You apprently skimmed my post (which I don't blame you for, it's hella long), as I mention several times that "This is also a potentially stupid theory, but I believe there is evidence to support it."

I've had the support argument so many times and proven so many people wrong I can't count. You're wrong. Support can carry. I'm sick of providing the argument but here we go.

Tell you what, grab a 2300 Elo player who mains support, ask them to jump on a low account and duo with you, have them support, and don't be the adc. No matter who that adc is (90% of the time or more, at least) he will end up fed, because that 2300 support will do such a great job at zoning and setting up kills that the carry would have to be straight stupid not to take advantage of it.

This is the support carrying. He will also ward the enemy jungle @ blue/red (depending on what side he is), and ping and go in with the jungler/mid/carry to counter jungle him and pick up a kill. He'll ping dragon, he'll keep timers, he'll roam to mid and help mid pick up a kill. He'll keep track of jungle locations and ping the jungler when he appears (because he'll have godlike map awareness). At the Q screen he'll pick a viable and powerful support that can do more than lane. For instance if he picks Alistar your carry will never die. If he picks Blitzcrank their carry will die first every teamfight. If he picks Sona their team will be stunned at the perfect time to pick up a kill on the priority targets and take over Baron.

None of this **** will show in his score, but you will have no doubt who actually carried that game. You'll Q with him again, it'll happen again. You'll Q with him 20 times, and you'll go 19 out of 20 games won.

Support can carry. Stop trying to argue that he can't. You're lazy. You don't want the "boring" role. You want to feel justified in your complete ineptitude at the role, because that's what it is - you don't know how to do it properly, nobody does at low elo - that's why all the good supports are gone - they're in the lowest supply and highest demand in low elo, once you get someone who can do it well 9 times out of 10 they'll win 8 times out of 10. The rest are left thinking that support is worthless because...and this is important...they are worthless as a support, and have only seen worthless supports.

I have played with godlike supports, and I've seen them turn games around. I've seen them carry by getting the carry fed, and then continuing on to lead the team to victory. Once your team sees you in the enemy's jungle throwing down wards and calling timers and pointing out the jungler, your team will be like "this guy knows his ****, wow." and they'll start listening to you, following you, and be led to victory.

Any role can carry.

CSZ you're getting dangerously close to castration brotha. Be careful. Don't worry about what others think, that's why I caps lock'd and bolded/underlined that section about DON'T TALK ABOUT OTHERS in that post. Sometimes that will happen, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't care if others can't see what they're doing wrong - you can pity them but that's as far as it goes, they aren't your responsibility. The only one you're responsible for and have authority over in this game is you, and how well you fulfill your own role. Don't look at others, only yourself, and you will improve dramatically.

my worry comes in that they are often the ones raging and calling for massive reports.

i know not the exact mechanics of the reporting system, but i know too many reports result in severe consequences. in a bad game, your stats don't look as good as in a good game.. i may THINK i'm doing a fine job (i'm hitting my CS targets, for example) but your death count naturally skyrockets when you have say, 2 fed members in the enemy team and your team doesn't have the coordination to shut them down.

also, the actions of others also greatly influence whether your decision turned out to be "right" or "wrong". since LoL is a team game, many things come down to whether your team is on the same page as you. you as malphite catch the enemy AD out, and ult to him. that is the "right" thing to do. however, if your team backs off for whatever reason, and the enemy alistar knocks you up, you'll get bursted down and killed in short order. then your team gets subsequently mopped up and aced. in a similar situation but with a different team, perhaps they would have flashed in and started wrecking havoc, getting a completely different outcome.

i've been in situations like this. we win a fight 4-2, me the adc is left with 2 others, while the enemy ap is alive and retreating. on good teams, we push and take a tower, or even a tower and dragon. unfortunately i've also been on teams where the players run off to take a red buff or a blue buff, or go back to base and buy an item. i cannot push on my own, as the ap can easily take me down. but pushing is the "right" thing to do. so i'm left stuck trying to figure out the best course of action. and this does affect my gameplay.

when your score looks bad and you get reported, my understanding is that suspensions and bans follow. that's what i'm worried about. while i can't be responsible over their behaviour and skill, i can't control the number of reports made, either.

I just read this whole thing... I now know what I need to work on to get myself out ^^ Thanks man, going to practice csing and map awareness right now.

2 things.

1. The decision to down bot turret or not is a lot more complicated than you make it seem. There are many factors to consider. Bottom line is don't ruin a good thing. For example the enemy bot is vayne and sona and you are killing vayne and cutting off CS. Do you really want to down the turret? How are the other lanes holding up? etc etc

2. Regarding supports carrying. Again that gets complicated. The bigger the skill gap between you and everyone on the enemy team the more being support is a bad idea. However in my opinion unless its a very large gap I wouldn't be the range adc either because like you stated the range adc also relies on the support. If its a very large skill gap then I would do the range adc.

If someone say ended up at 800 elo and they went from there to say 1500 doing support then thats very impressive but unless they are simply not capable of playing any other role as good it was not a wise decision. You mentioned picking blitz alistar and sona but blitz and alistar are going to be banned...at the very least blitz will be banned because if any support is going to carry its that one.

Say Ego Ignaxio and Xpecial some how magically end up in a low elo game on opposite teams on smurf accounts (yes I specified that so xpecial doesnt ban kennen). Ego is kennen mid and Xpecial is support (and yes blitz is banned) what team do you think is going to win? I would put money on Ego infact I don't think it would be even close.

Edit: Oh and don't kid yourself support is not easy. I mean from a gaming skill stand point like if ez is hard because of skill shots then sure yeah support is easy. However as far as tactical knowledge goes...support is not easy and requires a good understanding of what your champions and enemy champions are capable of.

Edit2: of course some supports are significantly easier than others

Wow great guide!
Gonna go practice now :P

I realize you're trying to be helpful so I won't really get into the negativity. I also don't really spend a lot of time watching professional streams or anything, so I'm just going to have to take your word for who these people are.

However, say Xpecial is Janna, what now? Both of them will be leading their team and calling out what everyone should be doing. The thing about the support is I guarantee the ADC and Bot Lane will be fed. Ego may come down to stop it but his team won't be counter-warding most likely, so he's just going to waste a trip down to bot lane for nothing. He might feed his top lane, but chances are it'll be Teemo or some other worthless late-game top-lane champ.

So late game hits and Ken initiates, Janna waits for it and ults him away, and the ADC then melts their team.

I realize this is situational, but I'm showing you how a support can carry the early and late-game and still make up for crappy teammates. I'm not necessarily saying the game would go like this, only that it *could* go like this. Don't forget that Xpecial's team will likely have the advantage with the jump in teamfights because Janna will be warding and counter-warding whereas Ego's support likely will not be doing so. If Ego wants the job done he will likely have to do it himself, wasting money on both wards and oracle's.

What I'm also saying is that the weakness on the team will lie in the support 90% of the time. Or, in other words, the support is usually where the most improvement could be made - because no one wants to do it. So when someone who is good at supporting actually does the job well, the team often times will win, simply because it was the largest area that could improve on the team, and the other team is stuck with someone who "Didn't want to support" and also "Doesn't really know how to support" other than dropping wards and poking in the laning phase - and they'll be doing it half-heartedly because they'd rather be killing things.

heh I like the Janna pick but don't you find it more difficult to carry a bad ADC without someone with far more aggression? I couldn't guarantee a fed adc in that situation. Even if he did get kills I really don't think its going to be enough Janna can knock Kennen back after zonyas but I really don't think his team will be able to win the match..confident enough that Egos team will win to bet money on the match.

I agree that the average support sure could use a lot of improvement and im not going to deny it can play a decent impact but if your enemies are far less skilled than you are its not the best choice to secure victory. If I were to end up in a super low elo game...say like the 500 elo you were parking at. I would slaughter them like a smurf prenerf akali in a lowbie match. With a support it really depends on my team...it would go better if they listened to me but its highly unlikely that I would be able to accomplish near as much with a support.

Everytime someone messes up, ima copy and paste the link to this post for them.

Ima try to be as polite as i can, say hello all, lets have a good game, and make a great team comp, in every lobby i go to.

Your completly right, i usually try to fill in whatever role is needed by picking my champion last. But sometimes people just dont want to pick and wait til lthe 10 second marker. :\

I hear what you're saying, but let me say this: Do you think that Xpecial would lose a single game (outside of crazy circumstances like 3v5 or a mega-troll (I've had each of those circumstances happen to me once or maybe twice in 600 games played) ) from 500-1300, even if he only played support every time? He wouldn't. I have several different "Elo Hell Doesn't Exist Because I Belong at 1800 Elo and I Won 9 Games out of 10 Getting Back There" examples I could list, and a few of them did it supporting.

This is the mindset I'm trying to get people to see. Even if other roles are more influential, you can still carry as a support, and you can still do it with a surety of victory if you improve enough.

Supports carry the carry in the early game. It's not the carry that is in charge of the laning, it's the two supports duking it out for zone control and harass. The ADC is CSing with the occasional poke, the support is zoning with constant poke so that the ADC can keep CSing. Try playing a Voli/Ashe game against *any* team comp in low Elo. As long as the two of you are reasonably intelligent you'll win the lane - I recognize Voli falls off in usefulness the higher your Elo gets, but in low Elo he dominates bottom lane. Try next playing Soraka/Ashe, see how much worse you do. Same ADC, different support.

Let me put it this way (this is a "usually" thing - and again this is my own "theory" and it might be full of ****):

The early-game carries are jungle and mid. (Laning) With the support carrying the bottom lane.
The mid-game carries are top and support. (Dragon control and knocking down towers)
The late-game carries are the tank(s) (whether that's jungle, support, and/or top) and the ADC. (Baron control and knocking down inhibitors)

If you want my reasoning for this I can give it, but I think I've given it in a previous post. Support will carry the team through the mid-game by warding, disrupting, and sometimes tanking. They provide map control for the essential job of split-pushing, grabbing dragon, and protecting the team from getting jumped in the bushes. Once the proper skills are developed for this, it's *very* easy for the support to fulfill this role in a way where they can carry the game at this point, especially in low-elo. All that's needed is a ping and "They are there, let's go here" type statements - because the map will be warded and the support will be keeping track of the enemy team's movements.

Once again, I get what everyone is saying. I understand the desire to fight back at what I'm saying. What I'm telling you is that a lot of what you believe is accidental indoctrination. You've been told what a support can and cannot do, mixed with the current "jungle and mid are the most influential roles" propaganda, and the logical conclusion is that support is worthless. It's not, and I would venture to say that a great support is the most important thing you can have in low-elo, because it's in the lowest supply and highest demand.

One more example to drive this home:

Imagine that Low Elo (below 1300) consists of certain abilities to completely fulfill roles at a given percentage range. Obviously the percentage drops as the Elo drops as well.

For the sake of whatever we'll say at 1000 Elo (Where most consider that Elo Hell ends and consistently bad players begins) the percentage range is this:

Top lane: 30-60%
Mid lane: 30-75%
Jungle: 25-65%
AD Carry: 30-60%
Support: 10-60%

Obviously these aren't true numbers but this is what I'm trying to point out. The range for everything but the support is between 30 and 45%, whereas the support's range is 50%. You have the possibility of two supports going head-to-head with each other where one is a complete derp that doesn't ward and steals cs (10%) vs. someone who knows how to ward and understands the basics of zoning and doesn't take cs (60%). Imagine now if you took a few weeks to *really* get better at supporting, and jumped all the way to 80% role completion. You'd dominate every single match, with some being closer than others (60 vs 80), but a majority being total ROFLstomps (average of 35 vs 80). You can't get this discrepancy in any other role.

This is my point. Even if the actual "overall game control" is something like top @ 18%, mid @ 22%, jungle @ 23%, ADC @ 20% and support @ 17%, the discrepancy in the skill-range makes up for the amount of control you have over the game.

EDIT: Let me know if the whole percentage thing doesn't make any sense. I'm using the percentages for two things: One is a person's ability to fulfill the role, giving a range of different people from the worst to the best at a given Elo. The other percentage is the actual influence that a given lane has over the game.