How to make Support "Better"

Well, you can't. Besides the fact that the concept of making something "better" is purely subjective, the role of support is actually, for the most part, fine as it is.

tl;dr: The support role in general could use more items, but there's nothing actually wrong with support as a role. Get over it.

What do people who want support to be "better" mean by making it "better"? Well golly gee, it seems people who get autofilled into support want to go into support expecting to be able to solo carry the game. Which, as a support, you can do just that. Except on your KDA it shows on your assists, not your kills.

So what, general grievances are:

1. Support shouldn't have to buy sightstone (fun fact, if people actually used their free wards, support probably wouldn't have to buy sightstone. But mid and top and the adc can't be bothered to place a ward after laning phase--and the excuse of "but it takes up an item slot" is no longer valid. Though to be fair, jungle could also buy sightstone--if not make more effective use out of it than support--but junglers don't do this either because "muh damage tho")
2. Support is always under leveled and/or doesn't make as much gold as the rest of the team (a consequence of sharing a lane and not taking any CS and, theoretically, not taking any kills. Sure, the gold income items try to make up for this, but support will always have less gold)
3. Traditional support champions like don't do any damage unless they forgo the support item build and instead only build offensively (which this complaint seems tied more to adding offensive stats to traditional support items, like ...shit I don't know, since have damage tied to them.)

So the general consensus of autofilled support players is that they say "fuck support", and then take as support, mostly ignores buying a sightstone while saying "I'm NOT support" and then tryhards all over the game as they assume if they let the adc farm CS then they're "supporting". But then when the game doesn't work out in their favor and they still realize that they're behind in gold and under leveled, they come to the boards and complain that support sucks and needs to be changed.

And honestly, the only valid complaint about support is that there isn't a lot of variety in support itemization. Generally you can be good buying one or two "support intended" items and then build full AP or tank afterwards and everything will still work out fine.

Of the general grievances, the issue of support getting sightstone is a stigma placed on the position by the community. Sightstone in itself is not inherently terrible as an item. gives 150 health and three rechargable wards, and gives 500 health, 20% active item cooldown reduction, and 4 rechargable wards. Then people complained that it was not item slot efficient for supports to have to invest in both a sightstone and upgraded gold trinket, so Riot listened to the community and created sightstone/gold trinket hybrids, which, again, are not inherently terrible items. gives 500 health, 200% health regen, 2 gold per 10 seconds, shares minion gold and health with an ally, and has 4 rechargable wards. has 200 health, 100% health and mana regen, 10% cooldown reduction, grants 6 gold and 10 health on minion deaths, and has 4 rechargable wards. has 200 health, 100% mana regen, 25 ability power, 10% cooldown reduction, 2 gold per 10 seconds, 15 additional damage to enemies and grants 15 gold on hit, and has 4 rechargable wards.

Like, these sightstone/gold trinket hybrids are so overloaded in stats that if they were champions people would be losing their shit over how overloaded they are. But again, they're not terrible. They're not even bad. Last I checked, health was a good stat on any champion in any role.

Sure, as support building an actual support build, is the best option because of that 20% active item cooldown reduction. Get with and you're good to go for teamfights every other minute.

But even for the mage supports, is not bad. Yes, it doesn't have the active of , but if you really have your panties in a twist over losing an item slot to then it is obviously within your best interests to forgo and just get instead and then build your normal AP build. Sure, you get 25 less ability power than if you bought frost queen, but then you also don't have that extra 500 health you keep bitching about having to buy (or let's be realistic, 150 health because mage supports don't actually upgrade past ).

And besides, you know what other role could also buy sightstone and use it way more effectively? Jungle, since they can more easily place deep jungle wards. Because realistically, when a support is buying a sightstone as their first item, those three wards are bot until mid game. How in the hell are three wards bot supposed to help mid or top? Of course, if mid got a sightstone, then both Rift Herald and Dragon could be warded at all times. If top got a sightstone, they would literally never have the right to complain about ganks ever again.

Food for thought.

Second grievance, supports are under leveled and have less gold then everyone else. Yep. Welp. If support went top lane, you'd have the same problem. Whenever two champions are in a lane, they have to share experience. So naturally, support and adc are going to be under leveled together for a while. And realistically, unless your adc gets fed af, both the support and adc are going to be the same level throughout laning phase. But where are the complaints that adc is under leveled? Oh right, true, cuz if the adc starts complaining that if the support is stealing the exp (like when a support accidentally takes CS or KS's), then the support will leave and the adc will forget how to function or something.

How do you realistically hope to fix this? Make it so support champions get bonus exp growth in lane? But what defines a support champion--because as the mage support players like to point out, apparently any champion can support. Make it so the player in the support role in champion select gets bonus exp growth in game? But what if they switch with someone else and don't go support? What about blind pick players?

Experience sharing is simply a part of the game. Unless Riot added a laning item that boosted experience--oh wait, then everyone would buy that, so nope, can't do that.

Sucks to suck.

Third grievance, traditional supports don't do enough damage to solo carry the game, hence autofillers will take mage supports. As a main, I laugh at that. "Traditional supports don't do damage." Lol. K. Never seen a support pull everyone to their instant death? I have, every game with a Blitz. And don't tell anyone, but 's W is lowkey OP af. But you didn't hear that from me.

Just admit you don't actually play "traditional supports" and thus you don't know their damage potential, even if their build has and boots and only two damage items. : ^)

So yeah. Support themselves are not in a bad place right now. Honestly, I like the diversity of support right now except for Zyra fucking gut her Rito please. If there is any significant problem with supports, it's that there is not a lot of support items to choose from. But the reason for that lies in the history of , because if an item intended for a support is too good, then non-support champions will start taking it and then it's not a support item anymore. If they make AP support items with good stats, AP mages will start taking them. If they make tanky support items with good stats, tanks will start taking them.

Supports can't have nice things because other roles keep ruining it for them.