Hi guys, I decided to write a guide about how to play support heroes simply because in most public games, no matter on which level, there is a lack of decent support players. This guide aims at helping players of all different skill levels in playing a support hero to its maximum use. Don't read this if: - You enjoy farming for most of the game - You like getting a lot of kills - It is important to you to have positive stats - You think you already know everything and the only reason you are not a Pro yet is coz you have been unlucky If none of the above applies to you, feel free to continue reading and commenting. Support is a role, not a hero! The importance of Supporters To everyone with a little experience, this section is self-explanatory, yet I still state the brutal facts: In most games, it is indeed the support heroes deciding the game outcome and not the carries. The reason for this is simple: With a lack in support, no carry will be able to farm the required items nor get the necessary experience for those nice rampages. (This of course assumes a similar skill level of the teams facing each other, if your team is pretty strong and the enemies are total newbies, the importance of supporting somehow fades). As you can see in most professional teams, the captains doing the draft are most often the ones playing the supporter/ganker role and hardly ever play the hard carries. It is also the supports who most often call the moment for teamfights/pushes/roshan etc. Mastering the art of supporting is in many ways as hard or even harder than playing a carry, since you will be making a lot more decisions throughout the game than your safe lane carry who more or less afk farms for most of the game. And decision-making offers room for mistakes. Therefore, as for all roles, the most important thing for supporting is experience and the willingness to learn from your mistakes (aka bad decisions). The fun aspect of being a supporter is that even if you know your role by just a little, you will be helpful for your team. Even if you fail in some situations, if you do your job correctly, you had a positive impact. Whereas we all know that a failing carry/ganker has no impact whatsoever. It is important to differ between a "hard support" and a somewhat assisting supporter role, who is buying wards from time to time but who should try to focus on getting some items. When I talk about "support" in this game, I am talking about hardcore supporting only! Section 1a: The support heroes Apparently, there is a wide range of support heroes. Summarizing, you can say that a support hero is a hero with either one or several disables or one or several strong nukes. The typical supporter doesn’t need items too much and experience is also not as important as it usually is for carries. Most support heroes are ranged, allowing them to effectively harass enemies without taking too much damage. Note that a lot of heroes can be played as support, yet with some heroes it makes more sense than with others. Here is a list of typical support heroes: After listing up the most common support heroes it is necessary to take a look at their difference capabilities. To do so, it is important to know more about the different roles in dota. Since a dota team consists of five heroes it is logical that there are five roles. The hard carry (usually #1), the solo middle hero (usually #2), the semi-carry/utility hero/ganker (role #3, most often the hero who takes the hard lane), the supporter (#4) and the hard support (#5). The #4 and #5 mostly share the role of supporting, yet the #4 should focus a bit more on getting the key items. The difference between those two is simply how big of an impact key items make on those heroes and on how they are capable of actually getting the money for those items. Heroes that are most often #4 are e.g the typical jungle heroes: It is obvious that a fast mek on Chen or a fast dagger on Enigma will do more for the team than the 2k gold could ever do on a crystal maiden. Generally speaking, if you do not have a typical jungle hero, you should talk to the other support hero on the team. If you have a Warlock e.g., try to get that Scepter up on him since it is really powerful. It all comes down to the general picks and how the game goes. As I have experienced, in most public games you might end up being the only support with four core heroes on your team, so there might not even be too many games that actually consist of a #4 and #5 role. But if there is, you are prepared now. As you can see, most typical support heroes are ranged intelligence heroes. Also, most of these heroes have either strong nukes, good disables, a devastating ultimate or several if not all of the aforementioned. The reason for this is simple: Supports are supposed to protect their hard carry in the early stages of the game. Being ranged helps in harassing the enemy out of the lane. So does the ability of nuking them back to their fountain. Moreover, supports are supposed to help the other lanes winning, too. Nukes and disables come in really handy there. There are a few exceptions from “Intelligence, ranged, nuked and/or disable” in this list. These heroes shine by either their sheer nuking power (like Ogre Magi and Earthshaker) or because of their abilities to change the outcome of teamfights (like Naga with her Song of the Siren). You should be aware of the fact that if you pick one of these 5 typical mêlée supports AND your hard carry is also mêlée, you might have a hard time laning if you face an aggressive tri-lane. But more about the laning stage in the latter section of this guide. Section 1b: The duties of a supporter - You should buy a chicken at the beginning of the game - You should upgrade it to a flying courier ASAP - You should buy observer wards basically any time they are off cool down - You should buy sentry wards to de-ward the opponents’ observer wards - You should buy sentry wards, dust or even a gem against invisible heroes - You should go for supportive items (for a list of them see Section XY) - You should NOT farm - You should NOT take hero kills on purpose - You should NOT take tower kills on purpose Arguably, there are situations in which it is totally “OK” for the support to take a last hit on a tower or a hero. That is e.g. if you lack a certain amount for your key item and a team fight is incoming soon. Or if your Alchemist with maxed out greed and a midas is free farming anyways, so the gold he doesn’t get on that kill does not really hurt him too much but greatly helps you. If you are in doubt, rather let the carry have the gold. Experience will tell you, when it is ok to last hit things and when it isn’t. - You should ALWAYS carry a TP and help allies when they are dived or their lane is pushed too hard. - You should sacrifice your own life to save your allies if the situation allows it. - You should anticipate the game and lead your team in ganks/pushes/roshan - You should always look out for the possibility of smoking up with allies and go for a kill on enemy key heroes - You should try not to feed - You should NEVER block the creeps on the fucking safe lane (even a block for one second might cause the first wave to fight under tower range which will result in you pushing the lane away from the tower into dangerous territory and you do NOT want that to happen!) Exception: You already planted a really aggressive ward and you can see that the enemies are blocking their own wave. In that case, it is completely perfect to block your own wave to avoid having to fight too far away from the safety of your tower. So, apparently I am telling you to play a support hero via supporting your team. Yet what exactly does it mean? Generally speaking, you want your own carry (with whom you'll be laning on the safe lane most of the time) to get as much farm as possible. If you succeed in granting free farm to your carry (or if you are so insanely out- laned that your presence does not play a role) you should take a look at the other lanes and search for targets for ganks. Typically this will be the enemy solo mid hero OR the enemy hard carry (who most likely will be harder to gank than the mid hero because he is on his own safe lane and probably guarded by his own support heroes). See Section 2 on laning and ganking for further information. Section 1c: Support Items Apparently, you are not supposed to last hit creeps, heroes or towers. So your main source of income will be the gold for assisting in kills and the regular gold income per second.