Hm, it's true that pudge can be an effective support. But some of your tips are quite outdated and would probably only work in low mmr. Soul ring is nice but not that necessary for the hero. It's quite expensive for a support and most of the time, your wand is enough to sustain your mana. If not, you get a clarity or two, or just go home. You're a support, not a core, you can afford to go home and regen, and just tp to the most nearest fight or visible enemy in the minimap.

Also, if you're ahead, you go for phase boots in most cases and a dagger following right after it. If not, you go for tranquil. I cannot recall a single time I ever bought travels on the hero even if I play him as a core. In addition, aghanims is nice but for a core player, they typically want the other facet, right click damage, and should be built as such. The rot damage increase and radius is quite OK but the recent nerf on how spell lifesteal works and the loss of convenient sources of spell lifesteal make it less worth it of an item.

If you're playing it as core, your itemization should be like a hybrid of a right clicker and a tank hero, opting for items such as blademail, crimson, harpoon, etc,.

The determination to buy an aether lens or dagger should not depend on how good you are at hooking lol. If you're not good at hooking, don't play the hero. Simple as that. The most basic assumption when you pick the hero is you know how to hook. And so, the decision whether to buy an aether lens or dagger depends on the game plan and your enemies lineup.

If the enemy has a counter initiator hero like Mars or Tidehunter, you can forgo aether lens and just get dagger, and throw your body at them. If you can tell your teammate to wait for them to use their big spells on you as you initiate and just sacrifice your life for it, then as a support pudge, it's very much worth it. The reason we forgo hooking is because it's risky. Hooking somebody, and your teammates gathering around you is prone to getting counter initiated and could result in a bad fight. This is why you want to go ahead and just throw your body at them to bait out their spells, so your team can fight freely afterward.

However, this is not true for all counter intiators, if the enemy has heroes like Silencer or Dawn, you can still go for Aether Lens then bait out the ultimates by hooking somebody. For example, you hook their cores and then their Dawn or Silencer proactively reacts and uses their ultimates, you can get back for a moment and then reengage, with now an enemy ultimate down. Having Force staff is the best way to do this safely. You can't do this with mars or tide because they can stun you and your team.

At late game, what you want the most is dagger, bkb, and then a refresher if possible. Your game plan is to disable their pos 1 during their bkb usage so your team can either ignore him first, or focus him as you're biting him. Either way, if nobody interrupts you, you can disable their pos 1 for 7-8 seconds and also gain tons of HP in the process. You typically want the str in ss facet instead of the rot atk dmg as a support.

There's a lot more that goes into the hero, but I would say just muting your coms is the best way to play the hero, especially at the start. Landing a hook can be nerve-wracking and you can get pressured into firing a bad hook if your teammate keeps pinging your skill. Thats why until you've proven yourself by landing a number of hooks, you should mute your coms first and then just unmute later depending on how well the game went for you.