Supporting successfully is about exerting early impact on the game. There are many ways to go around this.
Zoning is the first thing you should do. If your enemy offlaner gets dangerous at level 6 (e.g. clock), or if your safe-lane carry is very weak in lane (Void, Spec, PL etc), you will want to focus on zoning.
I would not actually recommend pulling in the first few waves unless you are running a defensive tri-lane in which one of the supports is able to zone out the offlaner by himself entirely.
So let's say you've zoned the enemy offlaner and your safe-lane carry has a level advantage. What do you do now?
If your safe-lane carry can hold the lane with a level advantage (Naix, TB, Luna, Gyro etc) then there are two things to do - roam or pull. Pulling is something you should do to get extra exp and gold ONLY after securing the lane for your carry. Alternatively, if you have a reliable disable or high damage nuke, you may opt to rotate mid to gank the opponent.
Haha CM/Disraptor/JakDaddy. Add veno in there and those are my go to supports. Feel free to ask any questions, though I'm not sure what your MMR is. Know those heroes pretty well.
Couple things of pointers on the top off my head:
I like to roam a lot and early. Really depends on the hero to see how fast you get your levels relative to how the games going. Your source of gold will come through successful ganks.
Try to preemptively place your obs wards to where you think the action is going to be heavy in the near future.
Encourage pushing as early as you can. Since your only way of getting gold is through towers and kills, tower kills are always helpful. If you have the late game, it gives an early boost to your farmers. If you have the early/mid game, you need to take towers down asap. Also, no towers = less map presence for the other team. Makes warding/counter warding a lot easier for you.
It sounds like I just need to get better at what I'm already trying to do, zone out in lane, keep wards up, play heads up. Do you deward?
Lich and veno are good, a few supports I'm still hovering around 50% with.
Zoning really depends on the laning situation. If you're 2v1 safe lane, then zone out the other dude and prevent him from last hitting. Even better is if you can get him out of exp range. Force as much regen items as you can. Once your farmer has a big enough lead and you have enough points into whatever skills you need, look at the other lanes to see if there's an opportunity to gank (current health/lane control/teammates heroes).
If it's 2v2 then things get a little dicier, and more often than not, you'll need to stay in lane to ensure farm. Not the end of the world if you can get a quick level 6. If you're losing the 2v2 lane and your farmer isn't getting anything done, I usually just leave, because there's no point for you to stay in a losing lane anyway. Force other lanes.
Keeping wards up are important, usually at least 1 rune spot. As I mentioned earlier, try to preemptively place a ward where you think the action is going to be soon. Example would be aggressive/defensive jungle wards or maybe next to a heavily contested tower. Mid lanes when the towers are still up are good too. I love placing a ward to the right of the mid t1 of radiant as dire. You get that "T" of vision which is huge. Only thing is it's hard to sneak this in if your enemies are attentive.
Making your wards up earlier is important too. If you can keep tabs on the other team's ward locations, you can always counterward and it will snowball the same way it does for farmers. You should always have map control at that point. Always be looking at enemy supports inventory to keep tabs on wards/counter wards. Also, try not to have too many wards up at once. Having 4 wards up at once may be bad, because you're not going to have any later, but game by game, you'll see if the wards are necessary or not.
Somethings come with game sense. If you have a radiant bot rune ward and you see the enemy support marching into your jungle with a ward and he's gone for 5 seconds with 1 less ward, you can usually assume they warded the middle if your jungle in front of the hard camp or next to the hill to the left medium camp. If he's gone for 15 seconds you can assume he warded your plateau.
Always counter when you can. Usually the faster, the better. There may be a couple times you don't want to counter right away though. Never sacrifice yourself for a ward. The other team will obviously see you, so make sure you know they're far away or you have teammates close by. If you guys were planning on smoke ganking, it's cool to leave it up to give them a false hope of security. If they ward right on top of you, it may be a good idea to leave it up as well if they are actively counter warding. You don't want them to counterward your counterward which leads to your regular ward. If your obvs is not close, then this may not be a problem.
One reason why I like veno support is when counter warding. The plague wards make it possible for veno to check high ground without using an obvs ward. Also, you can deward without putting yourself in danger. Drop a poison ward and bounce.
I like your walls of text. Since I read above a 6th grader level, I read it quickly.
Yeah take what zenoth says to heart he is bad ass.
Early game:
Yes zoning is a big deal when you are supporting your safe lane carry, push the other team out of gold/xp range if you're just in a dual lane.
Dont be an ass and not get courier until like past 10 minutes in. Get it ASAP 3:00 min mark if possible.
Use defensive wards for your lane so you don't get ganked. If you're on safe lane radiant, ward your jungle a bit and the rune spot.
If you're on the offlane radiant side, try and ward their pull camp so they can't pull.
If you're on safe lane dire, ward your jungle. If you're offlane dire, ward their pull camp if possible.
Judge your lane on how far it is pushed back. Optimal early game is the enemy is close to your tower, but not getting the creeps pelted by tower dmg, so between side shop and a little bit further. This allows for a mid to come over easier to gank your lane.
Be efficient with courier. If you can buy items in side shop, or secret shop then do it, allow the carries to use the courier as much as possible. If you have to get items from main shop so be it. I try and optimize as much to get side lane items for my support if I can.
Watch the mid. Grabbing a smoke out of the starting gate is good especially if you have a disable support. If mid is having a rough time I.E. you keep hearing "your middle tower is under attack." i mean just smoke up, get into position behind the mid if possible and stun him, and TRY to communicate that to your mid, while keeping an eye on his mana pool/health to ensure you can acomplish a mid gank. Such a big deal. It's not always mids job to go gank sometimes you gotta gank mid man.
If you have to be in a tri lane, learn to stack ez camp, and pull ez to med creeps into camp dire and radiant side (dire is harder to pull med. camp IMO.) Its huge. Be sure you aren't screwing up your lane pulling though like zenoth mentioned. If you see that your side is pushing their tower, then time to pull or stack/pull. Remember to start denying your creeps before they get back into lane if they are under half health is huge too. That means other team doesn't get xp/gold from these which is another way to help your team early.
Mid game/late game:
You should be just hugging your hard carry at this point beyond you should be babysitting him no matter where he goes. He wants to jungle? Well fine go buy some wards so he can safe jungle. Warding is huge. REMEMBER you CAN place wards WHILE smoked.
Be sure to check other player items if they are getting utility/support items dont buy the same thing if possible.
Keep active. Be there for team fights is #1 obviously, but in those down times, farm creeps, farm jungle creeps, get cash/xp man you need it.
^
http://dotabuff.com/matches/609291792
An example of a lich not having to be hard support, and allowed to get carry items. Here is a big mistake a lot of teams do. You don't need every "support" type role being a support. If you have the opportunity to enhance your nukes mid/late game then do it. I took the role of IO healer, warder etc. and allowed lich to go more nuke items since nuke is his forte, and he has a better scalability to nuke in the game versus me IO.
Encourage your team to keep knocking down towers. "group up Mid and take down tier 2" Roll with your team, get them organized and keep as a group. (Unless your team is a rat type team then split push 4/1 I suppose 3/1/1 split push rat is not optimal for support IMO) I see a lot of games where I know we could push down all the tier 1's tier 2's then we don't and sit back and farm our jungle? Farm our ancients? This isn't winning anyone the game man time to do some damage. Buildings win you games. Can't run stagnant. Look for that opportunity where you are ahead in that last battle you had, you lost 3, they lost 4, don't just bail and go lick your wounds in base, keep pushing that lane man.
Late game/med. game warding:
Again sticking with the team is #1, but vision is #2.
Find those gaps where it "looks" like you can go ward the rune, or you can ward enemy jungle because you see the other team out of position. I think a lot of supports big mistake (mine included) is map awareness and when to ward. Offensive warding in enemies side of map is good, but if you don't see anyone on the map, guess where they are? The spots you haven't warded so warding there is your doom. Warding is good, but not good when you just end up dying anyways warding. Not worth it if you don't have a good idea where they are at. It's not worth giving the other team free money.
Dewarding: Big. You know all the spots, you seen it time and time again. Dewarding is huge. Lack of vision can kill a team if you get these knocked out. Doesn't happen often enough. Common places I usually deward are: Early game jungle dire/radiant (try and spot if the team is carrying 1 observer ward is a tell tale hint they dropped one nearby.) Med. game radiant ancient cliff and rune bottom on dire side. I see these warded most games. If they are on the offense med/late game cliff for jungle on dire where the eye is, and cliff where the radiant is where the eye is on the jungle, or radiant side cliff left side corner.
All game:
Tp's are important. Yes, the best 135 gp you can spend. Make sure you carry at least one all the time. But what I see a lot of is you just died, then you immediately TP out to your lane again. I mean why? If it's getting pushed ok fine save some tower health, but if not, then just walk there. Nothing more annoying than having to wait 60 seconds on CD on TP when all of a sudden the action switches lanes, or it didn't really make you 135 gp just to hop in lane 30 seconds quicker. Not a good move to waste that cash man.
Smoke. You don't need it but damn it turns the tides of games big time. You didn't de-ward? You want to throw on a smoke. The only thing that breaks smoke is they get 1000 units away from you which is good IMO because then you know someone is nearby when you're in their woods or your woods so everyone's readiness is there. You run faster with smoke on. You can go into rosh pit as a team undetected and kill him. You can single out heros as a team and get in behind them.
This by far in my bracket is not used enough and most games never bought unless I'm playing support. I can't tell you how many times it has early game saved my mid's bacon from getting killed so I sneak in and stun them/silence/slow etc. Or turn the tide mid early game and secure a kill for my mid hero. Its big man and underrated.
Just remember, this is THE HARDEST role to fill man. Support is rough and a lot of little things to remember all throughout the game. IDC who says what on here, I find jungling rat easy, carry medium, and support is the hardest. I mean if you don't support right, then your carry will have a tough time. Also on the support you select to help your carry, is a big deal. Synergyze with what is picked.
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This is a general how to support thread. Something weird happened to my gameplay once ranked matchmaking was released. I normal matchmaking I had a few carries I played a lot and did well with, then the vast majority of carries I only had a handful of games stuff like 3-4 lifetime. But my supports, I had great win rates with, stuff like 12-5 on CM, 12-4 on disruptor, 18-8 on jakiro, 7-3 on bane. Since ranked I've gone 1-4 on CM, 1-3 on disruptor, 1-4 on jak, 0-3 on bane. I'm not sure what happened. I had enough games on these heroes before to make me think it wasn't just luck, but that I was having a positive impact on the games we were winning. I haven't changed my support playstyle yet I am losing at almost twice the rate.
As a result I've drifted more towards playing carries, I have three times as many games on carry heroes in ranked and am 75-73. Not great, but I'd take a couple games over 50% overall. But my support play is terrible, 39% win rate. That could be a factor that I just don't practice supports enough anymore.
I'm trying to figure out what I need to do different. In the past it was enough to place wards in smart locations and harass in lane and score kills in lane. I rarely would roam and gank but would usually be able to secure kills in my own lane for the carry. Now I feel like that isn't working or isn't enough. Often times I will get the carry free farm space and we still lose cus other lanes die and the safe lane carry isn't good enough- that's when I get frustrated and start playing carry heroes. But I think there's probably something I can do on a support hero also. When I play a carry the number one thing I want my support to do is protect me so I can farm. I feel like I can accomplish this but we still lose. So I'm looking for more.
So what should I do? Give me some simple steps to have more of a game impact. I've tried smoking mid but it usually fails, not enough coordination. Should I roam all the way to top? Should I actively deward now? Or do I just need to get better having impact in lane? Not looking for really detailed, hero specific strategy guides, just general guidelines.