Necrophos Mid?

Good!

I really dont agree with necro as a support. Seriously, what does he offer? No stun, no slow, needs levels for reaper's scythe because its awefull at low levels, and needs tankyness to deal a lot of damage with heartstopper aura. His ult is technicly a stun but you want to use it mainly for its damage, and such a short stun on such long cooldown is really bad.

Compare him with other unconventional supports like juggernaut or beastmaster. Jugger provides massive push and ommnislash, and is much harder to kill because of bladefury. You dont want to chase a magic immune support who used all his spells after all, and that means he will die less and get more gold.
Beastmaster provides massive vision and an amazing stun that is easy to use, along with some damage and utility in his aura and axes.
Necro has to commit in fights and is squishy without farm, so he will die more often.

The only reason people see him as a support is becouse he can heal, but healing has NOTHING to do with being a support, mekanism is misunderstood in the same way, people think supports SHOULD pick it up all the time, but there are much better items for heroes like lion or chrystal maiden to pick up.

The mini stun on Necrophos's ult is useful though

Well first off Necro is one of my most successful heroes ; I'm at more than 80% winrate with ~50 games with him and I've always played him as a #4 support. So I think it's the best argument for me : I do that all the time and I win games with it.

Playing support at the core is about one thing and one thing only : helping your carry to farm and win his lane in the first 15 minutes of the game. Any hero can buy wards or mek I agree, Bounty Hunter can buy wards and use them to gank and outworld devourer can buy mek. But if a hero can help a useless carry like Spectre to win his lane and farm then this hero is a support.

There are two kinds of supports : aggressive supports like Sand King who are there in lane because you want to get kills, and passive supports like Warlock who have no chance of getting kills but who can harass very well, zone out the enemy offlaner(s), and possibly heal their carry. If your carry is a passive carry then you need passive supports : if you do a trilane with Sand King, Ogre Magi and Spectre then it's pretty obvious why this trilane will suck. Necrophos is a passive support like Warlock : Heartstopper Aura and right-clicks allow you to constantly harass the enemy offlane and the great thing about aura is that it's effective against solo offlaners, dual lanes and aggressive trilanes alike. The harassment forces the enemy offlane to either play aggressive or get slowly zoned out. And Necro is one of the best turnaround heroes and really punishes aggressive play in lane with Death Pulse.

Necro is one of the best supports to lane with a passive farming carry and his skillset is one of the best ways to shut down aggressive dual lanes or trilanes.

Necro is not a support because he can heal, he's a support because he can babysit an afk farming carry really well.

He doesn't have the Mana to make use of Death Pulse without Bottle Crowing, he needs levels in Heartstopper Aura for it to be of any use. Sadist is useful, but not enough to justify him as a Support. Reaper's Scythe is a good ability, but without the ability to Jungle or Gank, he's going to have a hard time hitting lvl6...unless he just sits in Lane pretending to do something other than Leech Exp.

He's a terrible Support, no question about it. Play him as a Solo Farmer only, pls. 8{(

This isn't how Support works, Ogre Magi + Sand King + Spectre is only terrible because you have 0 Harrass with 3 Melees, but just because they can't get Kills in the Safe Lane doesn't mean they shouldn't Rotate Mid or Offlane to find them.

If you play this "Passive" Supporting against a Team that knows what it's doing, you're going to lose the Mid-Game....hard...

Let's say you have 1 Support Jungling and 1 Support Babysitting your Spectre. On the other Team, you have Shadow Demon and Leshrac and 3 Cores. The Shadow Demon + Leshrac combo can go Roaming and get Kills on whatever Lane they want, they're not going to be getting as mny levels as your "Passive" Supports, but they're gonig to make life hell for your Mid an Offlaner. All it takes is a couple of Kills on your Mid and before you know it, your Mid Tier 1 is down...before long, your Offlane Tier 1 will follow.

By this point Spectre is farming nicely and will have her 1st Item, this won't help her fight, but it will let her Farm a lot faster. Your Supports have pletny of levels, and your Jungler can even afford some Arcane Boots...none of this will help against the 5-man Deathball heading your way to take that last Tier 1. If they manage to get enough Kills here, it won't just be your Tier 1, but your Tier 2 going down, leaving your Jungle wide open to Ganks.

Since there are at least 3 of your Towers down at this point, and maybe only 1 of theirs (if your Supports don't Rotate, they'll never take anything aside from the opposing Offlane Tier 1). The other Team is outfarming yours, granted [Spetre]] might have the best GPM at this point, but that's not going to help you fight back. Your Mid and Offlaner have been outFarmed, quite simply because they were 2 vs 5 the whole time.

By this point, so long as the other Team doesn't screw up...it's an easy win for them.

Always look to be active as a Support, just becuase your Carry needs lots of Farm doesn't mean you should leave your Mid and Offlane to themselves, they need Farm too. You're not there just to Support your Carry, you#re there to Support your entire Team.

I do not agree that Juggernaut is a support. Take a look at his skills - Blade Fury is an ability that deals magic damage IF you are close to the enemy. Damage is not spread, so you want to be as close to your enemies as you can. Name supports that wants to be close to many enemies while not disabling them. Healing Ward is a pure healing skill, and you stated that "healing has NOTHING to do with being a support", so this skill isn't supportive in your opinion (I think this is the only Juggernaut's skill that is support oriented). Blade Dance is a melee critical chance skill - no comments on that. And Omnislash is an unreliable physical damage nuke.

Necrophos being a support is something different. He has combined skills of dealing damage (magical and HP removal) to many enemies, while healing his teammates and one of the strongest single-target spell. Death Pulse has a very low cooldown and can be used around 2-4 times in an average teamfight. Heartstopper Aura is dealing constant damage within it's huge range, which is obviously helping a team during teamfights. I think that Necrophos being a support is based on his contribution to the whole team and potentially removing most important hero at each teamfight. Healing Ward takes 1 hit to be destroyed. Death Pulse is spammable. Sadist gives him extra survavibility after he will succesfully kill someone using Reaper's Scythe.

Juggernaut without farm is any better than Necrophos without farm. Juggernaut is a carry that has to be active early and snowball (I hate that term) even more than Necrophos. Juggernaut is both gold and level denependent, while Necrophos is rather level and gold dependent.

Warlock needs to leech XP at some point too and people still play him as a support. Death Pulse doesn't cost much more mana than Shadow Word, and death pulse is not meant to be spammed, just used in encounters. Necro can harass passively without spending any mana, something Warlock can't do. I've never ran out of mana even once as a #4 Necro, with the Clarity buff I really don't think this is a problem.

Necro support is exactly the same as Warlock support : you get good lane presence, good teamfight and good late game at the expense of having to find a way to leech XP.

But Necro does much better at finding XP than Warlock because he can stack jungle camps and clear them later. And Necro is a really good farmer so even if he gets very low farm from stack-pulling in the first 15 minutes then he can farm really well to recover from it. In most of my games I end up with perfectly decent farm like Mekansm, Rod of Atos, Shiva's Guard and Aghanim's Scepter in a ~40 min game - his constant presence in teamfights means tons of assist gold and he farms really well.

Necrophos basically brings nothing to the table early levels which is basically the reason why supports are supports. You want your core heroes to get the levels to be effective so your supports have to be able to get along with very little exp. Necro has really bad killing potential lvl 1, just 75 magical damage and a 70 hp heal. That is basically two auto-attacks doing the exact same thing.

The thing with jugger support is that he is able to deal 400 magical damage lvl 1, which is a lot more than Necro can do.

How much do I have to repeat this? You don't play Necro support because you want early kills, you play Necro support because you want to passively win your lane and prevent aggression on your carry completely. He's a DEFENSIVE support, like Lich or Warlock!

Take another look at his Skills, Blade Fury is a 400 Damage DoT Nuke at lvl1, the strongest Nuke at lvl1. Combine him with some method of keeping the target within Bladefury range, and there's little you do to stop him...

Never mind, Seagull beat me to it! X{D

K, moving on then, Healing Ward is a good Pushing skill. That doesn't make it a Support Skill, but any Utility is good on a Support and this is damn good Utility! 8{D

Blade Dance, obviously this is suited to a Right-Clicker, but this doesn't rule him out as a Support.

Omnislash, unreliable yes, but if the other Team are buying early Ghost Scepters to deal with it, then that's more impressive for a Support than a Carry.

I personally prefer Carry Jugg to Support Jugg, but Support Jugg is legit. 8{)