Hard Support - Making the 5 role work

+1 ;)
I usually buy Tranquil Boots so I can avoid using Shrines or taking a trip to base. Then if the hero is a mana hungry one (Des), I'll buy a Void Stone. Damn thing is more effective than it sounds. You can also upgrade it to a Ring (Perseverance) which can also be upgraded to a Force Staff.

Great Guide +1 Great detail and hard work gone into this guide. A great resource for learning dota players and even some of the more experienced. +1

No, he needs Levels and Items to be effective, so at the very least, he needs to be a Position 4. When he's picked competitively, he's usually a 3 or even a 2 though, he was even a Position 1 in one game at TI3. He can't handle being a 5 without some massive boosts to his Mana Pool/lowered Ability Costs.

Great Job! +1
Is Omniknight a hard support?

Great guide. I'm almost always the 5 role (those AR games I always end up with a hard carry) everyone needs to read this so they don't think support is getting cour and mana boots which is normally for themselves anyway. I get commended more for being a solid 5 role than my friend who is always 1-2 and 35 mins in gets back to back ultras. 5 is the make or break a team IMO. Hard for troll to be fed and melting faces without a hard support having 0-39 cs early on and letting him get the FB that was caused by the support baiting an overextension and constant harass :) +1 on guide

Excellent looking guide so far, I wish I had something like this to read when I first started playing 5th support for my team. A few things I can think of adding to this guide:

In trilane vs trilane matchups, a Magic Stick becomes a must item, maybe even a starting item, as the total of abilities being spammed around you will fill up its charges really fast.

To increase chances of a successful gank, Boots of Speed are a must item together with a TP scroll, as otherwise you won't be able to chase enemy heroes. General rule of thumb is
Boots + TP = Gank. This is especially important on hard supports with especially low movement speed like Vengeful Spirit And Crystal Maiden. If you can't afford Boots, which is very likely, it's best to save your TP scroll for defensive purposes or to punish enemy heroes who overextend trying to get a kill.

An important thing to have in mind is how efficiently the 5th support can get extra gold from the jungle. While this is easy for Keeper of the Light and Crystal Maiden, it's much more difficult for a Warlock or a Nyx Assassin, meaning that you'll need to play offensively to get gold.

Added some new sections as suggested, still a bit rough. Thanks again for the feedback.

Fantastic guide as usual, read your drafting one and that really helped me a lot. This one is no exception. Really liked the pictures too :D

Maybe you could add something about the fact that you don't need boots to be helpful. All too many support hereos completely neglect their duties until they get boots and maybe even a basic stats item. Carrying a tp scroll is sometimes much more beneficial for your team and buying those sentry wards for where you just saw the enemy ward.

I feel so proud when i get boots at about 10 minutes cause I've been going from lane to lane saving people and stopping tower dives and making that bit of extra damage to get a kill. :-)

Tp scroll deserves a mention though definitely as no point having a support if they can't support the right place when needed.

Also, I don't think you can Eul's an ally, only yourself and enemies

Nice work as always, still waiting for the support Tusk guide :p :p

Thanks for all the feedback guys, will work on some of those suggestions.

For detection items I recommend this guide instead (no point rewriting it!)

I um'd and ar'd about things like Smoke of Deceit and whether to do anything on warding/counter warding. It's not quite in the brief for the guide and it's already a wall of text...but this is something that definitely concerns a hard support.

And yeah it's reassuring you all think some of this is stuff you have to learn from experience - I've tried to give plenty of examples, and outline the thought processes, but yeah it's much easier to learn this stuff by playing and being aware.

Smoke of Deceit, Smoke of Deceit and Smoke of Deceit. Definitely needed.

It's a bit hard, but the most important part of a hard support is flexibility. Would Sentry Wards be better for this invisibility-based opponent, or would Dust of Appearance be recommended? Is it correct time and situation wise to get a Gem of Truesight and give it to a teammate?

Would it be ok to sacrifice myself for this carry? Would simply retaliating to reduce the enemy's HP be better because our Nature's Prophet will be respawning in 4 seconds, and we have a chance to get a double kill be better, though this would definitely end the carry's life? (imo a support is really valuable and sacrificing your life for the carry/a more valuable member in combat should be highly situational and a last resort)

Would a ward here be better to cover a bit of jungle vision for incoming ganks from the enemy aggro-tri, or should I be warding here to counter ganks from the enemy mid while covering roshan so the enemy Ursa can't rosh early? Both cover rune vision...

A bit hard to teach of course, but some pointers would do nicely. Obviously not everything can be covered because most of these things come with experience, but tips would be great.

More focus on the vision wars, I guess? Tips on de-warding rather than simple warding should be useful, warding itself has other guides.

So far so good though, more content would be much appreciated.

Nice one, Sando (as usual). Unfortunately, many of these things can only be learned by doing - but knowing what direction to go is a huge help. I would add a section with pro replays as there you have some pretty awesome hard support stuff going on with supports who barely have naked boots.

Also a section describing pull-throughs would be good, it's the "new s***t" as of 6.79 when the jungle pull camp got switched. Pro tip: If you find Vhoul assassins in the pull camp (those poison javelin throwing ones) they can kill you entire creepwave without stacking or pull-throughing as they do piercing damage.

As a side note, I've discussed which support items to get in which situations in my guide here:

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/picking-the-right-support-items-6762