Since s3 has begun, I have been playing almost exclusively support chars as they seem to have gotten a huge buff, whereas the other lanes have gotten more difficult / tighter.

Granted, you don't get kills (at least you shouldn't), but I find it equally satisfying to come out of a game with 0/0/28 than to have 20 kills under my belt.

It seems to be a position most people try to avoid. I never have trouble playing it because I can always call it, no one else wants it.

With the new support champ coming out I am pretty stoked to try him, but I am a little annoyed that it will undoubtedly be a while before I can freely call support in almost very game :)

Does anyone else prefer supporting or is it just me?

Plus, what's the most effective non-support champ you have seen play in the support role? I see a lot of Kayle supporting nowadays, sometimes it is really effective... other times.... ugggh :/

Supports have been buffed, yes, probably in order to convince people to give them a try, because, you know, it's LoL and nobody ever picks support in anything else but ranked.

Also, Kayle support seems a bit misguided. She was kinda mediocre as a support before they redid her, and now supporting with her seems rather pointless.

Zyra and Panth support are weird ones, but yea, I love playing support, too :D

Depends who I'm using. Leona support was the most fun for me. Looking forward to Sona this week.

If you want a non-standard one, try Fiddlesticks as a support. It works, trust me!

Don't play with me, you won't get to pick support.

I've played support for a while for a few reasons.

It's fun to let your team think they're doing all the work, where in fact if you weren't there they'd have no kills and be dead.

It takes a lot of skill and quality decision making to be a powerful support. It takes a lot of patience to not kill everything in sight, and just let your little ADC get his job done. A lot of players don't have either of these qualities, so that's why i like to fill in.

Everyone wants to deal the damage.

My personal favourite supports are Lulu, Taric and Nami.

I don't know about kayle support. She's too good as on hit top, and her kit allows her to semi support without having to go full support. Kind of a waste to have her stuck farming an ADC since her ult is only 2 seconds, her W doesn't heal shit and the movement speed increase isn't much and doesn't last long. Her slow is alright, but it's not a stun.

If you're gonna play Kayle support, might as well just play Lulu.

@FirePrince said:

Supports have been buffed, yes, probably in order to convince people to give them a try, because, you know, it's LoL and nobody ever picks support in anything else but ranked.

I've never played ranked. But in the past 100 games that I've not been support. I'm pretty sure I've had one every game.

I agree with you whole heartedly. I'm actually achieving full builds with my supports now when you used to barely ever get close. You just feel like a complete monster when you pull off some successful supporting to turn a teamfight on it's head. I usually play Lulu incase you were wondering.

Sejuani support is pretty great.

Supporting has always been fun in its own way.

Not sure why you are saying the other lanes are more difficult now? If anything they feel easier with the insane damage buffs on S3 items.

@Canteu:

Then again, I do play with 2 or 3 people most of the time, but even so, nobody ever wants to play support unless it's ranked, where everyone is like: GOTTA GET SUPPORTS IT'S IN THE META.

Which is ok I guess, but so many carry lanes fail because of bad supports it's insane.

I still avoid support roles as much as I can. It's not a fun part to play for me personally, so I stick to the jungle and top.

@TobbRobb said:

Supporting has always been fun in its own way.

Not sure why you are saying the other lanes are more difficult now? If anything they feel easier with the insane damage buffs on S3 items.

I dont tend to play the other positions all that much, I play top/mid/adc every now and then. The Jungling definitely seems to have gotten more difficult because of sight-stones and tougher jungle mobs.

I guess its somewhat anecdotal, but going from what my friends who I play with say, their lanes seemed to have gotten more difficult. Especially if you are slow to try out the new items. (Coming up against Ashe and Darius with the AOE items is disgusting)

@FirePrince said:

@Canteu:

Then again, I do play with 2 or 3 people most of the time, but even so, nobody ever wants to play support unless it's ranked, where everyone is like: GOTTA GET SUPPORTS IT'S IN THE META.

Which is ok I guess, but so many carry lanes fail because of bad supports it's insane.

Yes. Bad supports lose games. With the sight-stones there's no excuse now to not have proper wards down, but it still happens. If you get sight-stone first > philosophers stone > kages you can get full build real quick.

@Canteu said:

It takes a lot of skill and quality decision making to be a powerful support. It takes a lot of patience to not kill everything in sight, and just let your little ADC get his job done. A lot of players don't have either of these qualities, so that's why i like to fill in.

Everyone wants to deal the damage.

My personal favourite supports are Lulu, Taric and Nami.

Dealing damage is fun, but I find it's equally satisfying to intelligently position yourself so that you can get some cc down and orchestrate a kill. A good support can control fights.

Taric is definitely my favourite support. There have been several occasions where we will get ganked, and I managed to stun the adc but not the jungler, or the other way around, and they dive the tower and kill the carry. Often in that situation my stun comes off cooldown and I can stun one of the enemy under the tower and kill them before they get away, or stall them while our jungler/mid makes their way down. Taric is great for making people pay for exchanges. It's cool to play a champ that is very aggressive but has great utility.

Looking forward to Thresh! He seems crazy. That lantern is going to change the dynamic of team fights completely.

I actually hung up my LOL account shortly after S2 ended. I just played that game TOO much, and was neglecting everything else. :)

When I DID play, I went with support a lot. Through S2 I did very well with Blitz and Taric, though midway through S2 Blitz became a permaban, so that was that. I also liked to try unusual supports from time-to-time, like Swain. If you got someone with the root, they were in real trouble. Though he was a little mana hungry for that role, especially with his passive that's built around killing stuff constantly. It was still fun, especially once you hit 6 and someone wandered into your bush. :)

I haven't been following at all, what did they change with supports?

@Irishdoom: Mostly new items and increasing the passive gold rate. Supports can afford way more stuff now.

@TobbRobb: Thanks. Now I have to ignore this thread, I don't want to be sucked back in. I should really look into selling my account or something, I spent at least a couple hundred bucks on LOL. :)

@Confirm4Crit: Zyra as support is solid up and down. Panth support is typically if you want to run a kill lane on bot rather than ADC/support. Darius also does the kill lane support role.

@FirePrince: Agreed. Kayle is no longer a support, but instead a highly viable AD pubstomper. Unfortunately, her ult doesn't last nearly long enough to be very worthwhile to me. Still love playing her every once in a while.

@Splodge: Everything you just stated is under the assumption that your ranged ADC isn't an absolute waste of oxygen-breathing flesh sitting at a keyboard incapable of understanding the simple notion of "last-hitting" or "not chasing". Well, either that or they want to continue believing that URGOT is a goddamn ranged ADC. Those are the pissants that make me want to shit through the computer monitor into their throats and let them choke on the methane fumes.

With all that said, I love playing support, but I typically roll in the more traditional route with Sona and Taric for most of my support needs. However, I do play quite a bit of support Nautilus and Maokai as well. I don't understand why people don't want to play support, as supports have the most fun of them all. They get to do the things that fuck the other team over, make that team rage, and you get to laugh at them afterwards for raging about it. Landing that Sona ult, getting that rocket grab, popping the ranged ADC with a Taric stun, headbutting and pulverizing someone with Ali, landing that anchor on Ez when he tries to get away, then rooting him in place... SUPPORTS ARE THE REASON THAT KILLS EVER HAPPEN!

@Irishdoom: Only a couple hundred bucks? Man... Statements like yours make me realize just how much money I've wasted on that game. O____O

I just want Heart of Gold back...

I think the reason that you feel that support is more fun is that there are so many more items for supports now. Kage's alone has like 3 or 4 items it can upgrade into. Also the more unusual supports are becoming more and more played now. Zyra support was ok last season but as Jakob said Zyra support is amazing now. There's so much more potential with playing more pokey types of supports rather than the usual cc/heals/tanky supports.

I played against a support veigar and his Stun kept our vayne from farming and given cait easy kills.

I thought this thread was gonna be about sex

Taric is the best support for me.

I remember the first time I legitimately played Support in normal games, and I started out with the (graphically) re-made Soraka. In the first game with her we were down big (at least 10 kills down) but somehow, some way we won the game in the end. The next game has the same outcome: slow start, fantastic finish. I thought from that point on I wanted to stick to the support role.

I got to playing Support much more often because I had so much success. I used to have over 20 losses than wins in normal; now I have 16 more wins than losses since I shifted to support (all games in LVL 30 btw) for most games. I also think that support is one of the most consistent positions I can play. As a top, mid, adc, or jungler I am frustratingly inconsistent; one game I would be 15-3-4 then the next game 3-4-1. But since moving to support a typical stat-line for me would be 0-1 kills, and an assist-death ratio of at least 3:1. Probably for peace of mind and not getting into so many peaks and valleys, I stuck to the role.

I also like the idea that I help set up my teammates to be great; I'll get to my favorite support in a sec but when I play support I now feel like a LOL version of Steve Nash, putting my teammates in the best place possible to succeed, not get ambushed (where warding comes in), be fed, and hopefully in a position to carry the team to the victory. I am lying if I don't say that hearing adulation from teammates ("best support NA", "please duo-que with me in ranked", "[the support] carried us") is also a joy.

I use to play Soraka a lot but now I play Nami, currently my favorite support. She doesn't provide any auras, buffs or shields but I love using her Aqua Prison (Q) and ultimate Tidal Wave (R). Provided that you can anticipate your opponents' next moves you can absolutely secure kills or disrupt teams with Q, and a well-placed Q can completely turn the tide of a fight to your teams' favor. Tidal Wave is even better; you can use it to save a pursued ally from afar (I did this several times XO) or even catch (even kill, which I did) fleeing opponents. It is in a way a bigger, better version of Q. Nami's E, Tidecaller's Blessing, really buffs either your AD carry or anyone on your team that relies on the auto-attack, which really helps in teamfights or skirmishes. I'm not down on Soraka; it's just that I thought I could do more for my team with Nami. When I play her I really feel like I can play-make after level 3 and give my teammates great chances to carry the team, hence the Steve Nash comparisons. I hope to get better with Lulu and the revamped Karma in the future.

As to untraditional supports, I think Leona has to be on the top of the list. She can give herself insane armor and magic resist when under fire, giving the ADC in lane plenty of time to do damage to the bot lane. Her passive also provides burst damage, meaning that she is defensive and offensive nightmare to play against. Finally she has 3 crowd-control abilities that can disrupt or lock down any ADC or support. Then I would have Nautilus for the same reasons (high crowd control, high durability). He does have mobility but the burst damage still goes to Leona.

I am sorry that I am rambling a bit too much, but I totally feel you. Support is a fun, fun class to play!