The Best Hard Support In Dota 2 According To Your Personality

Before we start breaking down the heroes and the ideas behind them, it is important to understand that every hard support has always the same ideas. It is simply to enable the hard carry into the game. What changes is the way each hero can contribute to that idea. This can be done in multiple ways. It can be done directly from the beginning with a solid laning stage, making sure that the carry is untouched while at the same time the enemies are being harassed It can only be done indirectly compensating in the middle game on with other aspects like strong team fight, split push, counter initiation or simply assisting and buffing your hard carry.

There are overall 3 types of hard support:

The Classic Supports

These are the well-known supports we all got to start with. Heroes like Crystal Maiden, Lich Dazzle, and Jakiro are the perfect examples. These types of heroes are really strong in the laning stage, having the ability to play aggressively getting great trades, or finding kills.

In the middle game, they are not to be ignored.

Jakiro and Lich are excellent heroes in the team fight while Crystal Maiden’s amount of magical damage can be fight changing. Frost shield and Icepath are perfect spells that never lose their importance and can be game changing.

Your best friend in the lane is mango! Make sure you always have enough mangos to be able to harass the enemies, especially the position 3! In the middle game, you want to buy items like force staff, glimmer cape, aether lens, and ghost scepter depending on the scenario. The idea behind these items is quite simple. You want to survive as long as you can, to be able to use your spells as often as you can.

Therefore, depending on what you are dealing with, these items are your best friends.

The negative of these heroes is that if your lane ends up being a stomp, it’s hard to play these heroes from behind. The lack of gold and exp will make you a target for the enemy’s core. Make sure you do as well as possible in the lane and snowball with the extra gold and exp you have!

If you are the type of player that wants to be impactful in both laning stage and middle game, these are your go-to heroes!

The Lane Dominators!

These are simply heroes that can 1v2 in the lanes with little to zero assist from the hard carry. They are usually quite tanky, have some kind of ability that allows them to favorable trade versus anyone, have a strong right click, and are hard to ignore.

Heroes like Undying, Abaddon, Bane, and Ogre Magi. What you should do with these types of heroes is to provide your position 1 free farm for the first few minutes. You will keep the opponents busy and under level, your hard carry gains gold and more importantly significant EXP difference leading to a great laning stage. This way you give the best possible start for your position 1 to do its job. Carry the game!

The downside of being a lane dominator is that while you keep your opponents underleveled, you stay underleveled as well. You end up having minimum EXP and gold while you spent your few golds in sentries and consumables. You will need to find your way towards more levels as you transition from the laning stage to the middle game.

That being said, you are still an important hero in the middle game. Abilities like Tombstone, Aphotic shield, Bloodlustand Fiend’s Grip are hard to deal with and can be game changing!

Strong Middle Game Heroes

These are heroes that are not that strong in the laning stage but they compensate with their abilities in the middle game. By definition, these heroes sacrifice laning stage for middle game presence. These types of heroes usually have big cooldown abilities, struggle to win right click trades but usually have a big level 6 power spike.

Heroes like Grimstroke, Dark Willow, Enigma, Omniknight, Ancient Apparition, Winter Wyvern, and Shadow Shaman are a few examples of the definition above.

You need to understand that these heroes are actually fine on the lane but they depend on a good lane partner to compensate for the lack of laning presence. The support’s most common problem in the drafting phase is that rarely you get to see carry players pick around position 1. The end result is usually having some kind of combination that fails to cooperate leading to a pure laning stage.

Nevertheless, their middle game presence is quite strong that often you get to see these heroes have a tremendous impact. Abilities like Ice blast, Blackhole, Cold Embrace, Winter’s Curse are usually game turning therefore these heroes should always be taken seriously.

To make these heroes work you need to make the laning stage work and chances are that the game is yours. The middle game should be the area of expertly for the heroes above

Since supports usually get to first pick you can be anything you feel like going. Make sure though, you are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each hero!

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About the Author:

Raza is a 7k MMR player that’s been a professional coach for the last few years. Having more than 500 people coached in his record, he is the person behind Dota Rollercoaster.
When he is not coaching or grinding to 8k MMR, he usually plays chess or reads books.