I recently wrote about counter-measuring heroes (particularly - counter-measuring Wraith King), so it will be fair to highlight specific roles conversely. This time, I'll review Hard and Soft Support. So bellow is
- A General review of the main aspects and less evident nuances of playing Support
- A short reminder of the differences between positions 4 and 5 (Soft and Hard Supports)
- Plus some speculative opinions about the current meta in this context.
Here we go!
Playing Support Primary Traits
Laning and Zoning
The support gameplay at the early stages, or simply at the laning period, is fundamental. Your most important job as the support is ensuring you carry farms safely. This will primarily involve zoning out the enemy offlaner(s) from the creep wave using harassment and positioning. There is an outstanding balance between not being too aggressive and also not drawing too much creep aggro because that will disrupt lane equilibrium.
Warding
Good vision can ultimately win games, so being a proficient support player means being a master at warding—where to drop your Observer Wards for vision and where to place Sentry Wards to reward enemy vision. Warding mastery includes understanding all the common spot locations forwards and even some uncommon ones that are less likely to be rewarded. Vision around primary objectives - Roshan, rune spots, and jungle entrances will offer your team a serious advantage.
Pulling and Stacking
This pulls the wave far into your side, which allows you to experience, akin to most other Offlanes, and control the lane equilibrium, especially when your carry can get levels but farm under your tower. It acts as a denial of the enemy's experience. Other important things include stacking neutral camps, which is a farming resource for your cores later on, and when and which camps to stack at different times. This is an ultra-subtle thing separating good supports from great ones.
Ganking and Roaming
Also, supports generally have some pretty nice early-game abilities to help secure kills or turn back enemy attempts. Knowing when to leave your lane to gank mid or the enemy's safe lane can end up turning the game over in your favor. It's all about hitting the right timings, striking a balance between helping lanes, and not leaving your carry 4-5.
Itemization
"Support itemization" is the act of trying to amplify the impact you can make with your limited resources. Arcane Boots, Glimmer Cape, Force Staff, Solar Crest—these are all items that provide utility and, hopefully, squeeze in a bit of space for the rest of your team. This is what supports are all about.
Sacrifice and Space Creation
Support is selflessness. You will very often have to give up your life, aiming not only to save your teammate but to make sure your team fight can be considered won. It is the feeling and the ability to judge when your life is less precious than your teammate's. Moreover, there is a possibility that your team gets ahead by making space for them by shoving lanes or distracting enemy attention.
Late Game and High Ground Defense
Much like every other position, the role of the Support in a game shifts as the game is allowed to develop further. Positioning becomes even more key, able to perhaps be the most focal point during high-ground defenses or sieges, but good initiation or counter-initiation, saving them at the right time, will be the game-winning play more often than not. Of course, warding or dewarding remains important around major objectives late.
The role of Support requires patience, strategic understanding, and a selfless mindset in-game. Every decision counts here, either where to place the ward or at the risk of life so your teammate can get out alive. Quite unsung, but definitively foundational in victory built.
Two Faces of Support
The two support roles in DotA have a distinctive name that comes because of the priorities, duties, and resource allocations of the team. While each is done in a manner that efforts should be towards team success, they are accomplished in uniquely different ways. The differences, as per the present study, are explored below.
Hard Support (Position 5)
Main Priorities:
In early play dates, vision control is in the hands of a very hard support player, with this role primarily being responsible for the purchase of Observer and Sentry Wards.
A Position 1 lane: This lane is more directed to provide the safelane carry with space to farm, which can usually be achieved by harassment, zoning off the enemy offlaner, and controlling the lane equilibrium through pulling.
It is this deliberate action that hard supports often remain without their own gold and experience; the farm priority remains the least in their case, considering a good notion of their resource shall go into the purchase of support items such as Smoke of Deceit, Dust of Appearance, and Town Portal Scrolls.
Itemization: Narcissistic islanding stands for the case of hard supports focusing on securing mainly utility stuff that doesn't take a lot of gold either. The most frequent are Glimmer Cape, Force Staff, and Arcane Boots, as they bring a huge impact on the team and don't burrow Support into farming.
Soft Support (Position 4)
Main Priorities:
Roaming and Ganking: The Soft Support player is going to be far more mobile than the Hard Support player and far more active around the majority of the map, thus mostly rotating between different lanes and trying to achieve a kill, or, in general, just a presence in order to help apply pressure to the enemy team.
Utility and Semi-Carry Potential: While it's still a position 4 and seen in the support role, this position gets a bit more freedom in the farm to possibly become a semi-carry or utility if the game does call for it. They usually build items more in tune with turning the tides in team fights or more useful during skirmishes than straight-up combative items.
Support the Offlane: More often than not, the presence of the soft Support is with the offlane hero in the early game, making sure to aggravate the lane a little more and deny farm to the safelane.
Itemization: With all the bullets on their utility gun, they could afford to be a bit daring, or even strategic, allowing themselves such items as Blink Dagger or Eul's Scepter of Divinity, or maybe even picking up some damage items when the situation requires.
Key Differences
Resource Allocation: Hard supports are arguably one of the hardest to play the role, very often putting their progression on the line for the team. Soft supports generally can farm a little more easily than hard supports and sometimes move into a more aggressive semi-carry role compared to other soft supports.
Playstyle Orientation: Hard supports typically orient the babysit around their carry at the time and control an essential vision, with soft supports taking an extremely active role in terms of roaming and starting fights.
Late Game Impact: Whereas equally effective in utility and spells, the soft supports usually succeed from the 4th position in having a bit more of a transition into the added potentials for damage dealing or making for a bigger initiator role courtesy of the slight boost in resource.
Such roles require very high judgment regarding the right understanding and execution: at what times does a player need to be selfless, and at what times must an opportunity be taken aggressively to realize how to benefit the team?
Best Support Heroes
Both Hard Support (Position 5) and Soft Support (Position 4) roles have some perks allocated to them, which heroes can gain from to execute their duties and be of major value to the organization throughout the game.
Soft Support heroes:
Vengeful Spirit falls into the category of fitting initiators; in fact, she is one of the initiators with the best win rate, sitting on an average of 53%. She comes with Nether Swap for positioning, Wave of Terror for armor reduction, and an ability called Vengeance Aura, which is, of course, damage-amplifying. Magic Missile is a harassment ability in the early game, only short of Solar Crest, which compounds this with team-amplifying potential and lowers the enemy's armor to zero.
Warlock: In magic-heavy metagames, Warlock is a huge powerhouse. His means of disrupting enemy formation come with Upheaval and Chaotic Offering, all of which may be. No doubt, it comes with a lot of natural benefits for Warlock's teammates and can do wonders in denying the enemy team a chance to find any initiation. Subtle in design, the tool of his kit's namesake bounce perfectly and has a proclivity for items defensive in nature, such as Glimmer Cape or Force Staff.
Weaver resurfaces with soft Support that is versatile enough for Shukuchi's unparalleled mobility, continuous harassment and armor reduction from The Swarm, and increased vision provided by The Swarm's vision allocation for invisible units after later picking up Aghanim's Shard. Versatility in the form of Weaver, so to say. To top it up, his ultimate, Time Lapse, bails him out of battles that might go south.
Hard Support heroes:
Tiny - One of the few heroes not getting a direct attack damage benefit from the 7.35b patch, Tiny benefits in all other ways. Some of this can be seen cast upon him by the administration of these new patches. Naturally, he gets much tankier and with the added strength, a rather daunting hero to initiate on. Avalanche and Toss now deal up to 320 magical damage. Snapfire's Aghanim's Scepter gives Tiny the ability to cast Tree Volley.
Jakiro is so often the baseline—it's a versatile hard-support, a lane-dominator. His kit, with Ice Path, Dual Breath, and Liquid Fire, is pretty disruptive to enemy movements in its own right, but adding Macropyre to the mix can turn what could just be a nuisance over time for a recurring fight into utter devastation. His Aghanim's Shard upgrade, Liquid Frost, is even more abusive, piling on more damage per second, which is a percentage of the enemy's max life.
Treant Protector, ever stubborn since TI12, remains a powerhouse with this laning dominator, Leech Seed, and Nature's Grasp to Global Overgrowth and Living Armor for allies and structures, and a possible control tool to Spell Immunity in skirmishes.
Meta-Analysis
However, the hard and soft support differentiation is a mix of their activity level and priority towards itemization. Soft supports will more often than not turn into a semi-carry composition player just executing pivotal plays better with less gold and consumables spent. Hard supports embody the concept of sacrifice and base their playstyle on vision control, lane sustenance, and immediate team-oriented utility, expending as few resources as possible in the process.
Notable heroes such as Omniknight and Dazzle transformed into the top tier for hard supports due to the simple way of playing by them and a high-impact style ranging from the lowest noob ranks to the very highest. Very amounting is the change that occurred to the support role in Dota, given ideas such as the healing and protective aura of Omniknight who is coupled with a debuff maneuvering Dazzle.
The hero tier list reflects very well the in-game trends seen in professional play: one full of adaptability, especially in items and build paths. Be it in the simplicity and utility of heroes like Ogre Magi or Crystal Maiden from the S-tier, or in the very nuanced play associated with unconventional picks, the essence of support play reads to strategic flexibility and making team-based decisions. As the gameplay progressed in the metagame, there was an encouragement that players should be less reliant on tier-listed attitudes and adapt to the specifics of a particular match. The gap between hard and soft Support is hair-thin, as they converge to flex to realize maximal efficiency and impact gameplay.