Article: How to Support by Camocspro

I liked this comment/post, but it was buried in Reddit, and I knew I'd never find it again.  It is re-posted here for posterity.

Captured from Reddit.  Post by camocspro.

Here are certain simple rules to all support players who are in low MMR. People at higher level MMR probably all know this already, so ignore from here on.

1. Always buy wards at level 1. If you think your enemy is an invis hero like clinkz, bounty, weaver, you have to buy sentry wards. Go gather around rune at 0:00 with help. Assess your enemy lanes, if you feel that they are going to safe lane and you are safe laning too, its always better to ward near the enemy's safe lane rune spot, so your mid can see incoming ganks.
2. Always check the offlane player's inventory. If he has wards, keep tabs on his inventory as he walks around. If he doesn't have it at any moment, he has likely placed the ward around where he walked. Always check pull camp at 0:30, to make sure it hasn't been warded. If it has, buy sentrys ASAP and deward and start pulling. If it hasn't then stack, go zone out if its a strong offlane like phoenix or bristle back and then pull. Else just zone out and pull through. Try to avoid staying in lane with the carry unless he requires it and make sure you get XP and so does his carry. Don't unnecessarily babysit carry. Just zone out offlane and come back in between to help. When harassing try to stay off the aggro range from creeps. Do not unnecessarily harass enemy while taking aggro from creeps. Harass mainly when there are fewer creeps and away from aggro range. Eat a tango before trading hits. Take off creep aggro after each harass. Learn aggro tricks searching on google. Do not trade hits with a hero who has more damage than you. Use harass with spells instead, of course you should have mana regen for that. If you need the carry help in harass and zoning out. Ping the enemy offlane hero to notify your carry to help you. When in lane DO NOT try to steal a creep. Deny and get your gold from pulls. Do not single pull unless you intend to get a tower.
3. After zoning out, go roam towards mid especially as a 4 role. If you are 5 role, don't bother roaming unless your carry is doing really well and doesn't need any help. As a 4 role, you should buy smoke to gank before minute 6, as most often enemy supports have wards. If you try to gank without a smoke, your move towards mid woulda be of no use. As a 4 or a jungler try to secure the rune for your mid hero if he has a bottle. Come around 55 to the rune spot and ask your mid to go to the other rune spot. This will ensure your mid hero wins the rune battle. Try upgrading courier as soon as possible after minute 3.
4. Watch for enemy hero levels. I've seen the players perspective of my 3k MMR friend and he didn't even see the scoreboard or the other hero inventories etc to see how everyone else is doing, until he died. Watch for levels of all heroes, especially mid and invis killers like nyx bounty. As soon as nyx hits level 5+, go get sentry wards and place one at mid and one at carry. You also need to get teleport scroll to be ready to TP since around level 6 laning stages transitions into ganks. You will NOT have money for magic wand, or arcane boots unless you have kills. At max you will have boots and a magic wand. This should be enough. That is why position 5 is really hard. You have to try your best to gather gold to invest on wards etc. Also remember to stack, supports even my level of MMR just refrain from doing this. They walk next to a creep camp at 53 and are completely oblivious to the idea that they can stack a camp/ancients without wasting any time. You need to pay a lot of attention. Your gold and levels depends on how well your team is doing, not on how well you are doing. You support your core heroes to win the game. You don't carry the game for your team.
5. Don't worry too much about your levels, ensure that your core heroes are at good levels as when you are near kills, you will catch up on levels. The more greedier you play the worse it is for your team. If youare position 5 you can control the tempo of the game with your support especially early game. As a position 4 or even position 5 do NOT stay in lane with low hp or mana without any form of regen. Just walk to base to come back. You don't need to use TP to come back. You can just walk back. That TP should be saved to help someone in danger.
6. The most important thing is to watch enemy inventory. There is no point in ganking someone with a haste rune bottled up if you don't have a really hard disable for a long time. Assess killing potential and hp. HP percentage bar is not enough to gauge killing potential. High strengh gain heroes can have 500 hp at 50% health which is not an easy kill. Also notice mana pools. If weaver has only mana for one sukuchi then it is a great time to gank. If he has full mana, unless you have good lockdown and burst, ganking him is fruitless, because he is going to ulti.
7. Watch for tier 1 HP. If it is under 50% HP, single pull the small camp and destroy the enemy creeps faster and get tier 1 quickly. This is especially useful, if your safe lane is doing really well and your carry is going midas. This will get his midas faster due to tower gold and therefore accelerate GPM.
8. Do not deward and place the ward in the same spot. Place in different places all over the map so your ward doesn't get dewarded easily. Always carry dust against shadow blade/invis heroes, sentries is not that useful. Get sentries against heroes that use invis to initiate, like nyx, mirana ultimate etc.
9. Do not stack disables, and please for the love of god don't buy an aghanims on supports. Buy mobility items. Blink/forstaff euls. My friends always go aghs on bane which is ridiculously dumb and I can't even imagine why. Unless you are warlock aghs is a stupid item on supports. Blink/forcestaff/euls will be better any day. Have a lot of gold, buy necro and stay relevant. Even a bkb/ghost sceptor/halbred is better.
10. In fights you shouldn't try to right click. Cast your skills and get away from the fight. You are not there to take any damage whatsoever. Once your cooldowns are done, come back into the fight and cast spells again.

Good Follow-up Comments:

by rascast5:
So don't just create space for your carry. Your job isn't to stand next to the carry so he 'has space'. Work to get him kills, work to get mid kills, and work to kill the enemy carry, while keeping vision up around the map so your team doesn't get ganked. Always have a tp so you can tp to ganks to help out and get return kills. Your carry doesn't need to be ultra farmed. If your mid is decent and you help him stomp his lane by controlling runes and ganking then the game becomes 4v5. If you kill the enemy carry as well and stop him from farming it doesn't matter if he could be last hitting better than your guy.

by Myzzrym:
If you see for instance that people are not paying attention to the mini-map, do not place wards in "passive" areas to "avoid ganks" (because they won't notice it anyway). Place your wards aggressively where you know you can catch someone or at least disturb them, or place them in a way where you have sight so you can harass safely because you know the enemy supports are not near.
If you see your carry isn't reliable, it's time to go and try to shut down someone else instead of making sure you own carry can get farm. Be careful, it's really easy to get into a "everyone sucks anyway" mindset and start playing solo, which is not what I'm advocating for. People make mistakes, and you shouldn't entirely abandon your carry because he missed some CS or got killed stupidly once or twice.