takes 3 minutes to find a group regardless of which role i'm playing
Except support. I guess despite all the changes riot made, the "whipping boy" of the game needs help.
I'd propose allowing more variaty of champs to go support, and not get wrecked by your boy thresh.
and an option for someone who isnt playing thresh to have dmg, and a site stone.
It is really tricky because there is a lot of things are important for a support player to do but I don't think that people want to do and I don't think you could get lots of people to play it without fundamentally changing the role. It is a marco role that isn't about out playing the enemy but often for out thinking your opponent.
but I agree that the lack of XP really hurts atm, I'd like some changes to that.
Well 
is a good play making item, 
can also be useful to start a fight. There are some play making items but it is tricky to prevent non supports buying them. but 
is a play making item they allow non supports to buy to perhaps they are okay with that.
oh no. then you'll find these annie supports that go full ap or these brand cancers that also go full ap, the list goes on.
The most annoying part of this is when Riot originally released new champ select, they predicted the lack of support players might be a problem and said they would consider adding support incentives to do something about that problem. If they have considered it, they sure as hell haven't done anything or told us anything about it.
The XP change they made says that after death, within a 300 unit range, you get XP for killed champions for 10 seconds.
First off, 300 range is less than the range of a normal ranged auto attack. This is useless in most scenarios except teamfighting.
Secondly, killed champions doesnt make much of a difference unless if it's in a teamfight.
The XP buffs only apply to teamfighting, which isn't where a majority of supports lose their XP. The ward XP helped a little except when you get a ward down to 1 hit and the ADC comes and hits it once getting that experience worth double a minion of what you're getting in lane.
The support item changes helped a little bit. I really like the new Talisman and sightstone. Lets your team have that extra mobility more often to catch and flee fights. It allows me to place more Banners on minions and use the support items more often.
Overall, they just gave a placebo on the XP to make it happy. Gold income was never as huge of a problem as XP gain.
considering i keep seeing "not thresh" versing me, i can only assume he is not regarded to be a dominant pick by other support players.
I am pretty certain a lot of support players consider him to be fun, therefore it he were as strong as you suggest, i would have been seeing him more.
considering the range of champions i am seeing in the support role right now, what's missing from the role is not more champion sub-types, but more viable play-styles.
the biggest culprit i feel is "protect the carry" which seems to be an overly dominant task that is relegated to support players. What I would personally want is more roaming, more ganking, less your ADC gets to die the moment you step out of lane, and less the ADC gets instantly blown up if you don't hold your cooldowns for carry-protection.
Item wise, i'd like to see more play making items. Not play enabling; Not saving your team mates; not empowering your team mate: play making. As in you make the decisions and set the tone of the play.
