support for jungling buddy?

last night a friend and I teamed up, and tried to pick matching heroes - we'd be in low-level pubs, so most likely everybody else would be playing carries. we thought it made the most sense to have our own lane and I would go support, and he'd go some sort of carry. he picked lycan, and I picked treant protector figuring I could try to help out his jungle with some heals while staying in lane. we were radiant, in the bottom lane.

that was an absolute disaster. he started out in the lane (which I'm not sure if he should have?), and we very quickly became very pressed by the opposing axe and viper. me not having a ranged attack made any sort of lane control very hard, and the squishy early game of lycan was not helping us either.

in the end we did win the match, but only because the other team were even worse.

is there a better way to play the radiant bottom if one guy is (supposed to be) jungling? should I just have accepted not getting any last hits at all, or would we have been better off if I had picked a less supporting support, with more ranged lane presence? phoenix for instance?

I seem to have had the same problems in a previous match, with me trying to jungle but eventually having to give up because the lone guy in lane was getting his *** kicked.

there were probably a lot of problems in our game, another being that I graciously used all my starting gold on courier, tango, and two sets of wards (there was a rikki in the top lane), meaning that I was very low on equipment. but, I just wanted to get some input on whether the plan (lycan + treant, easy lane) was sound enough.

First off, you went against a lane that really countered yours A LOT. Axe is THE counter to melee heroes in lane, as you cannot get any farm if he knows what he is doing. Double melee usally isn't an ideal lane. I think Leshrac would work better here, he has range, counterpush, stun(Important! Lycan has no CC!), and the ability to take apart towers.

Yeah, they had a very strong lane that would make it pretty difficult for you. Lycan has poor lane presence, and putting with a melee support is worse. If he's jungling, you need a good solo hero.

You'd be better off in low level pubs going for a kill lane (i.e. two heroes who can get early kills and snowball hard), or even a roaming duo - low level pubbers don't have a clue how to deal with roamers and hardly ever ward. However, you are relying on your team mates to not screw up solo too bad before the roam-wagon turns up.

Jungle Lycan isn't that great to be honest, he farms very slowly and always stays at low HP (so it's free food for a team with proper warding)... In my opinion, the only good "afk farming" jungle carry is, talking about pubs, Lifestealer because he's able to jungle with only two points in Feast, but he's much better in the lane.

Aside from that, just try not to play a dual melee lane: they only thing you could've done versus that Axe-Viper dual lane was creep pulling and let Lycan get some levels until he could go jungling. And also, as Sando said, going for a kill lane like Shadow Demon and Gyrocopter is fun and easier to play. :D