Support Is Such a Unique Role

Your job is to help your allies first and foremost and let's face it, its the easiest job on the Rift. However, being so different from the other roles it requires more balance than say top lane would (ie. exp, gold, itemization, ect.) Currently I have two problems with the support role:

1. Items are not the best. They're focused too heavily on actives and because of that the items stats are repetitive (either mana regen., hp regen., or cdr) and the passives are terrible/nonexistant. Athene's is one of the only items that's slightly interactive and that's because it was meant for mages but nerfed for support all the others just feel like stat boosts to allies. What about a passive that gives the next ally you heal or shield ms and put it on a charge system or SOMETHING interesting. Right now I feel like a glorified B.F. Sword (I should be so lucky...) and imo itemization for supports feel stagnant no matter the enemy team comp (I usually play caster supports so idk if it's different for tank supports).
2. The whole "heal and shield bot". It's not accomplishing to play as and it's frustrating to play against. I honestly don't understand why Riot hasn't tried to introduce a new way to heal and shield allies (ability wise, Redemption did more harm than good imo). Currently all but a few of heal and shield abilities are restricted to point and click but why not skill shots (linear, aoe, cone) or tethers or something that makes me want to spam my mastery 7 icon because I just saved your life and it was awesome. The exceptions to this point and click boring way to heal and shield allies are Bard with his shrines, Thresh with his lantern, and Lux with her wand. Two of these are considered the most skill oriented supports and make for amazing spotlight videos... and the other is Thresh (kappa).

I hope this sparks conversation on ways to improve the support role rather than "Redemption isn't even that good" or whatever. The most frustrating thing about the boards is that someone picks out one flaw in a post a focuses on that rather than the original discuss. So feel free to disagree and tell me why we don't eye to eye on this, but right now these two glaring issue are what's keeping the support role a little stale for my taste.