The Support role has changed drastically over the years. It used to be a very limited role that could only play how the team required it to. Nowadays, the Support matchup is often the deciding factor in the bot lane. Moreover, it also provides players with the potential to roam and impact the rest of the map.
Knowing how crucial the Support role has become to the game, blind picking becomes that much more of an issue. Also, with autofill being a part of the game everyone needs to have a support champion they can blind pick and not be hampered by a bad matchup.
There are many different categories of support champions. In these categories, some champions are superior to others. To be confident in your ability to blind pick any of these champions, you need to first know which of them are the best individually while also leaving very few counter-pick options.
Once you know which Support champions are the best to blind pick, you can choose to play whichever comes naturally to your play style. To help you choose, we will go through some of the best supports of their specific class of champions.
Morgana
Morgana is the safest champion to blind pick in the support role. She does not fall into a specific category as she is able to do more than the other champions who are generally restricted to doing the duties that their specific category offers.
Morgana can be played to neutralize any aggressive engage support that the enemy can pick. “Black Shield” gives your targeted ally a magic shield that makes them immune to crowd control effects for the duration of the shield. This ability effectively makes the enemy engage null if timed correctly.
Furthermore, Morgana also has the “Dark Binding” to root an enemy champion and stop their advance. This ability along with the rest of the abilities of this champions scale appreciatively with ability power as well. This allows for flexibility in the build pathing according to the requirements of the situation.
Morgana is a highly adaptable champion as she can also be played aggressively to make picks and deal damage. You can also play her in a classic support play style to peel for your carries with the crowd control at your disposal. Overall, it’s a very well-rounded champion to have in your repertoire.
Nautilus
For the engager tank category, Nautilus is the best blind pick. This is simply because his engage is more or less guaranteed since it is a point-and-click ability. The problem is getting close enough to your target. Once locked on to the target, “Depth Charge” follows the target and knocks them up when it reaches them.
To add even more power to his engage, Nautilus has the “Dredge Line” ability to hook a champion from a long distance and follow it up with an AOE slow. You also have the ability to make spontaneous picks at an opportune moment by using flash combos.
He is hard to deal with for the enemy team because there is no clear weakness in either his laning phase or his team fighting. Essentially, Nautilus is a hard-to-kill tank filled to the brim with crowd control effects.
He can roam freely as well as you will often have lane priority while playing such an oppressive champion. It makes Nautilus an ideal support to have for people who wish to be able to impact the map and take matters into their own hands.
Thresh
Thresh is the icon of the support role. He makes for a great blind pick because he can be picked into any combination of champions in bot lane and have a decent laning phase. This is mostly because Thresh is just an extremely solid champion with a lot of counterplay to anything your enemy picks.
The most underrated ability of Thresh is the “Dark Passage” or as it is commonly known, the “Lantern”. This ability allows you to rescue an ally from a tight spot by placing your lantern near them where they can click on it. The Lantern also gives allies a shield to reduce incoming damage.
Thresh has a long-range hook ability that he can use to pull enemies towards himself. He can also peel effectively by using “Flay” and “The Box” as disengage tools. Both of these abilities can be used offensively as well to keep enemies near a place where your team can dispose of them.
As you have seen from the above overview, Thresh can be used as both a defensive and an offensive tool. The decision lies in the player piloting the champion and his ability to judge situations and decipher the best course of action. Thresh is one of those champions that rely heavily on the player’s skill level to land important skill-shots as well as game awareness to save his allies.
Lulu
Lulu is the prime example of an “enchanter” or a “buffer” support champion. These types of support champions are basically the ones that buff their allies and make them more effective. Lulu can not roam as effectively as a Nautilus or a Thresh as her real strength lies in playing with the team rather than making her own plays.
Lulu excels at team fighting because of how much stronger she can make her carries via her constant shields and boosts.. Her team fighting is both easy and effective, the main thing to take note of is your own positioning. You have to make sure you do not get caught yourself as you are quite easy to kill if out of position.
Lulu makes for an excellent blind pick as she is very hard to punish for any champion that the enemy can pick. She can shield her ADC as well as herself, stop enemy engages by polymorphing the enemy or disrupt any enemy that manages to get close via her ultimate.
Although, Lulu has a hard time making leads in the laning phase of pressuring enemies into making mistakes. This is because she does not have the heavy engage tools or the damage to be a threat. She is a safe pick for the lane and an impeccable team fighter.
Karma
Karma is a support champion that falls in the category of an enchanter. She can shield her teammates and give them movement speed boosts. She also has the ability to root enemy champions. Karma synergizes really well with any ADC so that is one less thing to worry about as far as bot lane is concerned.
What makes Karma really stand out is her lane dominance. Karma has a good amount of poke damage with “Inner Flame”. Add to it the “Mantra” bonus damage and then it is really a problem to deal with. Thanks to this exceptionally high early game damage Karma is able to bully enemy bot laners.
The only real weakness in Karma’s play is that she gets outscaled by enchanters like Lulu in team fights. It is still not too big of a difference as you also give your team constant buffs and do significantly more damage in the fights than Lulu.
Karma generally plays aggressively during the lane to make the most of your early game advantage. Since you can pressurize the enemy bot lane quite efficiently you are bound to make some sort of a lead to take into the later stages of the game.
Final Thoughts
As you can see from the above-mentioned champions, there is no shortage of blind pick options. The problem lies in finding the best champion for the situation and for your play style. This is quite often a delicate balance that you need to reach in your understanding of the game.
For people who wish to play dynamic champions with a high skill ceiling, Thresh is the ideal pick. However, if you want to have more reliability and safety in your kit champions like Morgana and Lulu are ideal. If you would like to play aggressively in the laning phase and get advantages, Karma and Nautilus are your best bet.
There is one class of Support champions that is worth talking about, which is the caster or carry-oriented champions. These are champions like Brand which can provide a lot of damage but they do not make for good blind picks. They can be countered quite easily, which is why they do not make the list.
Fore more blind pick champions, check out this list of the best blind pick junglers in LoL.
