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Hey, guys and gals this is your boy Kronic with another intro.
Guardians/Support
There are three types of supports.
Traditional Support
Tank Support
Bruiser Support
Traditional Supports:
These gods are ones whose primary role is to provide utility to their lane/team; providing utility means that they can give allies mana, health, crowd control (cc) reduction, or increased mana/health regen. When you play one of these gods, you want to help your lane/team sustain into late game, sustain during long teamfights, or to give someone just enough health to live.
Tank Supports:
These gods are ones whose primary role is to soak up damage in teamfights and be an engager during the laning phase. When playing one of these gods, you want to be the primary target of the other team. Ideally, you want to get right up in the other team's face and force them to deal with you with everything they have. By doing that, you take the focus off of your squishy carries, allowing them to maximize their damage output.
Bruiser Supports:
Playing the bruiser support can get a bit more complicated than the previous types of support.
When playing one of these gods, you typically want to play halfway between a tank and traditional support. It is a little more complicated to play these gods, simply because you must rely on your decision-making more than the other types. Bruisers are typically melee and (in laning phase) have to get close to the minion line and enemies to dish out damage. Because of this, when you decide to go in to put damage down, you have to make sure your carry can follow up, otherwise you'll go in and basically engage in a 2v1; if you don't die, youll take a considerable amount of damage and that may cripple your laning phase.
Outside of laning, you want to act like a typical bruiser (kind of tanky, but still able to dish out a TON of damage). By playing this way, you will help your carry or team kill the enemy by being a front line, and laying damage down which will in turn provide your carries with an easier target to kill.
Not all supporting gods have the same playstyle.
When playing traditional supports, stay by your carries! Always!
When you're the tank support, be the front line and try to see how many ults you can get the enemy team to waste!
Bruiser supports require a bit more decision making; you can (and most often will) be punished for making the wrong decision.
Making a great decision with bruiser supports will most often net your carry a kill.
The most important thing to know about supporting is this...
You are the playmaker.
That's right. YOU. Not your mid, not your jungle, not your top, no, not even your AD Carry.
Sounds crazy doesn't it? How can I be the playmaker, when I'm just a lowly support? Well it's simple, really. You are the one keeping the team alive. If they're not alive, they have no opportunity to do anything. You are the one with the Crowd Control, locking targets down for your carries to demolish. Without your CC, there would be no hope for the carry to snag easy kills.
As a support, you are perhaps THE most important member of the team, yet also perhaps the most unrecognized. Take pride in supporting, because you are the one who makes everything easier for the team behind the scenes.
The second most important thing to know, or remember, is to ALWAYS try to give your carry the kill. Yes, even if you're sitting there dancing around an enemy at 10hp.
Never Take The Kills ...unless you absolutely have to.
How Warding Is Important And Why You Should Do It
So why is warding important? At first glance, it doesn't seem worth the 50g for 3 minutes of vision on one small part of the map, right? Wrong. Completely wrong. The Ward and Sentry Ward are the most OP items in the ENTIRE game.
How are wards OP? They Don't Do Anything.
You know the saying, "Knowledge is Power"? That is completely true, and believe it or not, that saying applies to Smite, and every other strategy game, too. Wards provide vision on enemy positioning, and movements which provide you with more situational knowledge.
SITUATION 1: PUSHING YOUR LANE WITH NO WARD
Let's say you're pushing your lane and you're winning your lane. You get right up to the tower and get ganked, resulting in your enemy laners getting a double kill. They are now caught up to you, and pushing, and because you're both dead, you're losing valuable xp. Had you put even one measly ward down, this whole situation could've been prevented and you'd still be winning your lane just as hard, if not harder.
Let's revisit that situation again, but this time you placed a ward down near the enemy blue buff.
SITUATION 2: PUSHING YOUR LANE WITH A WARD ON THE ENEMY BUFF CAMP
You are winning your lane, up 2 kills on the enemy laners, and have level advantage. The minions are fighting in the middle of the lane and you just clear all of the enemy minions, starting your push to their tower. However, because of your ward placement, you notice the enemy jungler clearing his jungle buff camp that you were smart enough to ward. With that knowledge, you now have even more of an advantage than before, because you now know it would be dangerous to push with the potential 2v3 situation. The jungler clears his camp and hangs out behind a wall for a bit, waiting for the perfect time to jump you. But you see this and stall the lane push, which makes the jungler waste his time. Sure the enemy laners now have a bit of free farm, but now you can continue to choke them out and dominate your lane with the jungler gone.
That ONE ward prevented a double kill for the enemy team, wasted about 1 minute of the jungler's time, allows you to stay in control over your lane, and in the long run starves your enemy laners of gold and xp.
If you ask me, that is definitely worth a mere 50g.
And that's just during laning phase too. Once late game hits, it provides even more function, as you or teammates can use Teleport to position themselves on the ward for fast splitpushing, catching someone out of position on the enemy team, or to catch up to the team as they start a teamfight.
How To Ward Efficiently
Now that you understand just how important wards are, let's take a look at how to really use them to their fullest potential.
Wards have a set radius of sight, so even tho it may sound common knowledge, you do not want to place wards too close to each other, or within the sight radius of another ward. This is redundant warding, as you have 2 wards functioning as only 1. This is the definition of inefficiency, but I have seen that happen in games before. To ward efficiently, it's best to place the ward where it will have the most vision; typically, this is where one or more jungle paths meet and the main jungle objectives (Gold Fury and Fire Giant).
This does not mean to ONLY ward these spots. If everyone on your team is warding (and warding consistently), these spots will all be taken. You can either hold on to your wards and simply replace the existing ones when they run out, or ward other junctions.
When you get used to warding, you will wonder how you even managed to play without them. The hardest and most important part is simply to remember to keep putting them down!
Recap
Wards are not useless!
Knowledge is power!
A single ward can save your teammate's life, or even your own
Ward efficiently, not redundantly
The Ward is the most OP item in Smite.
Wards allow you to make better decisions
Here I have marked where the wards should be placed.
I have not marked where jungler should ward as his role is to counter ward.
The Jungle role should place a sentry at gold fury or fire giant when it is to spawn and regular ward at enemy red buff or speed buff.
Guardians/Support
There are three types of supports.
Traditional Support
Tank Support
Bruiser Support
Traditional Supports:
These gods are ones whose primary role is to provide utility to their lane/team; providing utility means that they can give allies mana, health, crowd control (cc) reduction, or increased mana/health regen. When you play one of these gods, you want to help your lane/team sustain into late game, sustain during long teamfights, or to give someone just enough health to live.
Tank Supports:
These gods are ones whose primary role is to soak up damage in teamfights and be an engager during the laning phase. When playing one of these gods, you want to be the primary target of the other team. Ideally, you want to get right up in the other team's face and force them to deal with you with everything they have. By doing that, you take the focus off of your squishy carries, allowing them to maximize their damage output.
Bruiser Supports:
Playing the bruiser support can get a bit more complicated than the previous types of support.
When playing one of these gods, you typically want to play halfway between a tank and traditional support. It is a little more complicated to play these gods, simply because you must rely on your decision-making more than the other types. Bruisers are typically melee and (in laning phase) have to get close to the minion line and enemies to dish out damage. Because of this, when you decide to go in to put damage down, you have to make sure your carry can follow up, otherwise you'll go in and basically engage in a 2v1; if you don't die, youll take a considerable amount of damage and that may cripple your laning phase.
Outside of laning, you want to act like a typical bruiser (kind of tanky, but still able to dish out a TON of damage). By playing this way, you will help your carry or team kill the enemy by being a front line, and laying damage down which will in turn provide your carries with an easier target to kill.
Not all supporting gods have the same playstyle.
When playing traditional supports, stay by your carries! Always!
When you're the tank support, be the front line and try to see how many ults you can get the enemy team to waste!
Bruiser supports require a bit more decision making; you can (and most often will) be punished for making the wrong decision.
Making a great decision with bruiser supports will most often net your carry a kill.
The most important thing to know about supporting is this...
You are the playmaker.
That's right. YOU. Not your mid, not your jungle, not your top, no, not even your AD Carry.
Sounds crazy doesn't it? How can I be the playmaker, when I'm just a lowly support? Well it's simple, really. You are the one keeping the team alive. If they're not alive, they have no opportunity to do anything. You are the one with the Crowd Control, locking targets down for your carries to demolish. Without your CC, there would be no hope for the carry to snag easy kills.
As a support, you are perhaps THE most important member of the team, yet also perhaps the most unrecognized. Take pride in supporting, because you are the one who makes everything easier for the team behind the scenes.
The second most important thing to know, or remember, is to ALWAYS try to give your carry the kill. Yes, even if you're sitting there dancing around an enemy at 10hp.
Never Take The Kills ...unless you absolutely have to.
How Warding Is Important And Why You Should Do It
So why is warding important? At first glance, it doesn't seem worth the 50g for 3 minutes of vision on one small part of the map, right? Wrong. Completely wrong. The Ward and Sentry Ward are the most OP items in the ENTIRE game.
How are wards OP? They Don't Do Anything.
You know the saying, "Knowledge is Power"? That is completely true, and believe it or not, that saying applies to Smite, and every other strategy game, too. Wards provide vision on enemy positioning, and movements which provide you with more situational knowledge.
SITUATION 1: PUSHING YOUR LANE WITH NO WARD
Let's say you're pushing your lane and you're winning your lane. You get right up to the tower and get ganked, resulting in your enemy laners getting a double kill. They are now caught up to you, and pushing, and because you're both dead, you're losing valuable xp. Had you put even one measly ward down, this whole situation could've been prevented and you'd still be winning your lane just as hard, if not harder.
Let's revisit that situation again, but this time you placed a ward down near the enemy blue buff.
SITUATION 2: PUSHING YOUR LANE WITH A WARD ON THE ENEMY BUFF CAMP
You are winning your lane, up 2 kills on the enemy laners, and have level advantage. The minions are fighting in the middle of the lane and you just clear all of the enemy minions, starting your push to their tower. However, because of your ward placement, you notice the enemy jungler clearing his jungle buff camp that you were smart enough to ward. With that knowledge, you now have even more of an advantage than before, because you now know it would be dangerous to push with the potential 2v3 situation. The jungler clears his camp and hangs out behind a wall for a bit, waiting for the perfect time to jump you. But you see this and stall the lane push, which makes the jungler waste his time. Sure the enemy laners now have a bit of free farm, but now you can continue to choke them out and dominate your lane with the jungler gone.
That ONE ward prevented a double kill for the enemy team, wasted about 1 minute of the jungler's time, allows you to stay in control over your lane, and in the long run starves your enemy laners of gold and xp.
If you ask me, that is definitely worth a mere 50g.
And that's just during laning phase too. Once late game hits, it provides even more function, as you or teammates can use Teleport to position themselves on the ward for fast splitpushing, catching someone out of position on the enemy team, or to catch up to the team as they start a teamfight.
How To Ward Efficiently
Now that you understand just how important wards are, let's take a look at how to really use them to their fullest potential.
Wards have a set radius of sight, so even tho it may sound common knowledge, you do not want to place wards too close to each other, or within the sight radius of another ward. This is redundant warding, as you have 2 wards functioning as only 1. This is the definition of inefficiency, but I have seen that happen in games before. To ward efficiently, it's best to place the ward where it will have the most vision; typically, this is where one or more jungle paths meet and the main jungle objectives (Gold Fury and Fire Giant).
This does not mean to ONLY ward these spots. If everyone on your team is warding (and warding consistently), these spots will all be taken. You can either hold on to your wards and simply replace the existing ones when they run out, or ward other junctions.
When you get used to warding, you will wonder how you even managed to play without them. The hardest and most important part is simply to remember to keep putting them down!
Recap
Wards are not useless!
Knowledge is power!
A single ward can save your teammate's life, or even your own
Ward efficiently, not redundantly
The Ward is the most OP item in Smite.
Wards allow you to make better decisions
Here I have marked where the wards should be placed.
I have not marked where jungler should ward as his role is to counter ward.
The Jungle role should place a sentry at gold fury or fire giant when it is to spawn and regular ward at enemy red buff or speed buff.
