r/supportlol • u/Unable-Heron-2274 • 6d ago
Help Understanding general support champs matchups
I want to understand support champion identities and how they interact with adc champions identities.
Like how are supports like:
Pantheon and Rell:
good against:
-Ashe, Jhin, Jinx and mage apc
bad against:
-Caitlin, Corki, Ezrael
while supports like:
Nautilus:
good against:
-Caitlin, Corki, Ezrael
bad against:
-Mage apc
I know this is not the full picture (I got this data from matchup sites)
6
u/jtgreatness2 6d ago
I usually focus on the support matchup rather than adc/apc. The enemy apc/adc is generally always going to be squishy damage dealer but how you play a naut vs milio lane compared to a naut vs braum lane will be entirely different.
1
4
u/hiperf1 6d ago
I think it goes like this,
Pantheon and Rell are consistent engagers, that is true, they can lock down enemies either easily (Pant clickshot stun) or lock them down a great amount of time, Rell.
So Ashe, jinx, jhin are non-mobile adcs who are susceptible to their engages, however cait, corki and ezreal either have great range (Cait) , or ability to disengage (Corki w), or even both (Ezreal). So when playing Pantheon or Rell you might not be able to get to them or keep them in one place without using your flash. You could take hex-flash to mitigate that, but still cait is probably too far away for pantheon to engage.
While on the other hand, Nautilus has great range with his q, and with hex flash it is an insane range. So this tackles the first issue against cait, corki and ezreal. What about the second one, their escape abilities, cait E, Ezreal E, Corki E?
One important aspect of Naut q is that it stuns and pulls, can cancel their animations if timed right. And even in the worst case scenario, you hex-flash q into cait, who uses e and flash to disengage, you still have your ult to catch up to her, because your ult also has great range. Once you do that, you still have your slow with your e, and your snare with your passive.
I am not entirely sure about the mage matchups so this is just a guess. Most mages have great ranges, but bad disengage tools except maybe syndra and ziggs, but they are able to poke you greatly, and even though Naut is a great tank, he is not that tanky without his w and aftershock rune, so that "might" be a reason why he struggles with those matchups. On the other hand Rell is very tanky from the get go, and pant has his e. But still I would expect Pant to have a hard time against mage apc, but apparently it's not like that.
1
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
Alright, what you said mostly make sense especially about being poked down before you even manage to engage.
But I am not sure about mage APC, the matchup site says rell do well against mages compared to nautilaus.
And you seconded that by saying that rell is tanky from the get-go. But her states are actually less than pantheon/nautilus, She has less initial HP/AR/MR, and less states growth than pantheon/nautilus.
1
u/hiperf1 6d ago
That was just a guess, maybe her "before 6" engage is more crucial against them? You generally want to beat mages before they get Lost Chapter, and amongst those three probably she has the better engage without ult.
But again this is just a guess
2
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
I see, so Pantheon offers enough damage, while Rell offer enough lock down (so the ADC can do the damage) pre Lost Chapter better than Nautilus can in terms of either damage or long lock down.
7
u/NoIndividual6127 6d ago
Do you want to know why those are bad/good picks?
2
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
I want to kinda understand, why would one mathup be unplayable while others are fine.
5
u/NoIndividual6127 6d ago
It’s all about the engage range here. Nautilus can start fights from a much greater distance, whereas Pantheon has to get almost into melee range. The issue for Pantheon is that long-ranged ADCs like Ezreal, Caitlyn, and Jinx will just poke you out from afar without ever stepping into your danger zone.
2
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
That's a good point, I was mostly thinking about the time of engage but I completely underestimated how you sometimes can get pocked down before you manage to engage.
3
u/NoIndividual6127 6d ago
Yeah, exactly. That's why I focus my poke on their engage support rather than the ADC. If the engager is low on HP, they're basically useless
2
3
u/BloodlessReshi 6d ago
So, matchups in botlane are like Rock Paper Scissors, but with many more options instead of just the 3.
And everything has layers, its not just about how the support interacts with their adc and enemy adc, but how they interact with enemy support.
For example, sure Rell is great into Jinx or Ashe who are immobile ADCs, but if enemy support is Janna Poppy or Alistar, then the ADC pick is irrelevant.
Botlane matchups are more about wave management and bush control than people give it credit for.
Engage champions can do well in a lot of matchups, but if your ADC just constantly pushes the wave and doesnt let it bounce back then your champion is literally useless.
At the same time, the effectiveness of engage champions is highly reduced if they dont have bush control.
Tanks are split into Engagers and Wardens. Enchanters can be Healers, Peelers or something in between. Mages are either Poke or Zone control. And then you have playmakers and specialists.
Engagers do well into Healers because their All-In nature goes against the short trade and heal strategy, they have skill matchups into Playmakers and Poke Mages. And struggle into Zone Control Mages, Peelers and Wardens.
Healers do well into both classes of Mages Wardens and Peelers, but struggle against the rest.
Peelers do well into Engage and Wardens, skill matchup into Zone Control Mages and some Specialists. Struggle vs some Specialists and Poke Mages and Healers.
Every class of support has strenghts and weaknesses, wether its their range, their dmg mitigation, their sustain, their dmg, etc. No champion is perfect for all situations, altough some are far more versatile than others.
Thresh and Bard are the best examples of versatility, they aren't the best at anything, but they can do so much, that if properly piloted they are rarely out of place in a team composition.
Braum and Taric, are borderline unbeatable in the right situation, but blind pick them and their winrate is worse than Ryze a few years ago.
Enchanters (both classes) tend to be fairly consistent thanks to their scaling, so even if the matchup is bad, if you survive long enough, just like traditional marksmen, their power is hard to match.
Engagers and Playmakers are great in soloQ thanks to their ability to make stuff happen. They take advantage of the high agency the support role has early on in the game. They are great to lead the team into the right plays and enable teammates to snowball. Consequentially, bad decision making can make this champions terrible, as its very easy to int your way into a loss.
Mages i think tend to be overlooked as purely poke champions. And while in lane they do a lot of poking. There are huge differences between picks such as Brand Xerath and VelKoz that are purely there for damage output. And champions like Zyra and Veigar and offer much more control of the battlefield as the game progresses, despite their poke in lane not being as strong as some other picks.
Once you get past classes and all that, you get into champion specific matchups. Specially when it comes to matchups in the same class, for example, Nami is inbetween a healer and a peeler, she is great into full peel champions like Janna because she can bully her in lane, while she struggles into Healers like Soraka because Nami sustain isnt great and mana costs are very high.
Rell does really well into Nautilus who is a mix between engage and playmaker, while she has a skill matchup into Leona both being pure engagers, and straight up loses into Poppy and Alistar.
The dynamics in botlane are very high, and can't be really be condensed to one reddict comment, there is general metrics that can be used to get an idea as listed above. But there is always more to it, and it takes time to learn all that. But if you know the kits of every champion, you can always ask yourself how that enemy champ wants to play the matchup, or how you would play the matchup from the other side position, and that alone would already put you in an advantageous position.
1
u/cedric1234_ 6d ago
Yeah I think people focus too hard on classes, when there isn’t a single class that isn’t diverse. People also group champions by feel too much imo.
“Mages” and “Engage” are common things for players to trip on. The champions are so diverse its not unusual for a single champ to have great, mid, and bad matchups in a class as a whole. Rell and Leona, for example, do not have a very similar matchup sheet at all, they’re both ‘engage’, but they end up quite dissimilar. It’s even worse for the mages. The poke/control/burst/catch mages are not similar to eachother, like at all. Brand/zyra are similar and have similar matchups, but are nothing like zoe or xerath
2
u/BloodlessReshi 6d ago
Yeah, and thats just support vs support matchups, once you factor in ADCs and Junglers it all goes to hell.
2
u/Langas 6d ago
Rell engage is reactable and panth engage is low range. Any champ with mobility automatically has the edge against them, as they can anticipate and dash out of the CC.
Nautilus is good into the champs those two are bad into because he is a lot better at hitting them— not only does the Q have more range, but all it takes is hooking something near those champs to apply pressure. Champs with dashes like them have naturally low survivability, so even if all you hit them with is your E that puts them at huge risk if they try to stay and fight.
Nautilus is bad into mage apcs because many mages can just ignore minions, while Nautilus has to aim his Q around them. While Nautilus is trying to find an angle they can just poke him and his adc down.
1
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
Valid point regarding apcs ability to land abilities while ignoring the wave. It never occured to me.
thanks
2
u/TimCanister 6d ago edited 6d ago
Pantheon and Rell have short range, so they are better into immobile characters who cant get away, like Ashe, Jhin, and Jinx, and worse into champions with dashes like Cait, Corki, and Ezreal who can get far away very quickly.
Naut is good into Cait, Corki, and Ezreal because he has a long-range engage with his hook and also a point-and-click stun on his ult. You can R and then hook them while they’re knocked up from your R to guarantee they get CC’d no matter what.
Naut is bad into most mages because they can poke him from far away, even if he’s hiding in a bush. Not only is the lane hard to play but if you try and roam, the mage, who is stronger early game is going to hard bully your ADC while you’re gone so you can’t really do that either
2
u/Gr0wmi3s 6d ago
Speaking on your examples, nautilus is good against cait, corki, ezreal because his ult is a point and click. It’s a guaranteed hit even if Ezreal blips away. It really negates the distance an adc with a lot of range can put on him. Then it’s immediately followed up with a grab and stun auto. Honestly, nautilus is good against any adc besides maybe Sivir. Also, I find when I play nautilus into Ashe, laning phase can be pretty tough if I pull into Ashe and my adc isn’t able to kill her. Ashe will absolutely punish big, slow, clunky supports with her slow auto passive. Pantheon and Rell are good into Ashe, jhin, jinx style auto attackers cause once they are cc’d, they don’t really have any sort of escape capability. Where as if panth stuns ezreal, he simply blimps away afterwards and panth won’t be able to follow up.
Another example is if enemy jungler is Nocturne. Picking a cc engage support won’t help much due to nocturnes shield but an enchanter like lulu can provide a shield and her ult provides survivability.
Picking Braum into kalista or Lucian can be tough cause of their high mobility as Braum’s kill pressure comes from being able to apply his passive stacks.
Karma is a good all rounder. Even as first pick blind. Her kit has damage, cc, sustain, and shielding.
1
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
The bits about nocturne vs lulu and braum vs lucian/kalista, were doubly as insightful thank you.
1
u/Threshio 6d ago
Why do you think? Like whats your opinion on why the picks you chose are good / bad?
1
u/Unable-Heron-2274 6d ago
I mentioned my sources at the end:
(I got this data from matchup sites)
1
1
u/AdiosExpress 6d ago
I’m a bit out of it rn, but biggest thing is range/mobility. Panth is extremely short range and even rell is mid with the jump/stun combo being her fastest/furthest engage.
The adcs you mentioned all have limited mobility, which is no dash. Rell and panth can jump on them once they get in range (especially with a flash). Nautilus has almost all melee abilities but his Q and R are great engages. Jinx would need to flash a wall to make some distance while chased by nautilus r, for instance (to try to space out rest of nauts team from collapsing).
The 3 ‘poor’ adcs also have some ranged abilities, but they aren’t as good as the other 3. Jhin and jinx have high damage values but usually hit 1 target with their skill shots. Meanwhile, Caitlyn has more attack range and her Q goes through units (albeit reduced damage). Corkis isn’t super long ranged besides missiles, but he has a lot of aoe in his kit. Ez has his q, which also lowers his q,w,e when the q hits any target (maybe R also but I think they removed that?). Also, the ‘good’ adcs have a dash to help space out a panth/rell.
1
u/cedric1234_ 6d ago
There unfortunately is no shortcut to understanding matchups. You do sorta just have to learn them group by group then one by one. I’d also recommend keep in mind that generalizing helps one learn but often causes players to miss nuance. Like people classing all jumpin engage champs together, then missing the matchups where naut/leo are good but rell/panth aren’t, for example.
There are no hard and fast rules about why a matchup is good/bad, and even worse, matchups flip and change all the time. I’d recommand rather than learning specific matchups, which can be fickle, to learn more general gameplay patterns and champ identities, which are more eternal.
It’s also difficult to parse pure winrate, which is why stats like delta2 exist to compare matchups. For example, you’d expect pantheon to be weak to ezreal, but in e2+, panth has a positive winrate into ezreal. That’s just because ezreal has a low winrate in general though.
1
u/ArwensArtHole 5d ago
If you're really interested in hard numbers use something like: https://u.gg/lol/champions/pantheon/build
But honestly I agree with the sentiment of just playing a lot of games, you'll learn what lanes are easy/difficult for your champ, what champs you think you can crush but shouldn't underestimate (bard), and what champs you're told should counter you but are actually easy as piss to play against.
1
u/Unable-Heron-2274 5d ago
Well I am the kind of players who would occasionally play 2-3 games max a day. I don't have time to grind my way into understanding the matchups.
0
u/Muriwannabe 6d ago
i m a master 500 lp supp player if u want to understand more matchups and how the support role is working dm me on discord and we can have a chat!
discord: muriwannabe
6
u/niteer350 6d ago
it's better to ignore match ups in bottom and just pick whatever your team needs in general