support items need a clear niche

I think the issue is riot tried to make support items that everyone can "pick between" they are meant to be thematic and match with their respective regions.... but honestly it is going to make it a lot more balanced...

although choice is nice.... there are several different playstyles in bot lane for supports.

sustain lane- the goal here is to farm up and make your adc (and support) monsters endgame but not really wanting to go into fights early game

kill lane- the goal of this lane is to be aggresive early and get kills... generally this kind of lane waits passively for enemies to make a mistake, and then goes all in while at a positional advantage.

poke lanes- the goal here is obvious as well, you slowly wittle down enemies with pokes and then allining when you have a clear health advantage.

right now the support items KIND OF fill these niches

ancient coin - be passive

spellthief blade - poke with aa's

targon's brace - farm heavily and get both your adc and support ahead in gold.

I think changes that should be made are generally small

ancient coin should become the new kill lane support item.... it should be the lowest gold but also have higher stats comparitively to the others. I think if they gave gold on kills or assists this item would fit the lane type much better and really make clear what this item is for. the stats might need a slight increase but I think the gold being basically the lowest right now is perfectly fine.

this item should complement waiting passively and getting kills, and should be very strong early game.

spellthief blade should become the poke lane support item... it should be decent stats provided and gold provided, since it doesn't need just stats for all in, and if played more passively, should still provide more gold lategame than ancient coin does. a minor qol fix is that it should provide the gold from ANY damage dealt to a champion, rather than just aa.... right now some champions have issues getting ANY aa's on a target but still are made to be poke lane champions. They end up going targon's because they can still cs easily but the poke item doesn't work for them. They end up getting an item that is not made for how their champion was designed, and I dislike that.

this item should complement passively poking and slowly killing an enemy

targon's brace this item should become the sustain lane support item. it should provide the least stats but also the greatest gold gain. with this item all ins would be a bad idea and farming would put you farther ahead. I think for adc's like vayne or kog' maw... this would definately be a very beneficial item.

this item should complement heavy farming and trying to scale to late game quicker

overall I think the choice between support items should not be about what you enjoy the most, but what kind of lane you are going for... you ALREADY picked a support you like to play and you like their playstyle... so having a support item that complements that playstyle is better than picking a support item that you think is a little more fun even if it doesn't work as well. I also think that giving them clear and defined roles is the only way to balance them... right now they all are used in any scenario... and it means one will ALWAYS be best. giving them a niche will mean even if one is slightly undertunes it will still outperform the others for a given scenario.

thoughts?

tl;dr: support items need niches to make them balanceable and more clear/fun. coin should be kill lane, blade should be poke lane, brace should be farm lane. right now they are not balanceable because they all can do a little of everything and one will always be better than the others