Introduction to Dota 2 Roles — Hard Support
We are continuing our series about roles in Dota in an attempt to help new players better understand the game. Today we are going to discuss one of the least popular, yet equally important role — hard support.
In our previous blog post we’ve already touched on the numerical approach to roles in Dota and position five, or Hard Support is the role with the lowest farm priority in the game. Typically, it means that your character is going to be of a lower level and won’t have many items by the end of the game.
That dissuades many players from attempting to play the role: there is a common misconception in the community that the impact a position five support has on the game is smaller, compared to other roles. That might have been true previously, but the balance patches over the last couple of years made the role considerably more important and interesting to play.
In fact, one could argue that the hard support role is the most interesting role to play right now: games are shorter on average across all skill brackets and hard supports, unlike other positions, rarely farm and typically have an earlier power level peak. If played correctly, a support hero is rarely idle: instead of afk-hitting creeps you are planning, scheming and constantly looking for an angle to attack or ways to get a macro advantage.
As such, there isn’t much difference between support’s early, mid and late-game: you should be concentrated for the whole duration of the game and never lower your guard. There are very few more satisfying things in Dota than outplaying a hero with five times your net worth, leading to an easy setup for a kill, but to get there, you have to fully understand the most important skills for a support.
Understanding positioning
Positioning is possibly the most important skill in Dota. It is important for all roles, but as a support your positioning mistakes will cost you more and as such, this is the first thing all support players should concentrate on.
In broad terms positioning is the ability to find space in the fight where you can have the maximum impact while staying alive for as long as you are useful. While tanky cores and some carries should typically have an aggressive, frontline position, the absolute majority of supports should be in the backline, using their spells from range, retreating once they are on cooldown and then returning for a second wave of abilities.
The biggest common mistake support players make is that they try to auto-attack the team’s target after using their spells past the laning stage. This approach makes sense in the first ten minutes of the game, but past that the right-click damage on most supports is negligible. The only big exception to the rule is when your team is ganking a highly elusive hero and you need all the damage you can get during the disable window.
Support right-clicking a tanky target doesn’t typically make a difference, but it generally forces you out of position and allows the enemy to find and kill you with relative ease. In most cases, retreating to a safer spot, waiting for your cooldowns and then returning to the fight with more disables or utility is preferable.
Spell usage
Learning to use spells in Dota is a skill that takes months to master. Learning not to use them takes years. Skills in Dota, compared to some other games, typically have a much higher impact, but on a longer cooldown and learning when to use them will definitely make you a better player. You can’t just press all the buttons in a quick succession and call it a day.
This is especially true for support heroes: they mainly contribute to the fights through their spell usage and the outcome of the fight heavily depends on how well they land their disables or how well they provide their utility.
Never pounce on an advantage as soon as it appears. Wait till it stands to have maximum effect. That means not using disables on already disabled targets, knowing what heroes to prioritize with your damage spells and casting your high-impact ultimates on priority targets.
Knowing how long your tank can survive for or how fast your carry can deal with a low-HP target can only come with experience, but as soon as you start getting a grasp on the general flow of the game, start asking yourself whether your spell is actually necessary in the current scenario.
Do’s and don’ts of being a martyr
Several years ago, in one of our blog posts, we’ve touched on one of the bigger problems with newbie supports: too often they get shoehorned into the role of a martyr. The aforementioned blog post still has a lot of relevant information, if you are up for some extra reading, but right now we would like to concentrate on the idea of “dying with a purpose”.
You can and should be the one to face-check the potential smoke ganks from the enemy. Support heroes should generally be quite close to their farming carry if your team is not grouped up and is simply trying to get some extra items. Hard supports with wave clear usually should be the ones to shove lanes in dangerous positions. Support life is a dangerous one, but it is still worth a lot.
Always think whether your current actions are beneficial to the team and whether you can survive through it without losing much efficiency. Revealing a smoke gank, getting killed, but providing your team with valuable information is admirable, but surviving the ordeal is preferable: use high grounds and defensive vision to try and stay alive.
Shoving waves into the enemy territory forces them to react and rotate, creating space for your enemy to farm, but getting an extra wave and getting killed is objectively worse than playing it safe and surviving.
Having vision on the enemy side of the map is always nice, but throwing your life away for a ward that will most likely get dewarded is rarely worth it: try to plant vision while achieving extra goals, rather than making excursions into the enemy territory just for the sake of it. Wards are best planted under the effects of Smoke of Deceit with your team as a backup during a gank. You can read this article for some general warding tips that are mostly patch-agnostic.
Closing Thoughts
All of the information above ties into a single, quite concise idea: as a support, don’t be a martyr, unless you absolutely have to. Hard Supports are as important as carries at all stages of the game. They might not be the ones to actually deal the damage, but they are usually the ones who make dealing damage possible in the first place.
There are many skills in Dota that can only be developed in practice, but some general concepts can be learned outside of game. They are as crucial for your growth as a player as your mechanical prowess, so it is worth doing your homework. Above all, however, love yourself, your teammates and stay safe!
Nice reading material. You could add some easy pos 5 heroes for newcomer to play with though. Perhaps mention CM, disruptor, or lich?
Dont mention the pos 5 roaming pudge.
For me warding is not only for providing vision but more importantly, to create paths to where (I want) the game flows through the map. Most carries don't understand this and keep shouting wards, wards, and wards. Placing wards needs a lot of consideration. Is it safe to place there now? Will that be dewarded very soon? Will it give a significant impact towards the pushing patterns we are currently on?
A good support knows where and WHEN to place wards.
A good carry knows WHY wards are placed there.
Good points and I imagine the mechanics of stacking & pulling we're mentioned in an earlier blog, but JIC, I find success as a hard support when I'm watching the clock. Spend the first :40 harassing and zoning the enemy out of lane, then stack at :53. Protect the stack and ward/deward as needed. Then around 1:07 decide if a pull is needed, if so 1:13 I'm pulling. If not I rejoin the carry and continue to harass and zone. Rinse and repeat this "schedule" as much as possible.
One of the hardest thing as support can get is accepting you will have low Net worth score and having less fun for the other 3 (if not 4) other player.
^^I agree position 5 support is not fun at all , but several pos 4 heroes are the most fun to play heroes in all of dota .
Pos 5 Hard Support should be removed in lower bracket, so there are two pos 4 and three pos 3 because no one is good enough to be fully supported and good enough to actually play like a pos 5.
From my experience smurfing as hard support on Archon and lower, it is so stressful because not only the carry and midlaner sucks, their decision making is really terrible for only and only on Hard Support (constantly farming all the time, sometimes so far without vision, not helping back to turn around a fight when a Hard Support rescued them, asking to plant ward on a bad part of the map).
Keep in mind that even I had a hard time supporting these carry, let alone those on lower bracket who picked hard sup.
Ranting aside, Pos 5 heroes that suited newbies would be hero that is strong in lane and had no weird mechanics like :
Warlock, Shadow Shaman, Snapfire, Veno, Skywrath, and Earthshaker, these heroes have very good damage output or stuns that can let you do a turnaround in a fight even with little to almost no items.
Once you get used to them, you should start using heroes that need game sense to play like Bane, Disruptor, Grimstroke
One thing about support role I dislike right now is that there are many heroes in the meta, who can jump supports - I prefer to play supports when the meta is a bit more focusing on heroes like Terror, Luna, Alch, Gyro, Spectre, medusa, who come online much later.
Now it is slark, ursa, Lycan, Jugg, MK, who just jumps on you with their first item and you are pretty much dead.
That is just annoying, as my primary support heroes are SD (needs a target, who is farmed and can selfharm), WD (who just likes prolonged fights) and Silencer, who dont have any save/escape for himself.
Your TI9 predict sucks
When i plan to place wards, ill NEVER place them on those columns that shows the ward place.
Cause they will soon or semi late dewarded.
Ill place them in those cordinations where the enemy will never understand their place.
Yes, surly those spots where the columns show the ward place is the best to provide a much and better vision, but atleast last longer than them!
You know, smart! Is my key.
They will never expect :)))
Pos 5 = free mmr in trench. And let those “carries” think that they are carrying:)
how is pos 5 borings? you literally dictate how the game will be played on the first 5 mins if u win ur safe lane or not. and u get u use ur moves a lot and do a lot of dmg early.
I love playing pos 5 sup, but most thing you earn in the game is: blame, For everything!
You can buy 20 wards, it will always be too little.
You are always the feeder (while saving ur carries ass) and the noob because you have little kills,
There is actually no fun in playing support especially with people who play Mr. Invincable, dive tier 2, die there and ping/blame you cuz you didn't join and feed with him.
Even whn you tell them you are stacking and pulling, they still push the tower and wonder why you are not there....
Problems are the carries not the sups!
Position 5 can be extremely interesting if you know how to enjoy it. I, for one, enjoy playing Pudge in this position. A simple hook does not require any items, and can easily decide the outcome of the game, let alone the outcome of a fight. A good Pudge will feed on those kills; with enough stacks, Pudge can later easily transition into an extra carry for his team. Waiting in the jungle for the perfect moment to hook in the early levels, however long it takes, is one of the best feelings in Dota.