Bronze to Diamond as Support / InDepth Tips and Tricks - League of Legends by Kubaguette

Bronze to Diamond in 14 months as Support / InDepth Tipps and Tricks

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Hello there my friends. I want to make this post to help lower rank people failing as a support player to become a better player and giving good tipps on how to easy improve your gameplay in this role.

My name is Kuba aka JuicyJuju. I created my account back in Season 4 but quit after I reached lvl 20 or so because the game was way to complex and I was really upset about all the new things I saw and my fails on even the most easy things. I startet to play ranked finally at the end of Season 8 as Bronze 1, and I hit Diamond 4 some days ago as a support main.

Here is my opgg and here is my leagueofgraphs if you want to check my stats.

I will try to make up some key sentences and explain them in the following subtext, I hope thats the best option how to do that, so lets start with the points:

Laning Phase

What you need to understand it that not the adc is the one who decides how the lane is going, but you are. The support is the way dominant role in botlane and he is the one who decides when to engage, when to stay back, when to push, when to fall back, that is all your job. The ADC has the job to farm and following you on engages, he has allready enough to do. 80 or 90% of the outcome of the lane is your work and how you play. Easy things like:

• Poke the enemy ADC if he goes for a cannon minion as Janna, Nami or Soraka for example.
• Wait until the enemy wave is shrunk and try to allin so the damage from enemy minion aggro will not be big but your wave will be bigger and therefore you will have automaticly more damage.
• Care the positioning of the enemy adc or supp. Especialy in low plat and below, even in Diamond people missposition often and are vurneable to hooks or engages from Nautilus, Blitz or Leona. You need to see this moments and engage. Your ADC is not stupid, he will follow you.
• Dont let your adc trade allone, you need to stay with him on the same line. If he goes worward for aa a minion, take also a step. Dont let the enemy adc and supp poke him down allone just because you standing back and healing the adc or looking on your mobile phone or whatever you do behind him, you need to be at least next to him, maybe even before him and harassing the enemy the whole time.
• Help your adc to farm under tower. Before the adc has a BF you need to hit the minions so that with the tower shots the adc can farm the minions effectively. Caster need one aa from you and a tower shot, melee need one aa and 2 towershots. Remember this and help your adc to farm, it is so much free gold that you waste because you just chill and watch your adc miss all that cs.
• Roam. If you pushed as Nautilus the enemy under their tower, tell your adc to go back and you can roam into the enemy jungle and ward the buffs there or the whole jungle (more to that later), also you can roam to the midlane, hook the enemy midlaner and kill him. Basicly you need to influence also the other lanes, not only yours.

These things are really easy to execute and I promise you, you will win really fast and easily every lane just because of this few things if you also execute them!

Tracking enemy Jungler

In order to be prepared for a gank in the first 10 minutes, you need to understand what the jungle is doing. One time my friend who is an ex-master player watched my game and was able to track the jungler the whole game beside the fact he had no vision on him, and I understand now why. You dont need to track him the whole game, but at least the first 10 minutes are crucial and most important for your laning phase.

• Check where the enemy jungler started. Pretty easy because he will show up in the river before min 1 or you will see the botlane or toplane went to leash the enemy buff. It they wanna trick you and bot and toplane come in the same time at their lanes, check who lost mana or hp due to the leash.
• Remember 2:10 and 3:20 time stamps. Junglers will try to gank you bot at 2:10 if they started bot and want to gank at lvl2, for example a Twitch but maybe also a Jarvan, Shaco or something else. 3:20 is the time where the enemy will have for sure lvl 3 and will go for a gank. This doesnt mean he will come always bot at this time, but you need to be prepared in this timezone for a gank and know how to react.
• Depending on where the enemy ganked and which farm he has, you can assume what camps did he clear in order to thing forward and know where he will go next. Each camp gives 4 cs, so if he ganks at 3:20 with 12 cs you know he cleared 3 camps. If he also has a buff you know he cleared a buff and 2 additional camps.

Those are not much points but if you continue to read, the next section will continue with tracking the enemy jungler but also with tracking basicly the whole enemy team, its the warding.

Warding (especialy deep wards)

I watched some months ago a clip from BunnyFuFuu where he explained some good points I knew already but that were really great I think most of the people forget so often, including sometimes even me which helped me I think the most in climbing as a support player.

• NEVER WARD THE SIDE BUSHES. Most of the people are wasting the wards to ward the river or the side bushes in the lanes. Stop this, just stop wasting your wards. I understand that if you are pushed in under your tower and the enemy has a Blitzcrank you wanna see what he is doing in the bush. Thats the only exception when you are allowed this, beside that NEVER ward this things. If you see the enemy going in there, just stay back. You know anyway he is in there so why you want to ward it? Because its easier and you are lazy to look whole time on the enemy botlane and focusing what they do am I right?
• WARD THE ENEMY JUNGLE. Its really important to ward the enemy blue buff or red buff (or a bush nearby/paths in the jungle crossing) depending on which side you play bot because this way you will know when the enemy jungler is nearby and you will have time to react and back off if you see hes heading your way to the botlane. Thats the continuation of tracking the enemy jungler past min 5 or even min 10 without using much brainpower. Also your toplane or/and midlane will know that they can hard push their wave and play without a risk. Deep wards are influencing your whole team, wards on the botlane only, you guessed it, only your own lane. Its one of the big reasons I climbed out of plat in my opinion, just because I got early vision about the enemy jungle. You can do this if you killed the botlane, when the botlane went to the base or if you just pushed the enemy botlane into their tower and they need to farm the wave which is crashing into their tower.
• WARD THE DRAKE WITH A PINK WARD AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. This is a strat from me and my duo partner who played jungle. The first time I went to the base, often about min 6 or 7 ingame I guess, sometimes also later, I get my fairy charms and always pink wards just to rush to the drake and ward it. Reasomn for this are multliple: You will see the enemy jungler when he tries to sneak and make the drake solo, also you deny vision of the drake to the enemy. In addition to that my jungler was able to sneak it even if the enemy did the scuddle crab and he was able to solo drake because the enemy never had vision in the dragon pit and thus we almost every game got a huge lead just because of this one pink ward.

What to do after laning phase

There are two scenarios tbh what can happen, either you demolished the enemy bot tower or the enemy demolished your bot tower. No matter which outcome you get, there will be still things you need to remember and do continuing the game.

• Keep vision on the next objective. If you climb more in more in elo you will see that kills dont really matter that much at all. Even if the enemy has way more kills, have one fed champ or demolished your lanes, as long as you get the objectives you are going to win. The gold value youre getting from just a drake allone is insane, and if you do the baron or elder drake you will probably win the game. Check those graphs here to understand what I say. Thats the reason why I place a pink at the drake so early, and thats the reason why you should do the same and always be one or two minutes before the next objective (drake/herald/baron) there and placing a pink ward or at least a yellow trinket there.
• Depending on which side of the map the next objective is, ward the area around it, especialy the enemy jungle. Multiple reasons again. You will see if the enemy is going to contest the objective, you can prepare for them and make up a trap or abort the objective or rush towards it, your decision. Anyway, vision is key to win games. After the laning phase the support is the most important role in the game who carry games imo, not the jungle anymore.
• If both of the point before you did allready, stick to your adc or whoever needs your help in your opinion right now and keep pushing towers and lanes so if the objective comes up, the enemy will be distracted farming their waves or missing cs and xp if they will come to you contesting the objective. You need to think constantly where you can influence your team the best in given time and execute your plan the proper way.

What to do in teamfights

Depending on which support class (enchanter/tank/mage) you decide you will have different roles in the teamfights later in the game. I will explain my opinion on that here for you.

• As a enchanter, simply dont die. If you are a Nami or Lulu or especialy a Soraka, your job is to peel the ADC and make him stay alive as long as it it possible. The ADC is the source of constant output damage so you need to peel him in every teamfight to make sure the odds will be in your favor! Soraka is in a teamfight a medic for the whole team and if you play correctly often none of your teammates can die. Your heal is on a extreme short cooldown, about 1.2 sec I guess. Your ult should be up, maybe you have a redemption too. All those things you need to consider. Never go into an unwarded bush allone as a enchanter, the risk to a trap is way to high, especialy if you play between high gold and low plat people start doing this stuff and it will get better higher in the elo brackets.
• As a tank, your role is to make a proper engage and to also peel your team and your adc from damage sources. You have most time a ton of cc (Leona, Nautilus, Thresh if he gets enough souls etc.) and you need to use it, for an good engage on a squishy enemy target for example or to peel the enemy assassin from your own adc because he will try to kill him the whole time, because that is his job in a teamfight. Either way, make an engage or make an disengage, but you need to lead your team into the fight and use your cc to either protect your adc or your team or to lockdown the enemy most dangerous player.
• As a mage your objective should be to poke the enemy until hes not able to engage properly or participate in a teamfight. Champions like Lux/Brand/Zyra/Xerath of course have also cc but its hard to catch somebody, especialy the enemy adc who is well covered behind his team. Its nice if you are able to land cc on the enemy players but first of all you have pure damage, just use it. As a Lux poke with your e and use your ultimate in teamfights to maximize the damage output, as a Xerath poke and poke the enemy away from you and as a Zyra use your plants and your root to lockdown people and burst them down. I dont like playing mages but they have not the objective to engage like a tank, neither to stay alive at all costs in a fight like an enchanter. You just need to make damage basicly and of course, try to save your adc from damage sources.

No matter which class you decide to choose, you always need to peel the adc in a fight, thats the most important thing to do most of the time if you dont have a clue what to do in a fight.

We are nearly done with the whole guide, one more thing I want to mention again and dedicate to that a whole subtitle is the warding.

Warding Warding Warding Warding Warding

I allready explained how and when to abuse warding in order to watch the enemies the whole team and make the best choices because LoL is only a big sum of choices you and your mates do. Nothing more. You need to make more and more good choices, and high elo and low elo have only the difference that high elo makes less mistakes and takes more often the good choices.

• Remember how OP deep wards are. Seeing the enemy junger doing his camps can tell you where he is or if you dont see him there but the camps are allready done, you will also know where he is.
• Remember to ward the drake as soon as possible. This first drake is going to make your team emotionaly stable and will make eventualy the enemies tilted because they lost an objective. Its the first big important objective which is near your lane and that you can reach very fast. There is no excuse for you if an enemy jungler is doing the drake and YOU are not noticing that and pinging it. The chance of you winning the game is going up to 65% if you are able to make this first drake! Thats pretty huge just for one ward you need to place there and check if the enemy jungler is doing it or not.
• Never go base without using all your trinkets in your support item. There is no reason why you should not put down there wards, they will get refilled anyway if youre back in the base, never forget that.

I dont want to repeat at this point anymore, just reading the secound point in "what to do after laning phase" allready explained enough about objective controle and how to use wards properly and simple.

My conclusion

Tbh I had much up and downs, I dropped from Silver 1 to silver 4 which was really depressing. I dropped from gold 1 to gold 3 and was really frustrated. I got banned for 14 days because I was really upset sometimes and trashtalked people. I forgot that I get every game other teammates but the important thing is that I stay a constant player and always perform the best I can and use my knowledge and the skills I read and get taught by other people and also use them ingame. Its one thing to read all this things and one other to properly execute them ingame.

I wish you all good luck and if there are any critics or other opinions you want to tell me, go ahead :) I appreciate every comment!

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