The best support heroes are generally casters that do not need many items in order to fulfill their role in combat. For example, the Warlock is a classic support hero, since he has a large amount of health and mana by default and all of his skills are incredibly effective on their own, he does not require large items to back them up. Other casters like Lich, Lina, and Crystal Maiden also often fall into this role. It really depends what heroes are on your team, the one that needs items the least should generally take the biggest part in the supporting role.

Choosing a hero who is as item independent as possible is essential when playing hard support. Depending on how the game works out you might be working with very minimal resources, and relying on getting particular items within certain timescales is simply not possible.

Hard Supports are very reliant on "team gold" - enemy towers going down, assists and Roshan being some examples. Depending on the game situation, you might also have to buy a lot of Sentry Wards, which can eat a lot of your limited gold. If you've died a few times this can quickly empty your coffers too.

At times like this it's very nice to have abilities like Arcane Aura, Sacrifice and Mana Drain. Who needs Arcane Boots or a Soul Ring? Not you.

• There are some other heroes who can also just about squeeze in as a hard support if they have to - Lina, Witch Doctor, Rubick, Vengeful Spirit, Nyx Assassin, Venomancer and Shadow Shaman amonst others. However, I think these heroes start to lose their effectiveness more than the ones at the top.

You'll notice that many of these heroes have beneficial utility spells which help their team mates, and/or a very good stun/setup ability which will help an ally get a kill or chain their own abilities off.

Common Setups:

Example 1: Tri-lane versus Solo

You and another support are helping your carry to secure as much farm as possible. Against a single enemy hero you should have a considerable advantage, pretty much ensuring that your carry will get maximum farm. However, the amount of experience in the lane will be split 3 ways for your team, potentially leaving you all underlevelled unless you can get kills on that solo, some jungle stacks and maybe some ganks on mid.

Example 2: Dual-lane versus Solo

Not that unusual if your team runs a jungler and an offlane solo. The power balance of the lane is less settled here - if your carry has strong lane presence/ganking skills then you should be able to win the lane fairly comfortably by either killing or intimidating the opposition. You can afford to be aggressive, and also go to stack/pull to give your partner solo lane time, and a little farm for yourself.
If your carry is relatively weak or unthreatening you will have to work harder to create space for them to farm in.

Your aim here is to ensure that your carry rapidly becomes more powerful than the enemy hero. You want to be able to let them solo and go off to help the rest of the team ASAP, but you can only do this when they can dominate the enemy offlaner.

Example: 3: Tri-lane versus Tri-lane

A very tricky lane as both teams have the power to get kills easily if an enemy hero makes a mistake. Often these lanes make it hard for both carries to get farm, and the winner is usually determined who can get the kills/assists needed to give them the edge. The opposite solo vs solo lane also becomes very important.

As a hard support your job is to avoid getting caught out, protect your allies and take full advantage of any mistakes the opposition make.

Many people misunderstand what being a Hard Support or "5" really means. It doesn't mean that you never farm and it certainly doesn't mean that you don't need levels. It's all about priority - if a hero with a higher priority than you turns up (i.e. everybody), you let them farm. Simples.

You can still take some farm if nobody else is about, there's a creep they're going to miss last hitting etc. You might well Frostbite a large creep even as you're stacking a nearby camp for your carry. Part of the art of playing Hard Support well is to find appropriate moments to grab farm as you go about your other work.

Generally levels are much more important to you than gold - they help bulk out your stats and improve your abilities (ie. the important stuff) for 'free'. While you should certainly be prepared to fall behind on levels in order not to leach off your carry, there is a balance here that without out them you are completely useless. Getting to level 6 is often an important milestone.

So how do you get gold then?

- Periodic Gold (5 gold every 3 seconds)

- Tower kills (~200 gold if destroyed, ~100 if denied)

- Kill Assists (varies, see below)

1 Hero: 125+12(Dying Hero's Level)
2 Heroes: 40+10(Dying Hero's Level)
3 Heroes: 10+6(Dying Hero's Level)
4 or 5 Heroes: 6(Dying Hero's Level)

Another important point here is that your gold income is very limited, so it's vital not to lose what you do have. Getting killed will strip away some of your unreliable gold, so always try to keep your gold reserves as low as possible.

This means buying parts for items as soon as possible, and certainly before going into any dangerous situations. Always make sure your quickbuy bar is loaded with stuff and hit your quickbuy key if you're about to die.

This is another reason why supports tend to like equipment that come in cheap increments - saving up for big ticket items is difficult when you might get whacked at a team fight or save an ally at short notice.

Obviously, not dying helps even more