So my younger brother sucked me into this game a few weeks ago, and I gotta say that I'm having a blast with Annie & Sona. I main with Sona and occasionally switch it up with Annie.

I've tried Taric, Janna, Blitzcrank, and Soraka, but Sona is by far my favorite. My win/loss isn't terrible (as of this post, 52/57), and I come to you guys for a bit of advice on how to build Sona and how to support in general.

In my average game I'll start with wards and a faerie charm, build up a philosopher stone, then work on the Ionian Boots of Lucidity (I've read in many places that Sona's Aria of Perseverance doesn't stack well with AP, so I go for cooldown reduction) or (I forget what they're called, the movement speed 2/5 boots) if the other team is mobile. Most of the time I'll get the Chalice of Harmony before the tier 2 boots for the mana regen since I burn though mana very quickly in team fights.

After I get that going, I base my next choices on how the game is going. I'll go for the Iron Locket of Solari if team fights have been frequent (great active at the beginning of a team fight), Aegis if our team is getting beaten back, Zeke's Herald if we have a lot of AD'ers and we're fairing well / evenly matched, and Shurelya's Reverie is a great item to have for those GTFO moments.

As for my playstyle, I go bot and give my lane buddy all the minion kills while poking the other laners and popping Clairvoyance around the map, usually in another lanes bushes. I'll drop a ward in the bush in the water and sometimes in the two bottom bushes if the other guys feel too comfortable in there.

Anyone have any tips on how to improve my game? Builds, tactics, and advice are all welcome. Also looking for critiques on my playstyle. Pat me on the back or rub lit cigarettes into my arm and call me scum, either way tips would be helpful to not just me, but probably you in the future.

Also, FIRST POST!

assuming level 30 for the build and such, if not don't worry about it too much its mostly runes after you get flash spell

annie is a cheese support and a bad mid(low range, low hp, all burst and even then others bring more damage)

all supports follow the same general build, runes, and spells, at least until season 3 items come out

supports should be at least 16 pts deep into utility for more gold regen

this lets you start either boots, ward, ward/pots if you are against a super passive or skillshot lane. Otherwise start the normal fairecharm, wards, pots

runes are any of the following:
reds: mpen(high poke lane such as sona), armor(normal support reds)
yellows: gold/10 or armor
blues: mana/5/lvl( i use these with mpen in a safe lane), mr or mr/lvl really just choice between those
quints: gold/10 can never go wrong with these, movespeed if you are playing a tank support(blitz, ali, leona) and are confident in your adc to get kills

spells 99% of th time you take flash/exhaust
CV is useless compared to just buying a ward and placing it in their jungle, it takes all of 20sec tops on your side of the map

sona skills
max r>q>w>e
can swap q and w depending how easy/hard lane is

as for sonas items as most supports you go the following: ALWAYS HAVE A SLOT FOR WARDS, really always have a ward spot since you can never have enough
philo, hog, boots first items
from there its zekes, shurelias, more wards, whatever else you want/need
keep hog for iron locket or randuins, both are good utility

on sona my last slot is normally chalice or banshees

I don't support with Annie, I just use her as a backup in case the role of support is called by someone else. I'm also not terrible with Ahri.

Thanks for the build too. I used it in my last two games with my brother playing ADC. We didn't win them, but he noticed that he was living "longer than he should be", so that's always good

Also, didn't know there were gold / 10 runes beyond quints, gonna have to nab some of those seals.

Exhaust > CV. It's much more likely to give you a kill or save your life. And as said above, CV can be replaced by wards. How mundane.

Also, try Alistar. He's free by liking LoL on Youtube (or is it Facebook? One of the 2). You won't ever get to play him in draft or ranked, but he's really fun and you'll win a lot of blind games just because you have him. :P He's my favorite support and he's awesome.

My 2nd favorite champ is Zyra, and I play her as support some. She gets free wards (seeds; if you use them that way) and some nice CC. She also deals a lot of damage to poke with, and is really useful in team fights even if she doesn't build AP. I'd recomend trying her out too. I know there's pros that use her as support as well.

I replaced CV with Exhaust, and it's already saved me several times and gotten my team a kill. Definetly keeping this on my bar.

I'm gonna have to give Zyra a try too, seems interesting.

Most of what you're doing is pretty solid, a lot just takes practice. I main Janna, not Sona, though and I don't recall ever building a grail. I recommend Mercury's Threads for boots most of the time because CC will really shut you down as a squishy little support (well, unless you had enough gold to build Randuin's Omen), but I have built boots of mobility on occasion, or even ninja tabi if their ADC is destroying us and I need to just quit dying.

As the others have said, exhaust is much better than CV these days as you should be relying on wards for vision. Exhaust is a wonderful tool to punish bad turret dives. I've killed people by circling around my own turret while exhausting/CCing them, even to the point of getting double kills off some really bad dives.

And do more Janna She's hard to use, but fun once you realize all the awesome things you can use tornadoes for. If you want tornadoing ideas, watch this: http://www.leaguereplays.com/replays/match/2518867/

I made some serious mistakes in that match, didn't ward enough, didn't buy Oracle's/pink wards when I should have, and followed Olaf way too deep into a hostile jungle with no HP, among other serious mistakes. But overall it went well for me and you can see some of my tornado tricks if you want to.

Everyone here has said it, but I feel like throwing it out there myself with a few cents too. Wards are really the biggest thing for a support. Depending on your carry too, I will often start with the charm and 2 greens and a pink ward and one pot either health or mana depending on the support I'm playing. Having that early pink can lead to some nice early kills by taking away any vision they have. Granted like I said that depends on your carry too, and how agressive the two of you can be together. Even so an early pink can let you control the river for an early jungle gank also. I don't always buy that early pink but I find myself doing it more and more now days. I just don't need the extra pots on support. I find I usually sell them back. But I have mained support since as long as I've been playing this game so I have a good grasp on it. Granted I am not calling myself a pro or anything.

I really do spend the bulk of my money on wards though. I like playing the map control game, and I find myself roaming if I can if my carry is fine or we are pushed up at all. I will even go throw wards near mid to help them watch for the enemy jungle early game. Map control can really bring your team back in games too, if you know where the enemy is you can complete objectives of your own that much easier or you can pull off ganks on enemies that are off solo.

I recently had been working on learning jungle some more, so I don't have as many rune pages set up support wise as previous. But I would suggest just reading guides. I read a lot of guides and what not watched videos and I'm always learning more things. As a support I have had many different rune page setups also. It really depends on the support i'm playing and the carry I'm with and who the enemy team has against us. A lot of guides will even help with little things, like where you can place wards when the enemy team has oracles and you want to try and be sneakier and not have your wards found so easily. All these little things add up.

Gear wise, once again it really matters who i'm playing. I don't find myself buying merc treds hardly ever as a support and while some may disagree with that, as a support its not that OFTEN that the enemy team will be targetting you. Often times the support is the last one to die. If i'm playing ALI for example I almost always buy boots of mobility, just because its huge to be able to get ahead of the enemy after a knockup and be able to headbutt them back into your team or wherever. Speed is essential. IF i'm playing sona, or soraka, i will generally buy lucidity boots because the cooldowns are just too long. Basically its just either, I want to be faster as a support or have shorter cooldowns. Once in awhile the enemy team is so heavy on CC i'll buy Merc treds but not often. Thats me though....to each their own. Another huge item taken on most support builds is Shurileya's (sp). It has cooldown reduction and it lets you activate it to make you and anyone around you move faster. Good for escapes or initiates. IF our tanky person or jungle doesn't buy aegis I will almost always buy that too. But in most games I am lucky if i get gear past Philo stone HOG and boots. I just spend the rest of the money on wards and oracles. I also buy a lot of early pinks. I believe very strongly in map control.

Other then that. Protect your carry is your number one job. When in lane, make your presence known, don't just hide in the bushes. You need to be helping harass if you can and keep the enemy from getting CS or looking for initiates for your carry if your playing that kind of support. If you just sit in the bushes your basically making a stalemate of a lane which is boring and gets you no where, or your letting the enemy be the aggressor which can make things difficult too. If you like sona she is personally one of my favorite champs to harass with especially early game. I would look into Leona also for that she can be huge and can wreck a carry early game all by herself while being plenty tanky on top of it.

So yea, thats enough babble out of me for now. Good Luck!

Hey, I'm currently on a forum smurf but I'm a Season 2 2.1k support only player. You can take a look at Ji Style, my main.
http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/19588577
Season 2, I had 450+ ranked janna games,
350+ ranked taric games,
250+ ranked soraka games,
150+ ranked sona games,
and couple more games with lulu, leona and nunu.
My alistar isn't the best and I'm totally bad at blitz, so I won't talk about them much.

Sona received a lot of defensive nerfs, which makes her very early level poke not very rewarding if she is getting harassed back.

First, let me go into the basics - I'm running a basic support rune page, but instead of gp5 seals I go for mregen per level seals, which will help you last longer in lane phase.

That said, I'm very passive my first 2 levels, and once I hit 3 I get aggressive.
I start with faerie charm 3 wards and 3 pots. With poke champions, you really want to go 3 pots.
Never poke when you are under 50~60% hp, because that makes you in a very dangerous situation where the enemy duo can easily burst you down.
The best levels to harass is level 3 and level 5, which is the levels when you can rank up your Qs.
Q damage does seem weak at level 4, and I like to save up mana for heavy poking at level 5 and try to go for a kill once I hit 6.

When poking, make sure you can hit as much auto attacks as possible. There is a big difference between a regular Q harass and an auto->Q / Q->auto harass which gets the most out of your Q and its passive aura.

When your AD is farming under tower, keep your Q up and he'll have an easy time farming under tower.

When your passive have 2 or 3 stacks, I usually don't use heal. That is to make sure I can either Q powerchord or E powerchord, and I don't see myself using W powerchord that often.

When your team is taking towers, dragon or baron, use Q, wait for its CD to refresh, then use W to heal the allies that are tanking and then use Q again right away, and repeat. This makes sure you always have the Q aura up which increases the attack damage and ability power of your nearby allies, which helps you take the two objectives a lot faster.

Other than that, when I'm chasing, I use QWE to get my slow up, hit the target, and repeat. It's an infinite slow pretty much.

My skill order is
Q W Q E Q R which is always same for every game unless something crazy happens, and if lane phase goes longer, I get Q W Q E, and if lane phase is ending early, I go Q E Q E.

Always max out E as soon as you can once you get out of lanephase, because that **** is just really op.

In high level play, it is best for a support to buy wards and then buy items with the left over money, but in lower level play, it is better to buy items and buy wards with leftover money just because lower ranked players do not make much out of wards all around the map.

Go Philo as soon as you can and then buy HoG before boots if you can buy it in 1 purchase. If you don't have enough for a HoG, get boots and wards.
Faster GP10 = more income = even faster GP10 ; this means that GP10 snowballs really fast.
Buy a 3rd GP20 if you can get it around 15 minutes, but if you are at around 20 minute mark with only 2 GP10, start building your reverie.
And usually, the game should end there. These days, junglers/top goes aegis which means you should go Zekes as your second item if the game even reaches there.

Add me, Ji Style, in game if you wanna talk more about the role