Support info with TPA Mistake

[SigmundTheViking]

This was just taken off his stream less than an hour ago. I did a rough translation, and decided to share it with reddit. As it was a very discursive session, this is in no way a word-by-word translation, but I believe I got most of his points down. Sorry guys I missed the Alistar part though.

All credit goes to Mistake, and I urge you to check his stream at: twitch.tv/mistakelolz

Hope you enjoy!

Support Counters

*Taric: Counters heavy AD carries, such as Graves, Sivir, Caitlyn, Ashe. Most of their skills do AD damage. However, as long as the Sivir isn’t stupid, you won’t get to stun her.

*Blitz: Doesn’t do well against EZ, since it is nearly impossible to land a hook against good EZs. He also does poorly against heavy tank supports, like Taric, Leona, Nunu or Alistar. His strength is in getting in the first strike, making it hard for the Support to help, and killing you in a single trade.

*Sona: Near invincible in this patch, by which I mean she has few counters, she is only really afraid of ganks. Koreans use Zyra against Sona, since she has very long poke, this is however a very skill oriented match-up. Zyra doesn’t have good base stats to go against Sona. Remember to use Q on the seeds, Q has ranged poke, which is much more annoying. You get 5g for killing a plant, but I get 300 for killing you, so don’t be shy on placing them. Oh, actually Blitz counters her, once Azubu picked Sona they banned Blitz, it seems we have a consensus on this.

*Janna: counters Leona, when she Es you can just Q, and she will not be able to fly to you, try it. No godly reflexes required. Same thing for Alistar, however he is harder to catch since he doesn’t have a wind-up animation on W. Jana is afraid of continuous poke trades.

*Nunu: (He goes into discussion of current support types)

As of now we have the trio of OP supports that counter each other, Sona > Nunu > Blitz > Sona...

Then we have the long range pokers Lulu, Zyra, Lux. Soraka is essentially a long range poker, but you need high lvls in e.

And then their are additional Tank Support options like Leona and Alistar.

On AD&SUP Combos

If you have an EZ, Graves, or Corki you should go with a tanky support. You have high CC good burst and a movement skill to deliver it. TPA rarely uses these three, because Bebe doesn’t like them, and we feel Kog and Vayne are underrated by the teams in the World Championships. M5 had the same idea, if you watch the reply they took Vayne as soon as we took Kog. We try to give them room to grow into hypercarries, by doing lane swaps, double mids etc.

Caitlyn, while not underrated, is definitely underrepresented. She was only shown iirc, in the Sk vs CLG game. Tristana has also been forgotten, she is a skill burst, Sivir is as well. Misfourtune and Varus are auto attack bursters. Ashe is in the past, doesn’t work very well now. If you have a poke AD you should use a poke support as well so you can synchronize your trades. I remember we had a game with EZ, Lulu and that combo works very well.

Skill Allocation

*Alistar: R>Q>W>E

It’s ok as long you don’t put too many points into E. Try to judge the situation and lvl E accordingly. Madlife maxes W first.

*Blitz: R>Q>W>E

Max Q or Max W first, maxing e doesn’t do much. At level six you do insane damage if you if you have lvl 3 Q. If you go W first you won’t need boots that early and you can bring armor pen for high damage.

*Nunu: R>W>E>Q

E or W first. If you have an AD that uses AS, Misfortune, Vayne, Kog, get W first. On poke ADs get E first.

*Taric: R>W>Q>E

I use to do E first, but W is definitely better.

*Sona: R>Q>W>E. QWQWQRQE.

Get Q first, take E at lvl 8. It doesn’t help that much in ganks, you could use better laning with QW.

*Lulu: R>Q>E>W. QEQEWR

Max Q first. It hurts as hell, has asinine range, and you can do tricks with it with E. I like the E as well, but Q is how I max it.

*Janna: Shield first then the MS buff.

*Zyra: R>E>Q>W. EWQEER.

Max E first, remember to use Q for plants.

*Lux: I’m not familiar with her, but I’d say max Q, damage is better.

*Soraka: Not much to say here. 王者無敵’s(TW solo que player known for playing a heavy roam style Pantheon support, 2000+elo, triple ganks with jungle to snowball the game heavily.) method is good. You can try it out, just don’t roam like he does. Maxing Q is nice for solo que. But please don’t let your AD sit there to dry. In 5v5s it is often required for the support to control the lane. Watch our game against Azubu, when Stanley went up against Vlad he was down near 20 cs but had a lvl advantage. This is due to the support zoning out Vlad. You can see M5 loves to do this as well. Maxing Q gives you good damage and it synergizes well with magic damage ADs like EZ.

*Karma: Riot wants her to be a support, but she has CDR issues. She simply needs some form of CDR before Kindlegem, her R is on too long a cooldown.

Items

A good principle is when you go defensive masteries go double GP10. When you go utility masteries go for one GP10. If you are going for a kill lane go for HoG, if you are a poke support go for Philosopher Stone. On Blitz solo que I like going for HOG and Glacial.

Max CDR is 40%, if specing utility grants 6%, in the offensive tree there is CDR too, but it’s not as useful. Where do you get the rest of your CDR? From kindlegem, it combines into Shurelia’s and Zekes, so it is a nice buy.

The four aura items on supports are Aegis, Iron Solari, Zekes and Shurelias, sometimes you can go WOTA, but don’t go Frozen Heart or Randuin’s, they’re too expensive. Buy Zekes if your AD is really carrying hard, buy Shurelia’s if you need kiting or chasing, or if your AD sucks and you need to bail him out. Get Aegis on tanky supports. I bring this on Sona as well since you need to get to the frontline to cast R. I wouldn’t consider Soulshroud, it has good stats but is too expensive. Double Aegis is never a waste, maybe on Weixiao it is though. You only get Iron Solari if they have a Karthus.

Edited: broken into more paragraphs for clarity.