My previous article detailing important information necessary to understanding most of the blathering that goes on in this article can be found here:  http://www.slashskill.com/league-of-legends-beginners-guide-to-adc/

Greetings and salutations my dearest fans friends! Welcome to the latest addition to my Beginner's-Guide-to-League-of-Legends-series-thing. If you may recall, and if you don't, there's a goddamn link stupid a very helpful and convenient link up above to my previous article which talks about ADC, which of course is incredibly important to have at least a basic understanding of for this article, because this one will be about the ADC's bot buddy! The exciting world of Support!

Support is an interesting role because it's nothing like the previous three roles I've talked about. It's a laning role, but not a standard laner. They're opportunistic, vision controlling, playmaking, assist monsters. Basically what your goal is as a Support; is to babysit your ADC while he or she gets lots of farm and hopefully lots of kills to get fed. You want to set up as many kills/protect your ADC from as many attacks as you possibly can so that your lane wins. You also will want to be buying lots of wards, though everyone should be doing that, supports just even more-so. Essentially you're the kind and giving motherly figure of the team. Fun, right?

Well actually, it is. You don't need to worry about that silly farming thing. You make your money doing other things. This is of course depending on your support item. (Keep in mind you can only have one of these items, you greedy children.)

Important Items

Starting with the top row in the diagram from left to right:

• Ancient Coin builds into Nomad's Medallion which builds into Talisman of Ascension. This set of items not only grants you bonus health and mana regeneration, it also grants you some movement speed, along with some bonus gold per second and when activated gives you and your nearby allies a burst of speed for a few seconds. It also grants you money just by being near a minion when it dies to somebody other than you.
• Next up is Spellthief's Edge which builds into Frostfang and that subsequently builds into Frost Queen's Claim. This particular set of items gives you ability power, mana regeneration, cooldown reduction and some gold per second. When activated it shoots out a projectile that explodes and slows all enemies hit by it. It's special moneymaking feature gives you some gold whenever you hit an enemy champion. Keep in mind though, this effect is put on cooldown when you kill a minion, so don't try to steal farm from your ADC!
• Lastly, we've come to the third set of support items, Relic Shield which builds into Targon's Brace, which finally builds into Face of the Mountain. This set of items gives you Health, Bonus health regeneration and cooldown reduction. For bonus gold it has a special effect that executes low health minions when you hit them, granting gold to both you and a nearby ally (hopefully your ADC) When activated, it puts a shield on an ally of your choice and explodes to damage nearby enemies if the shield isn't broken for 4 seconds.

These items are crucial for Supports, as they would make very little money without them, seeing as how they don't really kill minions often. Obviously different supports want different items. Generally you want the Ancient Coin set on a more passive Support. The Spellthief's Edge set works very well on aggressive harass Supports. Finally the Relic Shield set goes well on tanky supports.

Now for the second SUPER important item you almost always need as a Support: a Sightstone. Sightstones are great items because they give you a little bonus health and give you 4-5 free wards you can place. (Keep in mind you can only have three active on the map at any given time.) These wards also refresh each time you visit the shop! So you basically have an unlimited supply of wards all game. This makes vision control super easy. You can see everything!

Now, onto the fun part now that the totally boring crap really important item conversation is over and done with. Babysitting time!

Playing Support

Now, as a support, as mentioned earlier, you're going to want to babysit your ADC. This basically entails watching them and your lane opponents closely while your ADC obliviously farms. Should your ADC make a mistake, you need to do your best to help them out, unless of course they had a royal screw-up and you helping will only get you both killed. This basically means you should heal, CC, slow or harass away your opponent(s). You're also going to want to set up kills for your ADC to the best of your ability, so make sure to punish the enemy players if they're out of position. Keep your ward coverage up as much as you can as well, to protect you both from junglers and roamers seeking to ruin your whole day.

Transitioning into the mid and late-game, you'll want to do your best to capitalize on potential plays you can make, for instance, throwing out Sona's ultimate (which we'll learn about shortly, class) on the enemy team when they're bunched up, stunning them all so your team can kill them quickly. Many other champions can make good plays, it just takes practise and knowing the capabilities and limits of your champion.

Now, almost any champion can TECHNICALLY Support, but most can't do it very effectively. There are a lot of champions that can really Support very well, whether it be due to amazing CC, healing, etc. Some of these champions are rather difficult though, while others are pretty easy.

Recommended Champions

#1 - Soraka

Now, prior to her rework, Soraka was basically the quintessential idiot-proof Support, just stand there and heal your allies and give them mana. That was 90% of it on Soraka. Nowadays she's a lot more fun, but slightly more challenging. Despite this though, she's still pretty easy to pick up and try out when you're new, not to mention fairly forgiving as well.

• Her passive is called Salvation. This passive makes it so that when Soraka is running towards a low health ally, she get's a movement speed boost. Heals on wheels. Whee-oo whee-oo!
• Her first ability (Q) is called Starcall. This ability is an AoE spell that deals a little bit of damage to all enemies hit by it. It also deals extra damage and slows enemies in the inner part of the circle.
• Her second ability (W) is called Astral Infusion. This ability takes a portion of Soraka's health and uses it to heal a nearby ally. Unfortunately this means that Soraka can't directly heal herself. Joyous day though! This also passively makes her Starcall heal her a little for every champion hit by it.
• Her third ability (E) is called Equinox. This ability is another AoE ability that silences anyone standing in it, and after a few seconds, anyone still standing in it is snared.
• Her ultimate ability (R) is called Wish. This ability when used heals every member of Soraka's team, regardless of how far away they are.

Soraka is the premier heal-bot support and with good reason. Her healing potential is through the roof because of Astral Infusion and Wish. She's also fairly simple and super cheap to buy! Really just a win-win for everybody.

#2 - Sona

Sona may be the easiest support to simply pick up and play. There's so much about her under the surface though that mastering her is actually quite difficult. She's a multi-faceted jack-of-all-trades support that offers harass, sustain and disengage along with effective CC. This pretty maven of the strings has a little something for everyone, and it's really hard to have an arsenal of potential supports without considering her. She fits very well into almost every kind of team and strategy you can think of. Also, she has really big boobies. I know some people will appreciate that.

• Her passive is called Power Chord, and this makes it so that every three spells Sona casts gives her next auto-attack a bonus effect based on the last spell cast by her.
• Her first ability (Q) is called Hymn of Valor, which when activated, sends out a sound wave, dealing damage to two nearby targets, prioritizing champions over minions. It also puts an aura around Sona that grants herself and her allies increased damage on their next auto-attack. The Power chord bonus for this spell increases Sona's next auto-attack's damage by 40%.
• Her second ability (W) is called Aria of Perseverance which when activated, heals Sona and a nearby ally. It also puts a protective aura around Sona that gives all nearby allies a small shield. The Power Chord bonus for this spell will make Sona's next auto-attack reduce the target's damage output.
• Her third ability (E) is called Song of Celerity. This ability when activated, grants Sona a movement speed boost. It also creates an aura around her that grants a smaller boost of movement speed to nearby allies. The Power Chord bonus for this spell makes Sona's next auto-attack slow the target hit.
• Her ultimate ability (R) is called Crescendo. This passively increases Sona's auras. It also, when activated, sends out a girthy skillshot that deals damage and stuns all targets hit by it. This is actually a ridiculous ability. She can basically screw over an entire team with this and I love it.

All in all, Sona is a pretty simple champion on the surface, but underneath the bra, she's very complicated. She's also not SUPER cheap, but not ridiculously expensive either.

#3 - Alistar

And now for something completely different. We go from two pretty booby-ladies to a giant purple man-cow. Alistar is actually a great Support in that he can provide lots of CC and a little bit of sustain, plus he can be a very beefy, tank front-line. He's pretty easy to pick up and play, and while not quite as forgiving as the previous supports, he's still pretty forgiving in general because of his raw tankiness.

• His passive is called Trample, and this makes it so that whenever Alistar uses an abiltiy, he gets a slight movement speed boost and does a little bit of pulsing AoE damage around him.
• His first ability (Q) is called Pulverize, and when activated, it knocks any nearby enemies up into the air, while doing damage to them.
• His second ability (W) is called Headbutt. This ability is a targeted ability that causes Alistar to charge at his target and deal damage to them, knocking them back a short distance. This is an amazing ability, but when used poorly can really cause some problems. Make sure to use it to save people or to move enemies to places you want them to be. Really try to avoid using this to chase somebody, because you can easily knock a potential kill away from your team. Unless of course you can master the W+Q combo, which allows Alistar to charge quickly to his enemy and knock them up.
• His third ability (E) is called Triumphant Roar. This ability, when activated, heals Alistar and all nearby allies for a small amount. This ability's cooldown is reduced slightly for every enemy that dies near Alistar.
• His ultimate ability (R) is called Unbreakable Will. This ability when activated, grants Alistar bonus damage, removes all CC effects, and reduces the damage he takes.

  

All of this leads to a charging, scary, healing, unkillable, man-cow-monster-thing. Watch out. The other night I literally went against an Alistar support who was basically the sole reason his team won. When played well Alistar is a MONSTER who ruins your hopes and dreams.

Well! That'll be all I have to say really about Support for now. I hope you all enjoyed, thanks for reading and good luck on the Rift you silly summoners!

~Bazzlie,

(With consulting from Gary Danovich (mohemian on /skill), because Bazzlie is a horrendous support player who is basically beyond help at this point humble person willing to reach out and collaborate with his colleagues. Check Gary out! His articles are great!)