Support Arachnid

Simply picking Arachne in the support slot will surely raise a few eyebrows, sometimes to the point it just looks like a stubborn jungle-role pick. If you have somehow got past the awkwardness of presenting this pick in what I hope is a casual match, this guide may prove to be useful.

Playing Arachne as support is similar to Ares or Cerberus by having great early pressure, yet Arachne's clear is much worse than both of their's. The upside to choosing Arachne is that you can gain early XP by being able to build quickly and set up webs over a camp before the match begins. The main ability for wave clear is also going to be your 3 (Spiders). This is mainly used when the enemy ADC and support has already used their abilities on wave, doing so will leave your brood-lings to survive long and output more damage on the wave, and with abilities on cooldown the enemy has to waste time clearing your brood-lings with slow basic attacks. You want to rush bezerker shield as soon as possible to gain health and mana from your basic attacks hitting wave, this along with your 2 (bite ability) should provide your enough sustain to continue clearing so long as you don't take unnecessary damage. There will be opportunities around level 1-4 for early kills as long as there is no CC stopping you from rushing in, and sliding into jungle after returning from base to poke back into duo is a good way to try to snag a kill, or atleast figure out if they have wards for you to counter-ward for your jungler. You almost always want to have a purple buff on you for guaranteed sustain, the focus should shift to your ADC who is squishier which allows you to protect with webs and cocoon. Webs can also protect you and your ADC by blocking off pathways to your lane and making it hard for ambushes. After levels 5 and up you might have difficulty securing kills on your own, yet your jungler will always enjoy a web to gank with since it slows down the enemy and leaves a trail for you to catch up as they run, your 2( stun) is maxed out last since it doesn't scale well but it is good for keeping them in place long enough for damage to arrive. You should level your ult whenever you can due to shorter cooldown, it lets you escape with CC immunity after gathering attention to yourself and also can be used to secure a kill that you normally couldn't get, so long as you can escape afterwards. Buying healing chalice helps save money from getting potions but getting it at the start is not possible due to bezerker shield costing 650 gold. Overall playing her into late game sadly shows why the pick isn't optimal with many abilities making your job to protect and stun hard as well as your clear still not being the best despite the Arachne player reaching the endgame, it is still fun to try though winning like this in a serious match doesn't seem to be in the realm of possibility with Heimdallr and other hard hitters shutting the idea down entirely.