Introduction
Remember this is
theorycrafting, it does not take random factors into account. While reading
this you’ll have to imagine that everyone is playing their lanes/picks
perfectly.
However you’re welcome
to ask questions if there’s anything you want clarified or don’t understand.
I’m also open in discussing my points and my view on the things. What is
written here is not necessarily the truth but it’s a reflection of my mind and
thoughts. When that’s said I hope you’ll enjoy the read. Some of this might be
a bit too complicated to completely newcomers and as I said before – You’re
free to ask!
Apologies for the wall
of text, it’s a long read and you don’t have to read it all at once!
Tri-lane vs a Solo
Situation (possibly semi-tri-lane with one of your heroes in forest)
When you’re playing
support on a tri-lane against a solo opponent your ultimate goal is so make the
enemy get as little exp as possible. To do this you’ll have to keep him away
from the creeps so he can’t get exp. There are a few things you’ll have to keep
in mind when keeping an enemy away.
1.
Don’t aggro their
creeps, make sure to stay more than 400 range away from their creeps so they
don’t hunt you. There are various reasons for this, but the most important one
is if you aggro the creeps you’ll mess up the lane due to your own creeps
taking fewer hits. This will bring your creeps to the enemy tower and the enemy
will then get exp.
400 range:
2.
Think about their
abilities and your abilities. Look at their regen items and figure out if you
actually want to trade hits with them or just try to scare them away. You must
remember if your regen (hp, mana) is not started it’s simply “wasted” regen. If
you start your mana-regen you’ll potentially have more mana than the other
person and therefore more damage.
You can basically
calculate hero power with:
“hp-regen
items*skill-damage”
I’ll try to make this
more obvious with some calculations:
A level 1 Crystal Maiden
would probably get Crystal Nova a tango and a salve so that would be
2*100
=200
100 is the damage of
crystal nova and 2 is the amount of “hp-regen items”.
A common solo sideliner
is Windrunner. Windrunner could for an example bring 3 tango-"packs" (3x3) and then she’s
going to skill powershot or windrun.
I’ll calculate with
powershot due to windrun being a bit hard to calculate. Which would be
3*120
=360
120 is the damage of
powershot and 3 is the number of regen items she’s got.
As you can obviously see
WR is much more powerful than crystal maiden at level 1. When crystal maiden
hits level 2 she’s however got 2 damage abilities and her powers should be
greater than WR’s.
Crystal Maidens power at
level 2:
(2*140)
+ (2*100)
=
480
(140 is frostbite damage and 100 is crystal nova damage)
Therefore
you see Crystal Maidens power doubling at level 2. It’s therefore quite
important for Crystal Maiden to get to at least level 2 while harassing the
Windrunner out of the lane. This leaves Crystal Maiden with a quite difficult
task. She must stay close to the creeps dying while not being too close as
she’ll aggro the creeps then.
There are obviously
things such as mana-cost, attack animation and base damage you’ll also have to
take into account, but making a calculation bringing all of these factors into
account is quite hard.
Remember to be aware of
new waves spawning and coming your way, you can often see how far the enemy
wave is by looking at your own wave. You don’t want to take unnecessary damage
at all!
Playing Support in a
Tri-lane vs Tri-lane Situation
Explaining how to do to
play support against another tri-lane is far more complicated, but there’s some
very simple things that come into mind.
1.
DENY EVERYTHING, simply
deny as fast as possible making your lane stay where it is. The more denies the
better. If your trilane hits level 2/3/4/5 etc. before the enemy team you’ll
have much greater power. Especially if you have a hero such as Crystal Maiden
that simply doubles in power from level 1-2.
2.
Make sure to look at
your lane and figure out what your plan is. Do you want to kill them? Do they
want to kill you? What can you do when they go on you and what will their
response to your going on them be?
Let’s say you have a
stun that you’re going to follow-up with a split earth from Leshrac and they
have a shadow demon. They’ll most likely disrupt their teammate just as one of
your stuns hits and thus negating it. This will make it almost impossible to
even try to kill one of the enemies. Then you’ll have to think to yourself
“What do we do then?” and change your plan. Let’s say your carry is melee,
theirs is ranged. Your carry will most likely get harassed out of the lane and
their carry will farm “easily” due to being ranged. In short: their carry gets
farm, yours does not. If you’re on your short lane this is not a big problem as
you obviously saw their tri-lane coming and therefore took sentry wards with
you so you could remove their anti-pull ward. Then you’ll just go spam pull and
therefore get more xp than the enemy. Either that or you have a killer-lane
that can kill the enemy easily. (As said before, some heroes can stop killer
lanes very easily such as shadow demon.)
If you’re tri-laning on
the long-lane you’ll have to make sure you can kill the opponent or have a
ranged carry that can farm against their melee-carry. It’s also a possibility
to simply make a lane on their off-lane that doesn’t have a carry which sole
purpose is just to kill. You can then place your carry on the middle/short-lane
and he/she will farm more than their carry.
3.
In an offensive tri-lane
you’ll have to be very aware of the eventual enemy jungler. If you’re against a
hero such as Chen/Enchantress you’ll have to remember it takes 30 seconds for
him to get a creep and then some time to get to the lane, in those first 30
seconds of the game the enemy is extremely vulnerable due to it actually being
a 2v3 situation. There’s also cases with heroes such as Enigma, Enigma will
most of the time be starting with the small jungle camp thus making him stay
quite far away from your lane also, enigma is not a big threat before he’s
level 3.
In short: make sure to
check the level of the enemy forest hero frequently, know forest heroes
patterns and think about creep spawns.
Supporting in a dual mid
situation
When playing the dual
mid your goals are very much like playing on a trilane against a solo. Most of
the time your goal will be to deny their mid hero exp. Often there’s very exp
dependant heroes mid and this can therefore be a very good idea to do. As
heroes such as Chaos Knight have been added to the game I begin seeing more
defensive dual mid lanes with for an example Lich and Morphling or Shadow Demon
+ carry. This composition is made to negate the power of the extremely strong
Chaos Knight dual-lanes. Your sole purpose in a defensive mid lane is by
denying the lane as much as possible and helping out your carry if he comes in
problems, this is often done with stuns or by simply disrupting your carry
whenever they choose to go for him.
Early Roaming Support
In some games you’ll see
the supporters roaming around together. This can be done by dual jungling or by
simply just running around the map with two supports. Whenever you do the last
thing you’ll want to make sure there’s a place they can go for exp. if you roam
around with two heroes and they do not succeed in their ganks (which they might
not always do) they’ll fall far behind in exp. when you’re roaming you’ll have
to be very aware of their wards, think about how they might predict your lanes
and the logic spots for their wards. If possible try to scout out their wards
at the start of the game. If you know where their wards are you can avoid them
and you can even smoke through them and then the enemy will feel secure. If you’re
dual jungling you’ll in a “magic” way apply pressure to all of the three lanes
due to the enemy not knowing where you are. This means that either your enemy
will be very easily ganked or they’ll be in a defensive position and most
likely lose their lanes.
General supporting in
the laning phase
1.
Think about where you
place your wards, try to anticipate how they’re laning and place your wards
according to this. For an example:
If you’re tri-laning
bottom and you’re thinking you’re going to be against a solo laner down there,
there’s probably not going to be a lot of action around your short-lane. You’ll
much rather have your wards around the long-lane/mid instead as this will
protect your mid-lane much better.
If you’re playing a
offensive tri-lane against a semi-tri with a jungler you’ll want to be able to
see incoming ganks from the jungler and you do therefore want to place some of
the wards into their jungle. There’s one last situation which is when you’re
dual mid. You’ll almost always want uphill vision with a ward.
2.
Be very much aware of
the enemies regen, spells etc. as support you’re very reliant on your ability
to calculate how big the enemy damage output is and how far you can move forth.
Always think about what the enemy can do to you, what your answer will be to
them doing it to you. Think about what you can do against them and what their
reaction will be to your actions.
3.
Make the things happen.
When you’re playing the support role you’re the one that makes the ganks
happen, you do sort of decide the game plan. You’ll be the one ganking and the
one starting pushes, be sure to inform your team of your plans and make a
“route” of what you want to do before going into the game.
4.
Supports must beware
they don’t get too under-levelled, being a few levels behind is “alright” but
you’ll never want to fall too far behind. Make sure you always have a place to
go get exp and you can possibly farm the forest, go to a lane with no heroes
on it or stay with your carry when he farms.
5.
Stay at the same level
or above the enemy you’re laning against. This can be especially hard in the
middle lane, or when laning against heroes such as brood, queen of pain, or in
general heroes who gets a big advantage with a few levels. If the enemy hero
gets higher level than you they might gain more power than you and then they
might then be able to kill you and snowball. The biggest mistake you can do is
getting killed in the laning phase.
Currently Common Support
Heroes
Shadow Demon
Pros:
Extremely good at
negating stuns
Amplifies a lot of
damage (If you have heroes with great nukes this can result in a great burst)
Vision (Shadow Poison)
The ability to purge
(His ulti)
Spamable damage spell
Anti-push (Shadow Poison)
Cons:
Disruption might at
times backfire and save the enemy because they get time to react.
You can blink out of
disruption
Ultimate damage is
delayed and it’s therefore easy to escape if you have a blink dagger.
Missing spell damage at
the early stages of the game.
Takes much time to clear
waves (need to stack shadow poison)
Can’t push very well
No stuns
Crystal Maiden
Pros:
Good against blinkers
due to having very much control
Lots of spell damage
early
A big AOE ultimate
Can easily clear waves
with nova
Can be skilled in a lot
of ways depending on composition (mana aura, nova, bite etc.)
Nova can give vision
over small areas
Antipush with nova
Cons:
Can’t push very well
No “defensive” abilities
(unlike Shadow Demon with disruption or Lich with Sacrifice)
Ultimate is channelled
No stuns (frostbite is a
root, you can use abilities in it)
Venomancer
Pros:
Good at pushing with
wards
Extremely high harass
damage at early game with poison sting.
Lots of slow
Instant AOE ultimate
Vision (Plague Wards)
Can anti-push
Cons:
No burst
No “defensive abilities
(unlike Shadow Demon with disruption or Lich with Sacrifice)
No stuns
Lich
Pros:
Denies the enemy exp.
Can push back lanes
Good singletarget nuke
Good against teams with
no push
Very strong teamfight
ulti
Cons:
Extremly bad at
antipushing
No stuns
Ultimate is a bit
luckbased
I’m not going to add
more heroes, but there’s obviously a lot more support heroes. But the above
things are things you should/could take into account when choosing your
supports.
Hope you enjoyed the
read.
-Ivz
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