Level Legendary
Roaming is not a personality trait. It is a timer, and most supports leave at exactly the moment their ADC cannot afford to be alone.
A badly timed roam never costs you just the roam. Your ADC takes a two against one they would have won, loses the wave they were holding, and gives up a plate while you are still walking. Then you arrive mid to a lane with no wave and no setup, watch nothing happen, and walk home.
Forty seconds spent making your own lane worse. And since 26.16 you cannot even take a side wave to pay for it: the penalty for minions outside bot lane is harsher and now runs until level 5.
A roam window is a wave state, not a feeling
There are only a handful of moments in a bot lane where leaving is free, and they are all defined by the wave rather than by your mood. You have a window when:
- The wave is crashing under their tower and your ADC can hold or reset safely.
- Your ADC has just recalled and the wave is coming back to you anyway.
- The enemy bot lane recalls together.
- Both sides walked out of a two against two, while their support is buying. This one is short.
You do not have a window when the wave is slow pushing towards your own tower with your ADC standing in front of it. That is the state where your ADC is about to be dived, and it is the state most supports leave on, because nothing is happening and boredom reads as opportunity.
Three rules for leaving bot lane
- Leave on a crash or a recall, never on a slow push. A wave walking towards your own tower with your ADC in front of it is not a roam window. It is a free dive you are about to donate.
- Roam to a lane that can convert, not to the nearest fight. If mid has no wave, no cooldowns and no summoner advantage, you are walking there to watch. Convert means a kill, a plate, or a dragon.
- If the roam fails, take vision on the way back. A cleared ward or a deep one placed before an objective is a roam that paid. Walking home empty is the only real failure.
One roam, start to finish
The window opens
It is around nine minutes. You are on Nautilus, your ADC has just shoved the wave into their tower, and both enemy laners are low enough that they have to back. Dragon spawns in about fifty seconds. Your mid laner has priority and is pushing.
This is a real window, and it is worth naming why: the wave is dead, your ADC has nothing to lose by resetting, and the enemy bot lane is not on the map. Nobody is punished for you leaving.
Walk to the river, not to mid
Now the part most supports get wrong. Do not walk to mid. Walk to the river, and clear the vision the enemy needs to contest the Dragon.
Their jungler cannot start an objective they cannot see safely, and the two wards you deny are worth more than the fifty percent chance of a kill you would get by standing behind your mid laner and hoping he engages. If your jungler is close, that vision turns into a free objective, because the fight for a Dragon is decided by who arrives with information rather than who arrives first. That is the same principle behind objective prioritisation, seen from the one role that can set it up.
Leave before the Dragon spawns
Your ADC is walking back to a bouncing wave and will be alone against a bot lane that reset at the same time you did. Being there at that moment is worth more than watching a fight you cannot influence. A support who arrives back on time turns one good roam into a lane advantage rather than a trade.
If the walk is unclear, plan the roam on our free map tool and drop the two wards described above. The river route that reads as long in text is usually shorter than it feels in game.
But my ADC flames me every time I leave
Some of them will. Most of that is not really about the roam, it is about not knowing you were going, which is a solvable problem: ping before you leave, not when you arrive. A ping sent early is information. The same ping sent from mid lane is an announcement that they are now alone.
The rest of it is worth taking seriously, because a support who roams on every cooldown is genuinely hard to play with. If your ADC is behind, the correct read is often to stay, hold the lane, and give them the safest possible ten minutes. A roam is a trade, and when your carry is already losing the trade, you do not have the currency for it.
The version of this that actually loses games is neither: it is roaming with no plan and no ping, then blaming the lane for not following up.
From the coach
When I watch a support VOD, I pause every time they leave lane and ask what the wave was doing. Nine times out of ten the roam was fine and the timing was wrong, and that is a much easier fix than teaching someone to play a different champion.
Coach Brian, Grandmaster, support and bot lane coach at Level Legendary. See his coach profile.
What to do in your next game
- Play one game where you only leave bot lane on a crash or a recall. Nothing else. It will feel like you are roaming half as much, and you will almost certainly gain more from it, because every roam you take will be one your ADC could afford.
- Before you walk, say what you are going for. A ward, a plate, a kill your mid laner can actually set up. If you cannot name it, the window was not a window.
When there is no window, the most useful thing you can do is stand next to your carry and make the next wave safe. That is a bigger part of climbing than most supports believe, and it is the same discipline that mid laners have to learn about priority.
If you want your own roams timed against your own replays rather than a general rule, your first session is free: a coach reads your OP.GG and goes through one of your games with you, live, with no card required.
