1. Pokemon team support guide.
  2.  
  3. Do not redistribute this guide.. it's purely for our team.  Also take this as positive guidelines.. not negative.  I personally can not do all the things in this guide perfectly. It is more as a general info of how to improve, what areas and things to really look at in your gameplay.
  4.  
  5. This is the guide to support, if you want to play support with us either follow these guidelines or explain why they should be changed.
  6.  
  7. A support hero in high level play must be comfortable and skilled at using a hero that is item independent, and comfortable with having basically no gold.  If you complain you have no gold with a support, something is right, the heroes picked for you will be item independent anyway.  Items are a luxury.
  8.  
  9. You must buy items that support the team, in place of item dependant heroes.  You also are the best hero to TP in to support other lanes if they are being ganked.  For obvious reasons, you have good early game skills, and dont require the farm a core needs to win the game.  
  10.  
  11. Main Objective:  Let no one on your team die, including yourself.  You do not have permission to feed just because you are support. It is not acceptable to die, and any death should be watching in replay to see if you could have avoided it, and if it ultimately was worth any trade.  Yes you will die sometimes in large teamfights, but most of the time you will be far more beneficial to the team if you survive and can continue assisting.  Basically a big problem is supports feel it is okay to die if it was trying to save a hero.  Unless that hero survives, and you die unavoidably, you did something wrong and need to fix that error in your playstyle.
  12.  
  13. Other objectives: none
  14.  
  15. You have one goal, a very important goal, you achieve it with wards, TPing, good play, good positioning, and intelligent decisions. You are the ones who most of all should understand what is going on in every lane, which heroes are missing, and if someone is in danger.  Multitasking is essential.  Just because you are on support does not mean it is for bads or our weakest players.  In fact support is the just as key as Core.  Any weak area or position will cause us to lose.
  16.  
  17. Optimizing Game decisions:  You as support must optimize your play, and continually get better.  You must know how to do every pull trick in the book, even if you don't pull.  You must know every ward spot, when to ward towers, when to ward runes, when to ward to the side of lane, etc.  You must know how to counter ward, watching for their wards, know how to use ward of revalation to counteward our pull no matter if they place in the middle of trees.  You have to know everyspot, it's not someones responsibility to teach you or tell you.  Walking back to a lane vrs TPing back intelligently is important.   If the lane is in danger, such as versus 2 heroes that can kill your core immenintly, TP back, if its relatively safe, walk, so that you might TP to other lanes if needed and save gold.
  18.  
  19. All the small little things adds up quickly, small mistakes or inefficiencies lose games.  Your positioning, tug of warring creeps, lane harassment, initiation on kills (almost all kills early will be initiated by a support player),  All of this is huge.  It's the smallest things such as not standing next to a hero if their is a plague MIA on enemy team, Reacting immediately and casting quickly so you can get the cooldown timer up sooner.  ETC.  If you are glacious, the range on the slow is maximum at 1200 or something ridiculous if you place it perfecly ont eh outside of the circle,  YOU need to be able to slow at maximum range, you need to know when kiting with your hero you can cast the middle of the slow directly infront of you to slow the chaser, and not have to turn aroudn to cast.  ALL THIS small shit adds up and causes us to lose games we can win.  If you want to play with Pokemon team, you must work to improve all the small things.  Your animation cancelling skills, your cast knowledge, positioning, denying, lane control, initation, Map Awareness, Quick TP reactions, immediate casting when needed, etc.  Small delays are difference between a death and a kill.  Item efficiency is supremely important on support, if you buy a boots to soon, it could cost wards, if you buy something like a bracer recipe when your inventory is not full, you are wasting 175 gold. etc.  You should know exactly what items you are getting to maximize inventory space efficiency and have money for wards/TPs.  
  20.  
  21. Another small thing is TP buying for a core.  If our mid player dies and does not have money for TP, by the time he respawns there should be a TP scroll on the fountain floor ready for him.
  22.  
  23. the difference between okay, good, and amazing are the smallest details.  You need to maximize the potential of your hero, your awareness (support don't have to focus on lane control/lasthitting as heavily).
  24.  
  25. You also should use the courier efficiently.  This means hotkeys, add it to control group, hit the hotkeys, hit E or send to the hero you are delivering items to, and when done hit R.  USE HOTKEYs, if you are afk in lane for 5 seconds vrs 1/2 second that will add up, not only in afk but in watching minimap, and knowing the gameflow.  personally I use 2BESE for boots, etc.  You should know for 100% sure, boots, TPs, health potion, and wards.  
  26.  
  27. You do not have ot do all this perfectly, but actively work on improving your game, practice mode is great for this, you can cast a spell, practice animation cancelling/range/etc and simply hit refresh and recast it.  Paying attention to any small details.  For instance armadon can cancel quill animation if you spam clicks,  so a non attention to detail armadon takes 3 seconds to swing, quill, while a good armadon can swing, quill, swing in that same time.  Not to mention you can cancel a swing with quill if you arent careful.  Also you can cancel the backswing on every animation, meaning that if you play a perfect armadon, you get +ms, +dps, from simple stuff like timing animation cancels.  Every hero has a high potential.  Glacius when harassing with tundra blast can place the AOE so it only hits heroes, or the least possible number of enemy creeps (push the lane less), you can obviously run away better if you don't turn to freeze, or you cancel to the backswing on it, you get more MS. etc.  
  28.  
  29. Example, positioning can save 1k hp, you are against a plague, and you spread out enormously all game, this nuetralizes an entire enemy hero practically, with just small tweaks and focus by players.
  30.  
  31. So for instance you are against 2 enemies in a lane, your partner pulls the creeps to the left more.  You position yourself on the right and harass, this causes less aggro, and allows you to harass freely.  This is a sizeable bonus from no gold spent or hero choice etc.  If you improve all of these aspects its the difference between okay, and good, to excellent.
  32.  
  33. Another example is double denies.  If you are in a dual lane, when a creat aproximately 1.5 hero hits (100 health early), both of you can hit it at the same time and deny it from even the best last hitters.  skills like that can win lanes and have nothing to do with hero choice.
  34.  
  35.  
  36. So basically you want to play practice mode a bit each day, work on ward positioning, spell animations, attack moving etc,  All these small things add up,  practice aggro pulling creeps (aka in a lane u click on enemy hero then run backwards to pull creeps inwards to a safer position), go over your item builds, courier hotkeys, etc.
  37.  
  38. Main goals to work on:
  39. Map awareness and communicating to team/cores dangers/notes
  40. TPing quickly and countering any ganks
  41. Positioning
  42. Denying
  43. Ward Placement / keeping wards up (placement changes based on how enemy team plays, aka TP ganks, you ward towers etc (know where to ward towers))
  44. Harassment
  45. Animation Cancelling
  46. spell placement
  47. Item choices
  48.  
  49. All of these ultimately lead to goal #1, Not letting anyone on team die including yourself.
  50.  
  51. The quickest way to improve, is to play, then watch a replay, and go over what you did right / wrong.  If you can't self analyze or find nothing wrong, ask someone else to find something wrong, because there will always be mistakes.
  52.