Support Item Guide. (cheatsheet & detailed) by Light

Hello everyone, I am writing a guide on supports that will cover several facets that pertain to all supports. I will Explain in detail what items are good for different situations. Supports must
a. Protect the team with buffs
b. Keep the enemies from reaching allies
c. Provide good map vision for the team
d. Decide when to engage enemies
Having the proper items is necessary to do your job. A support in a sense is the captain of the team and must communicate well with the team to be effective

Chapter Guide
1. Introduction
2. Support Item Cheatsheet
3. Essential Support Items
4. Situational Items
5. Vision Items

This portion will have brief summaries of which items are good in certain situations. I will go into detail on these items in later chapters.

Items to use against teams with

AoE damage/stuns Adagio Ardan Celeste Skye: Crucible

Teams building high health Aftershock

Teams whose weapon power is causing you trouble Atlas Pauldron

Prolonged team fights and or you keep running out of energy Clockwork

2 heroes building weapon or crystal Metal Jacket or Aegis

Stealth oriented heroes giving you trouble Contraption

Diverse items for most situations Fountain of Renewal, Travel Boots, warhorn

Early game damage and mid/late game vision Scout Trap

Early-late game vision Flare Gun

If you want to become higher rank in VG you must learn that no one predetermined build is optimal for most situations. One of the main purposes of this guide is to teach you how to be flexible and adapt to your opponents hero and item selection. With that being said there are a couple items that I recommend buying in the vast majority of games as a support.

Fountain of Renewal can vastly help almost any composition or situation. It gives you rapid health region, Shield (mainly), Armor (a bit) and provides the sustain that your allies need to win team fights. It takes practice to get the timing down because of the delay of healing to start so make sure to become experienced with it! A team with fountain is VERY frequently able to outlast a team without it! (Tip: if you are having a hard time with the timing of the fountain the issue of delay can be mitigated by using a Crucible to INSTANTLY provide your allies a shield then immediately using fountain afterwards if necessary. I find this greatly reduces the instances where fountain heal doesn't take effect in time. I recommend getting fountain ASAP

Ironguard Contract + Stormguard Banner If you are very new to support just know to ALWAYS go Ironguard first item. Make sure to make the jungle minions hit you so your jungle gets extra gold. This is how a support gets his gold. Storm guard is necessary because it gives you the ability to do half decent damage with your Auto Attacks that increases throughout the gold. It helps you clear jungle camps faster and also helps you do damage in team fights.

Warhorn Is such a diverse and useful item wit a low 40 second cooldown. There are very few situations that I prefer Contraption or Shiversteel over it. I will list a few of the main benefits here
1. Helps the team pursue fleeing enemies
2. Helps the team flee from pursuing enemies
3. Helps the team run past the opposing support and focus down the squishy laner or jungle. This often takes a team by surprise when you all fly out of a bush at such high speeds.
4. Helps the team reach objectives (turrets, miners, kraken) quicker which increases the chances of destroying them or intercepting enemies that are trying to destroy them.
5. Big 400 health buff with a huge 16 health regeneration that will keep you healing up and tanky.

Think of the opposing team in team fights as a snapping turtle. If you are stuck on their support you are attacking the shell of the turtle while the teeth and claws (ranged and melee carries) rip you apart. Using warhorn allows you to bypass that hard shell and to straight for the squishy turtle head! Just make sure your team is clear on if you will be focusing the laner or jungle first. It's good to establish target priorities to keep everyone on the same page

Travel Boots Give you a good passive speed boost and a much more frequently available active speed boost along with a little health. Just about all heroes benefit greatly from this which gives better positioning and increased survivability.

Atlas Pauldron is the way to go If a weapon power carry is burning your team down. It gives you decent armor, has a low cooldown of 15s and can turn almost any weapon power hero into a potato for 5 whole seconds. Late game team fights Atlas is often a must and can make or break a team fight. On a side note atlas can be blocked by a reflex block.

Aegis + metal jacat are counterparts to each other and are rarely useful as useful as atlas or crucible as a support since don't help your allies survive. I would recommend these if for instance you are going against a double CP or WP build which will make you almost immortal against them.

Aftershock Helps you deal a decent damage output against enemies that opt for high health. This makes you as a support a threat and gives you additional sustain along with energy recharge and decreased cooldown.

Crucible is a great item for particularly going against heroes that have AoE stuns such as arden, Skye Reim. It is also useful against teams that have AoE ults that do lots of damage.
It also was mentioned earlier that crucible can work well with fountain or renewal by providing instant shield to allies at low health before fountain can take effect.

Clockwork is a pretty good support item if you feel the need to spam abilities. If you are having frequent lengthy team fights it can make you much more relevant but if the team battles are finished in under 10 seconds it won't be of much help

Flare Gun and Scout Trap are one of the differences between a good support and a bad one. It is supports JOB to lead his team into battle and to do that you need good intel on the enemy team.

Scout traps are great for gaining vision throughout the map and you want to use them in different ways for different phases of the game.

Early game (damage): Scout traps do a decent % of the opposing teams health and if you can get it to hit one or two of the enemies it will give you a significant edge in early team fights.

Mid/late game (vision) Come mid/late game respawn times get longer and longer. Vision makes or breaks a team late game so you want to use mines primarily for lasting vision. To do this you want to put the mines in places where people often don't think to walk so they aren't triggered.
Scout trap placement guide
This video shows the positioning of mines to place for the best vision. If you get your mines in good positions and they aren't getting tripped you can take them out of your inventory and replace them with flares

Let's imagine two situations
1. Late game team A is grouped and waiting in a bush to ambush whoever crosses their path. The jungler and support on team B wander next to the bush and BAM ambush they are are both dead.
2. The support on team B knows better and uses 25 gold to check bushes before entering them because the death timer is at 50 seconds and if they die it's game over.
As the death timer increases your level of caution must increase proportionately.

Contraption is worth the cost if you are facing a Taka or Kestrel that are giving your team a hard time with their stealth and you need a ton of flares and mines to deal with it or if there is a team that you find particular fond of trying to ambush your team from the bushes