Good article :) Supports are so under appreciated at the lower tiers, but at this point is SS that underrated?

Is alche back in the meta?

The meta is stale and boring, and the only reason for that is Valve's inability to properly buff useless heroes.
With SS's low range he will always get overharassed by anyone with half a brain, and he is a proper pick ONLY in games vs Slark, WR, and Weaver. Apart from those he is a burden on his team that does the same thing Bane with a Meteor Hammer does. But worse.
SD is still trash as he is geared towards "dealing damage" (good luck having any mana to do it) and "amplyfing damage" (good luck being in range to land a propper SC and not being killed by an enemy core that looked your way with that pitiful HP. Oh, an your starting dmg is trash, so you can only properly harass with SP which will costantly push the lane. Good luck having no exp when the enemy start denying and lasthiting under his tower.
AA is the pinnacle of Valve's moronic inability to give out buffs. He is now only a situational pick against Alch or high-lifesteal heroes, but you know what also is good agains them? Fucking spirit vessel. Why would I pick a shitty support with no propper save or stun, that dies in 2 hits and can't be properly agressive in lane due to his low HP, when I can build 1 item and do the same thing this whole hero does.
AA is one od the heroes that suffers from Valve thinking "Well he's got a strong ult, so we should nerf everything else he has into the ground!" 10 patches ahead from now, if they'll go on with it, a bunch of heroes (scilencer, AA, etc.) will be replaced by ranged creeps with no abilities, cept for an ult.

^I agree with above comment until he mentioned Silencer replaceable with ranged creeps :D

Alche is back, not exactly the best hero in the game, but he is back... He went missing after they messed up the jungle, but after TI8, he is being picked more.

Shadow Shaman is not underrated, but he is not being picked as much... Almost all of the heroes have their ups and downs, but we really need that 7.20 balancing patch to shake up the meta whole heartedly. We have had this same meta for too long already. Time to shake things up.

@OfGreyHairWaifu
i guess u never saw a silencer beating the crap out of u with his 100+ stolen int and 430+ pure damage

Make the jungle great again :(

Oracle?!

Where's fucking Bane?

i think Shaman is still on the track, why he is become one of underrated ?
what about Disruptor ? he was very dependable heroes before TI8 but now nobody pick him

bane,warlock,dazzle,s.shaman,apparat...

pls people do differentiate underrated and complete trash

Good analytical article, but not that practical.

Shadow Shaman is underrated? He's sitting in the top 25 most played heroes. Grab a wind lace and you can't escape his harass if you're a squishy support unless your name is KOTL. You mean that you'll exchange hits from a support with 45 damage and 500 starting HP? Ooops you have 76~ starting damage and will wreck anyone trying to exchange hits with you, not to mention you can withstand more punishment than a good number of early game supports. A smart SS is very difficult to stop.

Shadow Demon and Ancient Apparition however are truly unused heroes trash heroes, with Ancient Apparition only being useful against heavy regeneration lineups (Spirit Vessel also does this job fine), and Shadow Demon being useful only in a Luna lineup.

SD is a good pick in for any lineup

I really like SD, but only if I see they have some good pick for me first - either some cores pick something useful (see below) or supports like venge, SS, WD etc (ranged, decent right click).

If they pick escapy heroes (void, qop, slark, mirana, pa) or some beefy, melee heroes (ogre, tusk, tide, underlord), this tactic is just completely useless and SD is not good in this game. This is why I go for pick when I see at least 2-3 heroes. If I have to first pick, I rather pick something different.

I take the hero from completely different angle – usually taking him with some bursty hero with slow/stun (venge, viper) so it amplifies damage from several sources – right click of 2 heroes, 2 illusions and this nuke/slow. It is an amazing counter to safe lanes, as usually there is needed trilane to at least draw the lane against this duo.

This build works miracles as well versus right click damage dealers (ranged ones mainly). Unless Huskar is streamrolling alone with godlike, you can solo kill him with only spirit vessel untill bkb. Than you can kill him with bkb when it is lower duration and you have eul. The same goes for viper, sniper and other ranged carries as well as heroes like AM, jugg, blood etc.

This is the main reason for me to go 2-3-0-1 into 3-4-1-1 (value point to poison for vision purposes). Second point is that I really want spirit vessel, it amazingly stacks with SD spells and with this build (spirit vessel + boots) it is impossible to sustain mana, as I am all game long using first 2 spells and SD has basic mana on lvl 15 under 1000. Your combo costs 400, so few times shadow poison and you are out of mana and you miss for the important skills. You want usually 5 or more stacks, which is 250mana+ and it takes you 13 seconds to build it. Which is quite long early game.

So shadow poison is usefull when I finally hit those sweet times I have spirit vessel, lvl 20 and eul to sustain the mana. Than you can kill almost any enemy right click core and still defend mega creeps. Which other support can do this? :D

@OfGreyHairWaifu

Wow. If you knew how this hero works, you can pretty much zone any range hero from lane.

Some stats:
ShadowD: 614HP, 2,88 armor, 50-54dmg
Silencer: 542HP, 2,52 armor, 43-57dmg
Vengeful: 542HP, 5,40 armor, 39-47dmg
CrystalM: 524HP, 2,56 armor, 40-46dmg

So in the stats: SD has highest HP, highest damage lvl 1 and armorwise is above average (for int supp). The thing is that SD ALWAYS wins the supports battle with any of these heroes. SD focusing on Q and W will force out of lane any ranged support and many ranged cores. If connected with hero like Venge, wind, viper, CK, lina, gyro, the offlane is pretty much won for you, unless enemy tries to trilane you. Which you can still win.

IF you have some decent burst hero mid (Invo, SF, Blood, lina) and enemy doesnt have escape (QOP, lvl 6+storm), every gank mid means kill.

Btw one funny combo I forgot about - Dazzle+SD. Disruption+healbomb is almost sure kill.

Good article, but I'm not getting tired of picking DW

Ss need this reduce damage from 76 to 63 and improve his attacking range from 400 to 650 and shackle do 0 damge but mana cost to cast it is 50 all shackle duration improved 0.5 sec every level hex duration level 1 should be 1.8 and Ether Shock level 2 do 250 level 3 320 level 4 390.
Now about talent tree replace 200 health with 90 gold at level 10 and level 25 remove ward damage and replace it with 1 extra ward

AA: improve mana poll to 550 at level 1
Cold feet mana cost 95 all level stun and damage per tick improved from 30/50/70/90 to 35/60/75/120

I like the amount of chatter on this article, and while I don't consider myself a particularly skilled support, I think there are a couple of points that some of the naysayers need to keep in mind when considering these heroes:

On Shaman: having access to two disables can mean you can play the patience game rather than the damage trade game, although he is able to receive a few right clicks. Not a lot of heroes are able to throw two targeted disables and secure the initiation in a dual lane, and with a proper coordination can net two kills with a very small reaction window for the opposing team. There aren't as many tanky heroes being played a lot in this dual meta, so where those disables used to be necessary to lock down that Bristle for a very long time, it can now be spread out and still secure a kill.

On the other two: I have extremely low personal experience playing either of these heroes, so this is mostly freeballing. Despite not having universal utility in lane, they really, really make up for it later in the game by having percentage based spells. Eventually most supports lose a lot of their early damage advantage and become more or less walking stuns and silences with items. Not a whole lot of them can boost teammate damage like AA and SD can, whether it be through tower siege or by making that damage stick. I dunno, I see some comments that make them sound weak, but I don't look at being situational as the same thing as weak.

Oracle [2]?

БАФ ОРАКЛА, уж слишком слабый сапорт на лайне

цвет настроения черный

Shaman is almost always useful coz of his mass serpent wards that makes taking towers with ease, or forcing the enemy to hit the wards that are attacking the tower which could kinda act like a weak disarm by itself in teamfights. Either way, the enemy team loses out on something.

>Shadow Shaman
>underrated
cool story bro

AA and Shaman is broken when you can play it and go against lower bracket

Lol this article came out right after a t.i winner is bringing or bumping this winrate to post 3/offlane role.. let's bring support to core roles again.. #LetsMakeSupportCoreAgain #ThankYouSEB

Generally, supports are underrated. But there are more underpicked cores especially offlaners.

Abaddon?

It's been nearly a year now since his core set took off and his winrate dropped from 60% as a result. He's still a fantastic lane support, especially with the addition of cooldown talents etc

Im ancient player

distruptor is missing.

I play undying and super aggressive - it’s fun