All the problems with them seems to stem from the fact that solo lanes abuse them. Why not do something like lock these items just to the person that queued as support that game (and make it so that they can be reported for said solo lane abuse i.e not performing the support role as intended when queued as a support)?
Vision items DO need reworks... But riot needs to end their war on vision first. We could do very well if riot would just give us sightstone...
Sightstone; 800g. No stats, just wards. Becomes the main component of all gold income items.
Quests are reworked;
; after quest completion grants bramble shield: 10% of max HP is gained as a shield that regenerates slowly over time based on your HP/5.
; after quest completion grants queens grace: Damaging an enemy champion while you have a charge of Queens Tribute will slow them by 30% for 1 second and deal an additional 0.xxAP as magic damage.
; after quest completion grants "hungry sands"; Coins are collected automatically and give 50g, 25mana, and 25HP. Also increases the pickup range of all pickups by 100%.
I just really miss sightstone and wards that don't expire about 10 seconds after you put them down early game. Really tiring when nobody else wards and I can't wait for a 500 gold quest to put the wards down where they need to be.
Can't we just have items that are fine if 'poached'? If Lee Sin or a Rumble wants to trade an important item slot for a sightstone, shouldn't they be allowed to?
With the 0 cs strat, Riot really should've looked into the stats of Spellthief. Why does it do magic damage on-hit? Maybe get rid of 10g on hit and just boost the passive gold generation a bit? Lower the value of the item, increase the risk of the strategy.
Also, I like Paroe's thought on quests. Why is something as essential as vision locked behind a really-punishable wall? If quests are going to be a thing, maybe make it a bit more like tear (takes a while to be worth getting) rather than tear-inducing.
League Fandom Wiki:
Tear of the Goddess is 45.75% gold efficient at no 0 mana charge.
Tear of the Goddess is 183.01% gold efficient when fully stacked.
Spellthief's Edge is 85.63% gold efficient. Spellthief's Edge becomes gold efficient in 4 minutes and 48 seconds without using Tribute, or after 6 hits against a champion or structure while Tribute is off cooldown.
The issue would then be blind pick. Would you not be allowed to buy these items in this mode? Also people would no longer be able to swap roles if the support is autofilled and someone is willing to swap with them.
its nothing new, in the pass junglers/solo laners would get heart of gold and phil stone to get gold generation
in the old rune system supports use to rune gold per 10 runes then those got nerfed while running gold support income items
its not they are actually being abused its people are crying its a no fun/ no interactive game play when they go zil top with gold support income item + klepto and then let the jungler come and tax the wave to get gold income/xp since the xp in jungle got nerfed.
Frankly support items shouldnt really matter whether solo lanes abuse them or not they need more overall power and damage items overall less power Sure people will rush support items for a stronger early but let them and let them fall behind from people who build real damage items.
Support itemization needs new additions and a rework.
Mage itemization needs new additions and a rework.
Jungler itemization needs a rework.
Will any of this happen? No.
Why?
Riot is just too lazy and they dont want to make "Big changes which could disrupt the fabric of time and space", no matter how unbalanced, unfair, unhealthy or just how not logical the itemization is. Dont expect any changes, seriously. They are too slow to fix anything in time.
Few things I think are worth noting:
First, I completely agree that support items need a rework, but not because the solo laners are abusing them...I'll get more into detail about that part in a sec. Regardless of reason, I do think we'd get a lot further by using some variant of Paroe's sightstone idea. It makes a lot of sense, at the very least.
I don't think the gold-gen is bad on the support items, and I really don't think that the solo lane "abuse" of the gold-gen is the reason they're unbalanced. Frostfang (the UPGRADED spellthief, as regular spellthief only granted 7 gold on hit) grants 15 gold on hit, with 3 charges that regen one at a time on a 20s timer. Sure, both variants also get about 2g/s passively too. An average clear time for a minion wave (worth about 105 gold) by last hitting only is around 20s. even with the upgraded item, you're looking at a maximum of 100g (through 4 procs and 20s of gold-gen) to about 105g, and that's not including a cannon minion (which would boost the cs side to about 165-170g) You are still losing money without cs, slowly but surely, and keep in mind that the argument about support item abuse was for spellthief's not for its upgraded component, and that I'm not covering the extra 450g to upgrade it since obviously you can't start with the upgrade. With regular spellthief's that deficit is actually about 72/105(or165 for cannon wave) meaning that the solo laner "abuse" of this item is really a fancy excuse for players to get salty about being destroyed by a solo laner with a support item.
Blind pick, auto-fill, and trading roles in ranked/draft. Can't really lock support items to a support when roles can't be determined, so blind pick will prevent you from using any control method like that. And good riddance, because that's pretty counterintuitive. Especially considering that this would mean your support wouldn't be able to build a support item if they traded a different lane for their role. Unless you want to trade accounts with each other for that game...but even the mention of that sarcastically is probably going to end up getting me reprimanded by a mod (and hopefully not outright banned) as a potential phishing scam. Don't share your passwords with people kids.
I also have to mention this, because it really irks me, but the hotfix for the support items functioning like "Conduit" items do is absolutely horrible. Why? Because it's extremely restrictive. First of all, supports frequently roam away from their lane to place wards. What happens when they go to ward and find an enemy? They embrace pirate tradition, and they fight to run away. But instead of earning anything, they now get nothing. Supports also like to frequently stay in lane while their adc goes back to catch the minions and potentially get a bit more gold from their poke...that they now don't get. I would understand dialing the gold-gen back a bit if they really thought it was op (5g for Spellthief's and 10g for Frostfang is perfectly reasonable) but I don't really see why support is being shafted so hard because of bad solo laners failing to handle support items being built in their lane. Also, the removal of the vision component is just asinine. What is a support's job? Ask literally anyone, and they will say "to place wards and not let their team die." Couple that with the fact that there's almost evidence that some solo laners and most adcs straight up seem to have disabled the hotkey for their trinkets, and now you're left with a support being blamed even more for lack of vision now, since most of them build a vision item and then get sweeper. You're halving the support's vision control score and gutting their ability to afford anything, all to appease solo laners with the cognitive functionality of Fiddlesticks (he hasn't got a brain) being unable to tolerate losing to spellthief's in a 1v1.
I hate riots bandaid fixes... the monster hunter debuff hurt junglers that we’re playing as intended when they were trying to punish funneling, the spellthiefs leash hurts supports who are playing as intended in order to punish the top laners abusing them. They need to just flex some creative muscles or be willing to revert changes that caused bullshit like that to exist in the first place
Cs bounties created the spellthiefs klepto top strat, a mechanic that shouldn’t have been introduced in the first place
THANK YOU!!! I cant count the number of posts I have made that fell into disinterest about this topic. Supports already build a ward item no other role is dumb enough to build... so make it so their is a support item pool that can only be accessed by completeing the fully build support item. Items that better accommodate the supports needs without being broken to the other champions that wont wanna do what must be done to get them.
Have started to see 
in the jungle. As first item or second item, not in alot of games but a few.
Probably inc nerfs to that one aswell, then we can truly go back to tank support meta and perma ban 
.
What do we think about going back to GP5 and having the supports' abilities buffed?
I can see one major flaw already. Two, actually:
1: Blind pick. Support items are quite literally unusable in blind pick? 2, and the actually important one: what if someone switches roles? Suddenly the guy who swapped roles can use support items, but the person who was in "Bot" can't?
