So I picked up ranked and got to silver v with Janna but I wondering if it is just me, but it seems like every single game someone always begs for a tank support. Like every single rank game I play or try to get into. I do not understand why. Even if our team already has tank the adc or mid laner always complains about it. Is it just a lower elo thing? I hate to have to dodge due to all the toxicity towards me sometimes.
As I understand it, Supports come in three flavors.
Poke, Tank, and Heals.
Poke beats Tank in lane due to sustained damage. Tank beats Heals due to hard engage. Heals beats Poke due to lane sustainability.
There are exceptions of course, but this is how I view most supports. Keep in mind, this is the in-lane experience, not the endgame.
There are also variations to this model. For example, Janna who specializes in strong disengage as coupled with poke, and Sona, who is both poke and heals.
People like tanks, though, because they like the idea of an unkillable lane partner who won't likely take their kills.
And then you get a douche ADC whom you accidentally get ONE kill from as Naut, and then he screams "FOR TYLER1" and suicides to the enemy turret, giving the enemy ADC a free kill.
Because no one likes a KSing 2nd mid mage as their support who doesn't ward. I don't blame them.
In ranked and normals I play 3 different types of supports 
and sometimes 
.
when I have a high degree of trust in my team
when I am uncertain of the skill of my ADC (I basically don't know if they are good or bad) and there are no assassins. I can usually zone so the ADC can farm with her or we can play the heal game and just sustain in lane
when I have little confidence in my team, more specifically my ADC. I KNOW my adc is not very good so hard damage and zoning is the preference. I also play him when we lack an AP in the top or Mid lane AND the enemy has a lot of tanks.
if I am first pick blind into a comp. I am OK with her, but I do not like player because she is largely an "enabler" for the team. Basically, if my team is not very good Morgana cannot really carry them to a win by covering up their mistakes and creating opportunities the same ways that the other supports can. She is pretty low damage and mostly play a disengage style of play.
I typically pick each one for the reasons listed above. On my smurfs (when they were in silver) I always got the request to play a tank support. That is because teams with tanks have higher win rates AND the bottom lane has more room for error in lane because they can handle more damage. People also request tanks because the pros have a tendency to play tanks more often, along with 
.
One of my smurfs was placed in Silver V and when I started climbing I was initially playing . Even though I play her sometimes on my main account I had to stop playing her on my smurf because I was not winning any games with her.
Now why was that? It was because my teammates would not recognize when I made a pick and there was often no follow up when I would engage. On my main account I play with low plats and high gold players who recognized to follow up on engages. When I was playing on my silver smurf I would set up a kill and my ADC would be leisurely farming. Then they would engage after I was almost dead (if at all).
Due to my lack of confidence in my ADC I ended up having to climb at support on that account with . I would zone the enemy laners, let my ADC farm, and if I would be engaged upon I had enough damage to usually kill one or both opponents.
NO ONE understood brand's kit or damage in low silver. I would have opponents burn 
when my passive was procing (proximity to me does not stop the passive from going off for those that didn't know). Opponents often like to group in silver, it is pretty much the only way they know how to win and that is great for brand! I can do my full combo for max damage, use my ultimate, and leave everyone incredibly low for clean up kills.
Since the games would go longer too I had plenty of time to get my items to deal a lot of damage.
did do a lot of the same things but scaled so much better with his damage I ended up just playing him at support as I climbed to Gold on that account.
I think you should be picking supports due to the situation, but my decisions at the position were largely contingent on the skill and familiarity I had with my teammates. On my main account doesn't do quite as well, because most gold players completely understand his kit and how to deal with him in the bot lane. He is basically a weaker version of 
, but she offers more as a support. Once brand misses his stun he is pretty much screwed unless he kills the enemies trying to kill him, and most gold players can dodge his skills more often than silver players.
I don't think most low elo players really understand the game that much and just try to imitate what the pros do or pick. On another one of my smurfs I picked 
as a mid laner and my buddy who is in silver told me not to pick her because she is bad right and kept trying to convince me to pick another mid laner. I told him picks do not matter in this elo and I would do fine. I did do well, but we lost the game. We lost too not at all due to my champion pick, we lost because my buddy tried to play 
because "Jhin is strong" and he stinks with Jhin. He is a 
main and picked outside of his comfort zone because jhin sees pro play.
Thats true and will tell you why: There are 3 spots for a tank: top, jungle and supp. Support has to be tanky so top can pick Yasuo (and lose) and jg can pick Lee (for the flashy plays...). Also ADC feels safer with tanks somehow
Even in to gold I feel like tank supports are preferable. You can't have too many tanks (unless you have 5). In low elo especially, people are really awful at everything, so having a beefy front line with lots of CC is always helpful. If you're ahead it's easy engage and an easy way to force the win. If you're behind there's tonnes of peel to deny their engage for the carries, and you can still win teamfights because of it (also CC is the biggest utility, and utility is the best thing to have when behind).
Basically, tanks win games in low elo. A 1 tank team versus a 3 tank team, the 3 tank team will win 75% or more of the time. The win conditions are just that much more clear, the stall potential that much easier, the ability to play from behind that much easier, etc...
Sure, if someone gets snowballing hard you'll beat them, but your win condition is literally a win condition for EVERY team comp. So I don't think it really counts.
Yeah when I was lower Silver and Bronze I was pretty much forced into play tank support, mainly cause everyone else played carry squishes. If anything Alistar and Leona are really good.
I look at it this way man, as a support main. I've qued as the team utility, not the ADC's best friend or slave. Make that perfectly clear, because I can tell you that Marksmen Main's hate it when you put them in their rightful place. Which is simple, you need me more then I need you. Won more games with a troll draven then with a troll top laner. Your playing the more critical roles in league of legends, that most people don't believe and hence don't want to play. Tho, your job is to create information for your team, ensure team mate's stay alive, initiate or disengage in fights and Create peel for the team mate whos doing the most damage. Which, could be a Marskmen, A mage, the jungler or top laner.
I'm a mastery lvl 7 Tahm Kench, Leona and Morgana. So as you can see I've stuck with the Team Utility route then with the just pick a tanky support. Leona i will only pick if i have a lucian, caitlyn, ezreal, or corcki. Morgana, I will pick agains't a CC, tank support and Tahm Kench is for Immobile ADC's, or if i see someone like Wukong, Noc or anyone with that kind of game changing ultimate. sometimes i build full tank, other time i focus on shields. Other times i focus on AP. Really, depends on the matchup.
Basically like this, If I'm playing Moragana and I'm literally hitting 8 out of 10 binds. I'm building ap, because at that rate. My pick potential, with my kit/ flash ult. to zhonya is more important then trying to get a banner of command, or ardent cresent.
Basically
Mid and adc can not be tanks, because they are the damage dealers. Many top laners and junglers in lower elo don't give a shit about the team comp(LCS WANNA BE PLAYING ALL THE 
top), they only want to play damage dealers as if they are going to be the carry. So it ends up with everyone wanting the support to be a tank.
Because, top, tanks, and JG are most commonly the tanks on your team, and in this meta strong early game junglers are picked, Like Lee, Kha, Elise, etc and while they can build tanky, they don't provide as much cc or utility that tanks do.
Supports are all about utility. Just because you have fun playing a second mid laner in bronze and silver doesn't mean that it's good for a teamcomp. If only one team has a single tank, the team with the tank is almost always going to win because it takes an insurmountable advantage and perfect play to pull off an all squishy team comp and even then they get outscaled come late game when front lines exist.
Because people don't have faith in you. It's a lot easier to hit Q as Leona than it is to hit a snare as morg. So people go into the game assuming you suck, and want you to play the easier champ.
Normally, I ask what type of support my team would like. Ap/ heals&shields/ tank. They can have input on champion based on that. Do they normally want some sort of tank? Yes, unless we have no ap; then they ask for Zyra essentially (yes I know Vel or Brand would work too but better on Zyra.) Do I find it annoying? Not really. I present it to myself more as a challenge to become better at the champ. (usually tanks are Braum, Taric, Blitz [pending map side], or Sion [Beautiful with Jhin.]) Regardless of the champ I usually build basic tank stuff, (ZZ'Rot, Banner) for a support.
tank supports are better at wiping your ass after you make a huge mistake
3-4 tanks usually guarantee a win against a team of all squishy champions ASSUMING the team with the tanks play well and dont feed the early game to obvious snowballers.
I'm nowhere near high elo and I much prefer healer supports ._.
Ya even when I adc i prefer healers or secondary mages like Karma. The main reason i do not like playing tanks in ranked (still talking bot lane) is because your the one suppose to engage but then when you find a good pick and engage nobody follows up. Even if you ping. They get scared and run away team fight time when you go in then when you die they go in. Then I get blamed. I don't really have this problem in normals at all. I thought about maybe using Poppy though if I really need to..or possibly Thresh if he is okay right now? I have Braum and Tahm Kench but I don't seem to do the best with them. Sometimes I'll just go tank Bard but that doesn't really count and not the greatest..lol.
People ask me for Blitzcrank, now that's annoying.
It's only low elo that does this. Just ignore them. A lot of them beg for this because they all want to play Assassins or squishy champs, and when you're that rank you feel like a tank is mandatory for all teams. In reality, they should be the ones playing a tank because if they feed at least they'll have some CC to peel for their team.
Mainly because the other people on the other lanes believe they are the next master tier player and play carry top, ad carry mid, and ad carry jg while doing the combined damage of just one AP mage support because they suck at their role.
But yeah, forced 1 tank comp support is one of the most tilt roles you can play.
As a support main who's been there, I think a lot of it is that they want a tank on their team, but nobody wants to pick tanks themselves because "muh damage". Thus they demand/request the support do it because they don't want to do it themselves and don't recognize the value of a good heal/poke/disengage support.
