For those of you who have played with me, you'll know I tend to favour the thankless task of warding and remembering to feed the courier before bed. Why? Probably down to my masochistic tendencies, but that's beside the point.

My short-term goal is to learn, and be able to play competently, every support hero. My question, however is how do you know which support is best off a certain line up? I've tried googling this, but due to the situational nature of DotA (or possibly because I'm using my phone to look) I can't seem to find anything.

The basics I understand:
Channelling ulti on the opposite team? Grab venge
Want pushing and support? Lesh, rhasta KotL and possibly DP
Want disables and push? Shadow shaman (although he's pretty much my go-to guy for everything in games)
Team fight assistance and crowd control? Rhasta, undying, AA, earth shaker, tide

I know picking the right support matters, as I played AA in a team without a single stun and had a horrible time of it. But when is a warlock the best support? Or a crystal maiden over a windrunner?

I tend to think about how best to help the supports. If you're with an invoker, something to hold someone in place is a great tool. Or if you're going to lane against 2 melee heroes, someone who can keep them off the creeps or keep them zoned out can really help your carry. CM is a great support for heroes that need mana, warlock is pretty good at keeping the opposing heroes from farming on the cursed creeps. I'm certainly still learning, and probably know a lot less than you Bandit, but these were just some of my thoughts.

Playing support, in my opinion, is extremely difficult. Your job is to both farm, without farming, get all of your spells off numerous times in a teamfight without dying (remember how you have no farm), keep vision up (again with no farm), and make sure your carries get farm/kills/stay alive. Picking a support isn't easy, if you're looking at proper team comp, some supports go with some heroes a lot better than others.

I like to think of it like this (this is for the supports I like to play):

Aggressive:
CM: Great stun, decent burst, mana regen. Effective with little farm. CM pairs well with most heroes. In a very aggressive opposing lane, she's not great since she is pretty slow and squishy, and her stun is single target, unlike Lion or Veno who can impale/gale both targets.

Venge: Good stun (short range), good aura and minus armor- Venge is best with someone who can initiate with a stun, or someone like Drow who can get her in range for her stun. Slardar is also great because of the minus armor.

Veno: Great slow, fantastic harass- you want him in a lane with a carry that is melee since his touch can keep him safe. Veno is a super aggressive support because of gale and touch.

Lion: Good stun (decent range), hex, mana drain (great on low mana heroes like WR)- decent support for most heroes. Lion is best when he can get some farm though.

Ogre Magi: Great with a ranged hero. His stun is decent range. I pair him with a ranged carry of some kind. His spells are good for harass and he's tanky.

KotL- With any carry that has a spammable stun or slow, KotL is a beast. KotL/PL is an almost unbeatable lane because of chakra magic. KotL can also benefit from some farm since his Q allows him to get items like a Mek up very fast.

Witch Doctor- Stun + Malefice is a kill if there's some kind of follow up burst damage. Witch Doctor doesn't need much to be effective, but is a little more difficult to play due to his stun's bounce and having to land the W.

Defensive:
Earthshaker: His stun is a fantastic defensive tool. It can be used defensively for sure, but it's great for defending a carry with no built in escape mechanism. I use ES when I play with a Drow (pre-patch), a Luna, or even a Naga (her net sets up a block with fissure quite nicely).

OmniKnight- OK, he can be played offensively, but his job is to keep the carry alive. He has no slows, but burst heal/damage is always useful. A soul ring is necessary to keep this guy useful

Warlock- No escape mechanism per se, but he's great at not letting enemies farm too well because of his Q. He has no real offensive uses until he gets his ult.

Thanks for the replies both of you

I'll take what you've said on board, Fallen and try some of the support combos you've mentioned. Omni isn't one of my most confident support picks, since I hate melee supports (even ogre can compensate for it with the excitement of the multi-cast lottery) but I'm not going to get good at every support if I just pick my favourites.

Omni is pretty difficult to use really effectively. He just chills in the background of fights, trying to get him combo off. Keep in mind, that while a target is magic immune (repelled) you can't heal them.

With KotL/PL, get the PL to max his Q as fast as possible and the KotL to favor Chakra over Illuminate. PL's Q has a 7 second cool down, while also doing 250 damage and giving a 40% slow. You can spam it with level 3 Chakra I believe.

Like people have said you pick your supports to compliment your team.

Like if you want some team fight wombo combo, theres some awesome wombo combo supports like CM or veno

If you trilane then you want some good set up stuns or follow up stuns, thats basically what a trilane can come down to. so like leshrac sand king earth shaker VS etc are great

Roaming ganker supports are great if you dont want to fight head on, VS earthshaker or anyone else with a set up stun are great, these supports dont need many items at all, usually just boots and maybe a blink dagger or another key item.


IMO the easiest way to pick the supports you want is to just to take a second and look at your team. think this : hmm what do we have already that i can compliment and get more of, or what are we lacking.

Like i said before if you have good roaming ganking potential, then maybe another roamer is a great choice, but at the same time if your team doesnt have alot of stuns then look at some support heroes with some good stuns, because alot of the supports at least the most popular ones have stuns or insanely good slows!

Picking in DotA is an artform. The more varied your knowledgebase the more you'll be able to make effective decisions. I started to learn how to pick by first reading all the abilities of every hero. After that I began playing every hero through random. Its only through first hand experience that you can gain an understanding of a hero to know how to play against it.