Help picking a high skillcap/trolly champ

So as support (and as any other role) some games you just lose. While a challenger support would carry every game at your Elo, that's just not realistic. You're going to make mistakes, you're not going to see every opportunity and capitalize. As a support, the main ways that you carry are by enabling your teammates.

So you don't have very many games played. I would say just keep playing. If you don't get crushed in lane, you'll win about 55% of your games, easy.

So I decided to watch one of your games. I watched your nami 1-5-16 game.

You're playing Nami with Lucian (who was very good, bailed you out of a ton of mistakes), Kassadin, Irelia, and Lee Sin against Velkoz, Orianna, Amumu, Ryze, Jhin.

First off, think through their comp and your comp. How do they line up? The way a standard fight will go is: Amumu will catch someone and ulti, hopefully catching 2 or fewer of your teammates. You should bubble on Amumu's landing spot (you win this interaction if you're fast) and immediately ult back into their team while activating Locket of the Iron Solari. Your job is to break up the wombo-comboness. Exhaust on Amumu is fine, exhaust on Ryze is better. This is your hard disengage.

There's a lot more you could have done in lane to win this game, like velkoz was pretty bad. You could have just pushed her out of lane with more value from your Ws. There were a couple of fishing Qs I think you should have thrown that would have been low risk if they missed and high reward if they landed. At the very least, Lucian covered for you correctly while their bot lane failed to capitalize.

But anyway, real stuff I think you should work on: Warding. You seem to place a decent number of wards, but you throw them down randomly, in irrelevant places where obviously the other team is not going to go. Like your team is crushing and you ward up your purple side tribush with a pink that you leave for the whole game. That's example #1, but you also like ward up your own top jungle for no reason (relying on blue trinket wards to spot approach paths to baron and rotation paths), ward your own jungle when dragon is spawning in a few seconds, etc.

As a rule of thumb: if your pink ward isn't dead within 3 minutes, it's not a good pink ward. Pink wards should only go in hotly contested warding areas. You might think, "Oh, but they'll kill the pink ward and I lose 75g!" Don't think this way. You lost the 75g when you chose to buy it. The only question is if you got any value out of it.

I don't think you placed a single high priority ward the whole game. Most of your wards, I would give Cs or Ds to.

Situation: Dragon is coming up in 60s or so. It's around 20 minutes game time. You're purple team and you're ahead. Where do you ward?

  • Wraith bush is S+. It gives tons of vision with plenty of time to see them coming. If you have this, you can safely start dragon (although it is suicide to grab this ward blind, through map awareness you can grab this when it's safe).

  • Bush behind their red buff is A. It gives more vision of how they're coming in, and can help you set up an ambush or peel off dragon if it's too hot.

  • Small bush is B. Also good to set up an ambush (t-bone them from your curly bush), gives good vision of the approach.

  • Their tri is B, it's an alternate path in and out, they might flank (or be split unintentionally).

  • Dragon pit itself is C since you're ahead, you're likely to be starting it. Wards in your own jungle are D, and that pink in your own tri is an F.

You can break down other situations:

Your team has double teleport. S+ ward is far lane brush, sets up the turnaround teleport from behind for free double kill. This is a play that you can definitely set up, even at low Elo.

Their tri: A. By far the most likely ganking route from Amumu, can also spot an enemy standard support roam (you push in the wave, and then you go roam to mid for a gank), and it's also a common route for the enemy midlaner to take.

Dragon mouth: B. Gives vision of river ganks (likely mid gank path). Also a theoretical invade on your blue.

Bot lane river bush: C. It's the easiest ward.

I dunno, I'm sure there are warding guides out there that do a much better job than I can, but really the point of wards is to get vision in time to do something with that vision. You want deeper wards to spot their rotations and, critically, to see when it's safe to get up other critical wards. You can't ward if you have no vision, because it's probably a pick. But if you can account for 4 of the 5 members of their team, ward with impunity!

A really good ward is worth 2 or 3 decent wards (and dozens of shit wards). Put wards in high traffic areas, in places where you're likely to see someone in time to organize a team response, in areas where enemies might get caught to set up picks, and in bushes or over ledges near potential teamfights.

It's a weird thing to say, but I think if your warding was better, your team would have won this game easily (and your decision making on taking objectives... like Lucian is 5-0 or something, double kill their bot lane, jungler full HP, and you start to channel a recall when they have turret and dragon is still up).

Oh, and you bought the wrong items. Locket and Merc Treads are the correct choice in this game. I think with correct items, your team wouldn't have died in that critical midlane teamfight where amumu jumped you and you lost 2 and the mid turret.

/r/summonerschool Thread