The Underrated Support Heroes
In one of our previous articles we highlighted how narrow the pool of viable support heroes is. With supports often being the first two picks and a heavy focus on the laning stage, players in high level games are often forced to pick one of four-five ubiquitously recognized heroes. Typical Silencer, Crystal Maiden, Dark Willow and Vengeful Spirit are all great heroes, but sometimes it can get tiring, playing the same thing over and over again.
Today we would like to highlight some other support heroes, who aren’t nearly as popular, but can still maintain a decent win rate and can provide both adequate laning stage and mid-to-late game impact.
Shadow Shaman
Shadow Shaman is an interesting hero. In a 3v1 or 2v1 meta he worked wonders against enemy offlaner, with his ability to both deal high amounts of damage and provide a very long lockdown to pose a kill threat.
When the 2v2 meta emerged, the hero saw a sizeable dip in popularity, with many assuming he just isn’t good enough in lane to justify a pick. His starting manapool doesn’t allow him to freely use harassing spells and his disables, while high-impact, are also very costly and have relatively long cooldowns, especially for the early game.
Several small buffs turned around the hero, but it seems the community is only now starting to catch on. Despite his low attack range and very fragile-looking model, Shadow Shaman has one of the better starting HP and Armor values for a support hero: without items he has 614 starting health and 3.5 armor. His auto-attacks also deals 76+ damage, making him the hardest hitting ranged hero in the game.
Granted, the 400 attack range is very restricting, but in the early levels he is almost on par with 
Vengeful Spirit in terms of tankiness, while having access to a very strong and adequately priced nuke.
Ether Shock’s only problem in the beginning of the game is that it is a single target nuke. While Crystal Maiden or Silencer can often hit multiple targets with their spells, weakening the lane overall, Shadow Shaman generally has to pick a target and stick to it, for his harass to have an effect—the enemy will generally try to reposition in such a way, that harass is spread out between two targets and is a lot less effective.
Shackles is also quite weak level 1. It deals a total of 60 damage and can be easily interrupted. It often results in a very controversial level 3 for the hero: on one hand you want Ether Shock to hit multiple targets, on the other—second point in Shackles adds a massive amount of damage and extends the potential disable duration into “unfair” category.
Most people in our guides default to Ether Shock, but, once again, it is highly situational and in certain cases you can justify both approaches. Players also generally go for a 4-1-1-1 build by level 7, getting access to a very strong waveclear, while still having multiple ways to disable a target and interrupt channeling spells. That said, if your team already has a decent amount of disables on the core positions, going 4-0-2-1 is also an option, one that can help a lot during the laning stage, with extra 100 damage and 0.75 stun duration for a 10 mana cost increase.
Shadow Demon
Looking at our meta tab, we can see that Shadow Demon is among the most skill-intensive supports in the game. Only in Divine and above does the hero win more than 50% of his games and there are many reasons for it.
Shadow Demon is absolutely a hero who can do more harm than good to his team, he requires a lot of knowledge and practice to be actually effective in lane and he also generally needs either specific allies or specific enemies to be at his best.
His level 1 should be generally spent with lane teammate and lane enemies in mind. Most players default to 
Disruption, which is a great setup, with decent potential damage. However, if you don’t have a lane partner who can capitalize on this setup, we believe that 
Shadow Poison is a better choice, bar instances where you need to contest the bounty rune.
Shadow Poison is a rather tricky ability—the damage it can deal is massive, but only after level 2 of the ability does it truly start to shine. More importantly, at level 1 it more or less gives the same amount of health back to the enemy is they have a 
Magic Stick. Absolutely make sure you aren’t in vision, when using this spell against an enemy with a stick or wand. Otherwise you will more or less be wasting mana with close to no payoff. It is also much easier to land the poison when your intentions aren’t as telegraphed.
[missing skill: shadow-demon-soul-catcher-5422] is a big reason to have a quick way to use normal cast even if you generally prefer quickcast. Finding the correct way to use the ability, ensuring it lands on the target you want to focus, is a big part of playing the hero and 50% extra damage is absolutely massive. While most players still go for 4-0-4-1 build on the nero, prioritizing levels into Shadow Poison, late into the game Soul Catcher can allow you to melt even the tankiest of targets, even through recently popular damage reduction abilities, such as Aghs 
Stampede or 
Ghostship.
Finally, one of the recent change to Shadow Demon’s ultimates that remains underutilized in the pub scene: 
Demonic Purge now continuously dispels the affected target, making it one of the best tools against heroes like Pugna, Necrophos, Windranger etc., who rely on dispellable buffs to stay alive.
Ancient Apparition
AA is probably going to be the most controversial support to suggest in the current meta, but according to statistics the hero still wins exactly 50% of his games in 5k+, while remaining extremely unpopular. So how does a hero who is often considered to be absolutely worthless in lane win games at all in a meta, that supposedly favors laning stage heroes?
Ancient Apparition looks like a support equivalent of Spectre in many regards. Despite not having access to easily utilized nukes and disables, he has an ability to come back into the game big time with his level six. His 
Ice Blast deals a massive amount of damage and works wonders against many tanky heroes in the current meta: it’s not only good against heavy regeneration and the 10% kill threshold is easily an extra 100+ damage nuke on the majority of targets.
His typical pub builds reflect his weakness in lane: all high level players default to acquiring and evolving skills that do something with the least amount of conditions. Most of the time 
Cold Feet is maxed out first, with at least two points in 
Chilling Touch before level 6. This provides his lane some amount of harassment, generally not with a kill intent in mind, but as a deterrent from enemy engagement.
The hero is also at his best when paired with strong laners on core positions. Weaver definitely comes to mind, with his ability to deal massive amounts of damage through Chilling Touch+
Geminate Attack combination. Access to reliable stuns can also make the lane a lot easier and can actually transform it into a kill lane—later levels of Cold Feet can extend the duration of disables by a very respectable amount, while dealing up to 360 damage. More importantly, most enemies will generally attempt to flee the AoE of Cold Feet, essentially making them run away, instead of auto-attacking. In a sense, that in itself is a form of soft disable.
Another big aspect of the hero is that he really doesn’t need any items to be effective: Eul’s can certainly be handy, Force Staff is always a great choice and Aghanim’s Scepter can be situationally massive, but the hero still should and can afford to have vision as his main priority. While most positions five heroes generally get a decent bump in their effectiveness with simple Aether Lens or Force Staff, Ancient Apparition already can use all of his spells from a very long distance and doesn’t need extra positioning tools for himself.
With heroes like Alchemist and Necrophos back in the meta, there is definitely a place for Ancient Apparition, even from the first pick position. At the very least he is a deterrent, in best case scenario he can become a counter. Provided he does, indeed, survive the laning stage.
Good article :) Supports are so under appreciated at the lower tiers, but at this point is SS that underrated?
Is alche back in the meta?
The meta is stale and boring, and the only reason for that is Valve's inability to properly buff useless heroes.
With SS's low range he will always get overharassed by anyone with half a brain, and he is a proper pick ONLY in games vs Slark, WR, and Weaver. Apart from those he is a burden on his team that does the same thing Bane with a Meteor Hammer does. But worse.
SD is still trash as he is geared towards "dealing damage" (good luck having any mana to do it) and "amplyfing damage" (good luck being in range to land a propper SC and not being killed by an enemy core that looked your way with that pitiful HP. Oh, an your starting dmg is trash, so you can only properly harass with SP which will costantly push the lane. Good luck having no exp when the enemy start denying and lasthiting under his tower.
AA is the pinnacle of Valve's moronic inability to give out buffs. He is now only a situational pick against Alch or high-lifesteal heroes, but you know what also is good agains them? Fucking spirit vessel. Why would I pick a shitty support with no propper save or stun, that dies in 2 hits and can't be properly agressive in lane due to his low HP, when I can build 1 item and do the same thing this whole hero does.
AA is one od the heroes that suffers from Valve thinking "Well he's got a strong ult, so we should nerf everything else he has into the ground!" 10 patches ahead from now, if they'll go on with it, a bunch of heroes (scilencer, AA, etc.) will be replaced by ranged creeps with no abilities, cept for an ult.
^I agree with above comment until he mentioned Silencer replaceable with ranged creeps :D
Alche is back, not exactly the best hero in the game, but he is back... He went missing after they messed up the jungle, but after TI8, he is being picked more.
Shadow Shaman is not underrated, but he is not being picked as much... Almost all of the heroes have their ups and downs, but we really need that 7.20 balancing patch to shake up the meta whole heartedly. We have had this same meta for too long already. Time to shake things up.
@OfGreyHairWaifu
i guess u never saw a silencer beating the crap out of u with his 100+ stolen int and 430+ pure damage
Make the jungle great again :(
Oracle?!
Where's fucking Bane?
i think Shaman is still on the track, why he is become one of underrated ?
what about Disruptor ? he was very dependable heroes before TI8 but now nobody pick him
bane,warlock,dazzle,s.shaman,apparat...
pls people do differentiate underrated and complete trash
Good analytical article, but not that practical.
Shadow Shaman is underrated? He's sitting in the top 25 most played heroes. Grab a wind lace and you can't escape his harass if you're a squishy support unless your name is KOTL. You mean that you'll exchange hits from a support with 45 damage and 500 starting HP? Ooops you have 76~ starting damage and will wreck anyone trying to exchange hits with you, not to mention you can withstand more punishment than a good number of early game supports. A smart SS is very difficult to stop.
Shadow Demon and Ancient Apparition however are truly unused heroes trash heroes, with Ancient Apparition only being useful against heavy regeneration lineups (Spirit Vessel also does this job fine), and Shadow Demon being useful only in a Luna lineup.
SD is a good pick in for any lineup
I really like SD, but only if I see they have some good pick for me first - either some cores pick something useful (see below) or supports like venge, SS, WD etc (ranged, decent right click).
If they pick escapy heroes (void, qop, slark, mirana, pa) or some beefy, melee heroes (ogre, tusk, tide, underlord), this tactic is just completely useless and SD is not good in this game. This is why I go for pick when I see at least 2-3 heroes. If I have to first pick, I rather pick something different.
I take the hero from completely different angle – usually taking him with some bursty hero with slow/stun (venge, viper) so it amplifies damage from several sources – right click of 2 heroes, 2 illusions and this nuke/slow. It is an amazing counter to safe lanes, as usually there is needed trilane to at least draw the lane against this duo.
This build works miracles as well versus right click damage dealers (ranged ones mainly). Unless Huskar is streamrolling alone with godlike, you can solo kill him with only spirit vessel untill bkb. Than you can kill him with bkb when it is lower duration and you have eul. The same goes for viper, sniper and other ranged carries as well as heroes like AM, jugg, blood etc.
This is the main reason for me to go 2-3-0-1 into 3-4-1-1 (value point to poison for vision purposes). Second point is that I really want spirit vessel, it amazingly stacks with SD spells and with this build (spirit vessel + boots) it is impossible to sustain mana, as I am all game long using first 2 spells and SD has basic mana on lvl 15 under 1000. Your combo costs 400, so few times shadow poison and you are out of mana and you miss for the important skills. You want usually 5 or more stacks, which is 250mana+ and it takes you 13 seconds to build it. Which is quite long early game.
So shadow poison is usefull when I finally hit those sweet times I have spirit vessel, lvl 20 and eul to sustain the mana. Than you can kill almost any enemy right click core and still defend mega creeps. Which other support can do this? :D
@OfGreyHairWaifu
Wow. If you knew how this hero works, you can pretty much zone any range hero from lane.
Some stats:
ShadowD: 614HP, 2,88 armor, 50-54dmg
Silencer: 542HP, 2,52 armor, 43-57dmg
Vengeful: 542HP, 5,40 armor, 39-47dmg
CrystalM: 524HP, 2,56 armor, 40-46dmg
So in the stats: SD has highest HP, highest damage lvl 1 and armorwise is above average (for int supp). The thing is that SD ALWAYS wins the supports battle with any of these heroes. SD focusing on Q and W will force out of lane any ranged support and many ranged cores. If connected with hero like Venge, wind, viper, CK, lina, gyro, the offlane is pretty much won for you, unless enemy tries to trilane you. Which you can still win.
IF you have some decent burst hero mid (Invo, SF, Blood, lina) and enemy doesnt have escape (QOP, lvl 6+storm), every gank mid means kill.
Btw one funny combo I forgot about - Dazzle+SD. Disruption+healbomb is almost sure kill.
Good article, but I'm not getting tired of picking DW
Ss need this reduce damage from 76 to 63 and improve his attacking range from 400 to 650 and shackle do 0 damge but mana cost to cast it is 50 all shackle duration improved 0.5 sec every level hex duration level 1 should be 1.8 and Ether Shock level 2 do 250 level 3 320 level 4 390.
Now about talent tree replace 200 health with 90 gold at level 10 and level 25 remove ward damage and replace it with 1 extra ward
AA: improve mana poll to 550 at level 1
Cold feet mana cost 95 all level stun and damage per tick improved from 30/50/70/90 to 35/60/75/120
I like the amount of chatter on this article, and while I don't consider myself a particularly skilled support, I think there are a couple of points that some of the naysayers need to keep in mind when considering these heroes:
On Shaman: having access to two disables can mean you can play the patience game rather than the damage trade game, although he is able to receive a few right clicks. Not a lot of heroes are able to throw two targeted disables and secure the initiation in a dual lane, and with a proper coordination can net two kills with a very small reaction window for the opposing team. There aren't as many tanky heroes being played a lot in this dual meta, so where those disables used to be necessary to lock down that Bristle for a very long time, it can now be spread out and still secure a kill.
On the other two: I have extremely low personal experience playing either of these heroes, so this is mostly freeballing. Despite not having universal utility in lane, they really, really make up for it later in the game by having percentage based spells. Eventually most supports lose a lot of their early damage advantage and become more or less walking stuns and silences with items. Not a whole lot of them can boost teammate damage like AA and SD can, whether it be through tower siege or by making that damage stick. I dunno, I see some comments that make them sound weak, but I don't look at being situational as the same thing as weak.
Oracle [2]?
БАФ ОРАКЛА, уж слишком слабый сапорт на лайне
цвет настроения черный
Shaman is almost always useful coz of his mass serpent wards that makes taking towers with ease, or forcing the enemy to hit the wards that are attacking the tower which could kinda act like a weak disarm by itself in teamfights. Either way, the enemy team loses out on something.
>Shadow Shaman
>underrated
cool story bro
AA and Shaman is broken when you can play it and go against lower bracket
Lol this article came out right after a t.i winner is bringing or bumping this winrate to post 3/offlane role.. let's bring support to core roles again.. #LetsMakeSupportCoreAgain #ThankYouSEB
Generally, supports are underrated. But there are more underpicked cores especially offlaners.
Abaddon?
It's been nearly a year now since his core set took off and his winrate dropped from 60% as a result. He's still a fantastic lane support, especially with the addition of cooldown talents etc
Im ancient player
distruptor is missing.
I play undying and super aggressive - it’s fun