There's nothing wrong with supports.

The last few days have gone by and I've seen people go back and forth about how supports need to be more rewarding or something, but supports aren't the problem. Please read the full thing before replying, as some things I say might come off as misleading if you read only one sentence.

First of all, what are supports? You could say they're playmakers but, at the end of the day, they can't make those plays rewarding on their own. So in reality, you could call supports "setup champions." Some supports play to their own advantage more than the ADC they're with, and therefore a real support is someone that makes things on the map happen. The whole situation with support singed and how he was double jungling, it definitely was still a form of support. It just wasn't the conventional kind and therefore not everyone is going to be prepared for it. Many players are not prepared for what is not conventional, because Riot obviously does not support it directly.

Second, where does a support's strength come from? They come from your team or the gold you've gotten yourself. Naturally that means items are there for supports to better help their team, or borrow from the laner pool of items to assist themselves. This is why support items are typically trash (or at least were in the past) for Sona who heavily relied on AP scaling as a support, so she would have to use her low gold income to get expensive AP items. Solo queue is not ANY place to be trying to go full-support-help-your-team mode, because nobody really trusts their teams. There are people who do it regardless, and those people are the real MVPs. I'm making this topic in hopes of seeing more support players.

Anyway, what does this then mean when the role is becoming unpopular yet again? It means that the supports want more relevance, to which their items do not allow. Let's clarify one thing that supports are in the game's current state:

LEECHES.

Now don't get me wrong, supports can be the true playmakers that lead to victories. It has been seen many times in both Solo queue and pro play. They aren't useless by any stretch. However...

Not only do supports rely on already existing items that can be bought by other champions, but they usually get new items that are usually so cost efficient that laners would use them (Frost Queen's Claim), leading to the item's utility getting nerfed. This greatly affects the support role by diminishing returns on bought items. Locket of the Iron Solari...also experiencing this now (even if a nerf isn't expected right now). History repeats itself yet again. Supports that want to benefit themselves have to pay full gold of what any other champion would, but they have considerably less farm to do so. They have no options for CS outside of relic shield and were made to be efficient even without as much farm, preventing them from getting any stronger. Tanks primarily have been the most efficient at the support role because tank items aren't that expensive and Face of the Mountain impacts gameplay greatly.

Supports have no item branching paths limited to the investment that only supports can get. In other words, their items paths lack incentive. More than that, their incentives right now are not rewarding in the least. It's the champions being played and the efficiency of said champion that makes the support role "good." Sightstone is an HP dump that rewards tanks more. Sona actually would prefer not to even go for such a thing. Neither would any other mage support really. Yet the idea of an AP Sightstone that doesn't build from Ruby Crystal never came up?

The logical solution to the item branching would then be to MAKE SUPPORT ITEMS MEANT FOR SPECIFIC SUPPORTS. Oh? What's that? We already have those? Let's break this down then on what these items do:

1. : Gives HP and a healing effect dependent on hitting CS. Scales off of HP for the execute, and arguably gives the lowest gold out of any support item if you get zoned off of CS.

2. : Mana Regen, passive gold the longer you stay in lane with your carry killing stuff. Item for passive supports that aren't going to be aggressive in lane, otherwise the lowest gold gain out of every support item.

3. : Mana Regen, passive gold regardless of staying in lane, rewards for hitting the opponent with literally any spell at all. Tiny bit of AP.

Now can you tell me honestly that these items gain relevance as you slowly upgrade them? I don't believe so. Historically it's their final upgrades that lead to such a reward, and for supports that is very far away considering how much farm they usually obtain. So basically you have a mediocre item for 7 minutes or more in the game and have to pay 800g into Sightstone. The items themselves lack gold efficiency, and that is inexcusable if we're talking about why support is unpopular, since this issue has been here for years. Riot said that they'd experiment more with the support items (and have been doing so) but have halted it for the starting items.

The lack of creativity in the evolution of these items (all due respect to the creators since these items were made long ago), is what led to this in the first place. What is the other thing people spend in the game other than gold? Time. That's where things should've been heading for GP5/10 items, and they proved too strong on junglers and laners, but not on supports. Yet there's another angle to this -- just think of Gangplank. He needs to land his Q specifically on minions and although he has support from his barrels, he still needs to burn Q consistently to perform his strategy. Spellthief took this idea to its limits but ended up being the only effective item for quite some time because GP/5 was avoided on the other items.

Riot, if you want to make support a more favorable role, you're going to have to make more aggressive approaches to the starting item. Make it like Sated Devourer if you have to, but it needs to fulfill the condition that only supports can do, which is spend time in lane without CS'ing that much. The pay-off needs to reward the champion enough for them to have a much more serious impact on the game.

Example:

Let's say I buy Spellthief's edge, which rewards aggressive mage supports. What I'd want to do is hit the enemy champions as much as possible, and the mana regen should be buffed accordingly to allow me to do so. To avoid mid laner abuse, the item upgrades would not be purchasable. The upgraded effect requires hitting let's say 30 spells or autoattacks (with a 3 second cooldown) without killing any minion, and has a CD of 30 seconds if I do kill any minion. The CD would then be decreased by 5 seconds if my ally last hits a creep, allowing a support to effectively be the only user. The upgraded effect would then reflect on the champion pool that would use this, meaning mage supports typically. So, the upgraded effect would be something like an AoE on-spell move, similar to Iceborn Gauntlet but damage everything in its radius over time while slowing.

Things like that are much more dynamic and require that you be a support in order to achieve the final effect. It wouldn't matter what champion you are, the effect requires that you be in lane and do what an aggressive support would normally do. You'd get a powerful effect and be able to do more mage-like things in the middle of buying things like Sightstone. This also removes burden of knowledge to an extent but definitely opens up an entire playstyle for the role that has its own rewards. The other support items might need changes or even new items introduced to add even more to the support roster, but for now we need to fix what we have.

Lastly, the lack of a "binding" option to the laner you're with so that if you ks them it still counts as their kill creates a lot of room for toxicity and also makes for a terrible fluidity in lane if the support is upholding most of the kill potential in lane. If these support items could do that as well, or possibly a mastery, it would be very effective at solidifying the idea that a support gains a team advantage more than self-advantage.

TL;DR: I would greatly advise you read the actual post but basically:

The starting support items are the reason supports are not a fun role. There is nothing wrong with the support role. Since the items literally are mediocre until fully upgraded, you're essentially playing a mediocre champion that can assist an ADC with his/her job. Make the starting items able to be upgraded through gameplay, not gold. Let supports actually have their starting item become a threat if they are succeeding. Solo queue has never been a safe place to pick support because not many supports are able to become independent after snowballing in bot lane unless the ADC is already on a killing spree. Supports also lack an ability to gain team advantage since they cannot split-push, give no advantage for ks'ing (it's unavoidable at times), and don't get their items quickly. The first two are real problems, the other makes sense due to the position.

I greatly appreciate anyone who has read this and would like to hear your opinions. Support is one of the roles I'd like to main but it's just not favorable at the moment for me. Playing non-traditional supports right now which the lane doesn't favor feels best because I can go into better items if we win lane, and I just find that reflects on the starting items.