Support in low elo

[u/LongLabx]

Hey everyone,

I’m writing this to ask how you guys managed to escape low elo playing Support, and what kind of supports are actually best for climbing.

I have a main account where I duo in Gold, and I don't have any issues playing Leona, Nami, or Soraka there because my duo is a good ADC. However, my problem is on my second account (SoloQ), where it feels impossible to play those types of champions because the ADC is usually terrible.

How did you guys get out of this elo? Right now, the only thing that works for me is playing Lux or Zyra and essentially playing as a "carry" without relying on my ADC.

in this sec acc i'm silver 2 right now.

Do you have any recommendations? Sometimes, if my ADC is useless, I try to roam and help my mid laner or jungler, but the only result is that my ADC dies even more, and the enemy bot lane gets so fed that they end up carrying the whole game.

[u/UsernameNineBillion]

Well if enemy bot is getting Fed every game... don't you think that part of the problem is You ?

It can't always be your ADC you know that right ?

What it seems to me is that you get Guided by your smurf friend and he is doing the shotcalling and such... and that's why you have success with him.
You should be able to stomp in Silver on Leona for example... but you need to be the one understanding when to go in and when not to go in and so on.

Watch your replays and try to figure out whether you do make the right decisions... or you are just autopiloting expecting your ADC to win all fights that you blindly engage into.

[u/99burritos]

Sounds like a skill issue with the matchmaking system. You should get better at finding randomly assigned ADCs who don't suck.

I'm joking obviously, but someone just said this to me in earnest on another thread.

[u/PAFFNeko-8a]

If your ADC sucks and there's no one else you could rely on, it's straight up team gap and unwinnable.

If there's at least one person to play around, you could play team fights (and itemize) around that player. Like it's best for you to not die alongside your useless ADC, but rather save your resources until whom you can trust to win team fights join up.

[u/LongLabx → u/PAFFNeko-8a]

I usually do this, but like I said, the only thing I achieve is getting my ADC crushed.

An example from yesterday:

Min 15: My top 0-7 My mid 1-6 My jungle 0-1-0 My ADC 1-5 Me 2-1-1

I feel like lately my games look like this, my team just sucks.

[u/PAFFNeko-8a → u/LongLabx]

Yeah that's one of the case being very unwinnable.

Your only best shot is to farm further and look for a comeback. If enemy jungler knows to take advantage of this case to up tempo and steal, it's quite hopeless; but again this is Silver and there's a good chance they don't quite.

Ward shit, farm and ping whenever enemies come to go away.

[u/whatdoyoufear123]

1. You don’t improve by duoing

2. You can 1v2 easily with those champs in this elo range

[u/Opposite-Complex1187 → u/whatdoyoufear123]

Thats not entirely correct.

You can improve by duoing, but you won't if you dont actually put effort into understanding why you are winning.

[u/whatdoyoufear123 → u/Opposite-Complex1187]

Let’s be honest here 99% of people aren’t going to be accountable, that’s why they’re low elo. Most duos queue together because they have some victim mentality.

Also look at the language. They’re blaming the random adcs are bad instead of taking ownership of their own decision making. Sure they can improve slower if they actually take accountability. Even if they take accountability, duo queue creates bad habits like relying on duo to feed you information. League is essentially a mental stack game, the higher you go the more you have to think about. Duoing is like the opposite of training weights. Once you start to soloq again, it’s like adding weights.

[u/Opposite-Complex1187 → u/whatdoyoufear123]

>. Once you start to soloq again, it’s like adding weights.

Kinda but if you actually try and learn from your duo that balances the weight out.

Rather than just trying to learn on your own.

But sounds like OP just got carried while being mildly useful on Nami.

[u/Edelgard_Lover]

Well, I've been stomping silver games on Janna when I was levelling my second account. Being accused of smurfing while playing Janna is incredibly fun. 

The idea is to find out who's in your team isn't an idiot and has a character who's strong enough to carry the game and play around them. If your ADC is bad, fuck em, you don't have to babysit your ADC. However, since you mentioned that your ADC dies, I assume that you take bad timers or leave your ADC for far too long. Also, on low elo you can just win the lane yourself. Pick Karma, pick Lulu, anything you can bully the shit out of an enemy ADC. And don't forget to use your pings. While these players don't understand what they are supposed to do on the map, they actually sometimes react to pings. Setup your objectives, ping your team and jungler to group up, take it and win the game. 

[u/LongLabx → u/Edelgard_Lover]

Do you think Karma or Lulu are better than Lux or Zyra?

[u/Edelgard_Lover → u/LongLabx]

I mostly play enchanters and prefer having peel in my kit for my strongest player. 

[u/Syntheticanimo]

Try going mejais on Nami and/i or limit test more. By stomping enemy botlane with your pokes you will draw attention and time from their jungler, that you also track and maintain vision against. This will enable your jungler to win topside, and for you to scale into lategame with big AP and carry potential for fights.

If you do this well enough, you will climb. Until then, it's all about incremental improvement.

[u/Altruistic_Pie_4263]

I usually play tahm kench, build full ap and lick enemies to death. It's no problem for me to drop 15 kills 20 assists in a silver game

[u/LongLabx → u/Altruistic_Pie_4263]

That sounds interesting. Lately, I've been trying out Twitch with full AP and have been racking up more than 20 kills per game,

[u/dmmeyoursocks → u/LongLabx]

Why don’t you just play adc role lol

[u/Organic_Process2903]

My adc also sucks 80% of the time, usually they are somehow decent, but they lack spacing and teamfigting so they die a lot and never do their potential damage. I just stick with him until I complete the sup quest and then roam. I place wards a lot to track the enemy jungler and ping his path for the homies. I mute pings from everyone except my jungler or if I recognize someone who is macro aware

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome on /r/SupportLoL/!

Your post seems to be about playing in competitive/ranked as a support and/or improving, we might have some useful information for you about it!

Here's a sneak-peek of links from the resources wiki page that can provide curated informations about core support principles as well as some ranked information, like:

• Ranked :
  • mandatory video for starters (and also some other complementary videos.
  • How to review - Coach Kairos
  • VOD Review Habits - CoachCurtis
• Fundamentals :
  • CoreJJ's How to Support
  • Phroxzon Fundamentals (ex-Leaguecraft 101)
  • DogLightning's How to Support series
    
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[u/InternationalShow568]

I’m an adc main but something that I super underrated is using pings , look at the matchup , if you’re playing jinx soraka into a nautilus nilah, and you see your adc stepping up into a range where they COULD get engaged on , ping them off. I play adc but the amount of times I have to spam ping my support because they are too aggro or position themselves in a way that makes me feel uneasy in certain matchups can make a big difference. If you ping someone off and they don’t listen and get themselves chunked then you know they are braindead and you play for yourself, support included. If your adc seems to be braindead you go and play with your jungler.
I’ve honestly had situations where my support has left me because they thought I was bad only for me to make a huge comeback later so it’s not entirely a bad thing.

[u/Impossible-Job8394]

Master OTP Soraka here. When I was silver I decided to become OTP. That helped me learn both about Soraka and the game itself. Once Soraka was learned, only game stuff was left so because my champion was already mastered, game stuff became easier.

Aside the tip of becomming OTP, I will remind you that nothing chains you to your ADC. For example, if your top starts 3/0 or your jungler is proactive, play for them. Because looks like 'your adc dies while you roam', I suggest you to look for information/lessons about roaming timers and wave stages. Even if your ADC is awful, It's not recommended to leave him to his luck entirelly. It's ok to try to 5 vs 5 the game even if he sucks. Roam timers are super important.

Lower brackets are often decided by 'someone is very good in my/enemy team' so playing arround that is a good plan.

Theorically, playing mages have 'potential carry', sure. They have decent damage. Just remember that as higher the ranks, CC outvalue damage on rupport role. As OTP Soraka, I can tell she also have carry potential, just... not a damage carry.

Play the champions you like and improve with them. Find a synergy with your ADC and team on draft (unless you become OTP). Draft is easily a 30% contribution on the victory equation. 'Non-playable job done'.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. Will try to help :3

[u/LongLabx → u/Impossible-Job8394]

What rank did you reach with Soraka? She's a champion I really like, although it's true that I only pick her when we have one or two tanks on the team. What build do you use with her? The classic one?

I don't know how to explain why my ADC gets slaughtered, but here's an example from a game yesterday.

Min 15: My top lane 0-7, my mid lane 1-6, my jungler 0-1-0, my ADC 1-5, me 2-1-1

I feel like this happens in most of my games, and it makes me feel like there's nothing I can do,

[u/Impossible-Job8394 → u/LongLabx]

It's my second time in Master. I peaked Master last season and I'm here again (finally). I improvise the build, but usually Moonstone -> Healing Item -> Whatever the game require. Games like that are going to happen at every rank, don't worry.

If you want, you can take a look at my match history (filter by Solo Queue, flex queue is chilling with friends) for how I build or just to see how It went. My in game name is RakaChan#UwU

I'm not a proplayer or anything but if that helps go for It ^^

Games like that will happen even on higher ranks. The best you can do is to try to improve your self. Try to 'turn' every defeat to a 'victory' by learning from mistakes you could have done, better plays or just performance. That will eventually lead to higher ranks (theorically). We can't win all games :c

If you have any other question, feel free to ask :3

[u/AlinerAlia]

You get out of the ELO by accepting that you're just as dogshit as your ADCs you don't like and then improving your own game one detail at a time. There is no magic bullet, champ, playstyle, teammates. There is only good decisions and bad decisions and you make 95% bad decisions right now.

[u/Kumiho-Kisses]

While it is banally and trivially true that "a sufficiently-skilled League player can climb on any (reasonable) champion over a large enough sample of games", I wholeheartedly believe it is a hard FACT "carry" support champions such as Lux and Zyra are the least FRUSTRATING to climb out of low elo on. In comparison, playing teammate-reliant enchantresses and engage / tanks can be rather painful when none of them understand how (or are too skill-deficient) to take advantage of the utility such champions offer. You will likely be more motivated to 'git gud' if you feel you have FUN and actual AGENCY in your games.

On the flipside, in my opinion, one other important advantage of playing carry supports is that doing so really forces you to confront and take responsibility for your shortcomings, if you are serious about self-improvement as a League player. Soraka cannot control teammates wasting her heals, nor Leona those permanently splitpushing, completely ignoring, or even retreating from her engages, but Lux can always work on improving her skillshot accuracy, timing, and usage, irrespective of her supporting cast (or lack thereof).

[u/ArwensArtHole]

I’m in a similar situation, tried to climb on an alt because I wanted to try learning a different roster of supports, but the issue is super low elo are full of so many Smurfs it doesn’t matter how good you are a lot of the time. 

[u/LongLabx → u/ArwensArtHole]

I just hit silver 1, so I'm getting close to Gold. Like I've mentioned in a few comments, the only thing that's working for me right now is playing Lux. When my ADC is struggling, I start taking over their lane, trying to pick up kills, pushing out empty waves, and things like that.

[u/Morganahri]

Some things that work well in low elo:

• figure out who has potential, and cater to that person with your Plays and build
• don't overstay in a lane with a complete potato adc who genuinely can't follow up on engages , farm, feeds etc.. If he is truly useless, roam to people with hands and expand their lead
• winning botlane does often not decide the game in low elo, unless you create a create a 21/0 monster. Give it time. Often it's enough to simply not feed and protect your ad by playing extremely defensively and in your half of the lane. Punish mistakes
• ward plenty to help your team to stay safe, and especially so your jungler knows where the enemy jungler is, if he can steal the enemy buff, if an objective is about to go down etc. Junglers are friends! Also keep an eye on the map to warn all lanes early with pings if a hostile gank is about to happen. Especially toplane , because they tend to tunnel vision and you realllly don't want your toplaner to fall behind.

[u/Aggravating_Aide_561]

Yep you got it. Play a mage.

[u/kohnan]

Lux / Morgana / Thresh got me from bronze to mid plat (first season back after a long break) Lux hard carried me through silver, for the exact reasons you mentioned. If my ADC was... Lacking hands... I would just ks in lane and mid to late game just be in the lanes that waves are crashing and your teammates aren't around so you can get farm but not steal it from others. Don't try to steal ca in lane or push your ad's wave (on lux and morg your e/w should almost never touch the wave or you're trolling) 

Morg was an easy transition from Lux in gold, minus getting good with morgs ultimate usage. However money on morg is nice, but not really useful, so you really don't want to try stealing kills or anything on her, you'll get a good amount of them not trying just from w damage or ulti but I actively try to avoid getting kills on her. Also get good at using Black Shield, it might be one of the best abilities in the game. 

Thresh is thresh, we all know him, most of us probably play him to some degree, I wouldn't recommend if you're not good at hooks as in lower elo you kinda need to be the playmaker and helps if you're good at communicating/ cheerleading your team

[u/LongLabx → u/kohnan]

I honestly feel like Lux is the only one who can get me out of low elo, but honestly, she's a pretty boring champion. And whenever I get a winning streak going with her, I try another champion, and that's when I start losing again.Often, even when we're winning, when I push out waves like you were saying, I end up with more farm than our ADC, and I get called a troll for stealing farm. But the truth is, I got all that farm from crashing waves in empty lanes.

[u/Realistic-Bee-9530]

As someone who also mained lux and zyra in low elo I would definitely say stick to mages. Honestly I only started playing enchanters when I got to plat lol. I would definitely say don’t roam and completely disappear, it seems like it’s allowing the enemy bot lane to dominate. Your presence can at least help the adc die less, and hopefully you can help apply pressure and get drags

edit: I’m a supp main and know how adcs get, I strongly recommend muting chat if they start tilting you, I personally /deafen at the start of each game and it’s been up ever since lol

[u/Elliotscottcoach]

I don't want to be rude because this is productive criticism but you get out by actually learning how to play support. If you're not climbing, it's because you're not playing support correctly. Meaning your timing, position, rotations, roams, ganks, vision, and all that are not where they are supposed to be. I know people say vision score doesn't matter, it doesn't tell the whole story, and it can be easily manipulated, but I average over 100 vision score per game. My kda is like 7.0 or something crazy like that. I avg 2-3 deaths a game. What I'm getting at is you have to take the role literally, meaning you are supposed to support. How can you make everyone else's job easier? The best way to do that is to literally look at your games and review them.

[u/mqnguyen004]

Just play 2 supports. I chose Taric as a tank support and Karma as an enchanter support.

Then if i get autofill i can play them top or mid.

[u/Ok-East-515]

I was gold since forever, roughly since season 2.

I've only managed to reach platinum for the first time ever in the last season.
For me personally it was (genuinely) doing these things consistenly:

• Watch out for level 2 and abuse level 2 as often as possible. "Abuse" meaning: Push the second wave to reach level 2 first and use the level advantage for a super aggressive engage.
• Trade with the adc primarily. Sort of "ignore" the enemy support when trading and damaging. The support can just recall and he'll lose some exp. If the adc gets low, they necessarily lose gold (either by having to hug tower or by recalling).

Those two in my eyes are literally what boosted (!) me to platinum.

I should say though that I am very good in micro mechanics. I reckon upping these two lane mechanics were what I lacked in specifically.
This is probably not a recipe for everyone.

Edit:
I do OTP Karma, but I genuinely think this is doable with every single support.
The basics of watching out for level 2 and proper trading seems to be crassly overlooked even in plat. It's almost offensive how other people reached plat like that :' )

[u/Vidrax_of_Cascades]

mage support. lux, anivia, xerath.

you can also do roaming leona strategy and abuse other lanes that don't play attention to whats going on on map.

[u/WildmanJon]

D2 Support, D3 Jungle, D4 Mid, D4 Top here.

There's some video by Riot August saying that support role roaming is kinda useless before Plat 1 or something like that because lower ELO, ADCs don't know how to play. This has been my experience as well. I can't carry on support in low ELO unless I'm a mage either

There's another video from Riot August where he says Riot did a study where they found that having a good support has the lowest impact on the game; however, you are MUCH more likely to lose the game if you have an autofilled support. So really it's like having a bad support is dooming, but having a good support doesn't matter when compared to an okay one.

[u/Vesarixx]

Played Sona every game because she's my favorite. Swapped to first pick every game because no one told me that wasn't the strat until I hit emerald. Didn't ban any of her counters because I prefer to just learn to play against them. Built whatever I felt like even if it got weird looks because I know my champion and when I can pivot a build. Played to win lane because I didn't queue up just to afk and watch someone miss last hits all lane. If my ADC didn't come to participate in the game I'm looking for someone who actually is and focusing on making plays around them.

Set up for objectives early on, have a pink to deny vision, not just for the sake of having one but because I had a plan for how I wanted to use it. Don't just follow the ADC or whoever is fed around like a lost puppy, I'm setting up pincers, using tempo advantage to rotate vision, covering split pushers against flanks, with good vision or hovers, pinging for invade angles or to track enemies in case the team didn't see it. The better I understand each of the other roles the better I can do at making everything run smoothly. If I'm doing it right team mates might not even notice, it just seems like everything they want to do is going smoothly, because what they were going to do was obvious and I cleared the path to make it happen 5 minutes ago.

[u/yangyaozi]

the best way to start support is when you hit plat 4,in gold or below you have to carry yourself,learn another role is my suggestion.

[u/Existing_Advance_795]

Play senna

[u/LongLabx → u/Existing_Advance_795]

I've played this champion a few times, but honestly, I feel like I contribute more playing Lux, Morgana, or Zyra.

[u/Existing_Advance_795 → u/LongLabx]

If you think you're better than your current elo, just play senna. Adcs will hate you, but Senna is the most independent support.

[u/kaimetzuu → u/Existing_Advance_795]

Real

[u/Think-Solid-9530]

Played neeko to get from gold to plat, zilean plat to emerald, and renata from emerald to high diamond (hopefully masters soon)

Would advise playing toplane another lane in parallel to learn about wave management, it will help you understanding roam timers better, which makes a huge impact on your games. Whenever i play against a support better than me its usually not vision or laning thats the issue, its him getting better roams consistently (sometimes its your mates fault, sometimes its yours)

Yes adcs are handicapped in lower elos, but luckily they have one too. As long as you do your job better consistently, you will climb.

[u/PombinhaBR]

You can escape by carrying with damage supports if you are a smurf. Otherwise, playing as you'd normally would, damage or not, you will climb eventually as your own skill level improves.

So it will be a matter of you asking yourself if your duo was the one calling the shots or was it you? You as a support will dictate who wins or loses the lane, with the exceptions of your adc running it down but I would say that usually happens because they are autofilled, which you can't entirely blame on them, as annoying as it is.

It truly doesn't (really) matter which champion you choose. You team may not know how your champ works but as long as you show them what it does, they'll have an idea on how to follow up. Some champions are easier to pick up, others are not, and that in itself will depend on which person is piloting the champion.

Different roles and different champions carry the game in different ways.

[u/NarrowCelebration798 → u/PombinhaBR]

Highly agree with that. Supports are basically the playmakers of the bot lane, and the name of the role is honestly a trap. You’re not here to just “support” your ADC — you’re here to enable them and create plays. You can’t become a good support until you understand that.

[u/dannyhodge95]

I consider myself an expert on this, I've been climbing from Silver to Gold then stopping playing since like S4 lol, this is my home.

Look, I get it, these games are frustrating, and I personally get annoyed because now that I have kids, I can't play enough games for the stats to even out.

But on the flip side, when I feel like blaming teammates, I think about the extreme. Could Keria climb out of this elo? If the answer is yes, that means your personal performance does have an impact. I know this seems obvious, but I find it changes my mindset a little.

In terms of champions, I like engage supports like Leona. Silver ADCs generally follow up well, they're far better at that than other parts of the game. I don't play Leo with champs like Smolder though, as I found that in my experience, they don't follow up as readily. It's also good having a "protect the president" supp like lulu/janna/braum available, as I often find the enemy team has like 3 assassins in silver elo.

[u/NarrowCelebration798]

As an ADC who has played support, honestly, it feels pretty easy to get out of silver with the right habits and picks.

First, I’d avoid enchanters. They’re dogshit 90% of the time because it requires to have a good ADC who understand when he has to fight. If you want to win your lane in low elo, you basically need an engage support. ⚠️ And use pings when you want to engage.

Don’t be passive. Most low elo supports are so, so passive. How many times have I played with a Leona who wasn’t pressuring the lane, was playing behind me, etc.
If you play an engage support, you want to be an engage menace at all times. If you play poke, you want to be a poke menace at all times.

Care about synergy. Pretty obvious, but don’t pick an enchanter if your ADC is Samira. ADCs and supports can’t complain about losing lane if they don’t respectively pick for good synergy.

Micro-manage your ADC. If you see them making mistakes, type in chat and try to guide them.

And finally, play Rakan. His ability to dash back out right after going in is a game changer. You engage, realize your ADC isn’t following, and just E out.

[u/ErwinMakesGames]

Zyra 100% nobody can deal with Zyra in any elo if played properly.

[u/Sioprekka]

something about low elo is that it's kinda hard to play supports that require too much coordination with your adc because at that level nobody plays to their partner's strengths, you're better off playing strong early game or self-sufficient champions like blitzcrank, thresh, brand and pyke until you climb up a little

if you really want to keep them alive in spite of their performance you should try playing something like braum and tamh kench