Crippling overspecialization; what no one seems to learn.

Another anvil that I have dropped so many times the past year alone, I have left a crater on the planet deeper than the Challenger Deep, and still no one can buy a clue. I don't know if I can attribute this to cognitive dissonance, blinding, stroke inducing ignorance, insanity, or people subscribing to Someone Else's Problem as their ism. But seriously, what the hell is wrong with the playerbase?!

I am a very, very, VERY, EXTRAORDINARILY jaded support main. The last year was both the best and worst of times for supports; we got huge boosts to our utility, items geared towards us, Braum, and trinkets and ward limits so we weren't dedicated ward mules. At the same time, the brief collective seizure that was Hexakill, the Feral Flare, and the assassin meta created an environment that is beyond toxic.

I didn't choose to become a support main; the role fell into my lap during Season 3 when people would rather drink a gallon of bleach than play one game as support. After a while, I noticed that the role was compensating for everything the team lacked, and as we entered season 4, what the teams lacked grew, and continued to grow, and has never stopped growing since.

At first, I warned people whenever we would be all assassin/all damage. No one took the hint that when you are almost all melee with barely a slow between four of the players... well, you should either be especially sure of your game, or be prepared to face the consequence of your crippling overspecialization. If you are all in damage and nothing else, what do you do once that stops working? You have nothing else to fall back on. Now... I don't warn people anymore. No one has bothered to buy a clue for the past year, and with the overreaction to the tank buffs, to what people are calling the tank meta, I'm pretty certain they will continue to not learn.

The primary role of the support is to do two things; compliment the strengths of the rest of the team, and compensate for their weaknesses. In depth, this includes warding, applying buffs, crowd control, heals, scouting ahead, and helping allies. The more things the rest of the team either can't or is unwilling to do, the support is expected to pick up. This includes tanking, stealing dragon/baron (I've been ordered to do this more times than I can count on both hands), pushing lanes, smashing towers, defending lanes, holding back siege minions, peeling allies, and the list goes on for a mile and a half. At its worst, i don't even get the privilege of recalling, a basic liberty that everyone takes for granted. Even if I have less than a hundred HP and no mana, I'm expected to run in and help someone else try and secure a kill, and I've been reported for doing otherwise.

This has to stop. Stop specializing as a team in one thing. It doesn't work. It has never worked, even in the arms race that was the assassin meta last year. That ship has long since sailed, and now the weaknesses of an all damage team has been made all the more apparent, but in an exercise of sheer insanity, no one gets this, and then I'm expected to cover up everyone else's shortcomings. I'll continue to support - because someone has to - but I'm tired of going far beyond the call of duty when others can barely fulfill their own roles. People want to be shortsighted, then they can continue to wallow in ignorance. I'm done trying to beat their heads in with this anvil.