Support - The Most Thankless Role in League of Legends

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The verdict on the Support role in League of Legends has always been a divisive one, with half of players saying the role is completely useless and most difficult to climb with while the other half claim it's the easiest role in the game to climb and has a ton of impact. Something more pressing however is the overall attitude people have towards the role: in that hardly anyone appreciates support players, regardless of what stance they take on the role's carry potential. Today we'll be discussing why Support is the most thankless role in League of Legends.

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#LoL #Support #leagueoflegends

[VarsVerum]

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[Tiki]

Also being support is great it makes you ready to be parent I swear it may seem easy, but preventing a suicidal baby from dying for 30 minutes is not the easiest thing to do

[MasakanSolaris]

Someone has to be the adult in the room.

[lillyie]

support is the role where you can do 100 good things and no one bats an eye, but do 1 bad thing suddenly it's support diff

[Milkiia]

Played a game where I perfectly timed a taric ult for a team fight and the only one who react was the enemy adc to complain about their own support

[nicholasavasthi]

An interesting and somewhat frustrating part of playing enchanter supports, especially ones like Soraka and Sona, is that because their heals go fairly unnoticed it gives people an over-estimation of their own champion’s current strength. Which can lead to players taking fights when the support is not present that they cannot win, but believe they can, since they don’t realize how much of their survivability is dependent on their support’s presence.

[poisonedoak]

I love how people rate supports solely on their k/d
Not their k/d/a
Their k/d

[briargray]

Something that could've been touched on that's strongly related to this:

Pick order.

As someone who plays support, I will usually only swap to pick earlier for the top laner, since their lane is the most heavily matchup impacted. Otherwise, I will hold onto last or second-to-last pick, which frequently makes the people in my lobby absolutely screech when I turn down their trade request.

Like, my dudes, support isn't *just* a counterpick sensitive role, it's also the role expected to round out your team comp or negate the enemy's team comp. In soloQ, the amount of people who refuse to hover their pick so I can plan mine is absolutely staggering. Since they don't hover, I can't pick to compliment them unless I pick last. And if I can't pick to compliment, I need to pick to counter, which also requires me picking last.

The mentality being that since support is the "least important", they should always be willing to swap you into the pick order position you want.

But I'm the support, not your UwU "yes master whatever u want" doormat. If the enemy team is hard wave pushers and the rest of my team picked champs with poor waveclear, I need to pick a mage support capable of one-shotting waves. If they're heavy on key CC, I should lock in Morgana. Hell if I see they have a bunch of autoattacking hypercarries, I'll lock in Teemo and build full CDR to perma-blind them. These are decisions I just straight up cannot make if I pick early. Support's power is it's freedom and adaptability, and if you take away the support's ability to make informed decisions, you've basically crippled one of your teammates.

Also, ADCs that have it in their head that you're *their* support. No honey, I support the team, not just you. If anything I'm way more concerned with getting the jungler ahead because their impact is larger and generally they're less prone to getting insta-popped the moment a Yone looks at them.

[BLKCLVR]

I've been maining ADC for like 6 years now. I genuinely cannot believe that people think supp is weak or useless. They're probably the single strongest role outside of jungle. I can't count how many times I've seen a support absolutely suffocate an entire enemy team, it's unreal what an excellent player can do.

[IslaOsborne-bqqo]

being honest im surprise that a support like renata took so long to show up, thats like many people that play support exclusively like myself feel, "you are alive because i saved you, now do the damage for me so i dont get my hands dirty"
a large part of why people dont play support more is the entire image of selfless healbot

[ultimateracer_]

As a zilean main, I dont need my team's thanks, I thrive on the psychological damage I deal to the enemy team

[TheDjpwn]

"A good roadie (or in this case, support) knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do whay they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. Once in a while he might step on stage, just to fix a problem, to set something right. But before you even know that he was there, or what he did, he's gone." - Eddie Riggs (Brütal Legend)

[Hououin]

You do get recognition for playing well as a sp but mostly from the enemy team

[メシャ]

As a long time support player, THANK YOU for shining light on this massive issue. I like playing support, tanks and enchanters, not to blow my own trumpet but i'm quite good at it, but i just rarely ever want to because it's incredibly stressful micromanaging 9 other players, 5 of which are enemies and 4 who might as well be, all while receiving nothing in return, since as you so eloquently put it supports don't get a singular moment to shine with a visible play often, but rather hundreds of small decisions throughout the game that contribute to victory.
It's true that support may have the lowest mechanical skill floor of all the roles, but being a GOOD support requires a lot of knowledge, split second decisions and SO MUCH PATIENCE.

[thekingofawesomeness]

Everyone wants a meat shield and healing but no one wants to thank them for it. Everyone just thanks whoever gets the most kills. I've seen that in all games that have tanks and supports

[adrianr]

As a Sona main, I can honestly say that, after a 30/40 min game where I must keep an eye on the map, vision, pings, take care of everyone without dying, buying the correct items, positioning correctly during any fight and keep a cool, calm and collected temper while everyone else flaming eachother or me, I am bruned out mentally, which makes me stop playing League for a few days.

At the same time, when I have an ADC that can read the map and knows how to play with me without me having to write to him is amazing.

Great video Vars, thank you for your work!

[cebokhumalo]

I remember this one match I had when I first started playing. I was playing Morgana.
For some unexplainable reason (At the very start of the match) our Mid-lane Yasuo completely abandoned their lane to play Bot.

Mid was completely vacated for at least 3 minutes and no-one ever bothered to try to cover Mid.
Our Top-laner stayed at Top. Our Bot laner stayed at Bot and our Jungler kept ganking Bot and sometime Top but left Mid completely empty. There was a point in the match where there was 4 of us at Bot...
I ended up having to rotating to Mid (since no-one else wanted to), doing my absolute just to make sure that they don't just steam roll our Mid turrets
I was so annoyed to have found myself somehow playing Mid.
it took the whole team far too long to even acknowledge that Mid was a thing that match. by the time anyone came to help. It was already a lost cause.

Needless to say, we lost. and I did do my best but a Morgana vs Yone in Mid wasn't a good match-up, especially when I was still relatively new to the game...

But the thing that will always pissed me off the most, was when that same Yasuo had the nerve to ask me way I even bothered playing Mid when I was so bad and that "I was useless, and I should have stuck to my job"...
If he did his job and not trying to do mine, I wouldn't have had done his job...

if he's somehow reading this. Sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart and soul "FUCK YOU!!!!"


Sorry for venting, this video in particular reminded me of the bullshit I deal with every so often as a support.

[mal]

I feel like the disrespect that supports get is indicative of the wider attitude issue league has at large. People simply do not recognize their team for what they do, and as supports have the most nebulous and hard to directly observe impact, they get the least appreciation. The key is that people need to get their heads out of their asses and just be nice to each other bc every role comes with difficulties and challenges, and every player is doing something well that you don't see. Just a shame that half the player base has such a serious ego problem they need to put in a time out lmao

[Iznikroc]

In china the support is called the Auxillary and it's a better term for the role. You round out your team, through mitigation, engage, or more damage. thats why i think one tricking is bad for a support because you should be looking at your team comp and adapting your pick to it.

[g-rated]

That's why thresh, bard, pyke and Morgana are my favorite supports. You can make big plays and still peel for your team in some ways