Why did Riot remove so many Support features over the course of the last season?

I don't get it. Why do they consistently remove interesting and innovative features from their game?

We lose more and more features everyday and I don't understand why. They don't hurt anyone. Most of the times they are even UNDERpowered and unused, but Riot doesn't try to improve the underwhelming features. They just cut them and god knows why.

Karma E shielding minions - Removed Soraka healing minions - Removed Minions gaining MR from Aegis aura - Removed Aegis aura - Removed Alistar applying Ardent Censer to minions - Removed Janna applying Ardent Censer to turrets - Removed Zeke's Herald Aura - Reworked into non-aura partner item rather than adding a stand-alone partner item Clarity - Removed Clairvoyance - Removed

I don't want to be rude, but I LOVED all these gimmicks and features. They made supporting very interesting because you had so many different ways to help your team out, but now? It seems like every item or skill that offers Supports a way to be creative or helpful gets completely removed rather than buffed. That's what makes me despise playing Support right now and I bet many other people would agree with that.

Maybe Zeke's 10% Life Steal and itty bitty AD aura wasn't the most amazing thing in the world, but in the current meta a lot of ADCs build Full Crit and I'd love to build that thing again. Instead of reworking or removing every aura, why don't you keep the items in the game for people to build so they can support their team properly? It doesn't help the popularity of the role at all that you decrease the variety of things one can do as a Support.

The only fun thing right now that keeps me from switching roles is Janna, Lulu and Nunu, and you already tackled all of them many times, leaving me only with the fear that you're eventually going to look at them and think "Why does Janna even shield people? Why can Lulu make people big and give them health? Why can Nunu buff minions?" before you rework the champions and take their unique traits away.

I agree with the reason you removed most of the features, whether that may be due to their unpopularity, their lack of contribution or spaghetti code, but I don't agree with the removal. I love being experimental. I loved building Zeke and Locket of the Iron Solari, just as much as I loved using Clarity just to give my team that little, very little advantage the enemy usually didn't have: more resources and opportunities.

But right now? I only get frustrated, I can't even pick Supports I used to love because Thresh who keeps getting unnecessary buffs just STOMPS on every other Support who isn't a beefy tank or a coward like Soraka and Zyra.

I agree that Support is generally not a popular role, but putting the bot lane under such frustrating and repetitive conditions just doesn't help the cause. There aren't a lot of people that want to be the unimportant 'Ward, Exhaust & CC Bitch' of their team that nobody acknowledges but immediately complains about as soon as they step out of the line.

That's all from me, folks. I keep seeing these "I always get support when I pick fill!!1!" threads and wanted to voice my opinion on the Support meta that slowly lost it's variety since Season 6 started. I hope someday, Riot will look back on their choices and revert some of the decisions they pulled like they did with Kog'Maw. It's not fun to build the same, mandatory items because everything that isn't mandatory is getting gutted and removed.

TL;DR

Support is getting boring, stop removing unique abilities and items and please bring back some of them.