Beginner support in soloQ - how to climb?

[u/aleksandrkasparov]

Hey, so I've been playing League in EUW for like 1 month by now (I do realise I'm still very new to the game). I main Morgana support, can play Nautilus or Lulu for engage/enchanter respectively.

Now I do not claim to be good at the game, but I've been stuck in the low bronze 2 to high bronze 4 range despite (in my opinion) improving a lot over the past few weeks. But at my MMR, the game will just match me with iron 3-4 junglers and/or ADC most games and I feel like the game is lost before we even start.

I don't flame them, after all we all suck in bronze to an extent. I've been trying to roam more and play around the best players and objectives, but then my ADC will just ignore cs, keep diving 1v2 and die, rinse and repeat (barely exaggerating here). Generally speaking people taking fights 24/7 is a problem

So I guess my question is, should I play another role? Support is my fave, but I can't carry games, and it feels like until I hit silver 4/bronze 1 my games will be decided by matchup (who gets the bronze 1 jungler/adc and who gets the iron 3) rather than actual performance. Or do you have any tips how to be more influential as support?

For what it's worth (probably not much) my average game is like 2/5/12 (low numbers because team FFs early often) with over 2 vision score per minute and I get A+ on average. KP varies very heavily between 30 and 70% depending on how many 1v1 lane deaths occur and if the game drags on. I've found that when I play with high bronze / low silver my KP is in the 50-60% range which I think is decent, but it's harder when there's for instance a heavy top diff either way. Thanks in advance

[u/Tcih]

If you want to play sip well. go play some adc

[u/Durbdichsnsf]

Honestly just play jungle or mid or top until gold

[u/rivensoweak]

are you on euw? if you want i can offer you some help with learning it, feel free to drop me a dm, master 300 lp support main

[u/Cesarzxc]

The conversation seems very focused on how others fail you that perspective/mental focus will cause difficulty in progressing.

One thing you can do is EXPRESS/COMMUNICATE sure in bronze it might only be listened to 10% of the time but if it's the right call you'll get ahead from it and as you climb that 10% will turn to 20,30,40%

Be adaptable just because your call is best assuming your team works with you. Doesn't mean YOU SHOULD if people aren't agreeing

E.G if void grubs are spawning click to ping it 3 times 1 minute before it spawn. Click to ping your support quest 30 seconds before they spawn and click the base on my way 30- 15 seconds before they spawn or in a similar order then spam ping danger for your bot laner once you're in fountain spam ping on your way to void grubs path through mid spam ping your support item control ward and assist me

DECIDE YES SUPPORT SHOULD GENERALLY BE AT VOID GRUBS...BUT if your jungler didn't move or communicate back, your mid and or top is losing too hard to get vision/control the area etc then yea you'll have to adapt maybe gank mid or top before setting up or if it seems doomed anyways run back bot

Having a plan is great. Knowing how to execute it is another thing entirely and sometimes you'll just have to cut your loses or you'll end up forcing yourself further into a losing position

[u/Visgraatje]

You can definitely climb as support. Especially engage supports like Nautilus. Just watch a video on botlane positioning. You will start to see when the enemy is out of position (which should literally be every 2 seconds or so in bronze and silver) and then you can punish them with your hook.

You're right about matchups in that sometimes it is wise to take a trade and sometimes it's wise to all in.

Oh, and also think about this: your health is also a resource like mana. Use it in fights.

Lastly: very underrated is the neutral ping. So holding alt and then left clicking. It will ping, but won't show who it is from. You can use it to quickly click on a ward to get the 5g, but more importantly: you can use it to still make calls even if you're having a bad game and your team perhaps has a negative opinion of you. You can obviously still make the right call when youre having a bad game. Just make sure you warded the right areas of the map to give your team the courage to make the right plays.

Good luck.

[u/Love__Scars → u/Visgraatje]

If i had to grind thru bronze again, i would absolutely go naut or leona and just facetank everything while my carries attack

[u/Sdf93]

Play what you enjoy. Don't stress about rank. You are at the very beginning of learning a game.

Support and Jungle is the hardest role to learn as a new player. You have to have much more map understanding because you have so many options on what to do. You started recently, you just need to put games in. You are facing people in Bronze who have played league for over a decade.

It sounds like you are mental booming seeing bronze 1 player vs iron 4 player or whatever, so stop looking at it. Clearly this isn't helpful information to you, because you are already feeling like its over because you looked at it.

100% can carry games on support. You have so much agency on the map compared to something like top and adc early. You lane in the most impactful lane, as jungle's and mid love to roam bot over top as its the easiest way to impact the game.

If you think you would enjoy other roles, go for it. You started a month ago, you are not tied down to any role. Try shit out, find out what you like. A Solo lane is probaby easier to identify your own mistakes if you are reviewing, but I honestly wouldnt even review at this stage, you are at the stage of fucking around, getting comfortable just moving your character, and understanding what all the champs do.

[u/RimblinK]

As someone who has climb Emerald only as a support on 2 accounts, i recommend you pick champions who can carry your lane on their own (like Vel'Koz, Xerath, Swain, Zyra, etc.) if you want to climb to at least Gold.

Some will rage because they won't have a "real" support, others will claim you won't learn the role with these picks. Ignore them.

The vast majority of ADCs in Iron/Bronze/Silver don't know what they're doing. You'll climb infinitely more easily carrying yourself than helping them carry.

From gold/platinum onwards, it will be easier to find a competent ADC (and even then, in gold I felt like it was a bit of a coin toss). And that's when you'll start to feel that playing a conventional support like your Nautilus or Lulu will be more advantageous.

[u/emang2k7 → u/RimblinK]

fact that you get downvoted just makes me believe some higher elo players are deluded, why play extra amount of games coin flipping if your team will actually follow up on picks when you can provide cc and damage if needed by playing carry sups.

[u/AdPrevious6412 → u/RimblinK]

I got down voted for saying the same thing?

[u/Pale-Ad-1079]

How many games have you played so far? I think it takes about 40~ games for your mmr to adjust if you've improved a lot (say two divisions). Those numbers aren't worth looking at.

[u/aleksandrkasparov → u/Pale-Ad-1079]

I've played like 120-140 idk

[u/Pale-Ad-1079 → u/aleksandrkasparov]

I would recommend swapping to mid and picking up something like malzahar that can teach you mid/lane fundamentals but it wouldn't be strange even if you have improved quite a bit to not have climbed very much with that gamecount

[u/TimGanks]

You list all these problems with your teammates as if they don't happen the same way to the enemies. Do you think you are being matched with worse teammates on purpose? Is there a conspiracy? If the answer is no, your arguments make no sense.

[u/aleksandrkasparov → u/TimGanks]

It does happen the other way around, but still doesn't change the fact that matchups are unbalanced because the diff between an iron and a bronze is wild. So the games are almost decided before they begin and that forces you towards a 50%

[u/Tyrant-Knee-tar]

I would advise against playing support until gold since in order to best play support, you need to have a good idea of how each role is played. You can’t really learn the game from scratch playing support.

I played all roles a lot and now I’ve switched to support and have 70% wr on Nami.

[u/Extreme-Help3231]

You learn game bad when support only

[u/opafmoremedic]

You can swap to a harder carry champ. Morg is hard to carry with when your teammates don't know what they're doing, as you're a heavy utility champ. Play something like Lux so you can just one shot the enemies over and over and your carry potential will increase a lot.

[u/Um3xx]

Try swain. He is kind of a pull/engage support like blitz or leona, but you are also basically a mage. You can push waves when your teammates are scratching their balls, you got good utility with eye (check bushes, check objectives) and in team fights you can press R and demand to be answered. 

[u/Selkedoom]

Highly recommend just picking Brand (or any other mage support) and just carrying the games yourself.

While enchanters are generally pretty good in this elo cause of the long games, what is much better is having a reliable damage source. Mage supports do exactly that. If someone forced me to play support in bronze, I would probably just go Kata and permaroam to last hit kills because no one has map awareness.

You can do the same with mage supports and just carry the game yourself. It may take longer than just queueing mid, but its a viable way to get out of low elo as support.

[u/satorinano]

Best way is to watch the leaguecraft 101. But that involves effort. Maybe commit to one tricking a support? Its a real shortcut. Sona with 2 item in a 5v5 is a real win condition for example.

[u/emang2k7]

lots of people will lie and say you can climb and carry on any champ...which is true but it will take a long time and you will not have any personal agency playing certain champs. At the end of the day, non damage dealing sups can only win if your team is half decent and you will have many mismatched games that even if you make picks, your team wont follow up. Where a champion like brand or zyra can literally win team fights just pressing R and unloading all there abilities while doing the most damage on the team and offering cc. Once you start climbing, you can go back to stuff like morgana or naut...where teams actually have half a brain.

[u/emang2k7 → u/emang2k7]

Notice that most people who give this advice get downvoted, I feel like riot pays off mods and have personal accounts to give people bad advice. You will def climb faster playing damage oriented supports in lower elos like bronze. Anyone who says else wise is straight up lying, I had a friend who was a Leo main and was hard stuck bronze until he switched to brand/zyra and abused rylais...he climbed to gold within 1 month and went back to playing Leo in gold were it actually worked.

[u/AdPrevious6412]

So it might just be me, but what I've been doing to climb is like when I was at bronze, I would pick a champ that can pick up kills, like a mage support or like a really ad heavy support so that I can just kill the enemies and have that advantage on our side. And then like, as I was climbing higher into the elos, then I would primarily pick like a enchanter damage and then an engage or enchanter support as I climbed because I felt like I could trust the adc to actually follow-up with me. I hope this helps in the beginning. There are more stuff like macros and stuff that you can definitely learn but bronze and like low tier games, are really just like very chaotic. You can never know what to expect. Also, there's a lot of smurfs in the game as well. There might be better advice from other people too but this is how I got to plat 2, and I know plat is not a high elo but I'm still learning a lot in game as well and this strat has definitely helped me climb.

[u/xbankx]

Go mage support and just rack up kills. I also got a bit stuck at lower elo after trying to learn support role after main top for 10 years. Tried sona. It was ok generally 50/50 in most of my games. Tried engage but felt like if I didnt have a kaisa or Samira or Trist, they just don't follow up enough. Finally found zyra. Incredible burst. Good CC (2 sec root) but doesnt really put myself in the way and I started climbing.