CHALLENGER SUPPORT ROAM GUIDE

Hi I'm Stunt, a challenger support, and I'm here to teach you guys about roaming! Roaming is mostly situational, but in this guide I hope to cover most of the common situations. In general, with every map movement you make in league, you want to think about what will give you a net positive. Let's start with basics and move on towards advanced concepts.

Usually when you roam, you don't want it to be at a large expense for the AD. ADCs are very fragile and are typically more resource reliant than the other roles. It is typically safer to leave the ADC alone on a pulling wave because the wave will eventually end up at your tower where it will be safer to catch. Most commonly, this will happen after you crash a wave and reset. Ideally you don't want to be leaving the AD alone on big stacked waves. The risk of losing the big stacked wave is usually greater than the reward of roaming. Think about champion specific interactions as well. (ex. Ziggs will be able to waveclear 1v2 most of the time from a safe range, Yuumi is bad at diving) Factor that into when you decide to roam.

If you're playing a strong roaming champion like Alistar vs a champion that specializes in laning like Janna or scales like Sona, and you don't think you can kill them in lane, OR if you're playing a matchup where you think staying in lane is going to be losing, it could be a good idea to find more windows to roam.

If your solo lanes are playing volatile matchups like bruiser vs bruiser that snowball hard one way or another, usually it's good to pay a visit to get the ball rolling.

When you roam, you need to think about whether the enemy support will match. If both supports can roam, think about whether you win the 2v2 or 3v3 skirmish. If you don't, it might be better to just stay in lane and accrue some xp.

Maybe you picked a really bad matchup, or the matchup became unplayable for some unknown reason, but if your lane is doomed it could be a good idea to just abandon ship entirely and try to help the strong members of your team. If nobody is strong, then just try to create a numbers advantage somewhere.

** KNOW WHEN ITS ACTUALLY UNPLAYABLE OR IF YOU GUYS CAN SURVIVE AND ARE JUST BEING WHINY. Some people leave too early when they're a bit frustrated.

Roaming is a big mindgame. You want to threaten being at multiple positions at once by staying in fog of war, and not give away your play until the best possible moment. This is why supports have been switching to sweeper earlier. Knowing when you've been spotted is the difference between a successful play and being punished. When you're roaming, think about what information you are giving the enemy. You want to keep mental check of where all the enemy wards are or could be.

With these new concepts in mind, you can actually roam at a time when the ADC has to catch a wave! Just don't reveal your location until the wave has been caught before proceeding with your play. This will give the enemy team the least amount of time to react with a punish. Decent supports will usually roam when the basic conditions from earlier in the guide favors them, so the next level to this is anticipating when the enemy support will roam and matching it even if your wave is bad because if both supports are roaming and bot lane is left to be 1v1 between the ADs, usually both of them can farm pretty safely.

Be sure to use function keys and the minimap constantly to keep tabs on your teammates and their matchups. Being aware of which matchups are reaching their turning point, or the point where a little bit of help can swing the matchup heavily in favor of one side, can help you plan out in advance a movement to go help them. I want to emphasize again how situational roaming can be. The more champion to champion interaction you can understand, the better your roams will be. Knowing when the champion will want to trade or what ADCs can survive a dive against what champs, or even what angle your champion wants to approach roams from (ex: rakan can roam through lane), all this is really important for having more successful roams.