League of Legends (LoL) Question: What is the role of a support in Season 3?

Supports are the major source of map awareness and that's where 90+% of their income goes to. The champions chosen for the support role have to be item-independent (i.e. not dependent on stats to be useful) which results in champions like Janna, Thresh and Lulu being very useful supports as they can be useful even without items.

Their other major task is to be able to help out carries in doing their jobs by providing CC and or utility that helps them do so (hint: Dark Passage). Nami and Thresh are popular supports who provide massive amounts of disruption to keep their carries safe.

Supports are ward bots that use their cc to somehow help their team out. Nobody really cares if the support dies, and the supports are much less significant than the other roles. The only real reason they exist is because Ad carries need to somehow scale up to mid/late game and survive their early game with as much farm as possible and little to no deaths as they're an important damage source late game and usually, the only continuous damage source.

"Supports" in this game should be redefined as a selfless role that consists of sacrificing ones own presence in the game (Well, not entirely true. They still have their crowd control to enforce their presence) to be able to take on the responsibility of warding and lessen the expense caused by warding to the other team members. They are also obliged to protect the carry at all costs and have to give their life without a second thought to achieve that goal.

Supports are quite a pathetic role currently and hopefully the season 4 changes would actually let them "be" supports instead of just ward/cc bots. Supports such as Janna, Zyra etc should be able to build ap to enforce their supportive abilities. Supports like leona, alistar and so on should be able to actually build some hp and defense instead of just the occasional Locket and a sightstone.

From the limited amount of games I've played (All mmorpg's and some rpgs, league is the only MOBA so I have no idea about other MOBA's) I've noticed that the "Supports" are either the main healing class, main crowd control class or a supportive class with a mix between crowd control, buffs and heals. Guess who protects who in pvp? Everyone protects the cleric/priest/shaman/w/e cause they can remove debuffs and heal people in a pinch. People protect the buffer class because they're severely crippled without their buffs. The crowd control class usually can protect them selves WHILE protecting the main support class. In a situation when someone gets to the supportive classes they have a ton of crowd control and respectable damage to defend themeselves, and once the players attacking the supportive classes are dealt with, they can continue to support their squad.

If someone jumps on you, and you're playing janna what would you do? Burn flash and ult to escape or just die because you might need the ult to save your carry in the next major teamfight, which could win you the game?

Of course you wouldn't waste everything you have on yourself and leave your carry unprotected in the next fight.

Instead of being the backbone of the team, the supports are more like expendable pawns once their cc is on cd.

Sorry for the rant, but as a person who enjoys supportive classes I'm not satisfied with how the supports in this game work.

What exactly is the role of a support in Season 3?

Pretty much agreeing to responses above. It's a ward machine and babysitting adc. I think It's best for support to make the calls as you have more time to keep eye
on the positioning and have little more time to look at enemies and cooldowns. (Assuming you have that kind of support that has good CC)
Has always been quite underestimated role I guess, but even more S2.


How important is it for supports to have a "full build" of support items like Locket etc?

This varies a lot. The higher you get the less items you are going to get, because of the vision wards. I call it ******** to be calling supports only having sightstone + boots. Most of the games I will get 1-3 kills early on and even +~8 with high damage supports, so obviously I will have item or two more.

I'm sick of the vision wars, which I have bumped into a lot lately --> Even then I will usually have shurelyas completed ~20-30 minutes, sometimes locket. Just ward with reason and supports can take at least the 1 item in the game.

Importance of items varies. The so called "silver aram wars", which means everyone goes mid 24/7 and waits for one guy to make mistake and push for tower (this appears in silver obviously). In there that 1 locket active or shurelyas/mikaels can make huge difference. I'd say items for support come less useful the higher you climb.

Other lanes rely on items more than support. Supports rely on their kit mostly and they are picked for their kit.


With the ward changes/trinket introduction in Season 4, how do you think this role will change?

I still see a lot vision wars between support. This reliefs it a little and makes the role more strategic. Supports can obvously focus on other major items with the changes, but I was hoping for something else. I don't see much of a change after all as it's still going to be a pink war fight AND trinket war.

Supporting Is Full time Baby Sitter.

Scouting the environment to keep Baby's safe from the impending danger of ganks, with the placement of Baby monitors.

Baby Sitters also set up a trust fund for their Baby's by giving them every last CS and killing blow. While the Baby Sitter takes up a GP 10 shop aid program aka "Welfare"

As full time Baby Sitter, Supports also have the job of cleaning and picking up after their Baby's late game that consists of cleaning up after everyone's mess forcing them to spend their money on an magical pink cleaning bottle while they clean up their jungle, of any enemy baby monitors. or to look for their baby's dirty toys/playthings, "I know that teemo doll is around here somewhere"

They also have the role of a mandated reporter. They are in charge of reporting any wrong doings of the other team. Enemy's missing/where about's having to call out suspicious behavior, Baby Monitor placements etc.

Baby Sitters are also first to blame for any wrong doings because any baby placed in their care, is just that a baby incapable of taking care of themselves. No self respecting baby sitter would ever let a baby do something dangerous.

When their baby's are all grown up, they then take on the role of mental parent waiting for a hive five, or a thanks Mom, or Dad, from their ungrateful children, most of the time taking no joy in the end game celebration.

The Job of Baby Sitter is a sad one instead of going to the movie with their friends they get stuck hanging out with little Baby's who do nothing but cry and whine.

ATM they are just cc/ward machines.

Season 4 changes will allow supports to do more besides just warding and using standard crowd control stuff (like annie ult, zyra ult etc) - their utility will probably have a bigger influence on the game. They'll also be able to buy more items due to support gold changes.

Depends on how you play the game, ive always disliked how supports often end up being less and less important as the game goes on.. I typically blitz (ad tanky) maokai, or teemo (beefy for teemo) support, and feed the hell out of my adc and still end up full geared and warding the map.. Ill have about 10 cs at 20 minute mark but feed myself on assists and kills. Teemo defense runes and mastery is a beast just keeeping them off adc so he can free farm and bait easy kills.

Support all what makes the team survive, support are what makes them win the game, support are the one who give them visions by using ward, and support are the tool of CC and buffs

In Season 3, I see support as a 'sad role' since you will mostly became selfless and give so many to others that people barely appreciate, in other words, sacrifice yourself.

I did not see any reason to dislike supports, they need more appreciations, and the system of this game just didn't give full access to that, so support are mostly like warding machine that are expendable.

I hope when entering Season 4, Riot will redefined support as class who help the team and not as expendable pawn, its just sad to see supports who sacrifice themself, they barely farm, being scolded when have kills even if its not KS, and no one actually protect them in teamfight.

Support should be class that give buff and heals, debuff enemy to help your allies and to protect them, not as some unimportant, unsignificant roles, which no one give a care in the team, while in the same time, did become important role that everyone expected, this is just wrong.

Sorry if its sound like personal rant, but I only said what needed, they need real appreciations. I often play support, and being support are just sad.... (nowaday I rarely play support, because of the reason I stated above, and because if you can't carry the game if your team suck and feed)

I am only a level 18 summoner who is new to MOBA games. I am however the person who loves to read up on the Meta game on sites like mobafire.com and to watch ranked matches to try and improve my game. I have been playing a lot of support as it is the role most people, especially in solo queues seem to stay away from. I am not sure that non-ranked play constitutes "Season 3" however I am a firm believer that you do not need to have a "Full Support Build" to be effective. A previous poster mentioned that support characters are not as "item dependent" as some other champions. This can be used to your advantage. For example: If I am playing LuLu (one of my new favorites) I can start with something like 2 x Sight Ward 1 x Vision Ward 3 x Health Potion 2 x Mana Potion. This is clearly a support start. I try and rush sightstone, but if I cannot I get Ruby Crystal and Faerie Charm. Then I build my Sightstone, Philosopher's Stone, Ionian Boots. Now we are likely at a point where we are ending laning phase a bit and heading more towards team fights. Hopefully things are going well and my Ruby Sightstone is next, but now I am not going to get any more support items. I am not grabbing locket here, hopefully my jungler has decided he wants one, but if not oh well. A good option for the transition from support to AP is to upgrade Philosopher's Stone to an Ohmwrecker. Then you are free to build what you want. You still several wards that refill on recall, plenty of mana regen and the ability to really contribute to fights by adding additional focused damage to the right targets at the right time. With LuLu you can even give yourself an AP buff with your W to boost damage without having to buy additional items. I hope this trend continues with the recent and upcoming changes and I think it will.

Supports will still have to focus on map awareness early game (this aspect hasn't changed), but with trinkets I expect the adc will now generally be a part of that as well.

Also, with supports utility now scaling with certain stats (eg: next season Janna's shield ad buff will scale with her ap)+ increased gold, we have the potential to see more "semi-supports", who act solely as supports early game but can change to more mage/bruiser type fighters later on. These would probably be weaker than full fledged carries, but still be a damage threat in a fight.