How to Teamfight As A Support In League Of Legends?

Support is a high-impact role in League of Legends because it revolves around enabling your teammates and disrupting the enemy. While supports have the agency to move around the map to make plays, they must do so with very little gold.

As support, your job is to gain vision and time summoner spells before a teamfight. During teamfights, tank supports tend to engage and frontline while enchanters stay with the carry to heal/shield. All supports must use their items and spells to peel for their carry.

Since supports can’t afford to take runes and items to empower themselves, they must play very carefully to make sure they don’t end up being free gold for the enemy, all while supporting their own carries.

Setting Up Before The Fight

A lot of teamfights in League of Legends take place over specific objectives or certain pre-defined moments in the game. This means that more often than not, you will be aware and ready for a teamfight to take place. To maximize the chances of winning the teamfight, you must prepare for it adequately.

Time Summoner Spells

Support has the most agency when it comes to looking at the game state, checking out lanes, and keeping notes of everything happening around the map. Each time an opponent uses a summoner spell, type the timing these spells come back up in the chat.

If you watch professional players or high elo players, you will notice that they time the summoner spells in chat. For example, “1318top” would mean that the opposing Top Laner’s Flash will be off cooldown at 13 minutes and 18 seconds. Try to use this to your advantage in teamfights such as focusing the carry if they do not have flash up.

Gain & Deny Vision

Supports are the best source of vision for their team. Your support item provides you with sufficient wards to keep an area warded. Switch your trinket to Oracle Lens and sweep out any area where you might suspect the enemy’s wards.

In case of objectives like Baron and Dragon, keep the flanks and the objectives warded to ensure you are aware of the enemy’s position around it. Sweep out any vision the enemy might have in the area to make it harder for them to check the objective without putting their lives at risk.

Teamfighting Based On Class

Support role has one of the highest variety of champions played in it. Most of the champions played as support fall into one of the three categories listed below. Teamfighting varies depending on the type of champion you are playing and the job you are supposed to perform.

Tank

Tank Supports are the most commonly seen supports in high elo. Their job is to cause disruption and control and perform their job by actively making the game harder to play for the enemy.

• Tank supports usually have the best source of engage in their kits. They can close the gap between them and their opponents or lock down the opponents for long enough that their team can follow up.
• In teamfights, Tank supports usually assume the frontline role. They try to engage a squishy target or someone that might be out of position.
• Your job is to lock down the enemy’s carry so your team can finish them off.
• The other job is peeling your carry which is performed differently based on the champion and will be discussed below.

Mage

Mages are very popular in low elo in the support role. This is because of two main reasons.

• Mages carry a lot of damage in their kits and often have more carry potential than other supports.
• The other reason is that mages provide the most comfort for players that are auto-filled to support role.
• As a mage, you act as a sub-DPS carry for your team. A good example would be Brand. Your job as Brand is to make sure you output as much damage as possible before you die. This ensures that your carries can clean up the scene and let you win the teamfight.
• Some mages also offer crowd control tools but they are mostly used to peel for themselves.

Enchanter

The final type of support, but not the least popular, is Enchanters.

• Enchanters are all about assisting their teammates and making them stronger so they can stat-check their opponents.
• As an enchanter, your job in a teamfights is to survive at any cost and keep providing your team with heals/shields or any kind of assistance.
• For this reason, enchanters tend to avoid the frontline and stay in the back with the carries.
• Enchanters generally contain peeling tools that are meant to be used for the carries but mainly focus on “buffing” allies to make them outlast the opponents.

Your Job In Teamfights

Once a teamfight begins, your job is to mainly focus on the following aspects of the game and make sure you assist your team as much as possible before you get taken out.

Engage

Tank supports are considered the best in the business when it comes to finding an engage. Although mages and enchanters have crowd control sources that can serve as engage tools, they are simply not as reliable as the options tanks have.

You must always be aware of your engage range with and without flash. For example, a Blitzcrank is scary as long as he has a target in his hook range. He’s even scarier when there’s a target outside his hook range and he can flash to close that gap. His job is to stay in the frontline so no enemy can collapse on his carry. And he will constantly look for hooks that will reliably connect so his team can pick off an enemy and start the teamfight with a numbers advantage.

While engaging, make sure you keep in mind the summoner spell cooldown of your opponents and be aware of the position of their teammates in case you get collapsed on before your team can follow up on your engage.

Tank supports assume the frontline and are willing to take damage as long as their team is not getting attacked. While tank support can dive in and lock down the enemy carry, they must always be wary of what is going on around their own carry. As soon as the enemy dives their carry, they must stop front lining and immediately peel back to their carry.

Peel

Peeling for your carry is the most important job support has, even more so if you lack engage options anyway. When peeling for your carry, you want to position yourself close to them in order to act quickly if the enemy tries to jump on them.

Certain Tank supports are made to peel for their carries. Braum and Tahm Kench are prime examples of these. These champions contain engage options in their kit but can quickly dive back to their carry and protect them from danger. You do not want to walk too far away from your carries if you are playing these champions.

Peeling tools on enchanters include disruption and healing/shielding. Soraka can silence the enemies and heal the carry to peel while Morgana can black shield the carry to prevent any CC from causing harm. Mages have little to no peeling tools and rely on any stuns or slows they might have to escape danger.

When your carry gets caught by the enemy tank or support, you should focus on peeling your carry from the enemy’s damage dealer. If your ADC gets hooked, make sure you don’t sink your resources into the enemy Thresh while the enemy Kalista freely auto attacks.

Following Up

Sometimes, you have a bruiser/tank top or jungler who is better suited to engage than you are. In such scenarios, you must always be prepared to follow up on any engage found by them and judge whether it is worth risking your own life to save theirs or should you just stay in the backline and keep your carry safe.

Use Items & Spells

Supports spend all their gold buying support items, so make sure you use them before dying. Locket of The Iron Solari is an amazing tool to peel for your team. Knights Vow can be bound to a carry to share some of their damage.

For enchanters, Redemption can be a game-changer because of its AoE heal and damage. Mages don’t have many peeling items but Zhonyas is generally good to buy time and survive burst.

Summoner Spells are very important for supports and must be used without greed. If you are using Exhaust or Ignite, make sure to get them off on relevant enemies before you die. Don’t hesitate to use your flash to catch an opponent off guard or to escape death if the enemy focuses you in the fight.

Supports also tend to take Summoner Spell Ability Haste so they can use the spells more often.

Conclusion

Supports have a massive role to play in teamfights as they are the ones enabling their own teammates and trying to disable the enemies. While supports tend to sacrifice their life for their carry, they can quicklyturn the tide of the battle using a single rotation of abilities and summoner spells before dying.