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The basics of supporting

September 28, 2017 by Trulf
Comments: 0    |    Views: 4646    |   



About this guide

This guide is for players with only a bit to none support games. Understanding the other roles in a game can help you a lot at adapting in certain situation and it will give you a better gamesense.
Since this guide will only be about the basics there will be no in depth itemlist and analysis as well as a huge warding map. The main priority is drafting your hero, as well as helping clarify the job of the two support roles for each game.

Getting started

Every game starts even before you queue into a match and accept it. It starts with your mentality when you think "let me play a game of dota". Do you want to play a specific role maybe you want to play your favourite hero or even a special sort of tactic? What can happen is, you beeing push towards playing something else. You may agree with the decisionmaking but in the and it wasn't like you hoped for.
The basic, most efficient mindset would something along the line of:"Let's see what i do need to play to have the highest chance of winning with my team". I am not saying you are not allowed to play what you want but heros have good and bad matchups and players having more MMR should have a higher picking preference.

Drafting

Thinking about the right hero can more than often give you all the insight you need to know what your job this game will be. If you pick a hero suited for this job you just need to play along the flow of the hero to do a good job.
Most of the time you wont have the lastpick and see the whole matchup, so dont be too afraid and ask your teammates if they can already think of some heros they want to play. As for the case of no getting an answer: pick what you fancy the most, nobody can expect you to completely predict all of the picks (exception are possible i.e. Dazzle, beware the incoming Axe-counterpick).
As 5 position your roamer and carry are the ones you will be interacting the most with during the laning phase. If your carry for example says hes fancy playing those 5 heros or so, look what they have in common and what they don't. After the short brainwork go for the "worst-case-scenario" possible(i.e. Witch Doctor). That means if one of those 5 heros is a very weak laner, prepare for it with your pick. If every hero you got told is a very strong laner you can pick something more greedy with the ability to help roaming or even go in the jungle for a bit(i.e. Crystal Maiden).
The 4 position hero is possibly the hardest pick, depending when you'll have to choose. As first pick you can have close to no limits on your pick while you are almost forced to play this one hero while picking about last. If you just start playing as roamer pick with the same mind as a 5 position, only a bit more greedy.

How to sort out support heros

Like mentioned in the chapter above you need to find out what kind of hero you'll have to pick. This chapter will help you to sort out what hero is appropriate. Keep in mind that the final sortig will be up to you, cause everyone will play heros different.

For a stronger lane and a nongreedy support('babysitter') questions you should start with are:

  • Does the hero have a disable?
    A disable gives killpotential and often helps at countering a gank. You almost always want some disable as support. The more disable, the stronger and safer your lane will be.
  • Does the hero have an heal?
    A healer is always nice to have (everyone will love you for some weird reason).He helps dealing with enemies pressure and should reduce your carries need of buying healthregen items. Further it gives you the potential to go more aggressive in lane and sustain a push later on. Keep in mind that healers more than often are protective picks for your carry and may suffer during the laning phase, so your carry can get his farm going.
  • Does the hero have a passive?
    Passives in DotA 2 are most common on carries but support can have some decent too. The biggest different is the fact, that most support passives are auras to accerlate your teams game flow by boosting the strength of the carries or fasten their farming.

All mentioned mechanics will help to protect your carry or even to setup kills for him.


For more aggression and a bit more greedy support ask:

  • Can the hero close the gab?
    This can happen with all kind of abilities. Be it a passive or an active ability, can you only lessen the distance for you or can you do it for all others as well. This gabcloser ability can even be a disable. You need some sort of mechanism do stay on the enemies heels to kill them if you can't burst them instantly.
  • Does the hero have a disable?
    Having disables gives you, like already mentioned, killpotential. You can stun, slow or hex them as gabclose (see point above) and hit them tll they die. For some heros you need a silence since they have abilities helping them escape.
  • How much damage does my hero deal?
    The question seems obvious at first glance, but it is important to know how much damage exactly u can deal over a sppecific time period. Some heros have heavy nukes even for supports while other need some time for this amount of damage and maybe deal more in the end, so ask yourself what kind of damage you provide (and if it combines well with the already known part of the draft).
These mechanics will allow you to kill an enemy quickly and with higher efficiency. Most of the times your roamer should have characteristics of this categorie.

Beeing a lord of greed

  • Does the hero have an ability to help me farm the jungle?
    Since (hopefully) all three lanes will be farmed, your source of money will be the jungle.
  • How well will this hero scale?
    The more powerfull a hero late is the weaker he is in the early game. If you have a better scaling hero you maybe can become a core late on.
Easiest way to say this would be:'Junglers are the greediest supports'. This means a jungler is a support (yes, it is for the best to think like that), but since most junglers are scaling heros they become cores later on. It will be close to zero times where you'll have the freedom to pick a jungler.

Those 3 categories will help you sort out about every hero in a type of support.

Examples:

Witch Doctor:
Has a stun for multiple targets, an aoe heal and an ability which deals great damage over time dependig on damage dealt.
So he has a disable, a heal and a boosting ability so he can be a babysitter.
He also has a small gabclose with his disable and a good amount of damage over time, which qualifies him to be an aggressive support.
He only has his stun for farming and doesn't scale very good so he is not very greedy.
In the end you can babysit your carry if needed, if it isn't you can go aggressive on other lanes.

Riki:
Has an aoe silence/slow, a blink, invisibility and a lot of rightclick damage when hitting from behind.
So he only has a depending silence and a bit if slow, no heal nor boosting ability, obviously he can't protect you very well.
But he has a lot of gabclose for himself between the invisibility and his blink as well as a silence/slow. In addition to that you can either deal damage to enemies running away from you or keep them busy until help arrives, which makes him a very aggressive hero.

Enigma:
Has a stun, his Eidalons, an aoe damage abilty and a huge teamfigh ultimate.
Since he only has a very weak stun he'll protect you similar well as a Riki.
With only the weak stun and an aoe damage ability (or very slow Eidalons), he can't go very aggressive before his ultimate comes online.
He can go through the jungle very fast thanks to his Eidalons and can get items to further strengthen his teamfight. So he can go to the jungle.(Although i would recommend him as offlaner)

Starting items

As supportduo you obviously should buy at least a courier and two Observer Wards.
Next up is an analysis of the upcoming laningphase. The basic rule is 'the more aggression (coming from you or the enemy) you expect on your lane the more regeneration you'll need'.

  1. Regeneration:
    • Tango:Helps you to constantly trade or heal up small amounts after an engagement
    • Healing Salve:Quick healthboost after fight
    • Faerie Fire:more luxurious, highest effect against melee with ranged hero, heal should only be used close to death
    • Clarity:gives a lot of mana over time, requires to play a bit more passive in lane while active, helps spell dependent heros to sustain aggression
    • Mango:bit of health regeneration, insant mana on use, for a slower/passive lane when there will be few but long and hard fights
  2. Accessiors:
    • Wind Lace: gives you a bit more movementspeed, rotations to other lanes as well as warding takes less time, its easier to control when to exchange hits if you have the higher movementspeed
    • Blight Stone:reduces enemeys armor by a bit, helps killing when most of the damage is physical, early towerpushs become more efffictive
    • Orb of Venom:gives a slow and damage over time, increases harassment on the enemey, due to slow and damage over time you can bully most solo laner with ease
    • Boots of Speed:gives you more movementspeed, rotations to other lanes as well as warding takes less time, its easier to control when to exchange hits if you have the higher movementspeed, very expensive --> very greedy (you will need to buy some sooner or later)
    • Magic Stick:mana and health regen to a certain degree, good against heros that have low mana/cooldown spells and are looking to constantly preassure your lane
    • Stout Shield:gives damage block, without one most melee supports can't trade with enemy ranged heros
  3. Other:
    • Sentry Ward:if the enemey has an hero with invisibility, one sentry at the start can win you your or another lane (best example would be against Riki in which case your mid-player will gladly acctept the sentry and (hopefully) win his lane)
    • Smoke of Deceit: with smoke of deceit you can place a secret mid/offlane ward to make out enemy rotation and prevent ganks or go on an early gank yourself
    • Ring of Protection:some armor for trading or tanking creeps, good startup when you have some money leftover and plan to buy a Ring of Basilius
    • Iron Branch and other stat-items: stats will give you more trading-potential and make your hero overall better, iron branches can be planted for you or your carry to increase the healing effiency of the Tango

Early game as lanesupport

Your job in the early game will be "classic" support style:

  • Bully the enemy's offlaner:
    Bullying means trading hits with the offlaner,so that he is forced to go out of experience range.
    Be careful not to go too aggressive, since he might get support which can result in your own death.
  • Pull your creeps:
    Deny the offlaner farm by taking away the wave and increase your own farm (pull min XX:53 the hard camp to stack). Sometimes you can't trade hits with your enemy, this way you can still help the lane.
  • Try to set up kills for your carry:
    Every time you think, you can kill the enemy inform your carry and let him have the kill, so he has even more farm and will snowball way harder.
  • Buy wards and place them/give them to your roamer:
    During the laning phase, placed wards should give your team vision over enemy rotaions.
    Sometimes you can't leave the lane, this isn't a n excuse to not buy wards since you can just give them to your roamer or put them in the courier for the other lanes.

If the enemy offlaner rotates into the jungle you can:
  • Keep bullying him:
    Try and rotate through the enemys jungle and find your "friend" again. Most offlaner loose a good chunk of health when jungling eary on. Maybe you can snatch a kill on him or just leech experience and maybe a bit of gold from his work.
  • Pressure other lanes:
    Since the is no enemy to pressure your carry, you can leave him alone (just carry a tp in case they are ganking him), group up with your roamer and help the other lanes.
  • Go farm in your own jungle:
    Some support heros have abilities, which let them take a few neutral camps quick and efficient. You shouldn't just go afk-jungling tho, since you'll just mirror the enemy offlaner, who'll probably scale better.

If the enemy rotates with more heros on our lane, you should play more defensive and set protecting the carry as main goal for the moment. If a death is inevitable it shall be you who die.

Early game as roamer

Your dream as roamer is to preassure the enemies safelane as well as their midlaner, since the other support will handle the offlaner singlehanded.
The mission of a roamer is to snowball your lanes. Easiest way of doing it is identifiy the heros you have the highest killpotential on and apply pressure.
As roamer you need to tell the lanes in advance when you will be ganking, so they can prepare (that means reseve their mana and health as well as manipulating the creepequilibrium). The more you are communicating the more effienct your rotations get.
If the enemy has a jungler, it'll be your job to disrupt or even kill him.
In most games the midlane is the best target since there is only a single hero and midlaners nowadays tend to be more of a carry than a hardcontrol hero.

Since you are rotating between lanes anyway you should be able to place wards without wasting as much time as the 5 position. You are not allowed to think you don't need t buy wards. You should buy a few wards yourself.
While rotating you should keep an eye on the clock and try to stack your jungle if possible (Think about how well your carrys can kill stacks and stack accordingly).

If you can't seem to get anything, try and get to a lane which is doing well to leech some experience or kill some neutrals. You should be level 6 after at most 12 minutes.
When thinking where to gank when you can plan on taking the bounty runes of you or the enemy every two minutes, they will provide you with a lot of gold and level.

Mid/Lategame as support

In the mid to lategame the specific job of the 4 role can be too diffrent but some basics concepts are the same as the 5 role.
In a farming period:

  • When one of your core is farming very aggressive there should be a support behind him, just in case something happens. You need to give your core an insurence, the only gain for you will be some experience so try to take turns giving the insurence (In the end the 5 role should do it more often)
  • The most dangerous farm will be in most cases yours to take. Due to saftey reasons the farm of the jungle and pushed-in lanes is reserved for the cores, so if you want some more than a lasthit every minute or so you need to go on the lanes which are pushed out.
  • Your wards should be placed, so you can see if the enemy is plotting something. The most attractive ones would be at the runes but it can be dangerous to walk there and in the end they will be dewarded instantly, so you need to come up with a "wardingsystem" to protect the main farming area of the cores.

    All in all is a farming period the hardest part while playing support, since all farm will be taken and everthing you can do is optimize when to take a camp or when to take a lasthit from the lane.
During a fight your positioning is orientated in the backline and your crowdcontrol is focused on the heros attacking your cores. If needed you should sacrefice yourself, so the carry survives.
You have high chances of dieing in fights so keep your quickbuy ready to reduce your deathcost.

When trying to apply pressure, your wards should be placed so your team has a vision advantage in the next fights or in a position in which they'll provide vision behind the next objektiv.

How to get farm as support

Having an impact without items is hard, so as support you need a way to get your items online.

In the early game the best way would be pulling, cause you will not only get the lasthit on neutrals but hopefully also the denies on your creeps, which give experience.
Another method would be jungling itself but for most heros it will take a lot of time as well as mana and or health.

In the mid to later stages of the game there will not enough time for you to farm. Most of your gold will come from teamfights or occasional lasthits. The most important things to keep wardmaintenance up will be:

  1. Dewarding an Observer Ward will give you 100g which is the cost of the used Sentry Ward. That means if you know there is a ward for sure you won't loose money of dewarding.
  2. Try to buy all wards from unreliable gold, it is easier to save buyback that way and it even quickens your itemprogression.
  3. Observe your cores farming pattern and find a spot where you can take lasthits without disrupting a cores farm.

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