Questioning the value of ADC and Support in lower elo ranges
To preface, I have played support for almost 4 years now. I've played off and on but really gave the game a good push in Season 5. Less of a push in Season 6 but still played a fair amount of games. Overall, I have about 2000 games of support in the last 3 years.
So, at least this season, I can honestly say over 50% of the games I have played so far, I feel almost completely irrelevant to the outcome of the game. I can lose my lane and feed kills and we still win or I can play clean and make plays and get my ADC fed and lose. The only thing that appears to make a difference is the performance of the solo lane players. If my solo laners perform well, we win. Vice Versa, we lose.
I feel that the things support provides to the game are useless in low elo, at least for the most part. Players don't take advantage of vision, warding and rarely leverage a good cosmic binding or thresh lantern. Players in this elo only appear to listen to a carry with kills and damage so attempts to lead and provide positive direction are met with random cussing or ignored. A level 2 power spike is rarely acted upon, even when I'm pinging or initiating or attempting to provide some guidance and obviously terrible shot calling reigns supreme. There has always been resistance to players choosing support (Just look at all the incentives new players are being provided free support champs every rotation, etc) but I have never felt less useful in games than the first 50-60 games of season 7 so far.
It's almost as if the bot lane is penalized for having to work as a team, which is counterintuitive to every other online game in the world, where the most teamwork something requires, the greater the reward. ADCs are in a similar position.
At this point, I question the impact of the role. The only answer I can think of is to just take a mid laner and attempt to impact games as a secondary mid laner with a sighstone, which in my opinion, really isn't supporting, its just a second mid laner in the bottom lane but at this point it might be more useful.
Are any others feeling this way regarding support and ADC at least in low elo ranges? I would imagine things improve as the elo increases but at this point, I can provide a rather compelling case that support plays 10% or less of the outcome of the game in Silver and Bronze. The other roles are far more important.