As a support main who´s roster consists mostly of
when serious
for fun
stopped playing
who abused Lulu when she was strong, all I can say is that the concept of mage-supports and supports like pyke may be one of the better changes to the support role, which doesn´t mean much considering the fact that riot usually just fucks with the support-role and punishes it every time other roles exploit the tools it needs to even function, but I digress.
The reason I tend to favor mage-supports over the "traditional supports" aka enchanters + a few tanks is that compared to those, mages-supports have a huge impact in the early game, while also scaling well into the late game and more importantly are completely self-sufficient. By closer inspection, a lot of supports actually scale backwards in terms of efficiency seeing how tank-supports usually get outscaled by dmg dealers unless they have integrated dmg reduction, and can´t frontline properly, while engage-potential and target accessibility increase as the game progresses.
which ironically makes enchanters, the role that is supposed to combat quick and focused attacks, less and less effective as their self-peel is too slow, telegraphed and often to weak to survive in this high-burst-high-mobility-meta. Positioning has always been a huge factor when playing these squishy enchanters and in an environment with less dmg and mobility, this has been a reasonable approach, but now that burst has gone so out of hand, correct positioning is just a joke now that is parroted by people who benefit from the overabundance of mobility and are usually not on the receiving end.
But even if you fixed those issues and buffed enchanters, for example, you would still face the same problem we always had since the inception of that role. The fact that it´s a mandatory role that like 90% of the player base doesn´t want to play because it´s not well integrated into the game and gives the player barely any incentives to chose this role over others.
Pick a tank and now you are a lesser tank, who does everything a top-lane tank would do but worse. Pick an enchanter and now you are playing a class that, by design, can only work in conjunction with your teammates. And with the exception of rare occasions where your decision can have a huge impact on the game you are usually a walking stat-stick for your carry. A playstyle as passive and thoughtless as it can get. And the concept behind these rare, highly impactful decisions is also so disheartening when you look deeper into it because everything you do, be it shielding, healing or ccing enemies is transferring power to your carries, while you wield no power by yourself.
This is problematic for two reasons. A: you need a very selfless person to pilot these champs. and B: those people must not have a competitive mindset when playing the game. And it´s problematic because most people take a lot of their enjoyment out of these power fantasies which are not or barely present in the support role and even if some people are not interested in such things many are still held back by the fact that you usually want as much agency over your matches as possible when playing the game, which is the exact opposite of what you do when playing support. You take all the power you champ possesses and give it to strangers who either win or lose you the game. There is the argument left that the power is often multiplied rather than added and can, therefore, make a difference, but imo it´s still a huge gamble and often not worth the risk.
This extends as far as to the extreme cases where playing support in low divisions is just sabotaging yourself. It´s a sad realization because saying that a supportive playstyle can´t exist in this game is like saying teamplay can´t exist in this game, but it´s the conclusion I draw and so I see the transition from dependent to independent supports as a logical progression to bring them more in line with the other roles.
There is still a lot more, that makes the support role unattractive, but I think the post is already long enough.
tldr: sucking your carries off for half an hour is uninteresting and unrewarding for 90% of the players. League isn´t really a teamgame anyway (solo que), so having one lonely role centered around it to the detriment to the one unlucky bastard who has to play it is stupid. Let them have fun too.
And I am genuinely sorry for the few support mains that really enjoy the role as it is (was) and now get overrun by mage- and other pseudocarry-supports.
[sg-soraka]
is often a nightmare to deal with, and a good 
can still wreck hard. There are a few others for sure, but these are the first ones to come to mind.
are a lot of fun in the bottom lane, so in my opinion it's a positive change.
