@Riot, What supports Need
So, With the announcment to see and analyze what supports need, you gave several categories in which you were looking at how to reward Supports for good play.
GOLD INCOME This was the first category you offered. In past seasons, namely seasons 3-5, there existed "Assist Sprees". This was removed in favor of the "Shut down Global" gold that was given. However, this DRAMATICALLY affected the gold income of individuals who did not often get kills. This meant their gold income was HORRIBLY reduced in general in games where they're doing well, on average by about 3k gold in the space of about 30 minutes.
For those of you who weren't around for it, as you got more assists than kills, you eventually got more gold per assist, Eventually leading to 210 for a single person assist, to around 100 for a 4 man asssist (A kill where everyone on the team participated). Bringing back these Assist Sprees would help re-inforce the feeling of "I died, but still got an assist or 2 so I did something", or even "I'm doing a fantastic job of enabling my team to get kills" and promptly rewarding the support for doing their job. This also helps boost players who may not have the best game, by enabling them to get gold income outside of CSing or kills when they're behind, still encouraging everyone, not just supports, to paly with the team and work together.
RECOGNITION OF SUCCESS ON SUPPORT This is generally tied to gold generation, but also to other things like vision control. Having a "Ward Kill Spree" that provides a boost in gold, an instant recharge in the sightstone, or trinket, would feel incredibly rewarding for keeping control of areas with vision. Having a "Damage Prevented/Shielded" stat would also help support players feel like they're having an impact. "CC cleansed or prevented" would also help out immensely for making it feel rewarding.
Changes to Crucible and Locket are HUGE for having feeling like I'm doing an amazing clutch play that my teammates can appreciate and usually thank me for. More support Items that allow these sorts of clutch plays would be nice, and having a unique mechanic for support items to make it so that their active cooldowns get reduced with successful saves/assists would be awesome! For example, If redemption saves an ally from the brink of death, having it's cooldown reduced by 20-50% would feel incredibly rewarding.
The big issue is that IP boost for people who queue up as support, and reach benchmarks such as "X damage healed/Shielded" or "X seconds of CC inflicted" would help out a ton as well because it would enourage team play without such negative incentives like Feral Flare did.
Overall Recognition is a cultural thing and it's the League Community that needs to recognize that supports are capable of BIG game changing plays, and that's not something that's easily changed.
Itemization Itemization for supports has always been problematic. In the past, you gave supports "Utility" ratios because of a "Increased" gold generation that would theoretically allow them to buy AP. This is what made Lulu a top laner, and people considered all of the changes an overall nerf to supports. By removing those changes, and adding in more unique support/Tank items that offer utility boosters like Heal/Shield increase, "Slow intensity increase", "Tenacity Pierce" or other things that Supports would want could help provide itemization to make up for those things.
Locket and REdemption again are great examples of items that FEEL GOOD. More items that allow Clutch saves, Unique Playstyles, or other things would be amazing to add, and I'd suggest reworking some existing items to move more into that niche.
Laning Patterns these are already pretty diverse, as each support has a different playstyle. Alistar likes to go all in super heavy, while Morgana likes to get picks, Zyra likes to zone, and Karma likes to poke. Soraka likes to Heal, and Janna likes to peel. Many supports have distinct niches in which they're preferred over others. Some supports are of course too good at their niche and are outright too powerful, while some supports are jack of all trades that just mean they push out other options when they're strong. (Sona, Nami, Karma, I'm looking at you)
Overall supports need help, but they're things that are quite reasonable to accomplish.