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Animal Courier
Observer and Sentry Wards
Iron Branch
Tango
Boots of Speed
Hand of Midas
Arcane Boots
Gem of True Sight
Observer and Sentry Wards
Aghanim's Scepter
Aether Lens
Game ID: 2532978434
Dotabuff results: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2532978434
Average MMR: 3.3k
(I highly recommend downloading it, as I will be going through a step by step process as long as the game lasts. But then again, most of my guides will fall short in less than a week under everyone else's guides)
Radiant Team composition:
Invoker
Spectre
Faceless Void
Beastmaster
Lion
Advantages:
-Strong early game support
-High kill potential in ganks
-Jungle enabled
-Four reliable disables, one BKB-proof
-Two unreliable stuns
-High disabling power
-Carry strength increases from mid game to late game
-Teamfight spells can be layered on top of each other
-Enormous push potential through all stages of the game
Disadvantages:
-Weak early game carries
-Mid susceptible to ganks
-Dual offlane cores would split farm to a bad degree
-Squishy supports
-Possibility of too many cores could end the game early
Dire Team:
Templar Assassin
Morphling
Riki
Mirana
Rubick
Advantages:
-Strong early game damage
-Plenty of ways to kite or escape enemy ganks
-Strong midgame potential
-High push potential
-Uncounterable ultimate
-High early rosh potential
-High chase potential
-Late game rat advantage
Disadvantages:
-Only two reliable stuns, only one of which has a good duration of disable
-Too reliant on invisibility
-Late game teamfights become more difficult if not given an advantage
-Contesting Roshan becomes a problem in the later stages of the game
-Too many cores contesting farm
-Jungling not an option from level 1
-Squishy cores
I am 38 ranked games in. It's been a joy having finally been able to escape that 2.4k bracket. But of course, there's still a ways to climb. Either way, this is an overall guide to playing Position 6. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, Pos 6 is just a term to describe being a walking ward with extra wards to place. You have no money, and you will not expect to have money for the remainder of the game. Most common Pos 6 I play are 
Crystal Maiden and Lion with the occasional 
Elder Titan joining the ranks every once in a while. Either way, This game is a good example of how choosing according to team composition can win games.
The first manner of business after loading in is that everyone automatically selected their lanes after banning nominations, which allowed me to gauge where I was going. The Beastmaster already said he wanted to jungle, but after my concerns, stated that if the offlane was going poorly, he would switch after getting level 3. This was also a big plus due to the fact that meant my teammates could be reasoned with. In the event they cannot, this also factors into your choice of heroes.
I chose Lion 4th pick, I believe, because he is one of the strongest harassers in the support lineup. His 
Finger of Death deals 600 damage before resistance at lvl 6, which is a huge amount of output, which stays good for a long time into the mid-game. Plus between a Lvl 3 
Earth Spike and a Lvl 1 
Hex is 3.6 seconds of control, almost as good as a 
Sacred Arrow and more reliable. This meant I was already less item dependent, which meant gold could go straight to observer wards and sentries, and as long as I was in any particular lane helping out, I would slowly gain levels.
Before I get too wordy (which we're already at 3 paragraphs, my God), let's move into the actual game
As a position 6, you need to have a good understanding of where you can have the most impact and which lane will require assistance. The only problem is that your resource of gold will be limited. In the beginning of the game, before I even left base, I already had bought 
Observer Ward 
Sentry Ward Animal Courier and Iron Branch before even getting Tango , mostly because I knew that there was a possibility of Riki wandering around at level 2 causing mayhem with his 
Smoke Screen . I handed my offlane one of each and my mid lane the other two, because I assumed I could just watch Spectre in her lane, where a support belonged.
Good Instinct: Buying Sentry ward preemptively instead of waiting.
Avoidable Mistakes: Leaving a lane after a sentry has been put down. Underestimating the enemy left my Invoker sentryless and wardless, forcing me to babysit him mid in order to make sure he did not fall behind. This also led to first bloodo n the Spectre, since there was no way to tell if Riki was in lane or not.
Unavoidable Issues: The safelane was left without a ward, which was necessary to prevent the offlane from being ganked as well. If Riki was gone for more than 20 seconds without harassing, calling missing should be enough to back out
However, with the Riki gone, 
Cold Snap in tandem with my spells were enough to net me a kill on the Templar Assassin , allowing me my boots and money for sentries.
Invisible enemies have a tendency to believe they're invincible, and are prone to making dumb mistakes in the presence of enemy supports. At minute 6, Riki was sitting on top of a rune. Without a sentry I nailed that sop with an Earth Spike , allowing me to get the haste rune, preventing the possible death of our Beastmaster and our Spectre. Stuns that don't need to be targeted are great counters to invis heroes and heroes that build 
Shadow Blade .
Taking the time to understand how each core worked on the other team allowed me the building of a Hand of Midas , which can be gotten later on a support. This gives you enough money to buy 2 Obs wards and a TP, and usually enough for sentries. This is also a good item because it allows you to level quicker, giving you more impact. Perfect for a Lion
Mid game starts basically as soon as two towers fall on the map on both sides, or at the 13:00 mark for some people. At this time I still only had brown boots, observer wards, and sentries. Just before that, Spectre had already died twice before attaining her 
Sacred Relic to Mirana and Riki combos. Sentries already littered the map at this point. However, the big issue during the mid game was a lack of respect from the damage output that the other team had and how little damage our cores could output on the whole team at one time, and our team was wiped around the 19:30 mark due to going in separately. This led to losing a tier 1 and tier 2 towers.
Good Instinct: Keeping sentries onhand. I also asked the Beastmaster and the Faceless Void to keep dust on them at all times. BM was already building towards his 
Necronomicon which is always useful against invis heroes, even if the build up takes some time.
Avoidable Mistakes: Spectre had been ganked once. Taking the extra time to place an observer or a sentry and asking someone else to buy extra would have been a good step to keeping her safe, which delayed her 
Radiance . During the teamwipe, there was no way to find a good 
Chronosphere . The final mistake was chasing after our team had already suffered losses.
Unavoidable Issues: Just after the push on the Tier 1 safelane, Templar Assassin had acquired a 
Desolator , making her a heavy damage dealer against a lienup that had very little armor. Lion is not a natural 
Mekansm carrier due to the high cost of his spells. Due to being a Pos 6, wards were running low, so there was no time nor resources to place an observer ward in the open area of the jungle to find enemies or to warn our Spectre in time.
During the Dire advantages, I finished that Midas, allowing more wards to be place and less resources wasted. Later support Midases should be treated as wards currency, since you will usually be sacrificing yourself or order to prevent ganks or to draw enemy spells and damage. There were also several skirmishes that were won on Sentries alone. I traded my life several times for two or more heroes. The biggest was the near full teamwipe won at the 29:00 mark which was done by placing a sentry mid just before we pushed up. A 
Moonlight Shadow had just came out from the enemy, but with the preparations, we were able to get a good combo from our Invoker, Void, and Spectre, along with some good shouting from BM allowed us to walk away from that fight with only me as the casualty. However, because I was able to have enough impact, I laughed from my grave with 3 assists in gold, giving me my Arcane Boots and allowing for the further purchases to come in. It is from this point that the enemy team crossed into the point of no return.
A position 6 late game will have the exact amount of game impact as the early game, assuming there is no build-up for items. If I hadn't been able to build that Midas by 25:00, I would have gone straight for the Arcane/Glimmer cape build. What you may notice while watching the game is that while teams with heavy invisibility will normally forget to buy their own detection. The reason is because they assume there's no real reason to do so, since their opponents have little to none. Some also depend on the enemy buying a Gem of True Sight too early, allowing them to kill whoever is carrying it and use it for their own dastardly motives. This is the reason why when you first played Dota 2 you would spam pick Riki or 
Clinkz , because nobody bought detection. This is also the reason why I would have bought 
Glimmer Cape after Arcanes, in order to protect my team from massive spell damage. As a position 6 support, you are worth nothing but your positioning and your ward placement. Saving up for items in order to save yourself could cost you the game. At the same time, saving up money to protect the rest of your cores will be more worthwhile in the end. The only exception to this rule is if you are a half-core, in which case you weren't position 6 to begin with.
After the first teamfight in which we won soundly, due to the enormous pushing power between Invoker's 
Forge Spirit and Beastmaster's boars and necro minions, they forced the objective into the barracks, in which I told everyone to back up from, and which I ended up sacrificing myself for a Spectre, who died anyway due to not having a TP scroll on her person.
Do not forget that at this point nobody had contested Rosh. An observer ward placed not too much earlier assured we had vision when they began to try and take it. I had already called my team together for a smoke in order to catch somebody out. Always remember that, especially when you are behind any number of objectives, to always smoke into Rosh. An observer ward could spot you and your team out and end in a bad fight. That's exactly what happened in the second 4-man wipe on their team. And we lost nobody.
Good Instincts: Keeping a ward and sentry on the enemy side of the river towards Rosh. This may also allow you to find wards they place themselves. Also it is a matter of blowing up and dealing the most damage to whoever will have the most impact, in this case, their only reliable stun, Rubick was killed while his core were casually fingered.
Avoidable Mistakes: The push bottom, the main carry became a little too trigger-happy and haunted in aggresively. As the support who can't push, I ran in to save the Spectre, completely forgetting she had the 
Aegis of the Immortal . The rest of the team began chasing with ultimates on cooldown, resulting in a 6 man wipe with the aegis. This led to a period of recovery, where mistakes could have cost the game.
Unavoidable Issues: Lion is a squishy hero throughout the game, even with an Aghanim's Scepter , and due to being a majority of the team's CC, was forced to run in as a frontline. And even with a casual 
Cloak , the output of 
Starstorm with Aghanim's Scepter and 
Ethereal Blade is too much damage to handle.
In the end, though, the enemy team wasted buybacks in the last two fights, failing to push us back, allowing two good teamfights and pickoffs to win us the game. They nearly reached the racks, but were sandwhiched between a Lion with Aghanim's Scepter Finger of Death and an Invoker Faceless Void combo.
So for everyone who probably spent a half hour reading this, Thanks once again for bearing with me, first off. Secondly, it is indeed a bunch of small things that a support with a good sense of ward placement and positioning can accomplish. This was definitely not a perfect game, for me nor for the Rubick on the enemy team, whom we both were dealt a lineup with 4 cores each, but then again I never fingered a creep instead of a hero when it mattered. This is not a high skill game placement either, unfortunately, but it's the mentality of people in lower skill games that determine whether or not they can reach higher ranks. In the end, the support may not be dealing the most damage to enemy healing, but they are definitely the highest impacts on the overall game. That's why the pro Captains all play support.
Good luck out there. Keep spamming Elder Titan until they unfairly nerf him.
Sincerely,
UnrulySupportGuy
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