"Enchanters should have their own stat" is a lousy idea

I've been seeing this suggestion pop up every so often, and a lot of people tend to clamor over it. I'm here to be a voice of reason and state why this is a terrible idea. It's with good intentions, but it's bad, and I'm going over why.

Brand and Zyra

You guys are sick of these two, right? Well, first of all, that's tough shit, because they're staying support picks regardless of the whining done here. With that said, why do these two work so well in bot lane? Because in a lane where only one person does damage and the other sort of adds utility to that guy's damage dealing in one way or another, these two (and Karma a bit) add another head of damage to worry about first, with utility being secondary. They practically double the lane's kill potential against you while yours is still 1/2 (primarily the marksman). Their weakness is that they're easy to kill if you're actually hitting them, but the role of support in general has taken a MASSIVE turn towards defensive play and itemization, so tank supports never had the reach to subdue them, but mage supports will, as the lane goes on, begin to lack the damage to hurt them even if they're landing hits on them.

So now the new idea is "Make enchanters forsake all damage dealing so they can build this 'utility' stat instead". This doesn't solve the above problem that Zyra and Brand don't respect that shit enough to leave bot lane. All this will do is make enchanters even more ignorable while enemies jump over and around you to kill your carries. Or burn all of you at once...that too. All this does is allow Brand and Zyra to be even stronger as support options more than anything.

Can't you just make the utility of enchanters stronger than their damage?

No, and here's why.

In any well-designed game centered around combat, offense > defense. Or rather, offense should reap better reward than defense. If I put in, say, 50 "points" into offense in a fighting game, with "points" being something like "effort" in this analogy, and you put in 50 "points" into some sort of defensive reaction to my offensive actions, I imagine the game would get old really fast if I couldn't ever land a solid combo or a decent special move with you blocking me all game long. That's why those games tend to have a lot of ways to attack, between throws, attacks that convert into throws, high attacks, low attacks, projectiles, attacks from the air, unblockable moves, and so on, but not a myriad of defensive options. I mean, you can block low or high, parry, tech a throw...and that's usually the most of it save a few spare things that vary from game to game. That's why devs make it so that you have to put more effort into managing a few defensive options to deal with significantly more offensive ones, so the balance is that I'm risking my standing in the match with 50 "points" in offense, attempting to put you down through your defenses, which you'd need to be putting like 60 or so "points" into to keep up against my attacks against you. In well developed fighting games, anyway.

"But that isn't Lea-"

So now we're in League, right? Honestly, I don't have to try that hard to make a decent comparison given the current meta. With this whole Redemption/Locket thing going on, what's the number one frustration people have right now? "We can't even fight through their bonus sustain with all that shit going on". Right, and people have the right to be mad about that. Supports should have agency in the game, but it shouldn't be 100 percent defense. If this is the case, it invalidates divers and assassins and their "50 points of offense" by pressing a few actives and spells. It's essentially Zed's "50 points of offense" vs. Janna's "30 points of defense" and Janna's defense doesn't just save her, but saves everyone on her team that the assassin/diver wants to dive. That isn't necessarily fun game play. Sure, the support feels like they're apart of the match, but it's really just them waiting for the enemy to run their faces into their OBVIOUS shield that they just can't do shit about.

"So how does this tie into Brand and Zyra?"

So with this established, if you want to make bot lane an insufferable sustain war where no one dies unless ganked, then yes, you can make it so enchanters have shields and heals so strong that Brand and Zyra just can't hang down there...but no one's that stupid.

On top of that, why design a stat for like 10 - 15 champs?

This stat only has enchanters in mind. Tank supports build defenses, and a new "utility" stat doesn't change that. Brand, Zyra, and Vel build ap, and they have enough utility to make it bot lane, coasting off of their base kits for damage. This stat really only has enchanters in mind, and not only is that unfairly targeting the class, but it's stupid. We're proposing an entire new stat for hardly anyone to use? Out of 130+ champs? That's daft.

To boot, it's hypocritical

Like, why is it that tank supports can be "kind of tanky", but mage supports can't "kind of do damage"? You guys don't realize that Brand and Zyra are OBVIOUS outliers when it comes to the amount of damage a support can put out? Why be afraid of supports dealing some damage because of those two? As established already, those two fight with bases and passives, not scalings. How's it fair that someone like Lulu is discouraged from building a damage stat to be an off-mage like you'd think she would, but tank supports are encouraged to build tank stats and be off-tanks?

It'd also make the role even more stale

This idea comes from the notion that every enchanter should be played passive, like Janna/Soraka style. So instead of working so that we have itemization that reflects the variety of play styles in the role, between offensive enchanters, defensive ones, wardens, vanguards, a burst mage, and a controller, we want to chase away the damage dealing controller and burst mage, ignore the vanguards and the fact that there's not a single support item that really caters to the thought of an offensive tank, and force every enchanter into a Janna-ish play style. Mmmm the variety. Nice and barely in the fight. Such invigorating game play.

Lastly, weren't we already tired of heal/shield being shoved down our throats?

Yeah, yeah, the stat would also effect slows and speed ups, but this would still reinforce this heal/shield meta where even Thresh can be found rushing a freaking Redemption. Weren't we over this already? Are we not? We want MORE? REALLY? Wowie...

And that's basically it, boys. Long story short is that it wouldn't necessarily solve any problems people seem to have with the role, but it'd just double down on current issues between Zyra/Brand being strong, Redemption/Locket being strong, and support being stale.