Play like the pros: Wraith King support! YES REALLY SUPPORT.

Why play Wraith King as a support?

So I guess the burning question on everyone's mind is: why Wraith King support?

Support is how the pros play Wraith King.

Appealing to authority isn't the best reason and it might still leave you in the dark about what Wraith King offers as a support, but it's a good way to start the conversation. In the majority of games, pros play Wraith King as a support hero. This might come as a surprise to most pub players who don't pay much attention to the competitive scene, but it's true! Pros generally play Wraith King as a roaming support for a couple of reasons such as...

Wraithfire Blast is the strongest single-target stun at level 1.

2 seconds of stun, followed by 2 seconds of 20% slow and 80 damage, with a 525 cast range. WOW! That's actually really strong! It's actually very very easy to rack up a ton of early game kills with Wraithfire Blast so long as you are active on the map and roaming around helping out all 3 lanes.

Vampiric Aura benefits everyone on your team, including creeps!

Wraith King wasn't a great support during the trilane meta because there was a whole bunch of babysitting, and the last thing you want is to accidentally push the lane out way too much while you're babysitting your carry. But there is a lot more focus on roaming now and early game, so you can safely get a point in Vampiric Aura at level 4 without pissing off your safelane carry too much. In addition, Vampiric Aura received a buff in 6.79 so that it now affects ranged units too, so you can run support Wraith King in more lineups successfully. Before the 6.79 buff, the only person Vampiric Aura was guaranteed to help was yourself, but that's no longer the case.

Reincarnation is great for initiation.

Carry Wraith Kings rely on Reincarnation to stay alive longer and deal more damage. That is not your goal as support WK. Typically speaking your goal is to jump in, have the enemy blow all their spells on you (a mere support!), and then when you die they get glued to the ground by the incredibly powerful slow from Reincarnation. Reincarnation slows for 75% over 3 seconds. It's a lovely slow, and it's one of the main things good support players try to squeeze out of Wraith King.

Wraith King transitions into a carry in the late game.

Let me be clear, you should not be banking on carrying the game as a support WK; the goal of supporting should be to contribute as much as possible and as early as possible, and sometimes if you are really good at that, the game won't go late. But god forbid if the game for some reason goes late, you won't be as useless as a lot of other supports would be.

What it means to support

If you follow the competitive scene religiously, you can probably skip this section.

But if you don't--and it doesn't matter how good you think you are--you probably need to read this section. I've found out that even among people who are fairly good at DotA and grasp the mechanics, most people actually have no idea what it means to support.

Supporting doesn't mean "you buy courier and mekansm" and yet way way too many pubs think that. Most players accept by common wisdom who the specific support heroes are and aren't without ever asking themselves why these heroes are supports and what specifically makes a hero a viable support.

So let's start from the basics. Supporting means, in simplest terms, squeezing as much out of your hero without farm priority. A lot of heroes such as Medusa and Spectre require a lot of gold and XP before they are useful, hence they are carry heroes. But heroes like Crystal Maiden and Sand King don't need a whole lot of gold to be useful, hence they can put their gold into items like wards, dusts, smokes, and so on: items that benefit the entire team.

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Remember what we discussed in the What it means to support section: in the early game, quantity matters. Without farm and levels, most heroes' damage outputs will be roughly the same, so the best way to get early kills is to outnumber the other team in engagements. So make every gank count--ping ping ping!

Items

Starting Items


At the start of the game, you should always share two tangos with the mid hero. Out of all the heroes on your team, you least likely to need those tangos because you will usually just be attacking people when they are stunned by Wraithfire Blast. Basically you won't be taking much damage, you'll be walking around a lot, and even when you are revealed you probably won't be a very high priority target. So SHARE THOSE TANGOS!

Most of the starting items are pretty self-evident. Branches for stats (mainly the mana), clarities so you can regen mana between ganks, and tangos to regen health.

What will throw you off are the Smoke and Sentry purchases instead of Courier and Obs Wards (which are "alternate" starting items).

This starting item build has become standard in in-house leagues, but I strongly recommend it for pub games whenever you can get away with it. The idea is that one support buys Wards+Courier, the other buys Sentries+Smoke, and each support ends up spending 300g. So why do it in pubs? First and foremost, it forces the other support to buy the support items people value the most, in case they thought they could get away with not buying any support items! Even in the trench tier, people understand the value of a courier and get pissed when you don't have it, and sometimes dumb and/or greedy support players on your team will try to get away with not buying anything for the team. Not buying courier is a great way to force the support to contribute a little bit!

But even in the worst case scenario that you're playing with a greedy guy who really doesn't want to buy Obs Wards, you should still get a Smoke of Deceit and strongly consider sentry wards.

• Why smoke? Support WK is a roamer almost without exception, which means you need a smoke, and you need to be the hero who carries it. Buying sentries also means you spend 300 gold on support stuff.
• Why sentries? You don't always need them, but if the other support buys the obs+courier, you should strongly consider picking up sentry wards even if the enemy team doesn't have invis heroes or junglers. You see, in pub games and even in high 4k+ MMR brackets, some people can be really stupid and blatant about where they place wards. Or even if you don't see then place a ward, you can pay attention to how the enemies behave and guess pretty accurately where wards are. Ideally ranged heroes should carry the sentry wards because they can reach wards better, so you might want to give one of these sentry wards to the other support on your team.

Skill Build

There are two ways to build Wraith King support: you ever get stats at level 2, or you get a point in Vampiric Aura at level 2. Generally speaking I'm a fan of stats at level 2 and I think that's what you should do most of the time, but it's not always the way to go.

The main reasons why you might get points in stats are (1) so you always have enough mana to cast Wraithfire Blast twice during ganks, and (2) because usually you don't want to push the lanes out at level 2 and Vampiric Aura tends to do that.

Interestingly enough, if you have 273 mana (22 INT), you will regen the little extra mana needed to cast the second Wraithfire during the cooldown of the first. This requires your mana pool to be 100% full, no exceptions. If you are even 1 mana short you can't do it.

It's worth looking at the ways you can achieve at least 273 mana as WK support. Here's a chart of possible skill builds and # of gg branches:

Level 1 Level 2 (no stats) Level 2 +stats

No branches 234 247 273

1 branch 247 260 286

2 branches 260 273 299

So basically, if you plan on getting a point in Vampiric Aura at level 2, you damn well better have 2 gg branches. (For the record, even as a carry Wraith King this is important stuff, and I strongly advise carry Wraith Kings to get 2 gg branches in their starting items in lieu of Quelling Blade.)

Roaming 101

There's a chance that you know how to babysit a lane pretty well. You know how to pull, you know how to harass. But Wraith King isn't really a babysitter; he's a roamer. So in order to play support WK, you need to know how to roam effectively early game. So let's cover a couple of tips and tricks.

Pings are your friend.

If there is one thing you get out of this entire guide it should be that COMMUNICATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER FOR ROAMING! The worst thing you can do is to attempt a gank without letting your allies know that you are coming in for a kill. They need to be in on it. They need to be ready. Say in ally chat "ganking mid/bristleback/slark/whoever" and then ping the dude you're going for. If they don't speak English or whatever other language you speak, just ping--it's the universal language! And trust me, if you don't screw up the initiation, they'll probably follow up. A little faith in the people you're playing with can go a long way. No idiot in his or her right mind is going to miss out on an easy kill if you set it up right.

One more note about communication: you don't need to be annoying as **** about it on voice chat breathing into the microphone for 30 seconds talking about how you're going to gank. Just type "ganking mid," ping, type "go," and go.

Trees are your friend.

People are not going going to let you get near them. When they see you walking toward you, they are going to back off. So make sure to only pop out when the time is right. Do not under any circumstances let people know you are there until you can kill them. So many pubs underestimate the value of hiding behind trees. It doesn't even need to be a lot of trees, just a small patch works too. As long as it's in fog of war.





One of the best things about trees is that, when you use them correctly, you don't need to use Smoke of Deceit.

There's one other nice thing about trees and that they let you avoid right clicks and single-target spells in a life-or-death situation even if the opponent knows exactly where you are. I'm not talking jukes--jukes are using fog of war to deceive the opponent of your movement. I'm talking simple, stupid standing behind a freakin tree, even if you aren't fooling anyone of your position. No trickery involved. If you are behind a tree most heroes can't actually target you without ground-targeting abilities. This could be useful information as a roaming WK when you fail to gank a Sniper or get counter-ganked by a Skywrath or whatever. But it's also advice for playing pretty much any hero, and not enough people appreciate the value of doing it.

Smokes are your friend (and they are a scarce resource).

By smokes I don't mean cigarettes (those are bad), I'm talking Smoke of Deceit! In pub games, often the entire game passes without a single one being purchased (or maybe the jungle Lycan/Ursa buys one for a Rosh attempt and that's it). But good players will be using so many that the smokes are constantly out of stock.

Smokes are important at all stages of the game. In the early/mid game they set up ganks that let you win lanes. In the mid/late game, they let your team set up team fights on your terms, not the enemy's terms.

Make sure to activate smoke outside of Fog of War, and make sure to never waste them!