I. Why and When do you play support
II. What is support
III. How do you play support
i.Basic
ii.Intermediate
iii.Irritating, annoying and ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Miscellaneous
IV. Let's talk about items
V. My support hero ranking

'Let it begin!'[www.dota2wiki.com]

*Click link to hear hero voice

In fact, the major reason that motivates me to sit down and write this out is due to the horrendous lack of support practice in Match Making (MM) games of Dota2. The thing is, these are no longer 'pub games' (like back in DotA) while Dota2's MM games match you with players at similar skills level i.e. your game could go very wrong (in a bad way) if your team didn't play the game 'correctly'. That being said, you can still do fun builds (or commonly known as 'troll builds') or mess around with different heroes all day long as soon as you know what you are doing exactly - playing support role is one of the basics in playing DotA/Dota2.

Now back to the 'Playing support is against human nature' part - it can be extremely disheartening to play support at times: there is almost no chance for personal skill showing off from you, that shiny high gpm doesn't belong to you, those glorious godlike/beyond godlike/RAMPAGE are never yours; in the worst case scenario, when the game is losing, some mentally incompetent players will flame or blame you for your 0/8 kill/death on score board (while totally ignoring your assist counts and your effort of doing all these background support works). Nobody wants to play support and there is no real reason ever to play support.

Well, except for one reason, you play support because you play to win, you play support when you WANT TO WIN the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. Or maybe, just maybe, supporting is actually fun.



'What is this?'[www.dota2wiki.com]

The standard concept of playing support is rather simple: resources in any game is limited and thus resource distribution is prioritized to your carry/mid/hardlane players while support players are generally regarded as 'ward ♥♥♥♥♥' or 'babysitter' who requires minimal income/level advantage to function. At the competitive level, generally speaking, supports are usually played on Position 5 or 4, or even 3 sometimes.

Now we are not going to discuss on what player who plays on what position should have priority farming during different phases of the game here (simply put, farming priority can be interchangeable throughout a game but the position of the player is usually static). In this guide, I'd like to stress the concept of supporting should always be kept in the mind of everyone in a team. In fact, in order to become a good support player you need to be a decent carry/mid/hardlane player yourself and a decent understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of most if not all heroes.

You may say, 'That seems odd, new people should always play support!'. Yes, newcomers are recommended to play simple support hero while learning the game - the thing is, do you see many of these horrible carries from non-newcomer players in your games? I am sure the answer is 'Yes.'. Which brings to us to one of the major points I am going to make here: in lower tier games, anything works, any build on any hero works, support is meaningless in lower tier game, killing heroes is the only way to win (which is also why most people love DotA/Dota2 in the first place).

I am talking about the 'hard games' that you get from Dota2's MM or some highly competitive IH (in house games) or CW (clanwar) or tournament games - ever wonder why Burning from DK almost always ended up with over 9000gpm in his games? A good team made that happen, a good team supported Burning.

You need to have decent understanding and experience in playing carry/mid/hardlane heroes so that you'd know what exactly does your team need - good support knows how to make the game comfortable for his carry to farm, good support makes kill/s happen by knowing when to setup gank or use that emergency tp to help out other lane, good support dies for the team in a meaningful manner (to trade for opponent heroes/tower/save the carry), professional support tanked the creep waves so the carry can come and clear the waves*. Good support makes easy games, good support wins games.


And some people wonder why 820 is a fun name of VS.

Again, for this guide, I'd like to stress that good support is not one man's work. Good support comes from everyone in team.

If that 200g+ of crow/flying courier could compensate your mistake of losing one rune (so you could save a trip back to base or prevent yourself to get killed in the next minute), why not just spend that gold? It is really not the worst deal in the world (1 death costs you the same if not more than that OMFG 200g+). If that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 180g of dust can net you a sure kill and hinder the opponent carry, why not? Why do you need to think twice before buying that 700g gem to kill that Rikimaru who is going to have a godlike soon if nobody stopped him? Godforbid anyone in team picks up an extra pair of wards so the team can fight with positioning advantage at critical moments.

When a support bought a critically important dust/sentry/smoke and beg his team to carry one for him because he has no slot available but still nobody gives a bloody care (where obviously a stout shield/quelling blade is more important than that support item at 40mins), that team does not deserve to win.

Let's not forget that this guide is aimed for us common folks playing DotA/Dota2, when you see a carry player buying support item in a pro tier match, you'd have guessed that the support player will be in big trouble after game but generally it wouldn't happen in the first place except some rare occasions.




'What wonders will i see this day?'[www.dota2wiki.com][/i][/b]

The central principle in supporting is that you put yourself in the shoes of the carry/core heroes in your team and ask yourself, for example: 'If I were mid, what help do I need from team mates so I can perform my role brilliantly?' - As a support you make these things happen to build a comfortable game for the core players in team, some support heroes can even go very aggressive to the point that they are the ones who alter the rhythm of the game.

As I mentioned above, experience and understanding of the game are the key abilities as a support player while the strong game sense and observation on everything happening in game make you a great one.

- if you decided to play a support hero in this game due to whatever reason , I wish you best of luck and hope everything I wrote here will be useful for you.

GLHF!

Yes, simply surviving. Most of the support heroes are naturally fragile (and are mostly so called early game heroes in which most of their strengths lie in early game) so learn to position your hero during every phases of the game (not too far away or too close to your enemies so you would be in range to cast your spells when your team needs you or don't die straight away because you stand at the front) and learn to build your support heroes not to die too quickly before you could help out your team (this is highly dependent to your playstyle, the opponent line up and will be briefly covered in the below Items section).

Don't die meaningless (aka feed) and due to the nature of being support equals to low or non-existent income from farming, dying less is the best way to maintain your good income and generally speaking if you survived the team fight/s you will get a very nice portion of EXP and assist gold.

Fat supports = scary supports, under the condition that your allied core heroes are fat in the first place.

Last hitting:
The days of being 0 farm support are long gone. As a support you NEED farm and especially some support heroes have some core items which are best to get within a timing window. HOWEVER, PLEASE, don't ever intentionally fight last hit with your carry, please. Or ruining the last hit so that both the carry and you can't last hit anything.

On a side note, if you needed that a couple of the last hits to get a boots/ wards/ courier/ arcane etc, just ask nicely and I am sure any good carry player will understand that. Yes, I did say that any GOOD carry player will understand that losing a few last hits is not going to lose him/her the game, and of course that is under the condition that the support player knew what exactly he/she is doing. Keep in mind that a carry with good farm on lane is highly due to the fact that the support is doing a good job.

Deny and harassing are probably the most basic skills of all DotA basics.

Denying reduces the EXP/Gold gain of the enemies and [green]harassing[/green] is a must and especially when you are 2v1 or 3v1 or 3v2 on lane, PLEASE, harass the hell out of the opponent/s forcing them to lose (a huge chunk of) EXP/Gold income. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do that because I have lost count of all time seeing pub support who just stand back with the carry and watch the solo opponent happily last hitting and getting EXP and HARASSING your carry. Whenever you are on a 2v1 or 3v1 or 3v2 lane, you are sacrificing the EXP (split between multiple allies) to ensure the farming of your carry so if you didn't achieve the purposes of doing so, you are bringing more harm than benefit to your team.

For an example, you commonly do a 2v1 on safelane with your carry so if you didn't deny creeps or harass the opponent enough, the opponent will hit lvl7 by the time two of you are lvl4 - some heroes can kill both of you straight away with that level advantage or when you left the lane to do something else your carry will be 1v1 an opponent with 3 levels advantage (and proceed to get killed in the next 30 seconds if the opponent was any good or the farm of your carry will be disrupted for sure).

This part of support practice is pretty much self-explanatory if you have played enough carry heroes.

Buy first set of ward after you got your boots.
Buy 2nd set of ward at 15mins.
Buy 3rd set of ward at 30mins.
Buy again at 40mins.

While this timing might not be optimal for various reasons, don't worry about that for now because I simply want people to get used to the habit of buying wards!

And remember what i say here, wards win games. We will talk more about this soon and I have prepared some beautiful pictures for you.

'Do you need chicken/courier or crow/flying courier?'
'Do you need dust/sentry/ward?'
'Do you need this rune?' (ask/ping the rune whenever you see someone in team has a bottle)
'Do you need arcane/mek/pipe this game?'
(Position 5 hard support almost never have the need to get mek/pipe but Position 3/4 are indeed expected to have at least a mek, more details in the Items section)
'Do you need help mid/top/bot lane?'
(do this when you see all/many/couple of opponent hero dots aggregate near one of your towers and ready to tp to help when you see fit)


The 'missing' information from your lane and give a glance to mid lane from time to time. Do you like to get hooked (and dismembered) by that monstrous Pudge? No you don't, so remember to call miss and keep an eye on the map!

Tell your team is your ultimate (common abbreviation: ult/ ulti) ready or in cooldown (common abbreviation: cd):
'25s ult'
'50s ult cd'
'15s ulti rdy'
Many 'supportive' heroes come with amazing ultimate (Lich, Warlock, Tidehunter, Sandking etc come to mind) and it is very critical for the team to know when is your ultimate ready (albeit Dota2 now has an ultimate cooldown indicator under each hero).
In contrast, reminding your team about the key ultimate from opponent team whether in cooldown or not is also very helpful at times (Enigma's Blackhole comes to mind). Same thing applied to calling out the key items from opponent team:

'Pudge gem/dust' (when you have invisible allied hero/es)
'ES/Tide/Enigma dagger' (To avoid getting initiated by surprise and team wiped)
'Bear radiance' etc
whenever a key item is acquired by opponent hero/es.

Write down Roshan timing (abbreviation: Rosh), you can write down the time that the rosh was killed or the next rosh spawn time:
'next rosh 2830'
'1750'
'3840'
Summon team for Arcane/Mek/Pipe! I love the newly added item alert function in Dota2 so much.

Oh and if that was the first time or you are not confident enough on using certain hero, please inform the team. This is a common Dota-etiquette so that people in team won't rely on your hero to make good play and some of them will help out on how to play or build the hero.

That's all the must-know basics when you play support. There isn't a lot here but you would be surprised that most people I have come across in pub don't have a clue about these simple and very doable basics.

Now if you are new to the game then you are sorted to play support in MM games. The guide technically ends here for newcomers or casual players and it is designed this way to keep you interested to get to know more about playing support (and you just did if you read all the way down here! GJ!). Go have fun now! :)

'What's the rest of the guide?', you ask, well, you can come back here anytime after you get used to the above mentioned basics and you can't wait to know more about supporting in DotA/Dota2. I simply hope that newcomers do not get overwhelmed by information at this stage, bare in mind you will need time to digest what you have read and definitely some practice with them in real games.

The rest of the guide will go deeper into the role. I suggest that you should try out all heroes at this stage and at least have a total of 200 games played (and should have about half of those games played as carry heroes) otherwise the below guide would not be much use for you (but definitely have a look at the Dota-etiquette, Items and Heroes sections).

But still, of course you are welcomed to read on if you liked :)

While I absolutely love the good old solo mid Lich, I have no doubt that Lich is the definitive support hero who is best to be used to learn and practice a lot basic mechanics. End game score: 0/0/14 while the whole team had 19kills in total.


'I'll keep an eye out.'[www.dota2wiki.com]

Maphack is technically allowed in DotA/Dota2 because it is purchasable in game - through Wards. The good vision on map from warding can win the game singlehandedly because your team will never get caught off guard, your team can do anything with a plan by knowing the location or movement of enemies on map and most importantly your team will always have the best initiation/ counter-initiation in fight due to you know where exactly are the positions of enemies (if you team could utilize the vision that's it).

Simply put again: Wards win games.

Remember the ward timing I outlined above in the III.i.Basic? Now that you have the basics down you can be ready for the real support duty: Wards buyout should be ALWAYS on cooldown.

Support failed when your team has no clue where is the enemy team about due to poor vision on map (under normal circumstances). That said, keep an extra eye on the warding while you watch some pro games next time, the performance of warding by support from Eastern teams is usually about five times more impressive than Western teams.

Use this gorgeous picture reasonably (or wildly if you could) to help you for warding:

Click picture to magnify



The picture is pretty much self-explanatory so I am not going to talk much about it, you will have to do some trial and error on your own to find out which spots you prefer to use during different phases of a game. Don't blindly copy the ward spots but think about why and when do you ward that spot to provide strategically useful vision (during different phases/situations of a game). Warding is highly dependent to your personal playstyle and it is related to your team playstyle.

Naturally, the location of wards should be close to the river in early game (aka rune wards/lane wards) and slowly moves closer to your or opponent base as the game progresses (aka defensive/offensive wards).

On a side note, the major reason I chose that picture is due to it included the spawn box for Neutral creep camps. Simply put, Neutrals only re/spawn when there is no object within their spawn box, use it wisely for blocking/anti-blocking creep spawn and stacking creep camps (or mass stacking for some heroes in your team that can clear them easily). One common confusion is that ward vision has nothing to with blocking creep spawn, as soon as the ward (i.e. an object) is inside the spawn box and , the Neutral camp will not re/spawn.
You can ward in/near the opponent/your neutral camps to disrupt their jungler hero farming (regardless early or mid game but rarely in late game), whether to provide vision so your team can catch the jungler hero in the jungle or you block the creep spawn completely (to denying income for the jungler). Alternatively, you can also use wards to counter pulling which will be discussed in the next section.

Some of my special tactics:







Note: The circled areas are the approximate ward spots.

All credit goes to Spacebear for providing the gorgeous original map (and thanks to him did a quick update on it after I contacted him <3). I am not going to talk more about neutral/jungling mechanics here, you may find some useful information in this original picture from him:
Link[i.imgur.com]
All the map pictures that I used in this guide will probably not be updated once I finalized this guide (except some rare conditions) but I will update Spacebear's original map whenever he released a new version. Current version is v1.5.

During laning phase, you want to strategically manipulating EXP/Gold distribution in favour of your team in order to win game.

Lane control basically means you keep the creeps at a fairly close distance to your tower (but not within the tower range so your carry is not fighting last hit with the tower) allowing your carry able to farm comfortably and safely while the enemy hero/es would be uncomfortable to get close to the creeps (to farm or getting EXP) because their lane would be a 'long' lane and can be easily ganked by our allied hero/es.

Lane control can be achieved by 1)Creep deny and 2)Creep pulling.

1) You start to hit your own creeps when they are below 50% hp so your creeps die faster i.e. your lane will be constantly 'pushed' to your tower but you don't want to overdo this (otherwise the creeps would get too close to the tower range). This takes some observation and calculation and it is dependent on how the enemies do their laning (spamming spells or auto-attacking is one way to ruin your lane control).

2) Technically you only do a creep pulling when your lane is pushed (to enemy tower) but creep pulling is situational at times and it is related to the fact that this is usually the major EXP/Gold income for Support during laning phase. To stack the creeps, you attack the creeps at around 52s, lead the neutrals away from their spawn box so a new neutral creep camp will spawn on the spot (due to there is no object within the spawn box). Note that you may need to pull slightly earlier if you saw the Satyr family of four.

With the discussed III.i.Basic in mind, you need to decide when should you do a creep pulling - the key is communicating with your laning partner and again it is dependent on your playstyle and previous experience to dealing with different opponent laning (combo), just remember your priority is to ensure your carry farm well and not dying while denying opponent EXP/Gold or getting the extra income from creep pulling is icing on cake but never your objective.

You should always keep in mind that pulling without stacking = bad because the lane will be further pushed away when the next wave arrives (well, UNLESSyou are doing chain pulling or looking for some quick cash and you want to make a push together with next wave or you simply couldn't stack for whatever reason). Last hit the neutrals and deny your creeps when you see fit. When the opponent hero/es decided to come to disrupt your pulling, don't panic and keep a nice distance from them and focusing on last hitting the neutrals - that way they are wasting their time and losing EXP/Gold on lane which further jeopardizing their own economy.

A rather simple, general mindmap for when should you stay on lane or go do a pulling:
Click picture to magnify

*Keep it mind that everything is situational.

A nice tips is that you can drop a ward to provide vision so you know the opponent are coming to you and react according (you may even use it as a chance to net a kill).
Inversely, when you see the opponent is pulling (and if you didn't ward to block their pulling), you can choose to either kill/harass the hell out of the lonely carry or go clear their stack quickly (if the situation allowed). And yes, more gorgeous pictures:

Click picture to magnify

Dire side pulling map.


Radiant side pulling map.

The numbers are the pulling timings from each side, for example:
You attack neutral creeps at around 15th second at dire side and lead them to your creep wave. Since your creep spawns every 30seconds so you can pull them at X:15 or X: 45. You need to attack the creep slightly earlier than the suggested pulling timing when you are a melee or close attack range hero so basically ±1second from the suggested timing depends on the hero attack range.

* marked timings are the tricky ones that requires you to position yourself or even throw a spell to provide the required vision for your creep and/or get hit by the range neutral creeps in order to aggro your creeps to the pulling spots. It works like when you target enemy hero within 500 AoE of creeps will draw aggro.
Note that it is '-2s' at the Radiant Mid lane pulling Large camp, i.e. 2s before the creep started to march (X: 58 or X: 28).
Available Screenshots:
Pulling radiant Radiant Mid lane Small camp.[imgur.com]
Pulling radiant Radiant Mid lane Ancient camp.[imgur.com]

X marked where you need to cut or eat the certain tree/s in order to do the pulling.
Orange dashed line indicating chain pulling is possible from that neutral camp to the other one/s. You will need to time the chain pulling by estimating your allied creeps killing the last neutral creep and 'lead' them to the next neutral camp.

The part is supposed to be included with Lane Controlbut I cut it out for easy reading.

Rune control is the one of the basics of playing on mid (commonly you see solo mid at current metagame) but as a support you can help to control the rune. You should guard it for your mid to come to take it or notify him/her for the rune spawn at top or bottom of the river; if your mid wouldn't take it in time, you may take it or destroy it to prevent the enemies take it. Your mid player will love you for doing this for him/her!

Ganking: Literally, go gank! If you have done your initial lane control very well, your carry would be able to solo the lane without any problem, then it is time, to make gank happens or help out the other lane which at disadvantage. It is literally this simple. Lets talk more about this in the next section.



'Life is worthless to me until my last enemy is dead.'[www.dota2wiki.com]

A small disclaimer to make is that, I am not a progamer and this guide was never intended to be that kind of 'pro guide'. I simply wish that my guide can be useful to some people then I'd be happy enough. Feel free to drop me a comment about whether you like it or not, your support and encouragement would be very much appreciated!

For this part of guide I will fill in whatever I feel like missing from the Basic and Intermediate sections and mostly come from my personal experience (I am highly influenced by my CW year between 07-09 if you wondered). To be frank, this is supposed to be the 'Advance' section of the guide but I avoided that term because in my opinion there is no such thing as 'advanced support'. In a highly coordinated game, good support is about devoting everything wholeheartedly for the team - selflessly doing his/her supporting duties consistently throughout the game while accurately executing the given orders from the team leader.

Always keep in mind that DotA/Dota2 is a game designed for us to have fun - different players have different play styles on different heroes, be creative and try thinking out of the box because this is what makes DotA/Dota2 so much fun to play (with limitless replayability).

Have you ever been in some situation that, the opponent team jumped and slammed everything on a fragile support in a team fight? Sometimes it is even funnier when that support sitting at the back of his/her allies but the opponent team still decided to jump on him/her instead. And the consequences? The opponent team traded their whole team for a (rather useless) support. As a support you wouldn't mind that to happen because trading one for four or five heroes from the opponent team is by all means a GREAT deal but it would be a 'life is tough' situation for you when you keep dying and get no EXP/Gold.

There are two main reasons that caused the said situation:

1) Your level is lower and they thought they can kill you instantly, taking out your support/s instantly is very bad for your team and give edge to the opponent.

2) They hate you. Due to you are the key hero or, they are simply haters or they just hated you because you are irritating, annoying and b i t c h y. Ya, DotA/Dota2 is all about mind games and people take things happened in game quite personally at times, even in pro tier games, like in this video. video

People always take the games personally. If you ever played with your real life mates in a slightly serious manner (say playing some CW etc) you would definitely know that. Same to these 'hard' games in DotA/Dota2, people always take the games personally to certain extent, USE THAT or rather, ABUSE THAT.

In any 'hard' game (where everyone in game knows exactly how to play each of their own heroes proficiently and effectively), you need to be the one who knows how every hero works so that you can do your support job adequately (as above discussed support concept of 'try your best to give what your core heroes in team wish for') and so that you can come to this third section of the guide - your goal as a support is ultimately to be irritating, annoying and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ (to the opponent team).

You force the opponents to play their heroes out of their comfort zones - You go mess with them by knowing what exactly they want for their heroes, go mess with their last hitting habit, go screw up the timing of their key items, you don't easily give whatever the opponents wish for, you make the game very hard for them. And when you start to do that while keeping in mind that 'People always take the games personally.', these opponents will start to make mistakes, it doesn't matter how good they are at playing that hero or how uber good they are at last hitting, when you force the opponents to spend their energy on something that they don't normally dealing with - you are technically ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their brains killing their brain cells and that can only be a good thing for your team.

Simply put, when the opponents need to spend effort to deal with the support hero/es, how much more effort do they need to deal with your core heroes? Not to mention while the opponents wasting their energy on you, your carry player/s should be free farming happily without hassle.

At this stage you need to be very confident and comfortable with playing the support role (covering every aspects that I have mentioned so far in III.i.Basic and III.ii.Intermediate and as I said in the very beginning of this guide, you need to have a lot of experience in playing most if not all heroes at a decent level.

So it is time, to make kills happen. It is time, to alter the rhythm of the game in favour to your team. It is time, to destroy everything that the opponents wanted for their team. You can do all that by being a mere Support.

The part of the guide will literally be a compilation of small tips about mentality/strategic thinking that a support player should keep in mind according to different phases of the game.

Starting items: You need to know exactly what your hero (and your team) needs before the game started, I barely have any items when I leave my base nowadays (as in rarely have 5/6 slots of items) when I play support heroes - I have a plan in mind before I leave my base e.g. do I expect to play aggressive HP trading and chances for me to back to base for healing because opponent laning combo would be hard to deal with, should I get tango or 2 healing pots etc.

Feed your carry/hardlane hero a regen item or ward when needed. The mindset here is that better spend those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gold to prevent early problems. Feeding from your team = hard game = more hard work to do for a support.

Know the strength of your hero and expect what hero will you lane against and buy your regen items according to your plan. Remember that you buy regen items because you are planning to use them, please find a way to spend (abuse) them.

Laning is about doing (dirty) business: Trade and spend your tango/healing pot wisely, keep an eye on the enemies' inventories to calculate how much can you trade with them, for example 2 pots should always come out ahead of 1 pot. Find a way to force them to use regen items and then go trade HP (fiercely) - either you kill them or you will announce that you own the lane from now on (because they will need to play passively with low on HP or without any regen item). Sometimes you need to be patient when you saw opponents have crazy laning combo, play defensively and prepare well for them to overextend or overaggressive so you can find a chance to kill them when they made that mistake.

Remember you are the disposable support so you are 'worthless' and you can die 100times for all you care as soon as you bring down enemy hero/es with you whenever you die and your carry doesn't die, farms well and gets fat. I love to do insane trading on hopeless lane (aka enemy laning combo is impossible to lane against) because the farm of you/your laning partner is ruined anyway, if you/your carry didn't make lane switch or getting effective ganking from ally, your lane will be screwed forever and the farmed enemies will snowball even bigger in game later and it can be a fairly game over if you didn't have any backup plan or real good reason to give up the lane like that.

Obviously you don't suicide or something like that - you either wait patiently or force mistake out of the enemies, remember these players are not god tier pro players, they will make mistakes, big or small mistakes, USE THEM, ABUSE THEM at the right timing. Remember you are a ♥♥♥♥♥(y support) and you use people like animals.

Alternatively, you can choose to make early ganking if you knew there is absolutely nothing you can do for your hopeless lane, I'd tell my laning partner to play very passive just for the experience gain and don't die. It is only a temporary measurement and hope your sacrificing of level and farm will be worth it (and if your ganking worked then it would great). It is still worth a shot if your ganking failed in this case because you help to 'balance' the situation by giving your laning partner some level advantage (as soon as he is not dying then is all good) and your pressure on opponent lane/s will help your team one way or another. And when you are ganking whether your team mate/s like you to share (read as: steal) some of their EXP on lane or not is highly dependent on your team mate/s and your own decision.

On a related note, capable to play the hero with undergeared and underleveled is probably the hallmark skillset of a good support player. As often as you see some support in some really rough games, being able to keep his support job up consistently throughout the game and function in team fight are together a very difficult task.

In short, watching enemy hero/es farming or getting EXP freely on lane is ensuring a (very) hard game ahead. Conversely, if you successful secured the farming of your laning partner (and yourself), your game will be so much easier later. So for early game, go make lane domination by any means necessary[www.fileden.com], go help your team (usually your mid hero) to secure the rhythm of the game on your side, go make space for your carry to farm - and then you win game.



'You only live...ice...'[www.dota2wiki.com]

Generally speaking:
1)If your team fell behind, most of your team should stick 24/7 and try to make kills on their lonely hero either on lane or forest to slowly gain back leverage. Avoid team fight if you knew your team couldn't win (usually you have a hardcarry and lack of team fight hero) or force team fight madly (when you lack of endgame hero and have stronger team fight heroes) - this is highly dependent on opponent heroes line up. Or you can do a smoke gank or ninja Rosh (more details in the Item section for Smoke). DO something, anything to can give your team a chance to come back. If you just sit there and wait for the loss and you will lose.

2)All carry players are greedy bastards, they want gold and exp, ALOT OF EXP AND GOLD. Well you should know better because you should be just like that when you play carry heroes. After your carry got his/her basic items and levels, you can leave him/her alone and go help out your team. Just make sure you dropped enough vision wards to ensure your carry comfortably farming on his lane/jungle. This is why I said earlier that you need to have enough experience to play carry heroes (at a decent level) so you can support a carry player with the necessary map awareness/game sense. On a side note, GOOD hardcarry player always bring a TP with him so he can come help out in team fight (you can even remind him/buy him one if he was a real sick bastard).

The bottom line is, be useful. Be very useful. Ward/dust/smoke etc for getting more kills and do some quick farm when you see a free lane (the timing of when to farm or when not to farm is affected by the mindset of different roles, please don't farm like you are playing a carry). Generally speaking the only chances that you show up on lane to farm is when you defending the tower or your team wants to push that lane (so you can clear 1-3 waves of creep before they meet up with you).

Poor support is very bad for your team, you want to have adequate gears and levels to be able to support your team. As I said above that undergeared and underleveled are often expected on most support heroes so you will need to find a balance between buying your core items and support items for the team. That is probably one of the biggest reasons makes the support role so hard to play because you really need a lot of experience to dealing with different situations and deep understanding of the game in almost every aspects AND THEN you get to play the game with handicap (underleveled and underfarmed). A kind reminder here would be 'Playing support is against human nature.'.
(I laugh so hard when I am writing this not only because I have experienced that too often but also the fact that I still have alot to learn to manage my economy as certain support heroes in some tough games.)

Your major income should always come from laning phase, assist gold and tower kill gold so feel free to whine abit when you needed some gold (e.g. 'Can we please take that tower, I need GOLD!'). And ya, you will need to kill that tower denier from enemy team at least 10 times by your hands to avenge your gold loss.

BUT PLEASE, don't ever say something like 'oh i need to farm X item so I won't die 15times' and hinder the purchase of ward/sentry/dust for your team - 'Dude, you are still gonna die 14.5times even if you got that Ghost scepter.'

The whole point of buying any item besides basic items as a support is to extend your survibility for 5-10seconds so you can be more helpful in a team fight. Tough life? That's exactly the life of a support.

Sometimes you want to get some mobility item or your team needs you to get some item but even your team needed that Mek/Pipe so badly (see Items section below, I will mention that Mek/Pipe is not really a Position 5's item), you still shouldn't be missing from team fight just because you needed to farm. What is the point of getting that Mek/Pipe when you have no team to win the game? Don't pick a support hero when you are aiming to get 800gpm in game so you can be totally useless after 30mins. This is like the basic among all the basics of playing DotA, you can't play a support like you played a carry and vice versa.

You are a support. Metaphorically, you ARE the supporting actor in a movie, you are not the main character, not even close. But we all know there is no good movies without good supporting actors/actresses.
When you are ahead you can choose to go for items that you think they could help your team or improve your survibility or personally I highly recommend you to invest more wards/sentry to further ensure the advantage for your team (e.g. Full map vision throughout the game would make the game 'very comfortable' to your team but your team will need to utilize that vision to make it worthwhile).

You will even have the luxury to go for a Pipe or BKB or even Heart as a Position 5 when you team had massive advantage but please, please, please, when your team is losing, don't fight for the already very limited resources just because you want your Forcestaff etc. Go get more ward/sentry/smoke because every 200 extra gold sitting in your bank is technically helping the enemy to kill your team. The reason here being you will not get any income to make any extra item (and at that stage an extra Bracer is really not going to make any difference) so instead of having 600-800 gold sitting in your bank for 10-15mins (doing nothing), please spend that gold for ward/sentry that can be useful for your carry to farm safely or better vision during team fight (be it better positioning or killing that invisible enemy hero).



'Free farming!!!'[www.dota2wiki.com]

Late game? What late game? There is no late game for support!

Generally speaking, the usefulness of most support heroes gradually declines when the game progresses. Say, for example when i play that Gandalf hero[www.dota2wiki.com], I still believe that me leaving the game at 30mins is a legit strategy if your team has not won the game already (my income will become theirs which is a good deal).

If you truly wanted to know what can you do in late game, ask your team about who needs to die first in the opponent team then you'd know what to do - kamikaze with the said opponent hero in team fight. No, I did not just suggest that you should pick Techies[www.playdota.com] and play him as a support.

On a slightly serious note, you just do your basic jobs as a support should do, providing vision etc as mentioned in the III.ii.Intermediate[/green] section but beware your support service will be slightly different from Early/Mid game. Notably, warding near Rosh pit and defensive/offensive wards inside/near your base or enemy base are the most useful ones. While team fight in late game is incredibly critical in deciding the outcome of the game (one team wipe can lead to one team says: 'GG'), you can even drop a vision ward and/or a sentry wherever a team fight occurs (it literally can change the outcome of a team fight).

The truth is that support heroes often barely matter in Late game, what can you can do with a hero with magic wand+bracer+boots+wards+sentry+TP that just dies to 3 hits from enemy late game hero? That's why as a support you want your team to be successful in early, you give your best for the team in early to mid game because everything snowballs from there - ensuring early advantage = most certainly easy late game. You should know better if you didn't play well for the first 20mins then you are probably going to have one hell of a game for the next 20mins (in a bad way). Do you want a hard game? Please play very (very) smartly in early/mid game.

And one more thing on playing support in late game is probably DIE WISELY for your team, remember what I said in the very beginning of this section? Trading one for four or five of the opponent team = best trade ever. Simply surviving as long as you can in team fight because it would be critically useful for your team if you could distract the opponent carry to waste a split second to kill or chase you.

I should mention that game sense, experience and the understanding of all heroes in a game are critical here again, you play your hero according to your team line up and enemy line up, you setup up a goal to achieve from the start of every game and estimate how much you have achieved throughout the game til late game. Incapable to locking down that free farm Naix in jungle for 30mins or doing nothing to the 10mins Battlefury AM - there is no one to blame for such losses except your team as a whole and you are a part of your team.

Too bad I have to say that there is certain limitation of a support can do for a team, you are not supposed to be the one carries the game (that's the job of carry) or lead the rhythm of the game (that's the job of solo and maybe Position 2-3) so don't feel bad about a loss that you have done everything you could (but remember that we always have rooms for improvement).

Please see more in the below Items and Heroes sections.



'Blink dagger'[www.dota2wiki.com]

GPM doesn't count in gold loss (aka death), it is gold earned per minute. It is very easy to tell if you have done a good support job or not:

1.Common sense, you want low death count and high assist count.
2.Your gpm should be (as expected) at Position 4 or 5;
if it wasn't (and you were the support and definitely not playing Position 1-3), then it could that mean you did a brilliant job in squeezing in some nice farming time despite you are the support or it could be you are stealing farm unnecessary from your team;
if it was, then have a look at how many times you die (i.e. you boost opponent's gpm) and compare to the gpm of the others, there is a huge difference between 260gpm with 4/2/9 and 360gpm 5/12/11.

Saying 'gj' 'well done' 'you are good player' to your team mates can make some positive effects on your team.

Commend and sincerely praise the good players in team. 'Thanks for carrying us hardcore' is not hard to type especially when it is true. And yes, I love to hear 'pro warder' ~_~ when the ward that I risked my life to ward it made a huge impact on the team fight.

Never ever ever ever piss on your support players. You may advice him how to play better but NEVER ever blame or flame him. Remember 'Playing support is against human nature.'? Try to play support for once in a while, and ask yourself honestly how do you like it when people did that to you.

Be nice and be forgiving. When you are playing a game, please keep in mind that you are a part of a team together - Win or lose, 5 of you are a team in a game for about 30mins to 1hour, why not let's make the best out of it?

The thing is you should always keep in mind that your opponents are not uber chinese pro players - they made mistakes, they make mistakes and they will make mistakes, just like you. There is always a chance to come back. Always. Albeit that chance can be 0.1%, there is still hope in any circumstances, please fight till the end as a team.

And I remember that bastard Riki keep trying to kill the leader of our team.
Too bad ally chat doesn't record in replay.


'You shall not pass!'[www.dota2wiki.com]

As compact and concise as I want my guide to be (so far), the title of this section is self-explanatory, I will talk about my favourite support items!

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Almost always buy courier at start but timing to buy flying courier is situational and not always necessary for you to get it.

For most support heroes, 1 salve = HP recovered from 1 trip back to base.
1 Tango + 1 Salve = Common startup
2 Salves = You expect high HP trading will happen.
1 Tango + 2 Salves = You expect high aggression from either side. You will trade HP like mad.

You don't need clarity potion most of the time because 1 GG branch at 53g is often more useful (depends on the hero) and can be used to make magic wand later.
1 Clarity/ 1 GG branch = when you feel like it. You usually get maximum of 3 GG branches anyway.
2 Clarity = You are going spam spells
2+ Clarity = You are going to do early roaming. The extra Clarity potion sometimes can be used on ally.

Generally you buy GG branch or clarity potion after you spent your gold on critical Lvl1 items.



Gauntlets for your maximum HP boost and Mantle for Mana pool boost.

There is no reason to get RoR or RoP first except you are planning to upgrade them to certain Lvl2/3 items.

Magic stick for extreme (early) spammer on lane. Rare but viable.

Boots first is extremely rare but can be a viable choice for slow MS (Movement Speed) heroes or against slow induced opponent/s or you planning to outrun opponent/s at the start of the game for various reasons. Technically you don't ever have a passive reason to get boots, is just that everyone will get boots sooner or later, you don't want to put yourself at a huge MS disadvantage.

Stout shield is rare but can be used by melee semi-support/support (especially on hardlane) such as BeastMaster, Tidehunter, Treant, Undying, Sandking etc.





Gauntlets can be upgraded into Bracer and Mantle into Null Talisman which give you some stats boost, the former focusing more on maximum HP boost while the latter for Mana pool boost. Note that you technically never need to make gauntlet/mantle+circlet into Bracer/Talisman unless you needed that extra slot.

Gauntlets can also be made into Urn, for support who prepares to spend alot of time running around the map with ganking line up, such as VS. Try to avoid multiple purchases of urn in team if possible.

RoR can be upgraded into
Headdress (commonly upgraded into Mekansm or Pipe) or
Soulring (a great item used by spell spammer who usually is a little bit beefy such as Orge, ES, Undying etc).

RoP can be upgraded into RoB (used by pusher hero or can be upgraded into Vlarmir) or Tranquil Boots (basically a reusable Healing pot with cooldown and a nice movement boost, suitable for fragile heroes without mana demanding spells).

Magic wand is a natural upgrade from Magic stick and clear up your GG branches in inventory.

Bottle is a nice option for a support who take mid or often place him/herself at danger of life so he/she needs to go back base frequently for healing. It is a good option for VS.

I am actually not sure where to put Medallion in this guide so I put it here instead (you usually see it on semi/carry heroes). It can be a situational supportive item to compliment your team that go for early aggression/ganking orientated strategy. Medallion and Urn are always good to have one in team.

The timing for these basic items are highly dependent to your playstyle and the rhythm of the game. Obviously the earlier you get what you want is better and for general reference by 15mins you should have gotten at least 2 Lvl1/2/3 items. For example, Boots+bracer+magicwand+wards+TP at 15mins looks fine.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


There is almost no reason to get PT on support heroes nowadays except you really feel like that extra 8Str or 8Int can really help your hero in your game. Oh, and that 30+ attack speed.

Arcane boots is good for any support hero to maintain his/her mana pool and a great little help to your allied heroes. Get it especially when you have stunner/s in team.

Tranquil Boots (basically a reusable Healing pot with cooldown and a nice movement boost, suitable for fragile heroes without mana demanding spells). Get it especially when your team doesn't lack of mana supply (already have 1/2 arcane boots).

Phase Boots for support playstyle which willing to cut down on HP/Mana regeneration (giving up Arcane boots or Tranq Boots) but emphasizing on mobility.

BoT is for posh support that I only dare to dream about it because I'd rather save that gold for buyback.

Wards win games. Wards buyout should be ALWAYS on cooldown. BUY THEM, MH IS GOOD!
Use the wards wisely but not with a waster attitude i.e. Having 2 wards sitting in your inventory is simply a waste (unless there is really no reason to use one on map at that moment) but having 1 ward sitting in your inventory is fine. Remember whenever you dropped 1 ward you need to utilize that vision for the next 6mins to make it worthwhile, otherwise just save the ward for later.


If your support did some decent job in your game please reward him with a gem. You don't even need to give him/her the gem, just hold one in hand and he/she will love you. And please, anyone can get buy dust/sentry when some pub abuser picked invi heroes to screw with you - they are expecting no detection from pub game, surprise them with constant detection since 1min and make them regret that they picked invi heroes. Gem is the ultimate support item while probably being the most cost-effective one, 700g to counter all invisible heroes/wards/sentry once and for all.

1 Dust is 180g or 1 sentry is 200g (and you get to use them twice), and 1 kill is 200g+. They ARE very cost efficient items considering that they can completely nullify the invisible ability of some heroes (e.g. Riki) at such a low cost (albeit restricted for a time limit or by AoE and dust has a usage cool down). While you can also start your Ward Wars against the opponent support if you found some opponent visions annoying or it would bring harm to your team at critical moments (e.g. it is a good habit to clear opponent vision near the Rosh pit so your team can prevent them to see what's going at that area at least for a brief moment).

Smoking is good in DotA universe. The birth of Smoke in DotA is actually right around the era when the game became competitive, and you might have guessed that why this item was created in the first place - it is a direct counter to ward vision and thus the most common use of it is to bypass vision to make ganks or do a sneaky Rosh. Another common use of it would be setting up a trap for counter-ganking, i.e. smoking up 4 of your heroes guarding or hiding behind a hero who acts as a 'bait' to lure the enemies to come for the lonely 'bait' and then you activate your trap card.

Use smoke whenever you feel like your team at disadvantage thus you want to make something happen to fight for a comeback (e.g. a successful smoked gank on the opponent carry may turn the tide of the game) or when you feel like your team is ahead and you want to get further ahead (e.g. do a sneaky Rosh or send a small squad to smoke gank their carry who is struggling to farm back their leverage). In highly competitive games you can even see some heroes get Smoke at the start to allow early ganking (e.g. Enchantress).

Alternatively, you can use smoke to play some mind games (such as faking your team going to Rosh i.e. the team walks in the Rosh pit under opponent vision and then you smoke up and come back out), using the smoke to dodge most projectile spells and some ultimates (it works like Leap ability except you need to keep yourself away from enemy hero or tower for 1025 AoE; e.g. projectile stuns/toss's shuriken, Sniper or Zeus's ultimate etc) or using smoke as a soft detection for invisible heroes (quickly pop a dust or sentry when your smoke expired before its full duration). Be creative and make plays.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


Even after the nerf from 6.75 Janngo/Drum is still the best all-rounder supportive item. It is so good and because it combines Bracer+Robe of Magi which give you a nice str and int gain and it has 4 charges of giving you extra boost on AS and MS (on top of the already very nice basic aura that comes with it).
This is the (only) item that you can get 5 of them on each of your heroes in team. I don't recommend buying the recipe to renew the charges because you can make better use of that 750g somewhere.

Note that I use 'supportive item' in the title, Mek and Pipe are technically not a Position 5's item (under normal circumstances) but definitely commonly seen on Position 3 and 4 which are pretty supportive to the team (and you can make both of them from Headdress anyway).

If you got a Mek before 10mins and able to use it effectively since then, the game is won. This is not even an argument but a simple fact. You don't need to save up and activate it only when you need that the small amount of healing, the armor boost comes with it is very good in helping for pushing etc.

You need a Pipe when opponent has strong AOE damage, notably SandKing, QoP, Tidehunter etc. There is nothing here to discuss.

Special mention is that I have seen some supports missing from critical team fight/stealing resources because they want to complete their Mek/Pipe for the team. Dude, what is the point of getting that Mek/Pipe when you have no team to win the game?

Dagger generally is necessary for some initiation heroes (and for flashy play of course) and forcestaff is self-explanatory (still a very good item after the nerf from 6.75). Either of them can give you a nice escape mechanism, you can even go for both of them on some heroes - together not only they can make any hero so much fun to play and the given extreme mobility is so good.

Eul is a nice semi-disable item and you can definitely get it for its +30 MS.

I am not sure where to squeeze in Lothar/Shadow Blade so here it is. It is an escape mechanism and may come in handy for some hero to use his/her channeling ultimate because activating it doesn't cancel channeling. I do not recommend this item because with 3k+ gold you are close to many other useful items and believe it or not it can be easily to be countered by a 180g dust (but here you go this item became quite cost-efficient after the slight buff in 6.76v).

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────





+

All of these are luxury items. You only get them AFTER you have fully done your support job beautifully, remember you are not going to win games by rushing these items (under normal circumstances) -

'Fat supports = scary supports, under the condition that your allied core heroes are fat in the first place.'

Necrobook is my first choice of item to get as a Position 5, it is very affordable and it is a very nice (pushing) item for your team and to boost your Str+Int and allow you to have the permanent vision on invisible heroes (from Lvl3 Necrobook). Not to mention it can deal huge damage to someone who killed the melee necromancer. Notably the 1250g recipe is the perfect price for a Position 5 - you don't want to banking too much gold and 1000-1500g is probably the 'healthiest' amount of gold that you can have throughout a 45mins game.

Hex, Halberd, Orchid and Atos are all high class single target disable item and they are EXPENSIVE. Expensive stuffs seem to be good though and most certainly you can't afford to get them until late game. I personally prefer Halberd among them, you can get it earlier than the rest of them and it is a good item for opponent melee carry that makes you headache. Obviously I wouldn't mind go straight to Hex if I could. 2700g Mystic staff always seems to be very far from me when I was playing as a support, the 2150g of sange plus 1600g of talisman are much more affordable.
And then followed by Orchid and then maybe.... Atos.

Scepter, Shiva, Refresh are self-explanatory. Scepter can actually be a core item for some supportive heroes like Rhasta and Enchantress.

Special mention that you can also get Vladmir (damage aura+melee lifesteal) or Veil (amplify magic damage) only when you think that they are worthy for your team.


Is there anything to ASSIST a kill better than Dagon?! Who needs HP/Survibility when you can kill the enemies before they can kill you?? That said, I am not responsible for the games you are gonna throw away if you rushed Dagon 5. What I can say is that the effectiveness of different level of Dagons scale with different timing windows in a game. I love ZAP. Get Eblade for more zappiness.

Come to think of it, Dagon is probably the best way to make yourself to be irritating, annoying, ♥♥♥♥♥♥^^. Who likes to get zapped all day? ZAPPPPPP


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────






Again, all of these are luxury items. You only get them AFTER you have fully done your support job beautifully, remember you are not going to win games by rushing these items (under normal circumstances) -

'Fat supports = scary supports, under the condition that your allied core heroes are fat in the first place.'

I still facepalm to this day whenever I think of that CM who rushed Linken without any warding throughout the game. Ya, get a 5000g item and proceed to get killed in 3hits please. One ward is more valuable than that 5000g purchase.

Bloodstone is a good item mainly because you can build it from Arcane boots and you can get its affordable component slowly throughout the game so it is by all means not a bad item to go for (under the condition that you are doing all your support job nicely).

Ghost scepter is an amazing against enemy crazy dps dealer/s and it is (very) cheap. BKB and Heart are self-explanatory. Situational (and posh) but viable. Notably BKB is highly viable on some heroes like Leshrac.

Blademail is very situational, you only get it against high burst damage (or very very high dps burst) because the purpose to hurt the damage dealer a tonne before you die. Manta gives you some nice MS speed and stats boost but the only reason you get it is to dispel some single targeted spell.

Have you seen WD or Tidehunter with Armlet? Well it is still stupidly better and more cost effective than Linken I guess.

There is no reason ever to get Linken (a BKB is about 100times better than Linken on any support heroes) mainly due to that one slot better gives it to ward. I still wouldn't get Linken as my 6th slot item because I'd rather have this:


TP best defensive item, hands down. Use it wisely and it can save your life for such a low cost. You have access to this 135g item since the start and IT IS THE BEST DEFENSIVE ITEM. Well, it is the best item in game after all.

And ya, I hate Position 5 buying Linken so much to the point that I'd ask my team mate to buy me a TP so I can have 2 slots used up for TPs.

1.Spend minimal gold on passable warding service
2.Save gold and sell all items to get Divine Rapier
3.In/directly feed your carry the item
4.GG NO RE

I have done couple of time this build back before the change of Divine mechanic: Farm Divine-> Suicide at Roshan-> Carry pick it up but it doesn't work like that after the change of Divine mechanics.

I suppose you can still do it in current version, just make sure your carry can get the divine back from enemy. BEWARE, only the manliest support should use this build, so don't attempt this build lightly. You may or may not get flamed/grieved by your team and end up in low priority for your next game.

Some people may ask 'Why wouldn't I just kill everything with my divine rather than feeding it to my carry?!'. Well, people, if you did that you would be the carry of your team and make your carry looks bad since you might ended up more kills than him. Hmmm.......

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────



'Warriors of the night, assemble!!! RAWR'[www.fileden.com]





'You are all nice people with good lives.' [www.dota2wiki.com]

Generally speaking any hero that can be played on Position 3-5 are supportive heroes but depends on different line up and item builds on the heroes, you may find that sometimes any hero can be support or some support heroes are not that 'supportive' at all! There are limitless ways to play all these heroes and here I will throw in my brief insight regarding their supportive roles, this will be my own ranking for supportive heroes from my understanding to the game.

I will try to use only 5 heroes for each of category below but always keep in mind that anything can work in DotA/Dota2, be it at a competitive level or lower tier pub games, there is always a way to make something works in DotA/Dota2 - If you could pull it off that's it. And before we get into the main rankings, I will recommend 4 supportive heroes especially for beginners:

Lich is hands down, the best 'learner' hero. You can learn about mana management, how denying creep affects the enemy hero and how important to position yourself in a team fight to pull off your ultimate - all by using this hero.

Tidehunter and SK are very useful throughout the game and relatively easy to fit in any line up and doesn't require much farm or level to function but still can make huge impact in team fight.

Jakiro is here due to his recent buff in 6.76, his ice path is very easy to pull off now (compared to pre-patch).

So here you go 2 range and 2 melee supportive heroes for newcomers! They have relatively simple skills/spells allowing anyone to make sense of them in one game. Keep in mind that I don't mean these heroes are extremely simple to the point that you can play them blindfolded, every hero is unique in DotA and there is an incredibly amount of depth to every one of these heroes.
[/spoiler]


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Discussion:
These are my Top 5 Best supportive heroes, they are my 'when in doubt go for one of them because they are the best supportive heroes'. Technically I only used 4 for the list because nothing can take away TC's 5th place. I will always reserve one spot for him, always. Always.

As you can see all of the above mentioned supportive heroes have something to do with their key ultimates and usually their amazing CC abilities (crown control). 'If he could pull his ♥♥♥♥ off then it would be a HUGE help for the team but he can go die for the team after that') - that's the life of a support, you die for the team but your team wins game.

Details will be discussed in their related sections below.

The most valuable point of support heroes is arguably their laning ability. The mentioned heroes are the heroes that I do not want to face them if they were played by good players. I'd rather go jungling or roaming than staying on my lane if I saw them. They are sickeningly good on laning in the right hands.

CM is hands down the best laning hero. And she is designed to be the Queen of laning - if it wasn't because her weak presence outside of laning phase, she would be in my Top 5 for sure. But that's the part of balancing in DotA, she is the hero with extremely strong laning abilities but other than that she is pretty weak. Pick her when you have many core heroes in team that most of them can't guarantee to come online in Early-Mid game, you want to ensure you have a stable lane for your laning partner and by using your aura you are helping the rest of the lanes. Yes, her aura was made global to enhance her laning power to affect her entire team, more mana = more power for your team mates to dominate their lanes (obviously everything is dependent on your allied/opponent line up).

And you know who is the hardest support to master in DotA (imo)? CM. One mistake and you are dead. And the next thing you know you are feeding the opponent team. However, a good CM is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Lich and Lion are common sense while Veno and Undy are strong in the sense of being flexible, they can do aggressive laning or being able to maintain their lane with lane control ability (namely their anti-push ability). I could have used Ezalor in the place of Undy but then Eza is a double edge to your team (and can do nothing when the enemies man up and dive him) while mark my words here: 'there is no solution to Undy'.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Disruptor, Enig, Tide, Puck and Treant are the definitive Team Fight CC heroes because they get picked for their CC abilities, what they do is literally providing their amazing CC abilities in team fight (and usually come with some small damage) while the team line up should involve some damage output dealers to achieve some sort of combos to wipe out the enemies.

Disruptor is my No.1 CC hero, one nice combo of his spells he can singledhandedly take away around 50% HP of the entire opponent team in 5seconds. While he is also being a very flexible hero to play with: if you chose to go for Thunder Strike you get a very strong laning ability and if you chose Glimpse then you can be a big help in ganking from very early phase (it is probably the most broken spell in the game). If you gave him some level advantage he can wipe any team fight happened in early game (to late game) by fighting 2v4 or 3v5 or even 2v5. That said, he is a very high skill ceiling hero that requires not only perfect positioning but also insane game sense - you need be a very ballsy opportunist to play this hero and not only that, your team will need to be very ballsy opportunists too due to you can't really initiate with this hero, you always need to wait for a good timing to work your magic. After all, he is the manly Trall, the warchief of the orcish Horde.

No team fight when you know the ult of Tide or Enig in the opponent team is up. Just no.

Puck is probably the best hero to show off your flashy big plays (he is rarely played on Position 4/5 though) and just like Treant they provide moderate team fight CC and can be very devastating at times with certain line up or combos.

WD and ES are unique in this category because they are the high risk high award supportive heroes. I used the word 'supportive' here because they can kill everything when given the perfect timing and positioning during a team fight. WD is more of a small team fight (against 2-4 heroes) CC hero because we all have been there getting permanently stunned by that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick Paralyzing Cask and then the next thing you know even when you successful run back to fountain but still killed by that Maledict....

While ES is a renown initiator (there will be an Initiator sector below) while at the same time he is arguably the best Counter-initiation hero (along with WD which is also a very good counter-initiation hero). Their valuable roles in a team is to force the opponent team to think twice on positioning and putting mental stress on enemies when they are planning to initiate a team fight, much like Tide or Enig (enemies are uncomfortable to group up to blast their spells away) but the difference is that your team will get team wiped when your team made a positioning mistake against ES or WD.

Jakiro and SK are more or less the same but the difference is that they are technically low risk high reward (making them among the Top5) and they are very useful in every phase of the game, they will be covered more in the AoE Monsters section below.

DS's Vacuum+ Wall of Replica, Undy's Tombstone, Veno's Nova, AA's Ice blast are all overwhelming spells that can make huge impact in a team fight (given that the spells were pulled off nicely). Rubick is here because he is like the ultimate counter opponent's CC hero, the stronger the opponent line up the stronger he will be - we all have seen those stolen spells that turned the tide around: stolen Blackhole and RAVAGE? Oh yeah!!!


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Bane is hands down the ultimate single target CC hero because he can disable at least 3 heroes at the same time if done right (4 when you have the level advantage, that one brainsap = killing/forcing a low hp pool support to run away). Too bad he has non-existence AoE (Area of Effect) spells which making he the 'extreme' single target hero (that has no place in current metagame) so we barely see him in competitive scene nowadays.

Rhasta and Lion are self-explanatory (what worthy mention is that both have strong team fight presence while Rhasta is more about pushing power and Lion's Impale can be a huge in team fight). SD is huge on setting up kill on single target. Three of them are capable to do solo mid (they will be covered in The Solo Laner/Anti-carry/Hardlaner section again) while it almost come down to personally preference to use which one of them as a support. Orge believe it or not he is the best single target disabler/nuker of all heroes because MULTICAST best spell (and mark my words here again: 'Bloodlust is insanely overpowered')!

Bat and BM are the Anti-carry heroes in DotA 101.

These heroes can bring alot to the team if they got level advantage/farm in early game so it is not too rare to see these supportive heroes go solo lane.

Rhasta, Rubick, Lion, SD are renown mid heroes that can lead the rhythm and can work well in certain line ups. What worthy mention is that Rhasta is a hero who needs his basic farm to function otherwise he would be a burden to his team (a somewhat supportive carry hero). Zeus is more about strengthening the rhythm of the game in favour of your team, i.e. he always follows behind the team to help out by using his incredible nukes, he is probably the most powerful 'supportive' hero that can shine thoughout every phase of the game hero (his Static Field makes him a viable 'late game' support) and he barely need much farm to function well in team fight, another highly underrated hero because of his fragility and lack of mobility.

Bane as mentioned above in Single Target CC hero section. Bat And BM are the definitive Anti-Carry heroes. BM is more of a anti range carry while Bat is for anti melee carry but both of them can lock down a single target hero none the less (basically serve the function of locking down one key hero from opponent team and notably their ultis can go through BKB).

Windlady is a one of the most common hardlaners, she can gear up to be a semi-carry but then I really hate to see a WR going into late game and thinks that she can actually carry the team. Tide/SK/Treant/Undy are hardlaners that becoming common since recent years. They are not too bad at their hardlaner jobs too.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

These are the All-rounder heroes that can be fit into any line up (generally speaking) and they can be played on any Position from 1-5.

Rubick, Windlady and SK (being the only melee in this section) were all mentioned above.

Lina is an amazing hero with alot flexibility of her position and thanks her third spell she has slightly better mobility than that almost-mirrored hero of hers - Lion (which is.huge, you don't often see supportive heroes come with mobility boost spell).

Necro is like a supportive carry hero (together with Pugna and DP, the Supportive Carry heroes). I won't talk much about these 'carry' supports because this is a 'how to play support' guide. When necro is given certain amount of farming his existence is devastating to the enemies. He is a hero that can have a very strong team fight presence throughout the game (again, given that he get the farm he needed) and it is highly dependent to what position he is played on. More over, his timing of laning/farming period is very restricted thus making him a hero very hard to play. To be frank, it is very rare to see a decent Necro nowadays.

DP, she can basically do everything but again she requires some farm to function well so she couldn't even get in my top Team Fight CC section but when it comes to All-rounder heroes she is definitely in the top list. A spell spammer that comes with an AoE silence and extremely powerful pushing/team fight spell.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

There is really nothing to discuss here. AoE monsters are monsters who can ditch out huge AoE damage, their roles are especially critical during team fight.

WL and Veno being on the '2nd tier' because they are unique in: Fatal bond is incredibly powerful and with Upheavel+Inferno he is technically an alternate (albeit weaker) version of Enig; Veno being here because he doesn't have burst AoE but DoT especially from his ulti.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

These are all the supportive pusher heroes that if you put 5 of them on one lane they are capable to push to T3 tower in a few minutes.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The rather defensive healers: Chen, Dazzle and Omni. They get picked for their healing abilities.
The rather offensive hearlers: Necro, Ench, WD and WL. They get picked probably not because of their healing abilities.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

These are all the Initiator heroes that can initiate or counter-initiate for your team especially during team fight, meaning that they all usually required a team to back them up/finish off the enemies after they initiated/counter-initiated. Their roles are very critical during team fight but the sad thing is that nobody gives a damn to them once they have done their jobs (Tide comes to mind).

SK, Tide, ES, VS and Clock are all 'suicidal' initiators that usually die first in a team fight (regardless before or after they pulled off their jobs). WL is unique in a way that he is a very decent hero for counter-initiation.

Enig, Rhasta, Lion, Puck and Treant provide team fight CC abilies that commonly used for initiating a fight.

If you survived the team fight after blinking in ulti and do your other magics (ES comes to mind), please give yourself a pat at the back. Because that's the hallmark achievement of being a good initiator/support player. It is very easy to tell if your team mates were any good - only the one whos noticed your 'achievement'.

The role of being a roamer is not longer that distinct in the newer maps but here are the traditional ones. Among them I personally dislike Sven as a support/roamer hero because to me he is like a physical burst damage dealer (and many western/eastern teams have indeed used him as a hard carry in big tourneys post-TI2).


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The distinct features of supportive heroes are including team support ability (such as Healing spell) and doesn't require much farm or items to be useful in team fight. Now look at Jugger - he comes with a Healing ability (an incredibly broken one, 5% max hp regen per second at Lvl3!! As a reference an item costed you 5500gold - Heart merely gives you a 2% of max hp regen per second) while his Blades and Omnislash are useful nukes in team fights so he can potentially to be played on position 3-5 without much difficulty.

'If Invisible carry = imba then invisible support = ?'. More over, Riki comes with a moderate AoE silence that lasts for 6 seconds. You will always be able to deliver your surprise Mek to turn the tide of battle and you are a great finisher to finish off the enemies with low hp (while keep in mind that KSing is not good on a supportive hero).

NA hardcounters opponent INT heroes, he comes with a stun just like Lion's Impale and his ulti can quickly burst down an enemy hero before or during a team fight. Also, reworked carapace is too good in team fight.

This hero is famous in having 12 item slots. Imagine that he has 12 slots of supportive items - he would be a like a walking clinic named SYLLABEAR.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────



'Not enough mana.' [www.dota2wiki.com]

I am not a progamer and this guide was never intended to be that kind of 'pro guide'. I simply wish that my guide can be useful to some/many people then I'd be happy enough.

After all, I write this guide because I love Dota/DotA2 so much (while we are at it, please VALVe improve Slardar model please!!!) and I have been playing for so many years the DotA maps from Icefrog technically for free - I do this simply as a paying back to the people who worked very hard for making this game and many many people that I have come across who taught me or gave me alot of advice on many different things or the people who produced amazing guides that I have read and learned from them (and all these good players that I have come across giving me good games), you all are the reasons that make me enjoy the game for all these years. Thank you all again for you all good people.

Special thanks to VALVe/Icefrog who gave me the access to Dota2 for about 1 year time now (since late 2011). I have enjoyed every moments of it :) (Just don't get me started on the MM). Great work and well done so far. I understand that the game can never be perfectly close to DotA (I have to say that I miss a lot of little things from Warcraft3 engine'd DotA) but I guess it is time to move on from a 10years old engine. I hope you will continue to keep your good work up, for many (many) years to come. And I am sure you will. <3 Dota.

Lastly, thank you all for reading. Hope you enjoy this trip of 'How to play support'. Thank you.

GLHF and have many GGs ahead!! Thank you for your time again.


'Thank you!'[www.dota2wiki.com]



*Special credits to my fellow mates who read and give me some useful comments especially thanks to evo for yelling at random mistakes and flamewheel for yelling at evo to yell at me <3

**And I have to mention that this old BB code guide from wo1fwood[www.teamliquid.net] helped me alot on editing this guide. And Spacebear again for providing the amazing map. Thank you all.

***All screenshots used in this guide are purely for entertainment purposes. Please take them lightly and they are lighthearted funny pictures. All pictures, sound clips and icons come from Valve's Dota2 that available on dota2wiki.com except two sound clips come from Blizzard's Warcraft3 (Mirana and Nightstalker quotes).