The Basics of Playing Lane Support

Lane support is a very difficult role for many players because you have to do a lot with a little bit of farm. You main job as lane support is to ensure the carry gets farm and to screw over your lane opponents as hard as you can.

In this post, I'm going to go over a lot of the problems I hear from people that are trying to learn how to be a good support player.

Keep in mind, these are some of the basic things. Warding locations and other stuff will be covered at another point in time.

1. Harassment is a lot harder than I thought. Creeps constantly aggro on me.

Normal Attacking:

• Keep in mind that you get aggro when you're attack moving on an enemy hero
• If you regular move you will not get aggro
• Get close before **attack moving** to **minimize** the time when you draw aggro
• Attack Move on an allied creep (even if they are full health) to lose aggro

Alternatives:

• Consider attacking from a different direction
• Come from behind your opponent (this can also help set up kills)
• Use fog of war and tree cover to your advantage

2. How often should I soak experience with a carry in the lane?

This is really dependent on the situation.

• 3v1 - your job as lane support is to zone. Your 2nd support will be stacking & pulling. This will result in the opponent being underleveled no matter what because they cannot contest the pull.
• 2v1 - sometimes you can stack & pull, other times you cannot. It's always a bit risky. Zoning your opponent out is usually going to be a good option because sometimes you'll be in XP range, sometimes you won't, but your opponent will be underleveled in any case.
• 2v2 - stacking & pulling is usually going to be a bad option unless your teammate is a good solo hero like Lone Druid. It will probably be better to stay in lane to harass and deny because in 2v2, your opponents can contest the pull.
• 2v3 - not much you can do in this lane. Best bet is to roam or change lanes. If they know how to trilane and you don't have a hero like KotL, Lone Druid, etc. you'll get beat badly.
• 3v3 - you want to pull the first wave, but then go to the lane after that. Harass and Deny (on defensive side), or deny and try to get kills (on offensive side).

3. When stacking/pulling, what is the goal?

• The goal is always lane control
• Stack & Pull - use this to move the lane closer to the tower and deny a wave of XP from your opponent
• Single Pull - use this to make a super wave that will help push the tower (or to move the initial wave closer to the tower in 3v3)
• Siege Creeps come every 3 minutes (good to know for the single pull)
• Don't pull if 
• (a) creeps are close to the tower
• (b) your opponent will take the pull
• When you stack you want to kill your entire wave
• Get your gold as a support from killing pull camp creeps (some supports are also good at stacking other camps and wiping those - e.g. KotL)

4. If I'm the safe lane support, how often should I roam to get kills?

• Roam when your carry is established (general rule of thumb - I'm sure there are exceptions)
• Goal of a Defensive Trilane is to get your carry farmed, prioritize that
• You might consider roaming if there is opportunity and a high chance of success
• Also consider roaming to smoke gank the courier bringing bottle to mid (i.e. <2 min or so)
• Smoke is your best friend

Miscellaneous Tips

• Grab a TP by at most 5 minutes
• Some teams divide support items like: (#4) gets Sentries + Smoke, (#5) gets Observers + Courier
• Upgrade the courier quickly to reduce chances of it getting sniped by opposing supports
• Make sure you get some farm (supports like KotL, Shadow Demon, etc. are good at stacking camps and killing them to catch up on gold + XP)
• Establish a strategy. In 4-protecting-1, you'll leave your carry to move with the rest of the team for pushing. In dual roaming, you'll have 3 good solos while the two supports roam to get kills.
• Defensive Trilanes want to get secure farm for the carry
• Offensive Trilanes want to get kills and deny the opposing carry farm
• NEVER do something for the sake of doing it. If there is no opportunity to roam, DO NOT ROAM. If there is no reason to pull or low chance of success, DO NOT PULL.
• Pick the appropriate support. If you want to be aggressive early, get someone like Crystal Maiden. KotL is good at zoning and destroying Trilanes. Nyx is good at Roaming. Shadow Demon scales well.

Analysis: Neutral Creep Pulling in the Safe Lane

Pulling creeps is a tactic used for controlling the lane. A lot of player blindly say to stack-pull every time. Others completely ignore pulling. Neither is the correct approach.

DotA is a game of making decisions to fit the scenario. You can never just blindly do something for every situation.

Stack-Pull

Stack-Pull refers to stacking the safe lane pull camp before pulling it. This gives you two sets of neutral creeps. When you pull these creeps (around the x:17 mark), they will completely destroy your creep wave.

This does two things:

1. Moves the collision point of the creep waves closer to your tower and to safety
2. Denies your opponent an entire wave of experience (~250-300 XP, in the early game), and gold

You Do Not Always Want to do This Though

If done at the wrong time, this can prompt a few bad things:

• Your Opponents Push the Tower -- there are no creeps to help defend it, so they just apply pressure and get early tower gold
• Your Carry/Support Tanks Damage -- if you don't want the tower to get hit, you can kite the creeps to some extent, but a hero will inevitably take some damage
• Your Opponent Dives a Hero -- with creeps already there, your opponent can dive a hero while one support is busy with the pull. You may be able to react in time, but even then, your carry might be too low to do much beside leech XP until a Salve can be sent to them.

Also note that a good opponent can apply harass under the tower by attacking a hero, then immediately doing an attack-click on their allied creeps (thus losing aggro). By doing this, they will not be targeted by the tower.

Single Pull

Single Pull refers to pulling a single set of neutral creeps into your wave. This will deny 1-2 lane creeps potentially. It also delays the creeps from re-entering the lane.

Generally, you do this when you want to push.

For pushing, try to do this:

• On the wave that has the catapult
• Or the wave just before the catapult wave

Note: Siege creeps come every 7th wave (the first is at 3:00 minutes).

When you do this around Siege Creep time, you'll get a double wave + a siege creep, which is very hard to defend.

Other Times to Single Pull

When playing Trilane vs. Trilane, you typically do not want to be pulling much at all because they can take the tower, contest the camp, or get easy kills. However, you can single-pull the first wave (given your camp is not warded) to bring the lane creeps closer to your tower / a more favorable position.

If the wave gets too far out, but you cannot risk stack-pulling, a single-pull can be useful as well.