Hi All,

A quick question re warding and support heroes.

I find that when I am playing support, this voice in my head ( err did I say that) tells me that I can't spend gold on warding. I fear that I won't be able to get items like boots/sheild etc since I am not farming and therefore will be too squishy come mid to late game.

Can someone give me some rationale to help me over my neurosis?

Im sure others will say it better but one of your main roles as a support is to keep them wards up!!

Hi Duck!

You're right, supports have arguably the toughest role in the game - they are expected to buy things like wards, counter wards, invis sight, mek/pipe/etc, build their strength so they're not squishy... and all whilst the carry turns around and says "DON'T TAKE MY LAST HITS NOOB!"

It's a delicate balance, in truth, and each game is different as to what you should buy. I know that's not a helpful answer, so let me break it down into a few examples.

If there is more than one support on the team:
Usually if I'm on the lane that gets first blood, with the assist gold the first thing I'll do is upgrade the courier, the mid lane ganker *needs* flying courier by around the 3-4 minute mark ideally. If you're going 25 mins without a flying courier and there's more than one support, you've got issues.
If you can communicate with the other support, and they're doing better with farm than you are, you can ask them to get mek whilst you continue to get wards, or vice versa.

If you're a solo support:
Unfortunately, the pressure's on. Courier upgrades, wards and mek are your priority. If the team needs dust and such, you may need to remind the carries that you're a solo support and they can get it themselves. Or, if you happen to be doing well, feel free to help them out. But sight is *crucial* on the map for where your team are pushing/farming.

There are ways that supports can get farm though:
Pulling the lane - If you can stack jungle camps and pull the creeps into the jungle camp, you'll get the gold from that camp, as well as the exp. You'll also give your carry solo exp on the lane too. There are plenty of video guides on this online.

Assist gold - If your carry can handle the lane by themselves, go roam and gank, or gank your lane again. Your job is to babysit your carry so he can become big and strong. If you're winning the lane, then perhaps another lane could do with a gank? Keep a tp scroll on you so you can tp in to support other lanes if they are being ganked. You can be the one thing that turns the tide around - and also nets you a handy amount of profit.

Jungle - I make a point of two things if I'm running between lanes. If I'm running past a camp near the stacking mark, I'll stack it for the carries. If I'm running past the easy camp and I have a few seconds, I'll farm it. It's not a great amount of gold, but every little helps!

The main thing a support needs to worry about in teamfights is positioning. You *are* squishier than the rest of the team most of the time, which just means you need to watch where you stand. The team may focus you if they don't like your disables, but if you die and manage to disable the carry whilst your team kills the other four, then it's a win in my book. If you feel you're too squishy, get a bracer - you can always upgrade it to drums to help your team and give you some survivability.

If you need any more assistance with support, it's the main role I play, so feel free to add me on steam.

Hope that helps!

TL;DR- Buy wards. Vision wins games!

All the boots/shield/mekanisms in the world won't save you from that 5-man gank if you never see it coming...

Bandit's comments were great about where you should be getting income as a support. Keep in mind that it is OK to ask a farmer to grab a set of wards, though. It is in a carry's best interest for a support to have at least boots/TP (to respond to ganks, etc), so if you are so under-farmed 10 minutes in that you don't have those speak up. If you look at well coordinated games the mek is generally bought on the 3 position and not on either of the supports because the earlier you get the mek the more useful it is, and supports do not farm. It is pretty common to see brown boots and obs/sentries on the 5 support in pro games, especially if the assist gold has not been coming in.

Keep in mind that the benefits from such a selfless approach only pay off if the people that you are concentrating the farm on are (a) actually farming and (b) can utilize that farm well. In pub games that is not always going to be the case, but you can still work mid/late game on your positioning as Bandit mentioned. You will not have farm and will probably be under leveled relative to the 1-3 on both teams, so don't feel like you need to run into the battle and start right-clicking things. You don't do much damage that way and since you are squishy the middle of the battle is where you do not want to be. Try watching pro games and see how support players abuse the fog of war and stay on the outskirts of fights, popping in to use a spell and then fading back.

To go along with what Uno said, the easiest way to gauge what hes saying about using farm and getting farm you just have to speak up, supports can and will farm but it mostly comes by teaming up in the jungle, leeching experience from stacked ancients, pulls early game are another big source of income the best thing to do is just be vocal with your team and figure out where you can cut corners and get by!

To add to Bandit's excellent advice:

Vision
Vision is generally the supports' responsibility (that is, keeping tabs on it and actually placing the wards), but that does not mean they have buy the wards themselves.
If the support is getting Mek, or the #1-3 have gotten up their core items there is no reason why they can't buy 1 set of wards. Look at this way, If your AM has a really early Battlefury (due to good supporting!) and is swimming in gold, 150 gold more or less doesn't make that much of a difference to him, but it will to a Rubick that's desperately trying to get Arcane Boots.

Support Items.
It's very important that the supports carry the sentry wards/Dust for invisbility detection. Again, the #1-3 can buy these items, but often the carry (and maybe the #2) can't actually carry them since that hero often fully slotted and maybe needs space for Aegis.

Getting that sweet, delicious honey-colered metal known as gold.
Often as a support you should try do things that benefit both you and the team.
An early Roshan is an excellent way of getting a lot gold and experience as a support. If you are Enigma/Windrunner/Lina/Vengeful/Veno it's very easy to do an early Roshan (10-15 minutes) with the help of 1-2 other heroes. This will not only benefit an underleveled support greatly, but also give your #1 or #2 extra security and team fighting capability.
Jungle early, jungle consistently. If you are not doing anything, i.e. just "hanging around" you might as well take the small camp. Try to take large camps if you have multiple people there anyway. Make sure you leech experience later on from the carry when that hero takes the stacked Ancient Camps; think of it as "support tax" .

Positioning
Remember that the later the game goes on, the more it revolves around the most farmed heroes (typically the carry and the #2/#3). This means that you should take your cues from these players and adapt to what they are doing. It's usually not a good idea to chase after 2 low-HP heroes, if it leaves your carry without disables against the remaining 3. This does not mean you should hang back and play passive though. What it means is that it doesn't matter that you get a sweet 5-man blackhole, if your Carry and mid player isn't there to deal the damage. It is usually much, much better to consistently deal damage/disable than it is to land a big ultimate once in a blue moon.
Try to trade intelligently. Usually the more underfarmed/underleveled you are, the better it is to get a kill and then die than it is to simply walk away. Remember that Kill/assist gold is reliable gold, so you don't lose it even if you die.
Always deal damage when you can. Often I see people that spend all the time team fights positioning themselves and using their spells that they forget to simply right click the enemy heroes. Right-click damage from supports is a major part of the damage dealt early/mid game and it makes a huge difference in teamfights even though it might not seem to be the case.

Great advice guys! All well thought out and articulated.

Just to add my quick two cents:

Like everyone has stated above vision does indeed win games, but it also will help you with your money issues. Put simply when I'm supporting a carry on bottom radiant, I need to be able to see those ganks coming in because more often than not I'm going to be the first thing they target when they get down there. Supports are generally not very thick heroes so they make juicy targets for gankers and dying cost a lot more than a set of wards. Learning to stack and pull is pretty important IMO towards solving your early money issues.

I have played many support games (most of my games are that way) and if there are a couple things to learn, they are wards and skills. Know those two things and your team will love you. On top of those, it is important to know what items help the most. Like, for example, a BKB would work well against a bunch of stunners and a pipe is great to stop those bad ulti's from wiping your team out. Like it has been said above, support can be really challenging. Just remember to pop your spells and help your team out. A well timed mek blast can change the tides of a teamfight. That's my two cents worth.

Some certain heroes are much easier to farm while playing support. Kotl for example has no trouble shooting one Illuminate at creeps and instantly have enough money to buy wards. Just make sure you know where your carry is. He probably would not appreciate you stealing his precious last hits. Other supports excel in the jungle as well, Such as Enigma. Many times I have played a hard support Enigma and was still able to farm up my blink and bkb while keeping the wards out of stock in the shop. If you find yourself picking and you know you will be the only support, those are two great options to ensure you have the gold for wards all game.