The email poll about support...

I agreed that yes, I enjoy playing support. I wouldn't do it if I didn't. But I wish they'd given us a chance to clarify a little when they asked if we thought support has enough of an impact on the match, where I said I disagree.

If both teams are about equally strong otherwise, then yes, support can and does make an enormous difference. I started playing support mostly just because I liked a lot of support champions, but I quickly found that I could really influence the outcome of games a lot from that position by doing more to facilitate vision and map control, something low level teams struggle so much with. And ever since autofill became a thing I've always thought any team that has me on it playing support should have a huge advantage over a team with someone who's salty about being autofilled.

Not when it's a huge mismatch, however. When your whole team is getting steamrolled, there's not much you can do as support but temporarily stop bot from being the same dumpster fire that the other lanes are. Every now and then everything will suddenly turn around when, for example, Sona or Janna finishes ardent censer and the enemy team wasn't counting on it in the next big teamfight, or Leona or Blitzcrank will get a key pick on an enemy carry that forces the enemy onto the defense and leaves objectives open, but that's usually when it's a reasonably decent team that just got off to a bad start. You can't make big support plays for a team that won't even group to fight. When the rest of my team is getting completely stomped, I feel like all I can do is shrug and try to prolong the inevitable. And it seems like that's what you can expect to get most of the time especially in ranked.