I find myself perplexed when I look at the changes listed for (pre)season 10.

I'm specifically talking about the support changes. I feel like on a surface level, the changes are great. More champions can play support with the new items, and that's great. On the other hand, I feel like the support class as a whole was hard nerfed. The Spellthief's line now just gives AP, Health and GP10, trading some health for the Mana Regen and 10%CDR. This is a huge nerf to the enchanter/poke mage playstyle. it means that more often you will just be sitting in your lane while your ADC farms because your spells are on CD and you can't afford to use them when you want or you'll run OOM. The added health seems to reinforce that the playstyle for supports that built Spellthief's is going to be more passive, and you'll stay in the lane longer. The doubled GP10 is supposed to account for this, but we'll touch on that later. It's a similar story with the changes to the Relic Shield line. It now gives much less health, no health regen, and no CDR (on finished item). This is designed to increase the passivity of engage supports as well. They will have to spend more time watching their ADC farm and not looking for trades/all-ins because if they all-in they will be lower health than normal, and it will take twice as long to come back, leaving their lane vulnerable for extended periods of time. Even walking up to stack a minion becomes dangerous since the heal on Relic Shield proc was removed, which mean that if you take an auto from their ADC and support to stack a minion, that damage sticks, and hard since you have no HP or regen. Now, this seems like it leaves a lane open for the third type of support. The supports that want to be passive in lane, and just let their ADC farm until they can start to affect the rest of the map. Support like Thresh or Rakan that can effectively build Coin... except Coin is also being removed, for the exact reason the other items should be good! Coin was rewarding certain champs for playing too passively, so it's getting the axe... and every other support item is being changed to reward more passive play? This change does not make sense to me, and it seems like Coin is getting removed so no supports benefit from the item changes. Speaking of benefiting from item changes, a big reason that these changes """are buffs""" is that you no longer need to spend gold on them! it's essentially 1450 gold back in the pocket of supports! Except... it's not. Enchanter supports can't just... give up 10% CDR. Getting as much CDR as possible is integral to being effective in the teamfight phase for most enchanters. Mana Regen is as important if not more, especially in the early game. Even though I technically have 1450 gold in my economy, if I have to spend 800 gold on a Forbidden Idol, that bonus is mitigated. The same goes for engage supports that built Remnant of the Aspect (Relic Shield item). They can't just trade away HP and HP regen, especially not early game when they have no resistances. So they're gonna take that 1450 gold and spend 800 on a Kindlegem, or 1000 on a Giant's Belt. Not only this, but you're further limiting support itemization under the guise of enhancing it, again. If I need to get 40% CDR in my build, and my first two items (Support item and Mobility Boots) give me a whopping 0% CDR, that means that as an enchanter support I need to build 4 items that give me 10% CDR (there are no support items that give 20% CDR for good reason). That's my whole build. That means that if I want to be doing my job as, say, a Nami, I can't afford to get Solari early if at all. I can't afford to get Rylai's even if it would help me peel, because I can't "make the CDR up elsewhere," I just don't have enough slots, and the CDR is the highest value stat for me. Engage supports are also going to miss that 10% CDR, because they typically build less. They'll get punished in the opposite way, because the fact that CDR is a less valued stat for them means that they won't have it, and they're not trading it for anything useful in a teamfight, which is their job. Double the GP10 won't do anything if you have no HP, Regen or CDR, and even though you'll build back the tank stats over the course of the game, you're still limited by slots. You can't avoid being less tanky than you normally would be. So supports are hobbled early because they have no sustain and no CDR, and kneecapped late by having to build items they normally wouldn't build. Not only this, but because laning phase is forced to be more passive, it's going to take longer to finish quest, even with the one (1) extra gold every 10 seconds. This means that you're going to spend even more gold on control wards in the early game. This isn't a buff, in the same way that removing Sightstone (which was perfectly fine when it had the option of being merged with your support item tbh) and green wards isn't a buff if I instead have to buy 2 control wards every back from first back until the game ends. It just feels like support's getting nerfed as a whole class, and it sucks. I agree that support as a class was pretty relevant, and could exert some influence on the game as a whole, and I guess that's not a good thing. It's much better to just be a walking QSS for your ADC, or a one time ult on a stick for teamfight, because god forbid people playing support feel like they have some agency in the games they play, and feel like they can do something to change how the game goes, instead of just praying their team is good, because if they're not then there's nothing they can do about it. I guess it's back to playing jungle in solo queue.