Herald to Archon on Support (hint: it gets easier)

I've always loved support but what I wanted most was to climb MMR. Having played this game since its custom game days in WC3, I honestly felt embarrassed somewhat that I was in herald rank and decided that I was gonna do something about it. It's been a year since I took this project seriously and over the course of about a 1000 games, I had ups and downs on my MMR but I finally now feel like I have what it takes to climb support well. After climbing to Archon, my winrate is still at 70-80% and I would like to share what I have learned so that other supports can also climb. Key learning points were this:-

1. Just focus on getting better. Initially as I was getting better (I could feel it in my bones that I was-- better laning, better habits, better map awareness and itemisation), I did not achieve the results that I hoped for. I was still hovering slighy above 50% win rate, a slow climb but nothing that was encouraging to write home about.

2. It took me about 600 games before I started climbing faster. Laning well isn't enough, contrary to what a lot of youtubers/coaches might tell you. It is YOUR responsibility to win your lane, snowball that advantage to have a strong map presence, and then stay relevant/strong throughout till the endgame. A good support at these brackets is basically a mid laner in disguise.

3. Eventually you will reach a tipping point. The tipping point being somehow you being strong enough on the laning stage, and somehow being able to snowball your laning stage presence into a map presence in the post-laning stage (yes, supports do need to snowball too! You are not a ward bitch, contrary to what your cores think you should be) Once you reach that tipping point, the entire game suddenly becomes easy, you win lane, create pressure on the map from minute 5-15, and then you close out games because a) you are stronger than enemy cores, and B) everyone in your team is listening to you because they've never seen a support do what you have been doing and they assume you are a smurf.

4. I can't say for sure which role has the most impact to climbing mmr, but I can say for sure that support is kinda akin to 'famine' till you get past the tipping point and then a 'plentiful harvest' after that. I can also say that it gets easier as you climb the ranks (partly because you get better at the game and partly because you get better teammates who can snowball the early advantage together with you that you have created for the team). As a support, if you play well, you are guaranteed to have an impact on the game in the first 15 minutes, and if you play well you will have impact on the game till it ends. As a core, it feels like the first 20 minutes are kind of out of your control as you attempt to scale, and then if you do well then you just carry the game on your shoulders after that. In short, focus on getting better and eventually the results will shock you and make you feel like the journey was worth it.

5. All this is from solo queue experience, I am sure if you do queue or team queue the experience might be vastly different from what I have experienced.

6. Lastly, which supports are good for ranking up from the trenches? The answer for me at least, is: strong lane, strong level 6 spike, ability to clear waves, ability to manfight at least in the early stages (before you get 2nd level in your ult). I think the candidates for support heroes to climb gets wider as you get higher in the ranks (due to better cores), but what has worked for me very well was Death Prophet. I think Snapfire, undying are also good candidates for heroes to climb through these ranks.

7. Getting out of Herald was the toughest as a support, it felt like whatever I did on the laning stage never mattered. When I got to Guardian, things felt a little bit easier but it was still super tough. At Crusader, things began to get a lot easier and I felt like the burden to carry the entire game on my own shoulders was a lot lighter. I will give an update on my Archon journey after I have been through it, but so far at Archon 1 it feels very similar to Crusader rank. Bottom line is, it really does get easier once you get out of MMR hell, but the good habits you built when climbing will pay off in spades once you get there. When you are used to winning a game without a pos 1, the game becomes infinitely easier when you have a pos 1 to close out the game for you.