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I've been playing Lux as my primary and wondered if any of you could recommend another champion with a similar playstyle.  Prefer ranged dps with a little cc.  Doesn't need to be support.  I'm still on the learning curve, but am willing to explore a bit.  I just know that my twitch skills aren't good enough for melee.

Thanks. 

What about Morgana? Skillshot root like lux, aoe effect, and a shield. Im not sure if shes played at all anymore (I just came dipped my toe back in again) but once upon a time she was a viable mid and could also support.

I can second that. My buddy mained Morgana for quite a while and he loves Lux.

Morgana is a decent one - I think Lux is better because she doesn't have much fall off late game. Leona is a decent support with a similar rooty skillshot though she's melee not ranged. Ryze has a similar skillshot mechanic with serious damage potential, though his item build is more mana-focused.

Yeah, Morgana would be my first answer too.

Most ranged casters have some kind of CC, so just about any of them would fit the bill to a degree.  Lissandra might be worth looking in to if she's ever free, maybe Zyra if you can land her skillshots.  Really, though I can't think of any ranged caster who doesn't have some kind of slow or stun or knockup or something, so you should be fine with anybody who strikes your fancy.

If you want more physical damage, Ashe springs to mind.  She's loaded with slows and has a global stun skillshot.

Zyra, Xerath, and Ahri might be to your liking. And Morgana's already been mentioned.

Funny that you mention Morgana.  She was my main until changes to her a few patches ago.  She falls off so much late game that I switched to Lux.  I played Annie a while too, but she's just too squishy for my tastes.  I'm thinking Veigar may be too.

I've been contemplating the following:

Cassiopia, Kennen, Swain, and Xerath. 

Any thoughts on those 4? 

What about Veigar and Syndra? 

Veigar is fun but you definitely have to land your combos. Cassiopeia is a BEAST.

Swain is also fun to just run around and toss ravens in your ult form and with the right team can totally wreck a teamfight. Xerath has insane range and damage potential but he is slow. He is all about positioning yourself for the rooting ult combo and the stuns.

Kennen is a weird little fucker. He's so annoying to play against but it requires some skill to not get CC'ed and focused.

Really though most casters are going to be squishy because of their potential for burst damage.

Veigar and Syndra are major 100-0 champs.  They can burst people down incredibly fast once you get their combos down.

I like Swain, but he's fairly close ranged and his mana consumption is through the roof.  He can be incredibly tanky due to ultimate.

Xerath can be a major lane bully with his range and is another 100-0 champ once he has his ultimate. 

Kennen is good, but difficult if your teammates are morons.

As an aside, are you still playing only Twisted Treeline?  Because 99.9% of the advice here is going to be mostly applicable to Summoner's Rift.

I only play Twisted with two friends to work on communication and teamwork.  I have been messing with ARAM and play 5's when we have 3-5 people in Mumble together.  My account is level 12, so I'm playing with friends that are using smurf accounts while I get my skills down.  I started playing more 5's when I got past level 7, but still have a long way to go with learning champs, tactics, buy orders and the like.  I'm a bit shy about playing with you vets for fear of reprisal!

Morgana is kind of bad at the moment. She can push but that is about it.

I would actually suggest Viktor.

3rd best poke in the game in terms of raw damage but its super easy to hit with since it has no cast animation and goes through creeps.

Second best AoE Burst in the game with competitive single target burst


Non-Blue reliant wave clear [easy to clear whole wave at once]

He fits into any team composition

Just buy death augment as your first major item and wreck face

here is an example of me wrecking face in Gold IV with him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-oc_8dv_cM

I love Lux. Ashe is also fun to play and taking skill shots with her ultimate all the way across the map is hugely satisfying.

Ranged Mids with CC that I like:
Morgana - Easily one of my favs
Ahri - Mobility, damage, lots of skill shots
Ryze - No skill shots, good damage, short range, builds different items than most mids
TF - Once you can lock gold cards semi consistently he is really fun, be prepared to be called out the ONE time you lock the wrong card though

No CC but still fun:
Cass - Super strong in lane/deuls, very fun, ultimate is deciptivly hard to use
Ziggs - Tons of harass, great range, shitty skins, his W is kinda hard to use for wall jump etc
Ezreal - Similar to Lux in that he has skill shots & global ult to snipe people with.  I prefer AD Ez though.

Not a fan to Synrda, Swain, Viktor, Veigar.  Not that they are bad I just don't enjoy them.  AP Kennen is good, it takes awhile to get going though.  Once you do though, flash -> ult -> zhoynas into a team is really strong.

What the fuck is wrong with you? He has some of the best skins in the game. Love me some pool party Ziggs.

Keep the input coming.  I hadn't considered Ahri or Ziggs, but I may check them out.

The concept/splash art for Pool Party Ziggs is awesome, the in-game skin... meh.  Love me some Pool Party Graves though.

Most mages are going to be squishy, the exceptions are pretty few and far between. Cassiopia, Veigar, and Kennen, are amazingly squishy. Xerath is squishy against magic damage champions but fairly resilient against physical damage champions.

Personally, i don't like Kennen outside of two situations

1) Top Lane
2) Coordinated Team

His primary lane advantage is auto attack harass and q follow up. But its very hard to get q follow up in mid lane because the lane is so short and your auto attack harass is dampened because most everyone is ranged. In addition he needs Zhonya/Wooflet in order to be effective due to his team fighting mechanics so no matter the mode he takes a long time to get going

Cassiopia has the highest consistent magic damage provided you hit your q's. She is very strong on TT iirc but it really squishy and has very short range. Because of her speed boost with her q's she is more like an ADC kiting around and auto attacking [using e in her case] than a standard mage. If you don't like that, don't play her.

Swain is a super tanky tank beast but also isn't long range. His skill cap is also very high

Xerath is amazingly strong if you've got good positioning. If you don't then you will do nothing because you will siege outside of combat range

Veigar is Secret OP at the moment. He is very squishy and has an amazingly weak early game [which can be mitigated by taking tanky/runes/masteries i've heard though i don't play that]. Veigar has probably three things going for him. These things keep the OPness of Veigar from being evident

1) no one knows how to build him unless they main him
2) no one knows what items to buy unless they main him
3) almost no good matchups[he shits all over Karthus though], easily countered with items
4) Syndra is probably better

Basically on Veigar, R>Q>E>W. Dumbs build him R>Q>W>E. When you build him dumb enemies can leave your stun before the w lands on your head, so it doesn't matter how much damage it does. When you build him smart, the bonus AP[and 1.0 scaling] from items means W clears waves fast anyway so you don't need points in it. Get points in ragecage.

For Veigar you get double dorans -> DFG -> Penetration every time. You're single target burst and you need to burst as hard as possible. Dumbs buy the more expensive and worse Deathcap. Deathcap is a 5th item on Veigar [DFG,Sorc, Guise, Void first 4]. Sure it won't catapult your AP like Deathcap does but it will erase their team faster. Dumbs by the totally redundant Chalice.

Even if you don't do well as Veigar you will end up with a 2.5 second AoE stun on a 14 second CD. I.E. ultimate level CC 4 times per minute. But only if you rank it up second.

Syndra is like Veigar except better. Her stun is easier to engage with, longer range, and on a shorter CD (but doesn't last as long) and she is a lane bully. She requires timing in order to be most effective because if you don't have balls out for your ult you won't 100-0 people with it. Even moreso than veigar her power is contained in her ult.

Ahri is another mid assassin, but has a good early laning phase. Once you understand what you should be doing with her she dominates. Before then she will seem very weak. Her power is very ult dependent

---------------------

Which is why i recommend Viktor

Viktor is surprisingly tanky despite looking very squishy. The shield from his Q lets him bully in lane and survive ganks/fights which other AP mids would not be able to. While he doesn't have the shields of Lux [.7 AP] all of his abilities are super efficient. Before explaining this its good to start thinking about abilities in terms of combined effects. Is it better to do 100 damage in a fight or prevent 100 damage in a fight? All things considered they're about even in a knock down-drag em out fight.

So think about laning as Viktor. His Q then has an effective .91 AP ratio and 112-364 base "damage". Its on a decent CD but costs almost no mana. You can even level it up to 2 before you will have to delay rank 5 of your e.

Once Viktor has Death Augment his E does 91-325(+.91 AP) damage. That makes it one of the the strongest poke ability in the game. It does more damage than Gragas Barrels.

What does this mean in context? Well once Viktor his level 13 his two ability combo is generally as strong or stronger than the three ability combo of any other champion. Take Annie for example, a typical "high base damage champion". She has 245 on Q, 280 on W.  Her 2 ability combo is 525+1.45 AP. Viktor's two ability combo is 585+1.51 AP [699+1.71 including shield]. Viktor's ult does about as much damage as Tibbers too. And he does this from longer range with easier poke.

3 Ability combo from Brand[I.E. straight up the highest damage burst in the game, but really hard to land]? 545+1.9 AP +8% max health.

I play a lot of TT.  I'll second Viktor for TT due to the surprisingly tanky (as mentioned by Goumindong) and the AOE stun.

I'll second Ryze (Haemish and Druzil).  Due also to the tanky build (ROA), hard CC and massive AE ult.

TT is tight, you have to expect that folks will get to you.  Ahri is decent due to being highly elusive and hard cc, but lacks the durability of the other two so unless you are very good at being elusive, you'll want to choose someone a bit more hardy.

Assassins tend to be weak on TT because there is no one to assassinate. Pick accordingly.

Oh, Karma is amazing on TT. She is basically a ranged bruiser mage. Another thing to consider

On Cass and Swaaaaaaaaaaaaaain:

Cass is quite strong as a solo lane, but you have to be aware of your opponent's mobility and burst. Because Cass doesn't become truly dangerous until six, if you are in a lane against someone who is more bursty than you, you will need to sit back and just control the lane with your two aoe. Once you are six though, as long as you can land your two dots on your opponent before you blow ult + fang spam, Cass will drop any of your typical mids.

Conversely, if you feel like you can press your opposite number, well landed poison dots and fang spam will wear down even tanky opponents.

I tend to run magic pen runes on my casters which makes an early sorc boots very effective; additionally you'll want to pick up some kind of early mana regen item (so tear or manacup thing) because she lives off of spam.

In team fights, she is a clutch pick, but you will have to have good timing with your ultimate. I don't find it particularly reasonable to expect to get a lot of dots off before a fight, but you will usually be able to get some good ones after the initial 'everybody blow everything' stage. If you can time the ult well, it will often win the team fight outright, however.


I've less experience with Swain, but there are some similarities. He tends to lane slow, chew up mana and arguably has even less impact early in the game. He does not however have the ability to turn a fight with a huge play, instead having a somewhat different effect.

Swain feels a bit weak in today's paradigm of hyper mobile assassin/caster zip-around and blow stuff up type of gameplay, but he does have the advantage of being able to deal lots of damage over time and building into a lot of hp & mana, which makes him very hard to single out and blow up. If fact, being dove in a team fight when you are Swain is possibly one of the best things which can happen to you, because you only really have one disable (which is hard to nail and isn't up very often), and your damage amp thing is single target, so you want them to come to you.


I also have a fair amount of experience with Syndra (but this requires a bit of depth in explanation), but she is essentially easy-mode if you have passable micro.

Also, have you considered Brand?

Swain is however, OP on TT(i believe, i don't play it much). Basically, his ult and kit in general is balanced around fighting against a team of five. Fighting against a team of 3? GG

Watched this last night... I am certain I could never make Viktor look that good. Well played.

Picked up Karma last night and played with her and Kennen all night.  Still trying things out.

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.

There are only two wonky parts about Viktor. His ult and his auto attack animation. You might have noticed how i was canceling my auto attack every once and a while without actually attacking? This is because Viktor, like old Ryze, has an auto attack animation that tricks you. The "projectile fired" sound goes off slightly before the projectile is actually created and viktor actually recoils from the shot slightly before the shot goes off. His ult is only really hard to use because its range is kinda low and so puts you in danger of other abilities.

His E can be a bit touchy but as soon as you learn to smartcast it its really intuitive. Once you have that figured out Viktor is a beast. Part of the reason for that is that aside from his ult, strategically his play is very simple. Laser everyone you see, q them if they come close, w them if you can get a full stun/zone. Try him out. No joke, i have 6 ranked games with Viktor. That was probably my eighth game as Viktor ever and my fourth time on SR

That being said Viktor is much stronger on SR than TT or Dominion. If you're going to TT alot then Karma is the champion for you. She is super strong on that map.

I actually think that many of the champions listed here are much more mechanically and strategically demanding. They have more hard counters and fewer workable compositions. Kennen is weak on TT because he is not a mana champion (or otherwise balanced around a team of 5) and mana champions have advantages due to inherent MP5 on the map. He also has weaknesses to anyone with a knockback and so has to play around that very hard. Oh and he is item dependent, so if the enemy team is heavy on magic damage his itemization makes him poor.

Viktor is so fun to play. Especially as a kill lane support.

Been learning this the hard way.  I'm also finding that 5v5 is a nightmare when you're playing with random people.  Some people are so terrible as to make winning impossible.  I'm also learning quite a bit by watching better players lane against me.

For the past week I've been playing Twitch, Cassio, Lux, and Malzahar a lot.  I think I may buy Malzahar after this week.  He seems like a great mid that can hard counter the opponents apc/jungler when I play him well.  While I love Cassio for her ability to stay mobile and really give my side an advantage in team fights, there's something really satisfying about taking a single player out of a confrontation. 

Played wukong last night.  It was the first time I had ever played melee and was a very eye-opening experience.  I think I went 14/1/16 in my first match.  Seems much easier than playing a squishy caster under less competitive circumstances.  I can imagine that they are a greater challenge at the more competitive levels.

What level/rank are you? If you want someone to watch your games and give you 5v5 tips i would be happy to help out.

I'm only level 19.  If I knew you were watching, I'd just stress out.  I'll figure things as I go.  This is more or less just a palate cleanser until I head back to tanks.  I can't see myself staying with this game for long... just in bursts.

Thanks for the offer though.

Ok... need you guys to tell me what's wrong with Twitch and Malzahar.  My inexperienced eye says that Twitch doesn't scale well late game and Malzahar suffers from having no escape tools.  I ask because I enjoy playing them a lot in 5's and have had some success... but I can see how they would be easily countered by someone that knows the game well.

Twitch absolutely scales into the late game. He's seen as a hyper carry.  6 item Twitch is nasty.   His non-ult range isn't the best and his escape isn't instant like some of the other carries.  Pink wards can be a problem.

Malzahaar is s not incredibly mobile.  The problem with Malz is that you can QSS his ult and make it useless.  Also, his ult puts him in a lot of danger. He's incredibly vulnerable while it's channeling.   He is, however, a great lane bully and once you hit 6 you can just 100-0 a lot of match ups.  

You really won't get your ass kicked for a long time just based on picking Twitch or Malz.  Malz pretty much wrecks at low elo.

Can you also recommend a top and jungle I should consider to broaden my horizons?

Jax and Wukong are both good tops (and both can jungle) for doing damage and being off-tanks. Volibear is also good at both, though he's much tankier and less crazy kill type. Teemo can top against certain champs but is very easily countered if picked too early. Jayce is fun but complex. Renekton is a good snowballer, and Yorick takes practice but if either are well-played, they can be nigh-unkillable. If you are good at last-hitting, Nasus is another good sustain/snowball top. Malphite is fun and not banned as much anymore.

For junglers, other than the ones mentioned above, there's Master Yi or Nocturne for your glass cannon types. Maokai is fun and tanky. Amumu may be one of the best AP junglers at lower elo but he is usually banned. Vi and Hecarim are both disruptive tanky jungler types.

Twitch is amazing. Not very popular but very strong. His invisibility is very strong as a tactical tool and he has one of the best lategame team fights of any ADC. His only weakness at the moment is that under the current SR meta teams that are structured around 5v5 teamfights are often weak to teams designed to splitpush and assassinate. Those teams which split and assassinate tend to do better with ADC's which can kite because its very easy to gank up on the ADC when your team is splitting or your mid is off trying to get to the back line to assassinate. Even with those weaknesses, Twitch is amazingly strong with his strong early game, great team fight, and his ability to ambush and move around the map.

Malzahar is a big lane bully and great at pushing waves. His weakness is that he is an assassin that takes 5+ seconds to kill a target. He has to get his combo off and then suppress them for roughly the full duration. This makes him incredibly strong in 1v1's (or if he has the ally advantage) but incredibly weak in team fights where his immobility for 5 seconds as he suppresses your carry kills him. Malzahar is great at pushing but unfortunately weak at escaping, which means that if he tries the split push game he gets wrecked either by a burst assassin or by any two members of the enemy team. In low level soloqueue he should be easy mode.

For top, the strongest are probably: Renekton and Wukong. You, ideally should also know Jax and Shen but these are a lot harder to play. Renekton is super strong and a great tank. He beats Jax in lane, i think. Jax beats Shen because his split push power negates Shen's ability to ult. Shen beats Rene and since Rene is not a great split pusher like Jax is, Shen can use his ult more freely.  Wukong is a 5v5 destroyer of worlds. You build straight AD and pen on him and then ult their team and they all die.

Situationally Cait, Vayne, and Karma can also top. Karma(AP/CDR) or Bruiser(CDR/tank) is dumb strong in 1v1 lanes because her Mantra W restores 20-40% of her missing health. Which is well a pretty massive heal especially when you've got a lot of HP or a Spirit Visage. So long as the enemy isn't ranged Karma should win that engagement. Cait wins most melee engagements as well. She is especially strong if the enemy has only 1 dash and no ranged poke. For instance against Jax Cait just auto attacks him every chance she can while standing on/near a trap. If Jax jumps to her Cait E's away and Jax is standing on a trap. Then Cait kills Jax. Then Jax comes back to lane and can't do anything. Then cait kills him again. Then cait kills the enemy team. Vayne can do similar things but is harder to make work IMO.

 The weaknesses of these three are susceptibility to ganks mainly, since they are so squishy early as soon as you have the second target coming in it makes it very hard to kite both targets (since this relies on single target roots/slows)

For Jangle:

There are generally three types of Jangles

1) Farmers
2) Gankers
3) Counter Janglers

You want to know at least one of each. Farmers farm till 6 and then team fight/take objectives with their dumb dumb ults [E.G. Nasus, Sejuani]

Gankers snowball lanes by killing the enemy team before 6[and after 6, but mainly before 6 is most important]. [E.G. Amumu, Jarvan, Vi, Hecarim]

Counter Janglers go into the enemy jangle and kill the enemy jangler/take their camps. [E.G. Lee Sin, Shyvanna, Shaco]

Best atm are probably Vi, Jarvan, Sejuani, and Lee Sin [if you're good at him] due to their ability to fit into comps and perform various roles [j4 and vi for instance can counter jungle fairly well as well as gank]

Things to note:

1) Almost anyone can Jungle. Quinn, Jinx, Karma, Ezreal, Karthus, Viktor [no shit you can jungle Viktor], Brand and these can even be ideal in the right situations. Don't be afraid to experiment

2) Almost anyone can perform any role of the three jangles, some just do it better. Nothing stops Nasus from farming the enemy side of the jungle too, he just isn't as good at it as other Junglers with escapes and better early dueling

2) Typically: Counter Jangle>Farmer>Ganker>Counter Jangle [but always think about what your team needs]

Resons for this are as follows.

a) If Shyv steals your wraiths i don't much care if you ganked mid successfully due to that. If you fail the counter jungler is behind but if you push the enemy out of lane at all this forces the enemy jungler to hold, negating their jungle advantage [you can take theirs back]

b) If you're ganking mid and do so successfully this just means more farm for Sejuani and a faster 6. Its not great for Sej, but you're not putting the jungle behind any and the enemy jungle is. Additionally farmers tend to be better at counter ganking since their pre 6 weaknesses lie in engagement [but by ganking you've solved that issue for them]. A counter gank, unless the ganking junglers team kills the farmer almost always favor the farmer. This is because the farmer can clean up the lane experience and the total experience overall even at a kill deficit won't be too huge. E.G. lets say a ganker comes in for a fight and the farmer counters. Farmer's lane dies, but the ganker and gankers lane are too low to do anything but back. Who wins? Sure the gankers team got a kill but the farmers team soaks all the lane XP/gold. The kill is less important to the farmer because they're concerned with winning team fights and their XP/Gold totals, not necessarily snowballing all their lanes.

c) If you're farming and your wraiths are gone, you can't farm them. If you go to the enemy jungle to take back camps and you meet the enemy jungler there, you're probably going to lose that fight. If the enemy jungler comes to contest in your jungle they don't have to kill you to win, just get some of your creeps/deny you xp. Which they almost are guaranteed to be able to do since those early fights are their specialty.

That was a very thoughtful write-up.  Thanks for the education! 

I need to think about this a bit.

The answer is simple... Jana.

Been playing her a lot lately.  I'm enjoying support more than I should. 

The learning curve with her seems to be about timing her ult and making sure you're in a good place to pull it off.  You don't want to anger your melee by pushing the enemy adc/apc away but also want to give them the health boost.  She does have great cc potential though with the knock up and single target snare.  I also love love love her mobility.

No lie, Janna carried me to Plat.

http://www.lolking.net/guides/192121

So... played Janna a bunch and then bought Sona.  I find that I'm quite effective on Sona and her Ult can be a game changer when you catch 2 or 3 enemy champs in it.  Is it the mobility that makes Janna so much better?  Her snare?  I find that her ult is tough to make good use of because a) melee bitch if you bounce anyone away and b) people tend to run out of the heal almost immediately. 

I'm guessing that Sona is better for low elo players and Janna is better for higher skill, coordinated groups?  Am I getting warm?

Sona sees more play in competitive play right now. It's hard to use Janna's ult effectively sometimes, and you can bone your team by using it at the wrong time. I don't know that I'd say that either is better, it really depends on the lane matchup and overall team compositions. Janna has the best disengage in the game but no initiation, so if that fits the team that's good.

Yeah so pretty sure ARAM has ruined my laning ability.  Been doing nothing but ARAM for awhile now just for the shorter games, tried a rift game the other day and got crushed.  Guess I need to practice my laning again, not used to all the assassins.

Assassins do seem pretty strong.  The guys I play with all claim that it's something being addressed for the next season. 

Sona is actually just kinda bad at the moment at all ELO's and in competitive play.  That isn't to say that there aren't situations in which Sona is very effective, they're just few and far between.

E.G. Head over to lolking and look at the highest win ratio champions. Weekly for Ranked Janna is number 1 for Silver, Gold, and Platinum, Second for Diamond(tied with Nidalee), and third for Bronze. Janna is (almost) never beat for win rate in Solo queue by any other support at any skill level.


Sonas primary advantage is that she can win lane really hard. And, if you're paired with an ADC which also wins lane really hard and pushes towers (and you both know this and push towers and your team is OK with you rotating and taking more towers) then she can be very effective. He weakness is that outside of laning phase she does nothing except ult and her ult isn't even that good and she gets countered by the enemy top and jungle 90% of the time and she has no personal defense so she gets dumpstered on by assassins... If she loses laning phase (because for instance your ADC picks an ADC who gets beat by theirs or your ADC gets counter picked or you pick Sona first letting the enemy pick Draven/Varus to nullify your strong ADC chocies) then you're in big trouble

E.G. C9 vs TSM at NA Regional finals. Sona straight up turned all three games into 4v5's once laning was over.

The thing that makes Janna so much better is that Janna

1) Peels: Especially coupled with her .9 AP scaling shield. In a meta that is largely composed of picking an assassin or two and blowing up the ADC/APC being able to stop that with massive shields very 6 seconds, a huge AoE Heal and knockback is really valuable.

2) The best free stat in the game: Global Move Speed Buff. This helps everyone else win their lane. Its 2 free move speed quints. Everyone on your team has the engage advantage in matchups where this is determined by move speed. Most importantly your jungler will almost always get to where he is going faster than the other guy

3) W is so strong you don't need boots, saving you about 1000 gold over other supports... Gold which can go into AP and CDR to make your shields more redonkulous.

If i am playing Janna lategame my ADC effectively has two health bars. He has 1600-1800 HP from his normal HP and he has 1000 heal from Heal and Ult plus 600-800 HP from at least two shields

Thanks a lot for taking the time Goumindong.  I really appreciate your insight.

What do you think about Lulu?  I really like her kit, but wonder about her viability. 

Lulu is one of those "well shit, they banned my main support" champs.  She plays well, and getting off the trick shots can be harsh, but then for the skill it takes to do them, you could play a champ that takes the same amount of skill that offers more bang for the buck.

I probably over exaggerate how weak Sona is. If you're good with her, or understand what you have to do to win with her there is nothing wrong with a Sona. However, she fits into so few team compositions, and importantly is weak against so many team compositions that i find her way more situational than any other support. In lane she is super super strong if your ADC is stronger than theirs because Sona's Q, Powerchord, and bonus damage allow you to leverage the strengths of your ADC. On the other hand, if your ADC is weaker than theirs you've got nothing to stop a hard engage(Sona is also very easy to gank) and nothing to start a hard engage except a 2 second slow that neuters your damage. This makes the lane super swingy.

That being said: She will probably get a lot stronger in Season 4 because it looks like they're making changes to supports that mean your ADC winning the laning phase is more important. Since Sona wins the laning phase this will let her carry on an advantage gained into the mid/lategame and could shore up some of her weaknesses of "being the squishiest champion in the game while also having terrible range" by raw item advantage.

A lot of people like her a lot (she got played a whole bunch in the recent Wolrd Championships... and did shitty every time... and still got picked) but I am not one of those people.

Re: Lulu. I like Lulu a lot but am not that great with her and i think that Nami is slightly better than her in general.

So some more general supporty stuff because at the moment, supports are really well designed conceptually (with the exception of Taric)

There are roughly 3 things you can do in lane, and 2 things you can do outside of lane. In lane you can be poke/stustain, counter engage, or hard engage or some mix of these with Sona, Janna, and Leona representing each role and their counters pretty firmly (that is, Sona counters Janna in lane, Janna counters Leona, Leona counters Sona). Outside of lane you can be disengage or engage. Supports are a combination of these with each one doing some aspect of each better/differently.

Janna is the queen of anti-assassin disengage but weak to an AoE bull rush engage. This is because against one or two divers into your back line she can easily separate them from their team and keep your squishy targets alive. But against, say, Amumu she is either caught in his AoE or too far away to knock him away. If the enemy team is running a wombo combo team that starts with a mummy ult then your only hope as Janna is that you can channel your ult through it and don't get stunned. Nami on the other hand doesn't have this weakness. Her disengage is a straight line. She can stand outside of Amumu's range and still prevent their back line from following up his ult. But against assassins she has to hope to hit her bubble (which is really hard against dashs/blinks) and can't knock anyone away (just up) with her ult which makes her much weaker.

So Janna is Counterengage in lane, disengage in team fights. Nami is poke/sustain in lane (with good engage potential) and disengage in team fights. Sona is poke/sustain in lane, engage out of lane. Leona is engage/engage. Alistar is engage/disengage. Annie is poke(engage)/engage. Zyra is poke(engage)/disengage. Lulu is a poke/counter engage in lane and counter dive in team fights. Kinda like a mix between Nami's laning (without the sustain) and Janna's disengage. I think that this makes her slightly weaker than Nami or Janna in general, but if you're in a situation when you need to win lane and the enemy has assassins you won't be able to stop with Nami then she is a great pickup. She is also mechanically easier to play than Nami which can be valuable

Importantly Lulu is one of the only supports who can straight 1v2 carry a lane. Well not totally, but because she has such high early consistent damage Lulu is the best "solo fighter" of all the supports. Sona will come in and Q+Power Chord you for 120+ damage at level 1 but after that she only has auto attacks and her auto attacks are kinda weak relative to her strength. Sona wants to poke you then get back out of range till her poke is up again. Lulu's doesn't do as much burst but at level 1 she gets 9 bonus magic damage per auto attack. At level 3 she gets 21.  That adds up fast. But only if you remember that you auto attack harder than most ADC's until they buy and so keep up the auto attack harass.

The hardest i have ever been beaten in lane and similarly the hardest i have ever been carried by a support was with Lulu's. Hardest beaten was actually two games in a row against the same Draven/Lulu team. Fuck that lane seriously just Christ fuck painful fucking ow. Draven is the king of early consistent damage (even post nerf) and so is Lulu. So if you get into their auto range you're taking 30-40% of your HP in burst then they're going to follow it up. Was worse because i had cait both times (who didn't realize that Draven beats cait). Hardest i've ever been carried was by a Lulu as I was playing varus. We contest their blue and she steals it. Walks into lane with blue buff and level 1.9 just 1v2's as i CS and throw out some free harass when its valuable. We take tower early and she roams mid while I CS and does the same thing there.

Stealing kills and going into AP support murder mode with Lulu is incredibly fun. Not necessarily the most effective, but fun. I feel bad for liking her because her design is so clumsy - most overloaded kit of any support - but somehow it all works.

Spent yesterday playing a lot of Lulu and found her to be very fun.  I may buy her just for solo ranked as she can carry a lane when the ADC turns out to be worthless. If I eat a loss, at least I'll have fun doing it. 

I'm also planning to spend more time on Janna.  Her ult is amazing.  I just need practice in best utilizing it.

I really love playing support and currently own Blitz, Janna, Soraka, Taric, Sona, and Lulu (soon).  Should I also buy Nami?  Any others you recommend?  Lux was the first character I ever bought and I have the most games on her.  I've played her as support a few times and found her to be useful.

Keep in mind, I'm no pro...not by a long shot.

Leona is a good support and I like Nami though she seems to require a good bit of skill for those early lane pokes.

I'll check her out.  Thanks!

The strongest supports at the moment are

Blitz, Janna, Sona, Lulu, Nami, Leona, Zyra(despite nerfs), fiddlesticks, and Annie.

Taric and Soraka are kinda bad. Soraka is like Sona in that she has a very strong laning phase. Then laning phase ends and you're like Sona except without the AoE Stun, bonus armor/damage, and peel. Taric better as a bruiser than as a support anymore. (no AoE CC, little peel)

Basically there isn't a reason to play Soraka if you can play Sona (well not quite, Roka is also good in really really hard sustain siege comps and if you're playing that against a Sona, go ahead because Roka beats Sona in Lane). Similarly there isn't a reason to play Taric when you can play Leona. Leona is the ultimate "win lane or nothing" champion but fortunately she has all the tools to win lane against any champion. Basically Leona's passive works out, on a full rotation, to be about equal to a free level appropriate ultimate of base damage. No one out damages her in lane. No one can swing a team fight as hard with well timed aggression

Zyra has a great AA animation good AA range, and a lot of free damage. Her ult makes her really good.

Annie has the best AoE stun in the game. Its not only the fastest cast animation of any stun, but also the fastest effect time. Oh and that isn't her ult. Her ult is the second fastest AoE stun in the game. Annie has the second best auto attack range in the game at 625 [cait is 650] which makes it really easy to auto harass enemy supports/ADCs. Gets a stun and damage at level 1. Can easily keep it charged by pressing e

Fiddles has a 3 second fear and CAW CAW CAW on his side. In all reality fiddles can solo win a lane at level 1 by getting an advantageous E bounce (max 1 e damage with 0 AP =130 against one target, 195 against the other). Fiddles with CDR plus another strong single target disabler can nearly perma disable someone. Fiddles+Rammus is a war crime against anyone who gets caught

With Nami if you can land an auto-attack with E first (or have your AD do it) it makes landing bubble much much easier.

The main issue with Nami is that she is very dependent on landing bubble, which can be hard against a lot of popular champions. I like playing Nami but generally I don't pick her unless I've seen a decent amount of their team and they aren't that evasive.

Nami lanes can absolutely crush once they get ahead. For example you cast E on your stealthed Twitch, he unstealths and starts attacking, then you land bubble thanks to the slow. Her E makes it hard for opponents to disengage, so if you are already ahead you can force fights.

Sona is amazing because she's free stats for your team and her ult is a game changing if you're good with it.

Late to the party, but here are my recommendations:

Top: Jax, Renekton
Junglers: Elise, Vi, J4
Mids: Orianna, Ahri, Katarina, Nidalee, Fizz, Khazix, Gragas
ADC: Caitlyn, Vayne, Jinx, Corki - (Jinx just got nerfed, but her late game wasn't touched much)
Typical Support: janna, Sona, Nami, Soraka, Thresh, Blitz
Kill Lane Supports: New Heimer, Annie, Leona

(Support Annie is a new thing that I've been seeing. I'm just starting to use her a bit.)

I really like Orianna and Nidallee in the mid lane. When the new season starts, supports are going to be completely different. Rylai's/Liandrys Soraka is going to be amazing. Big heals, and big slows.

edit:
I don't recommend you play Fiddlestick unless you buy the party sticks skin. Only acceptable version imo. ;)
I also forgot abotu Zyra, she's fun too, but is on the advanced side of things.

Played quite a bit last night.  Heimer is insane early with the changes.  Having 3 turrets out early causes all kinds of trouble.

Question: I really like the kit that Leona has but find her a challenge to play against a lane with good poke.  I played several matches with her last night as support and had a rough time knowing when to be aggressive against ranged adc and support.  I've watched a few videos, but they make Leona appear far tankier than I found her to be and my support rune page is loaded with armor and magic resists.  Any suggestions?

Also: What do you guys think about other bubblers as support in the upcoming season?  Morgana, Lux, or Karma for example... I own and play all 3.

With Leona, the key is to be on point with your ADC. If you can both be aggressive then you can do really well. Otherwise, the key is zoning out your opponent or baiting them into the river for a gank.

In S4, I have no idea, but I have a feeling that we'll see more unconventional supports. They nerfed a lot of the damage on some support champs, but we'll see how some of these champs scale in a full game. For example, how well will Soraka heal? Putting a Rylai's on her starfall?

Karma is seen more in mid/top and every once in a while in the jungle, than support. Lux and Morgana are gonna be interested when they can get gold int he support. I think you'll see more damage from supports than before.

Just looking at the PBE numbers, Janna loses AP damage, but receives a huge AD buff on her shield. Sona got nerfed. The rest saw damage decrease on their damage abilities.

Like I mentioned in the other thread, I'm also in the market for a new support. Right now, my laning phase is kind of shitty: I don't win exchanges and I'm not great at zoning. The only lanes I win against competent opposition are when I get carried by a Vayne or Ezreal with killer mechanics. I make up for it by being good at warding and using Lulu's amazing potential to swing fights in the mid- and late-game, but I'd really like to learn to carry a lane a little better. Is there a support whose zoning/trading fundamentals are really obvious, yet still not too punishing when I fuck them up? Or is Lulu as good as it gets for that?

Sona.

Max Q. Press Q, auto enemy.

Press W to heal

I whiff every. Damn. Crescendo.

Oh well, time to buck up and learn I guess.

Leona is hard to play. If you are out of synch with your AD or you get behind you can die a lot. It's also not obvious what to max. She gets a lot of tankiness from W, so if you don't feel tanky either put points into W or use it more effectively.

I don't think many people will agree with this but Sona has a high skill ceiling. That doesn't mean it's hard to play her effectively, but that the difference between an ok and good Sona is pretty large. In particular having the right power chord available at the right time and using it effectively. The slow powerchord is very important.

She has no escape or hard CC until 6, so against certain lanes and junglers not dying takes some getting used to. I don't pick her into Blitz because one Blitz hook is death, and if I pick her into something like Leona, Thresh or Taric I do my best to maintain brush control with pinks. I pick her into kill lanes because I'm good with her and feel comfortable doing that, but she's very vulnerable to all-ins in general.

Those Crescendos are definitely something people completely ignore and don't utilize properly. Including myself, in S4 Sona with a Tear is going to be awesome as a support.

I actually had my first Leona game last night. I didn't do too well, gave up a few kills in lane, but I went 2/0/2 with my adc. We got tower eventually but their ez got slightly ahead of my vayne early but my vayne outfarmed him into mid game.

Fun champ.

I don't see many Lulu's these days. She was played top actually for a month or so as some pros were messing around with an AD version. I really enjoy playing a Soraka in a sustain lane.

I also just got gifted Forecast Janna last night. So I suppose I need to play more Janna now.

I played Lux and Morgana for my first 15 levels.  Both were great training for other skill shot champs.  I am confident with crescendo and have landed it well in team fights.  That's the funny thing.  I do very well in team fights.  It's the laning phase that seems to give me fits.  

Perhaps my ADC's and I aren't on the same page.  I can do well to poke and create space, but when I try to set up a gank I tend to be out of position for my ADC to get their attacks off quickly.  I do notice that many of the adc's I get paired with are quite tentative in their play.  I'm not sure if I'm the one that isn't seeing opportunities or they aren't being aggressive enough when I try to set up something for them.  For the record, I ward well and rarely get caught by the jungler.  Usually my early deaths occur because my ADC is so intent on cs that he doesn't jump on the opportunity to catch the enemy out of position.  Perhaps that will improve when I hit the 30 queue.

My current solution is to play Blitzcrank.  I can pull people to my ADC and let him kill them during the knock up.

That is a good plan.  If you're not playing draft, you'll get him every time.  He was, when I played, a near perma-ban in low ELO.  He's a terror for people that can't dodge shit.

However, if you get behind or they pick really tanky champs, you may have issues.  Blitz is fun, though.  You'll never lack that.

Blitz is still perma-banned in ranked because at that skill level, he is just a difference maker. The bans I'm seeing these days in the shit end of the scale are Blitz/Amumu/Malphite (if the banners are smart) with a mixture of Fizz/Yi/Shen/Jinx and some other odd ones thrown in.

Blitz/Amumu/Malph is the triforce of low elo bans. Shen is usually included, but can slip through.   Blitz/Malph have been low ELO permabans since season 2. 

It's always funny when someone doesn't ban Amumu and then gets bitchy when the other team gets him and melts faces. At that skill level, there is no good goddamn reason to have him on the field. He is that good... at that skill level. Blitz is the same way. Malphite and Shen used to be but aren't so much anymore.