your own buff or look for a further poke and pressure on the second wave which would in turn allow you to invade their own buff.

Wave Management

Wave management in duo lane is really important, in winning match ups you are mainly looking to keep the wave constantly pushed and showed into enemy turret causing enemy to lose gold under it and allowing you to invade where enemy duo lane is forced to choose between having the experience from the wave or contesting their own buff. In even match ups, depending how the laning phase goes you can look to either push the wave, keep the waves neutral in mid or look to freeze in front of your turret line, allowing you to be safe from any possible ganks. In case of losing match ups you're looking to mainly have the wave neutral if you don't win the early poke or have the wave freeze in front of your turret line for the reason mentioned above.

Freezing

Freezing
An important thing to keep in mind is that you can't effectively freeze the wave unless the enemy wave is even in terms of hp and minion number or has the bigger wave. Freezing the wave in front of your turret is also important to keep in mind that the wave is going to be pushed towards the enemy team due to the sake of the equality law. Equality law means that if both waves are equal the one that is going to lose the push is whichever is further away from their turret due to the fact that enemy wave comes in sooner and helps with the push of it. So be aware that frozen line is eventually going to be pushed in with the huge wave. This is important to keep in mind in case you are 1v2 in lane and enemy duo is zoning you from the wave. So its better to wait a bit further away than risking your life for a mere minion or two.

Rotations

Rotations are closely related with your map awareness and decision making. Knowing where approximately where each member of the enemy team is, how good is each of your lanes performing and where you would be most effective is all to be considered when deciding where to rotate.

Starting rotations usually occur around level 5 or 6, or by the time you complete your 2nd back(the one where you get your boots finished). Mid lane is usually the preferred lane to rotate to because of the fact that you can quickly answer to or make plays on both parts of map from that point. You can also opt to camp the enemy adc in order to make a lead on your adc or force invades. Another option is to casually chill if you sure that your team is going to out scale the enemy team and prevent any possible plays on your own team.

Objective Control

This is mainly for early to mid game

So we have talked about warding objectives in order to make sure the enemy team doesn't sneak them from us, now let us talk about objective control while your team is trying to take one. Having a decent vision from the possible entering paths of enemy team would make this easier, but in case you don't your job is to zone the enemy team off the objective while your team secures it if your current god is capable of that, ones that are quite potent in it are Sobek and Cerberus. Another option is to bait enemy team while faking an objective pull and pick off enemies incoming by ccing them for your team. In some cases you also might be the one securing the objective in case if you're a god with good confirm once again Sobek with his Lurking In The Waters and Ymir with his Shards of Ice while someone else zones the enemies.

In case you are suspicious of enemy team pulling an objective while you don't have any vision of the pit, in most cases it would be best if you face check it in case if you're a mobile support such as Fafnir or Cerberus for example and getting the vision of it for your team, if you lack mobility and no one else from your team with mobility is in position to check it would be preferred for you to check it once again if you decide to contest the objective, that way you're in position to cc the enemies on the objective or those collapsing on you in case of a trap and set up them for your team who even if you die will be able to get couple of kills in return.

This one is slightly more complicated to explain mainly due to the fact that there are so much possible situations and circumstances so we will just go over the most common ones. Late game Team Fights will usually occur either in the objective pits, jungle or during the sieges.

Objective Pits and Jungle Fights
Read above objective control, now the main difference is going to be that this time you will usually be in a 5v5 situation comparing to mostly 4v4 as mentioned above. Now it will once again come to understanding what is your role in your team composition, whether you're the one who is going to be peeling or engaging. Important part to mention about how important peeling is, is that if you're able to make room between your carries and enemy divers they can easily burn through enemy divers and allowing you to win fights.

Picking up jungle fights is also really dependent on your team composition, if you feel like your team has an advantage fighting in choke points around jungle(for example you have a Poseidon) then your main job will be to bait the enemy team by faking an objective pull. That can be achieved by grouping up at the pit, counter warding the pit, then proceeding to fake the zoning while enemy team tries to get the vision on objective. This will require a deeper vision that on the average because you must be aware of potential flanks from enemy team.

Sieging

Late game sieges are sometimes really hard to pull off, unless you have a superior sieging team and can easily poke out the enemy team and force them off the phoenix then your job will be to bait enemy abilities and relics if you're main engage on your team. Perfect example is if you're Athena, you'd want to make constant resets with your taunt. Move in, taunt and try to get some beads and poke on enemy team, reset and regen with fire giant buff, repeat. In case if you're a peel support your job will be to take care of your back line, making sure that both of your carries are safe and not being zoned by enemy divers is your primary task.

Possible Starts

The most common start on supports are Guardian's Blessing, Shoes, 3 Healing Potion and 3 Multi Potion plus a relic of your choice which will be discussed a bit further. You can also go for an upgraded relic by not going for Shoes.

Other possible start includes not going for Shoes and instead buying Chalice of Healing plus up to 5 more potions of your choice, this start allows you to absorb the enemy pressure in losing matches or make even more aggressive plays with double Healing Potion ticking.

Chalice of the Oracle is an interesting pick up which allows you to save gold after your 10th ward, but keep in mind it forces you to spend 400 gold at the beginning and it makes you extremely vulnerable in the laning phase due to the enemy support having a higher amount of potions in the start.

Other possible blessing are Mage's Blessing and Hunter's Blessing if you want to cheese and look for an early pick or play. Be aware that if it doesn't succeeds you will fall heavily behind due to Guardian's Blessing nature.

Items in Detail

Shoes

Shoes
Shoes of Focus - is my personal preferred pick up in most situations, extra mana, decent amount of power and most importantly extra 10% cool down, which for support is probably one of most important stats. You want to get as most of rotations of your abilities as you can during team fights. Every second matters.

Shoes of the Magi - penetration shoes, they are something that you want on high burst supports like Bacchus, name says it all, you get in and burst enemies.

Reinforced Shoes - They are sometimes most potent shoes when it comes down for supports, extra 100hp, crowd control reduction, and 18 protections each when the passive is up. It's definitely a pick up to consider when facing a heavy CC compositions, for example Ymir or Athena. You can also build them into compositions with a lot of tick damage like Anubis or Poseidon perhaps to make use of the passive as much as possible.

Traveler's Shoes - Besides the movement speed bonus when going out of base and a bit higher movement speed than other shoes, main stat that we are looking here is mp5, you want it if you're playing a mana hungry support for example Artio. It also allows you to rotate more often and back to base more often if needed.

Phyiscal Defense

Physical Defense

Sovereignty - currently a standard aura item for support players, gives a decent amount of health and 60 physical protections plus some extra sustain.

Midgardian Mail - is your anti auto attack item, it's good if enemy team has more than one auto attacker or if you just want to be plain annoying to their adc.

Emperor's Armor - sieging item, pick it up if you're expecting a defense or siege in near future.

lotus crown - A really powerful item combined with healing supports such as Artio and Sylvanus, gives 100 of each protections combined.

Jade Emperor's Crown - reduced the power of nearby physical gods, you can consider to pick it up if enemy team has 4 or more physicals, other than that it's not a really preferred pick up.

Hide of the Nemean Lion - pure physical protection with some mana, reflects 25% of auto attack damage back as magical damage. Once again into heavy aa comps.

Breastplate of Valor - physical protection, mana and 20% cool down. It's a decent item but very selfish one, your team would probably benefit more from Sovereignty. BoV should be ideally picked into heavy physical compositions where you're mainly looking to benefit off the cool down. Be wary of the cap tho, remember that you will also be using the 500 gold potions that give 10% cd during late game as well.

Void Shield - a good pick if you manage to snowball your lane, only on physical supports. Otherwise quite expensive and not really worth it.

Mixed Defense

Mixed Defense


Gauntlet of Thebes - an item to pick if you're expecting no action in the early to mid game, or if you're ahead. Item is a bit of a risky pick up on immobile guardians due to the lack of defenses early.

Spirit Robe - probably something that you want every game, gives you 15% damage mitigation for 3s, every 15s combined with decent stats, those 3s can mean a huge difference in team fights during late game.

Mantle of Discord - Is also something that can be quite useful, the extra cc immunity that you get once you drop below 30% of health combined with a small aoe stun can sometimes turn around a lost team fight.

Hide of the Urchin - the item itself isn't really cost efficient, meaning you have to stack it. Only buy it if ahead or expecting a huge team fight to occur soon.

Magi's Cloak - one time beads every 90s, good into something with Ares that keeps engaging with his Blink Rune.

Stone of Binding - a decent bridge item, allows you to give a penetration aura to your team by ccing an enemy. Really good for snowballing in early.

Magical Defense

Magical Defense

Void Stone - gives a protection debuff to nearby enemies, good pick up if your team is heavy magically oriented or if you manage to snowball.

Genji's Guard - gives a lot of magical defense and some health, combine it with cool down and you have one decent item. It's passive also can come up clutch in team fights. Pick it up if you're not afraid of enemies CC and want more rotations of your abilities.

Oni Hunter's Garb - another quite potent item, gives you crowd control reduction, decent stats and what is most importantly 9% damage mitigation in late game team fight. It is my personal preference to try and include it in most of my builds.

Shogun's Kusari - gives an attack speed steroid for your allies, it's only really good for his passive. Stat wise alone there are better items. Buy it if you have more than one auto attacker on your team and they won't over cap their attack speed with it and if you can fit in your build.

Bulwark of Hope - good item into heavy cc comps and against true damage dealers like Serqet, the extra shield can come in clutch.

Pestilence - an item to pick up in case the enemy team has a lot of either healing or self sustain.

Heartward Amulet - decent pick up if enemy team has 3 or more magical gods, gives you a magical protection aura.

Talisman of Energy - a good sieging item, it allows you to clear the wave and then look to fight while the buff is up from the passive, other than that it alone has decent stats.

Ancile - snowbally item pick up, only buy if ahead.

Runic Shield - physical support item only, you can pick it up into heavy magical comps.

Other Items

Other Items

Witchblade - an item you can pick up into heavy aa compositions, combine it with Midgardian Mail and people will curse you for entire day.

Winged Blade - item you can pick up if enemy team has a lot of slows.

Relic Dagger - If you find yourself that you need your relics as much off the cool down or if you want to engage as often as possible with Blink Rune it's your item to go.

Pythagorem's Piece - an interesting pick up on supports, increases the power and life steal of your nearby allies. You'd generally want it if you're ahead, other possibilities are if enemy team has only one sort of the damage, where you have enough effective health and protections or if you're not the main focus of the fights.

Relic Choices

Relic Choices

Magic Shell is your standard go to relic at the start of the match right now, it gives you a decent amount of hp buffer at the start of the match and later on the block stacks are really good.
Blink Rune if you're an engage support like Ares, Sylvanus and perhaps even on Athena is really good.
Heavenly Wings is good into an enemy team with a lot of slows, upgraded version at the start also gives you an opportunity for a very aggressive play.
Phantom Veil obviously for Odin, but it can be also used for Cabrakan as well.
Cursed Ankh is a really potent relic, besides the fact that it reduces all healing for 50% it also increases all damage taken by 20% if the enemy team is healed by any of the abilities. Imagine popping it off as soon as Terra ults.
Belt of Frenzy is also an interesting pick up, it allows you to burn objectives and structures insanely fast and gives you an edge in team fights.
Horrific Emblem is also really good into aa heavy comps, gives that attack speed reduction, slow and upgraded version gives you that great debuff of all damage dealt for 20%. It is usually picked up as an aggressive early game relic in order to get a kill in lane, but it can be easily countered by beads or sprint so be careful.

Keep in mind, this is my personal opinion on the ranked supports, if you disagree with it feel free to comment and we can discuss it.

Also another note is that I don't recommend for those that have just started learning support to try warriors, mages and assassins support until they don't get some experience in the role.

Thank you for reading this guide, hope You have enjoyed it and found at least something useful. Once again, I'd like to encourage you to discuss anything inside of this guide and look for a better possibility, and not take it for granted.

Smooth Homie