Dota 2 Guide | Best Items for Supports

The best items for the most underappreciated roles

Game Guide by Arne on Dec 06, 2024

Dota 2 is a game of immense skill. It requires a great deal of different skills combined with teamwork and strategy. Your mechanical skills, however, can only take you so far. Your itemization and timing are also important parts. The right items mean you have the absolute advantage when dealing with most enemies.

Supports are responsible for keeping the pace of the game and maintaining initiative. Often a thankless role, the Support keeps the Carries alive, defends towers, and a dozen other tasks. For most Supports, items are a rare commodity since they barely get any gold. This means that itemization is even more important. So, here are some of the best items to get as a Support, regardless of your specific role or hero.

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Force Staff

It's probably the best utility to get in the game. Force Stuff is an amazing item that lets you pull off crazy moves at all points of the game. From kiting enemy carries to evading enemy roots and stuns, Force Staff is an item with endless possibilities.

It costs 2200 gold and gives you +10 intelligence and +175 health. The stat boosts are fine, but that's not really its most useful trait. The item's active ability pushes you in the direction you're facing for a certain amount; this can also be used on enemies and allies.

So you can just about do anything with it. Push enemies into cliffs, or yourself for that matter, to run away. You can escape many combos that rely on roots. The best use is still probably to get away from enemy carries. However, carries like Anti-Mage might not really find it too annoying due to their movement abilities.

Ghost Scepter

Another utility item, a common trend on this list, is universal, actually. The Ghost Scepter is another one of those items that are really good at making sure you don't die and get off all your spells before you die.

It gives you +5 to each attribute, but again, that is not its main draw. Its active ability makes you enter ghost form for 4 seconds, while in ghost form, you are immune to physical damage but are 40% more vulnerable to magical damage. This item is much more divisive. On the one hand, you basically get to ignore carries for 4 seconds. On the other hand, an errant Skywrath Mage or really any Magic Nuker will make your day very bad.

However, it still isn't a bad item since, more often than not, the enemies will burn a lot of resources trying to get rid of you. In the end, that makes it worth it.

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Eul's Sceptre of Divinity

It's another one of the legendary items in the game. It is also probably one of the best in the game due to… you guessed it, the incredible utility the item provides. For this one in particular, this is both offensively and defensively.

The item itself gives you +10 Intelligence, +2.5 Mana Regen, and +20 Movement Speed. The stats are actually more than fine since the Mana Regen and Intelligence increase keep you topped up on your mana as most supports. The +20 Movement Speed is also helpful for positioning and running away.

Its best use is with its active ability, Cyclone. Casting it sweeps up either you or an enemy unit in a cyclone for 2.5 seconds, keeping them invulnerable for the duration. Now, its initial use is obvious. You can be invulnerable for 2.5 seconds, meaning you negate many enemy spells that aren't instant damage. Even spells like Laguna Blade take a small millisecond to actually hit its damage. It is very useful against Juggernaut, Jakiro, Sniper, and Zeus. However, it might also let your enemies set up their own stuns and spells, so be careful when using it on teammates.

As for when using it on enemies, the item deals 50 damage to them. This means that their Blink Daggers are set on cooldown. Furthermore, it also allows your allies to set up follow-up stuns and disables, ensuring kills on key enemies.

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Lotus Orb

Now, Lotus Orb is one of the more underappreciated items in the game. Usually, initiators buy it. However, it is a good item to keep as a support, too.

It provides a small boost to stats, giving you +6.5 HP Regen, +4 Mana Regen, +250 Mana, and +10 Armor. This comes from good build-up with platemail, the item that gives it its Armor. This suddenly makes you extremely tanky and capable of surviving longer in fights.

Of course, Lotus Orb excels against enemies that have a lot of single-target spells. This is useful not only for you since you can effectively ignore those spells but also for your allies on whom you can cast these. Lotus Orb also gives you a basic dispel every time you use it, meaning it is also good against all of the annoying debuffs, slows & silences you have to deal with

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Glimmer Cape

It's a great item, especially at low-tier Dota. It is now even better, capable of letting you survive many engagements.

Glimmer Cape excels when used with heroes that have spells with channeling. So, heroes like Bane, Crystal Maiden, and Witch Doctor can rely on getting targeted early in the game. Glimmer Cape also gives you a small magic damage barrier and provides a 55% magic resistance to those it is cast on. This lets you or anyone you cast it on survive most deadly situations. Surviving nukes goes a long way, and to top it off, you become invisible for the duration, letting you walk away from ganks.

It's normal +25% Magic Resistance, which is also useful in most situations. However, Glimmer Cape's usefulness wanes and diminishes when the enemy gets Detection. As previously mentioned, Detection is hardly ever utilized properly at lower levels of Dota, but at higher ones, the enemy is bound to get Dust as soon as they see you have a Glimmer Cape. To top it off, if your team has heroes that rely on invisibility, like Riki or Bounty Hunter, then the enemy will always carry Detection; the value of Glimmer Cape diminishes incredibly.

There are quite a few other items that work similarly, providing various flavors of utility. Most, however, have variable uses and depend on scenarios and the enemy lineup. For example, the Medallion of Courage is a decent item to get for that extra Armor and movement speed you can get onto your allies. But it's not always useful. Generally, the five items in this guide are your earliest pick-ups.

Some items are also not really worth it, such as the Aether Lens. Which costs a lot for all it does and, in return, gives out little to no value overall. As an individual item, it is great, but as a team item, it is terrible. Overall, the items mentioned here are your best bet in almost every scenario. They are also future-proof in the sense that they're key items that shouldn't see changes too wild. So this means you can use them for virtually all patches of the game without much hindrance.

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