General DiscussionI suck at supports

buy glimmer cape every game and enjoy -10 deaths

I hear you m8. I started Dota playing practically only position 5 supp every game in a party with friends, and I honestly think I did alright. I then spent this whole year playing mainly core roles and now every time I try to go back to support I end up feeding.

^^ but what if i'm so underfarmed that i can't even purchase it before one team knocks on the opponents' t4

e: okay that never happened but it isn't impossible and could've easily happen in some of my games if people pushed their advantage

there are three ways a support gets farm

1 - Early game kills from rotations

2 - farming jungle with or without pulled creeps

3 - not dying

You need to pick two.

Do not go to in warded areas solo under any circumstances. So if you are radiant and you want to get from mid tier 1 to bot tier 1 then walk down mid then across bot. If you are hard support then ending a game with only boots and wand is not a bad thing if you buy wards non stop. Use common sense when pushing the enemy safe lane tier 1, if you are not 5 and they are all ss then you are likely seconds from death. Also force staff is always a great item.

chill and go dota

pick np, place ward in enemy base, watch for free 150 gold

if you just dont die you have gold even without farming

you need to buy more midaseses

Arin, from my perspective u have been very useful in all our games. I really enjoy having u as support (or any other role) on my team. I also end up playing support often and I know how it feels. But ur filling very important gaps, which nobody else can fill as pos 5 even though ur underfarmed. Even in pro games pos 5 is really weak - their gpm/xpm rarely hits 300. All they buy is a glimmer cape as core item and then rely on their skillset and positioning.

specifically answering ur questions:
· pos 5 has to be underfarmed and underleveled, except if ur team stomps really hard. otherwise everyone else has priority over u. (boring right, so what to do?) You cannot be selfish, sorry. Even ur core items are only utility things like wards, smokes, mb glimmer/force.
· pos 5 often dies alot and gets rekt. stay back, wait for ur time to show urself in order to ini, coutnerini or to save a core.
· no lane gankable? e. g. prepare wards/smoke/stacks, pressure a lane, anticipate opponents next gank, anticipate ur teams next gank and stay in range of ur most important teammate.
· try to avoid the empty lanes. 4v5 w/o support is a bad fight.

I know i do mistakes myself and i have the feeling that u knew all this already. anyways, hopefully see u later in game ;)

Winter Wyvern (yes, I'm going to suggest her in every thread regarding supports) is a good answer to most problems a support has to stay relevant. She can fit very well a pos-5 support, but can be a bit greedier if the opportunity arises or the team requires it thanks to her easy super safe nuke (dat range).

You can be a lot more bold with her, because she has a lot of innate survivability that other supports lack without items. Use that to your advantage when you gank or defend-tp. All her skills have very large cast ranges, so try your best to always stay out of sight or use Arctic Burn from a place like above trees or hills to make you hard to catch even if you are in sight.
Also, your ulti. The wiki states this: "If the target gets killed by its allies during the curse, Winter Wyvern gets credit for kill", however, you still seem to get the kill credit if your allies kill the target, á la Necrophos, so there's another gold source.

Remember, you not dying means you get a lot of passive gold and also that your enemies are not getting extra exp and gold.

So yeah, she can do very well at not dying (unless your enemies do focus you or your team just loses every lane), she has a lot more freedom when it comes to positioning, she can afford both a lot of wards, detection, smokes and core items like Glimmer Cape no problem, and she does ok at laning, ganking and counterganking. A support player's wet dream.

I am basically facing all your problems + lately i don't feel I'm playing well at all.
Makes me feel a bit relieved I'm not the only one, tho i feel a bit useless especially early game i don't think i am coordinating properly, Triple and Hush should know the best since i often play with them.

I am open to constructive feedback / suggestions.

you just need to analyze the situation better, watching replays helps with this a lot

anal yze

MR. Dogolino you can also gief some more detailed imput to me, I am all ears!

i give the info in game, stuff like "that kid is dead", "we lost"

lol :D

@eating some demons
its not just "we lost", its "we lost, boys". i can even hear your voice when i think of this phrase.

when you are a position 5 zupport u don't need farm, u don't need levels. when it looks like there is going to be a fight stand back, or stand in the fog, throw your spells from as far away as you can then back off, until your stuff is off cooldown and you wont die too much.

if you are a 4 try stacking the jungle a bunch early on and then clear the stacks when you have nothing else to do (if you have an AOE).

if there is no where to gank during laneing, just zone the offlaner so ur carry gets free farm & the offlaner gets nothing (you can also leach XP when you do this and no one will yell at u 4 it), if the offlaner is tower hugging already go stack/farm the jungle/secure runes. if the lane pushes out you can pull, which will get u some farm (only if the lane pushes though).

6.84 is "anti-support" patch, so you can only pray and wait for some changes.

Volvo... please...

It doesnt matter much if u cant get items like aghim's sceptre. just try to complement team, place all your wards in the right places use ulti in team fights and help to sway the odds in your teams favour by getting support items

trying picking easier supports like Warlock, lion and lich

Note: Dont deny your carry valuable farm in your lane by last hitting

@ soultrap
how is 6.84 anti-support patch?

@Soultrap
No, i dont think that's it. It's just that u gotta be more careful in general playing number 5

YOU SUCK

> Sometimes I go to empty lane to recover a bit
dont do this, you could get picked off by enemy, as a support always stay with your team and ready to tp anytime

stack neutral camp/ancient then ask your carry to clear and leech som xp for easy level,
as for gold if you are position 5 underfarmed is expected since you dont farm much and buying ward/smoke/etc
earn early gold by double pulling early/get assist/jungle if your hero can

also dont try last hit in lane just zone enemy so your carry can farm

from your dotabuff you are good core player, maybe try roaming bounty hunter as support and you wont underfarmed and possibly bath in sweet track gold lol

@ Mekarazium
dude, just because you cant play with wyvern doesnt mean ww is shit hero

@hushhush
Like many people in this topic said before: "just buy glimmer cape". But the truth is that glimmer cape is a blessing and a curse for supports at the same time. Because of this item you have to spend much more money on detection items. Also, glimmer cape ruins life of supports who rely on their magic damage (e.g. Skywrath Mage). BTW, where is Skywrath Mage, since 6.84 patch?

Also, there are no solo offlaners now. Sometimes you come to your safe lane just to meet UD+Viper or something even more toxic. GL zoning them out!

And the last nail to supports coffin is the meta itself. There are too many "ganker-type" heroes in current meta who come online very fast and can punish you for every positional mistake.

@soultrap

im sorry to put it in a possibly offending way. ur arguements are invalid. the only thing i agree w is that glimmer is a blessing and a curse for supports. but imo, more blessing than curse.

Like why do u talk about sky? Lion e.g. is still a frequently t1 support and deals only magical dmg. Same w Earthshaker. Aoe magic dmg in general is a huge thing this patch w gyro, lesh, qop as fotm. Sky lacks a reliable disable and therefore is not picked. (but for example is still a solid pick in EG's lineups)

The 6.84 meta is very versatile and more dependent on picks and counterpicks. It can be a mixture of snowball and deathball. Much better for supports than 6.83.

I mean look at the TI games. There are huge things happening on pos 4+5 like the support naga, bane, io, techies and revival of crystal. Their plays matter at any stage of the game. The new t1 support heroes need ofc skill to be executed right, so we wont see it in pubs much, but its beautiful to watch sonneiko, aui+ppd, puppey ... and so on.

@soultrap
the pick rate of skywrath mage didnt change much in the last half a year
solo offlaning still works nicely for me, and I see more or less same stuff in competitive dota

IDK but I seem to have way higher winrates with supports even thu I prefer playing cores but then again lately I like to pick whatever role is needed and that's usually support.

IMo the most important thing when playing support is good timings of movements around the map.

@hushhush
Lion is not about magic damage, he can disable you for 6,5 seconds and repeat it every 12 seconds, and I believe that this his main strength. But I have terrible winrate on Lion, so I may be wrong. Earthshaker is not a support. Not #5 at least. He can't farm, but he needs Blink.

You tell me that 6.84 is better for supports, but I'm support! I really enjoyed 6.83! Troll or Sniper were strong, but not as annoying as elusive PL or red/black racecar. I lost ~600 MMR after 6.84 release... It's not fun to play support for me any more...

In good old days we learned from pros, but now they take abusive pub strategies into pro stage. I feel sad about this...

Lol, the safelane is the new offlane. Now what you have to do is pick something cancerous to go to the offlane and beat the hell out of the fool who didn't notice this.

^Exactly.