I'm not someone that jump to the gun when Riot make major changes...

...but the support itemization changes look kinda horrendous.

And is not even a matter of power, as supports are receiving very powerful items indeed, probably receiving even more power than what they have now. It is a matter of disrupting support feeling and restricting the space to operate rather than expanding the item choices

Some of the things that are happening with some of these changes:

• Changing recipe formulas for items that are working for no precise reason (I'm looking at which is going to be completely discarded for Zz'rot at this point since it became a worse version once you take out completely the AP/heal)

• Force some items down the throat ( how someone is going to pass on given that now it has both the cleansing ability AND the highest bonus healing and shielding power? Why you would put an higher heal and shield bonus on it than the Ardent Censer which should supposedly be THE healing and shielding item - while Mikael the one to use to do clutch saves throught the cleanse -? )

• Put too much of a power budget of new items in actives on a role which is yet requested to have a ton of active items because of sightstone and his upgrade forcedly taking a slot, and yet at the same time make some active item easier to use make it at the same time more complex and dumber to manage the actives(insert items like Redemption and New Knight's Vow while making more powerful and easier to use?)

• Create duplicates of the operating system for some items which would cause either problems in being OP if the synergy is too strong or would leav some item even more behind in the dust if one item proves to be far weaker than the other (see the above mentioned ZZ'Rot-Banner situation or New Knigth's Vow with )

• Balance some non support item for supports which would cause general balancing problems and will likely cause nerfs that will take items out of support hands ( / , , even mentioning that was traditionally used by top laner while supports always opted for - which was confined mainly to supports before became common for other roles after some changes it received that made it better for other roles - )

All of this while taking away power from the situation when you are going occasionally solo berserk and straight carrying or splitpush alone without temamates, which sometims you are forced to do when you can't get a team you can properly support in SoloQ (of course for organized teams and competitive you get more power as I said in the premise)

Of course there are very good changes and intriguing items here, so there is great potential for success. BUT a lot of tweaks need to be done because a lot of the potential good things you are putting on the table now could be going to be wasted because of the problems that could end up being created by a lack of perspective when taking a step back and looking at the big picture when you see a bit of confusion in some of the directions taken here

** EDIT: Added TL;DR for clarity **

** TL; DR ** Support itemizatization changes presented in PBE have good ideas into it, but overall look horrendous because of overlying design/perspective issues (not strictly related to items power) and need serious tweaks to fulfill the good potential of those ideas introduced