Pos 5 guide (any hero)

Following this guide will make you a better pos5 than ~95% of pos5 players in dota (ragardless of the rank).

Guide

Rule 1: NEVER PULL!

Aaaand... that's it. Yes, that's literrally it. Following this rule will actually put you in top 5% pos5 supports in the game.

Appendix

Basically if you will follow the one and only rule in the guide that would be enough and you won't really need anything written here. However, if you wanna understand why is it so, then this appendix is for you.

So, let's analyze how pulling affects the lane. Firstly, noone nowadays is pulling single-stacks, right? Thus, I won't comment on single-stack pulls a lot, it is enough to say that they are just as bad as standard double-stack pulls and that's it. Let's move to standard pulls then. If pos5 wants to pull in standard way, then he needs to stack first. In other words, pos5 needs to leave his pos1 solo vs double lane for about half a minute, which leads to pos1 losing mp/hp/gold/exp or usually several things from this list, sometimes this half a minute running around stacking by pos5 might even lead to his core dying vs 2 heroes. So, even before pos5 pulls, the preparation to a pull (i.e. stacking) itself already severely griefs the lane. Ok, what happens next? Pos1 losing some resources as mentioned above playing passively might wait out his support not supporting for half a minute and then everything might be fine again. However, pos5 is not satisfied enough with not supporting for a while and wants to grief the lane even more (much much more) and is going to pull. Basically, the good point of the pull exists and it's simple - enemy pos3/4 are losing exp and gold from a wave. However, is this a good enough impact? Is it worth it? Let's see what happens while pos5 is pulling. And the following happens - there are several options: 1) standard option - pos1 farms under the tower - this leads to some hp/mp loss and probably 1/2 creeps loss as well since it's still quite hard to farm under tower (especially on certain heroes); however enemy pos3/4 won't stay afk during this time, they will either harass pos1 and won't let him farm at all or they will just pull themselves - in this case the outcome is: enemy pos3/4 lose 1 wave, your pos1 is struggling when u r stacking, then is struggling farming under the tower and then also losing a wave that enemies pull. So u completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the lane - congratulations! 2) another option - pos1 is trying to run aroung with enemy creeps running after him in circles waiting for his wave to come (which is half a minute), this would be fine, but again, enemies won't ignore it and afk, they will harass pos1 and force him to retreat under his tower which moves us to a standard option anyway. 3) also some supports pull 2 waves in a row. good side - enemy pos3/4 are losing 2 waves. bad side - your pos1 is dying with 99% probability (enemies just dive him with 2 waves under the tower) or losing 2 waves himself if enemies play passive and just pull. So, in both cases u completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the lane - congratulations! Also, even if enemies are bad and couldn't take advantage that u give them with ur pulls the effect of the pull is not even over immediately after u pull. It lingers by the lane being shifted towards enemies even if they don't pull, cos when ur pos1 is struggling under the tower enemies simply block their wave (even if they don't pull it) and now u r far from ur tower and exposed and ur lane is griefed yet again.

That's it pretty much it, so the basic idea is that whenever u pull as pos5 u greif the lane omegahard, u r literally playing for enemy team if u do this, so please stop, please for god sake just stop. Thank you!

Also, u know what u can actually do instead of wasting like 1-1.5 minutes on pulls leaving ur pos1 solo vs 2 heroes? U can *drumroll* harass enemies. Wow, impressive, right? Who would have guessed. So instead of literally griefing ur lane u can literally right-click enemies and this would be a huge positive impact on the lane cos if enemies are near half hp instead of 100% hp they can't dive ur pos1, they can die if ur lane has some killing potential, they can't harass ur pos1 that much cos they will be scared, they can't farm and deny much as well due to the same reason and ur core can actually farm instead of just sitting somewhere in trees for 2 mins being harassed by 2 people while u r farming jungle using his lane creeps and calling it "pulling".

Also fun fact: each time I get decent pos5 on my lane (which is like 1 in 10-15 games) I check dotabuff and about 9 out of 10 decent players are core players, which gives them the understanding of everyting a wrote above. It would be actually really good for dota to not only force core players to play supports from time to time, but also to force support players to play cores from time to time so they can experience laning solo vs double lane while their pos5 players are farming jungle using laning creeps for several minutes in a row. However, it won't be good for the queue time so not really implementable i guess.

More accurate guide (gives you extra 1% so u will be top4% instead of top5% maybe on average)

Rule 1 (99% importance): NEVER PULL!
Rule 2: harass enemies as much as u can (since u r not pulling u need to do smth so eventually u will figure out urself this rule i guess).
Rule 3: check ur pos1 resources, giving him 1 tango won't kill u irl, believe me, it also probably does not contradict any religion u r following, so do it if ur pos1 is low :) same goes for mangos.

P.S. Oh yes, and what about any suggestions after laning stage? Uhm, who cares, pos5 impact in the game is 90% laning stage, 9% wards and 1% smth else. So just put some wards i guess, anything else doesn't matter at all. It's better to play good for first 10 mins and then literally afk on fountain for the rest of the game than griefing the lane with pulls and staff like that and then playing perfectly starting from min10 whatever u mean by this cos ur impact is already over anyway. So, just ward, deward and try to stay around ur cores to help them if needed, but again all of it doesn't really matter usually.