How To Support in League of Legends

Salve,

Unfortunately, I haven't had much inspiration to write recently, but I think that I could do a quick primer on how to play the support role in League of Legends.

Simply put, I think the most important thing that the support role does is give map control. That is, you buy plenty of wards, and position them well enough that you give enough vision to keep track of the enemy. While you should not be the only person buying wards- really, the entire team should- it is your primary duty to give map awareness to your team.

Now, depending on one's awareness of how League's metagame works, the current notion is you have a bruiser top, jungler, AP mid, then the AD carry and support bottom. This setup makes it so the top person must be able to stay in lane long enough to get enough CS to do the Warmogs/Atmos combo, and that is why the term "lane sustain" comes up so often.

As for summoner spells, I normally go clarity and CV, which lets me heal the AD carry every time it comes up, and normally that toon also uses mana. If the carry doesn't, then I switch clarity for summoner heal.

I think I'll get a post hoc analysis of a game up over on own3d.tv to illustrate how to do this.

I am still alive!

Item Build for Jungle Poppy

Hey folks, I've been playing some more games, and trying to find a good way to approach Poppy's buy order when it comes to her items. To that end, I have some notions about her.

Poppy is almost entirely based on speed. To that end, Ninja Tabi, Mercury's Treads, Boots of Swiftness, or Boots of Mobility will be your choices on boots. The former two if you really need the avoidance and defense, the latter two if you're well enough being able to chase and roam like a champion.

To begin, let's look at the basic Jungler initial buys:

Cloth Armor and 5 health potions
Boots of Speed
Madred's Razors
Wriggles
Upgraded Boots

After this the Jungler has autonomy for getting tankier and more dps.

For Poppy, I think she needs to rush Sheen more than anything else, since that's what makes her go as an assassin champ. To that end, I think I'll try this for her build order:

Cloth Armor and 5 health potions
Mana Crystal
Boots of Speed
Sheen
Madred's Razors
Boots of Swiftness
Lich Bane
Shurelia's Reverie
Wriggle's Lantern
Deathfire Grasp
Rabaddon's Deathcap

So, basically this is an AP Poppy built to burst a carry down. For summoner spells, I've come to the conclusion that Flash/Smite is the best, while Smite/Ghost is still quite good. The positioning granted by Flash cannot be underestimated, as it gives Poppy the capacity to Flash over a wall, then smack people into walls, and have a merry time killing folks.

With ranked teams coming out soon, I'm hoping to get set up with some friends to try our luck in ranked games with me either playing Jungle Poppy or support with Soraka. Maybe solo top with Maokai, so yay! Quite excited at the prospect.

This is where I am, but not where I'm ending, there is more to come!

More on Jungle Poppy

Ok, so earlier this evening I decided to do some experiments by myself in order to figure out if Poppy can actually do a full jungle run. That's Blue, Wolves, Wraiths, and Golems. For her masteries, I went 1, 8, and 21, taking Smite in Offense, MR/Armor and Strength of Spirit in Defense, then the normal ones in Utility. For Runes, I took armor pen marks, flat armor seals, flat MR glyphs, and flat armor pen quints. Post hoc I learned that using so much armor pen is overkill while Jungling, and it will be better to have 6 armor pen marks, 3 AD marks, then AD quints. I also tested this using my AP build, which is magic pen marks, armor seals, AP glyphs, and AP quints. I didn't notice much of a difference between them overall. As usual with Jungling, start with cloth armor and 5 health potions.

In my control, I started the route by taking Q first, then wailing on the large golem until it died. Now, this is incredibly easy to mess up. As soon as that Q hits, queue two potions. Then, it's a race against time, but as she gets lower she becomes more efficient with her effective hit points, which will see you through the little minions if you kill the golem in time. After that, grab her E skill. Queue potions as you fling wolves into walls, and Q them down. Move to the wraiths, smite should be back up, and smite the big wraith. Then, proceed to kill the golems, neither of which do much damage to her, especially when she's low.

So, at this point all I have proven is that Poppy does have the capacity to solo the jungle, but whether or not that makes her a good Jungler is yet to be seen.

Why?

Can she gank well at early levels?

This part is more dependent on summoner spells, I think. Ghost and Flash are very good, yet I think Flash will be better overall for her on the basis that she can use her W, Flash ahead of the enemy, then E them to force the enemy back into your team. As I understand it, Jungling is a race to level 4, after which you need to begin a gank fest in order to make it worthwhile. If you wait til level 6 when she can towerdive like almost nobody else in the game, like MANTHEON, the enemies are probably too near that level for it to matter as much as an early gank. Lacking a slow is what bugs me when it comes to her trying to gank out of the jungle.

IF she wants to do this, she needs movement speed in order to get the necessary positioning to have her E be worth it. However, if you have enough team coordination, having one person with Exhaust in top and bottom, then they can pop that as soon as Poppy pushes the target back. Q and autoattack, and see what happens.

Currently I'm considering how to approach making Poppy a better laner, because she is terrible at farming. She has to get in close, and has not a single multi-target ability. Here's a quick link to a guide that has helped me a lot today:

Linku!

With this is a great point concerning the relevance of her Q after rank 2, which assumes that you, as Poppy, will be going after their carries when team fights break out.

This is the result of my labors today, and I think it was well worth it. Right now I'm wondering if I should continue trying Poppy as a Jungler, or go after that laning build in the link, which requires movement speed quints, which are damned expensive, but so worth it on her.

:D

The Worst Thing Nynaeve Does.

Well, a couple days ago I finished A Crown of Swords. In it, towards the end, Moghedian finds herself in Ebou Dar, and happens to see Nynaeve out of the corner of her eye. She is going to the Sea Folk to discuss the Bowl of the Winds. So, Moghedian gets to a rooftop, sees the boat Nynaeve hopped on, and commences to use Balefire on the ship. Then we get that scene where Lan hops in to save her, yet she finally actually surrenders to saidar, and severs her block as a wilder that's been so much trouble to her.

It's all hunky-dory until you learn that two Redarms got Balefired on that boat. Two men burned from the Pattern, never to be reborn into the world again, and Nynaeve does not even want to tell Mat what happened. Hell, Lan is the one that tells him what happened to the two Redarms.

I know Nynaeve is avoiding Mat as much as possible, but does she have to be such an uncaring cunt that she won't even tell their commander that two of his men died protecting her from one of the Forsaken?

The import of this scene only came to me during this latest read, and it's really bugging me. Sure, she gets pissed off after she learns that Lan told Mat, yet she does nothing to show Mat her, well, toh for their service. Mat is only told that they got killed, but not that they were Balefired.

This bugs me, and I hope that Nynaeve actually does apologize later. I don't know, but I've started Path of Daggers already, so we'll see.

Just something on my mind.