Support has never been as important as it is now

The Support position is always an estranged position in Dota at low ranks, not because this position is easy to play or only for newbies, but on the contrary, this is the most difficult position in the game. The importance of support has been shown towards the end of the game in terms of annoyance and disturbance in teamfights and thanks to the recent patches, the support position has become more and more important.

Why is Support so important?

The forest is a great source of farming, but that doesn’t mean it’s endless, so if you don’t want to farm, then farm. It is this concept of limitation that makes the support important and necessary when it looks like this team has very little farm. Since picking support you have to understand that you have to be blind, read the map as well as stack creeps and cause mutations in teamfights throughout the game. That importance is even more evident in professional tournaments. For example, in the MDL2017 tournament, the final between LGD and LGD.Forever Young was dramatic and exciting with the score 3-2 in favor of LGD, especially in all 5 matches, the first 15/20 picks were 15/20. and the first 12/20 turns all came from supports. This further proves the importance of support for the current meta.

Types of support

Support has many different categories but they are divided into 2 positions, 4th and 5th. 4th is for outplay-oriented supports, and 5th is for supports. Prioritize stable aka traditional, less farm, spend all your money buying blue and yellow eyes, dust and somke. The 5th position is also usually the position of the captain and gives direction to the team. Here are some examples with the support lineups of the top teams in the 5th and 4th positions:

Team OG – Tal ‘Fly’ Aizik + Jesse ‘Jerax’ Vainikka
Team Liquid – Kuro Salehi ‘Kuroky’ Takhasomi + Maroun ‘GH’ Merhej
Team Secret – Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov + Yazied ‘Yapzor’ Jaradat
Evil Geniuses – Andreas ‘Cr1t-‘ Nielsen + Ludwig ‘Zai’ Wåhlberg
Virtus Pro – Alexey ‘Solo’ Berezin + llya ‘Lil’ llyuk
LGD.Forever Young – Leong ‘ddc’ Fat-Meng + Tue ‘Ah Fu’ Soon Chuan
TNC Pro Team – Theeban ‘1437’ Siva + Timothy ‘Tims’ Randrup

However, not every team is like that because it depends a lot on the mobility of the team.

So what are the heroes used in the 5th and 4th positions?

This answer is always changing with updates. However, it still has its general principle, in 5th place usually supports heroes who can contribute a lot in the team even if the farm is small like Dazzle, Oracle, Winter Wyvern or natural heroes. towards total combat such as Phoenix, Disruptor, Ancient Apparition, Warlock, Witch Doctor, etc. These are heroes who have both good combat ability even though the item quantity is small and depend a lot on the skill set to affect the match. And in 4th place, support must be the one who brings mutations to the team from the beginning of the game like Night Stalker, Clockwerk, Earth Spirit, Sand King, Riki, Kunkka, Earthshaker, etc. Besides, there are also heroes that can play. in both roles at the same time.

What should support do during laning?

There are a lot of things a support can or should do in the laning phase. Usually the supports (position 5) will usually stay in the safe lane to protect the carry, while others (position 4) will roam the lane to gank. The purpose of the supports in position 5 is usually to harass the opponent’s offlane, pull the creeps when necessary and especially stack the creeps for the carry or for other lanes. However, this is just a concept and it may change depending on the game.

How does the current meta affect support?

After the 7.00 release, there were a lot of changes to the early game, making support even more important. With changes like bounty runes (there are 2 bounty runes on the jungle side every 2 minutes), it’s because of this that it’s important for supports that favor ganking lane reversal. Protecting the bounty rune is extremely important as it gives the support the money and level they need. The addition of a shrine makes it easier for odd supports to move.

Besides, Valve also released a major update 7.06. Here are some notable changes to support positions:

Jungle monsters now spawn 1 minute instead of 2 minutes like before

Monsters now give 20% less XP and Gold

Jungle monsters’ XP and Gold will increase by 2.5% every 7.5 minutes

Lane mid will have a creep melee in the first 15 minutes of the game

Creeps on both sides will meet a little closer to the turret in the offlane lane

Although jungle monsters spawn every 1 minute instead of two, removing 20% ​​XP and Gold makes it difficult for jungle heroes to return. Instead, these changes are making supports more focused on protecting lanes and runes. Second, with the mid lane now having a creep melee in the first 15 minutes of the game, this ensures a much better mid lane laning. This meta change to support has had a huge impact as now both teams’ supports can run out to mid lane to help midder early in the game causing 3vs3 situations to happen even at the first level. . Finally, both sides’ creeps will meet closer to the turrets in the offlane lanes, making the support’s offlane harassment more difficult than before, but most importantly, it’s still important to maintain volume. stable farm for carry.

Back in The Internation 3, this is the time when the meta is only for offlane and safelane divided into 2 lanes: triple lane protecting the carry farm and triple lane aggressively ganking. By The Internation 5, triple lane gradually disappeared, instead, more dual lane. This makes the support role more mobile as it can move around the map continuously. In the current meta, we can see that all 3 lanes are almost solo and the support’s role is just to make sure the lane is safe.

Take for example the Epicenter final between Liquid and Evil Geniuses. In game 3 Earthshaker in the hands of GH did a great job early game when in the beginning of the game he killed the enemy courier as well as brought back Sumail’s first kill for Miracle, besides in 5 lives The first team of Luqid had 4 lives with his presence and stacked 2 ancient creeps in the first 10 minutes of the game.

Conclusion

In the current meta, the early game has become quite fierce and extremely important, no matter what the lineup or strategy, the teams still want the early game to be easy and support is person in charge of that task. This is the meta where supports have a place to shine.