Suggestion to increase support popularity: ease the burden of vision.

As you might be (painfully) aware, the support population is quite smaller compared to the other meta-roles in League. A recent survey on Reddit got almost 37000 votes, and why that's not really representative of the player base (more or less 0,1% of the playerbase), it suggests that support population is not only smaller by a quite big margin (5%, more or less), but also that support is less popular as a secondary role due to the high demand.

Now, there is always a least popular role.There always will be.
Currently is support. It could be top. It could be mid. All that it matters is wether or not you can do something to partially solve the problem without creating a worse problem. In my opinion,it is possible.

Currently, what I think drives a lot of players away from the support lane is "vision duty". What is the vision duty, you might ask? Well, the vision duty is when you are shoehorned into buying a vision item while also being the most gold starved player in the team. With trinket releases, Riot tried to enforce the fact that vision should be a team game and not a support exclusive role. Then they said "fuck it, let's put a 800 gold entry tax on the support, people love to play support, amirite fellow". And of course, it doesn't help that with season 6, hyperscalings and League of damage, the support AKA the least farmed champion are the players who deal the less damage and burst. Against a stealth champion, you are the only player who at minute 30 is still at 4 slots because sightstone and vision wards.

Honestly, I think the support experience would be quite more popular if people stopped saying as the "champion who lacks gold and still has to provide for vision which is still costly".

1. Remove Sightstone item, add a Sightstone trinket .
2. If Sightstone trinket is too popular, add a limitation that prevents solo laners to purchase it. It's quite easy to implement, just add a gate to farming gold with support item before taking it from the shop (even if it's free).
3. Put another trinket with vision wards OR add a vision ward slots. It's extremely frustrating to be the only one in the team with one (or two) slots less.

This will help ease the unappealing factors in playing a supports that are:

1. gold starvation and sightstone slows your first item purchase
2. slot efficiency
3. General enjoyment of the role as wether you want to ward or not you still can but you are no longer gimping yourself in order to do so.