@Xypherous please read

On the off chance that you see this Xypherous I would first like to thank you for being so open and talkative with the community. The reason I am posting this is while going through the PBE update and seeing the support changes I naturally went to the PBE thread and was going to post on that thread but I don't have a PBE account so I was forced into this (I did apply for one :).

I have really enjoyed your work over the years Xypherous (been playing since season 1) and even now the support item changes look great. I believe it leads to some pretty difficult item choices for some champions particularly Thresh/Blitz (really excited to build talisman on Thresh to see how it is)

Let get to the bread of butter of why I decided to post this in the first place though and that is support item changes. (this is probably going to be a long post and I am sorry for that but I do believe the feedback/ideas I'm giving would provide a better state for supports and this game in general) Disclaimer: I am not good at writing, my ideas are always better conveyed through speech (dream of mine would be to to hop into a curse call and further explain all of these ideas but I don't see that ever happening)

The problem I have with support after 6 years and climbing from bronze to diamond from season 4-6 is that support and excuse my language is the bitch role simply put. Now I'm not saying supports are not essential to the team because they are and a good support will/can carry games hardcore. We have had a juggernaut, marksman, and now a mage rework, hopefully; support is the next to get a major rework and I beg you Riot not to fuck up the support rework. I will admit you did an amazing job with the mage rework with the exception that you did not remove LOCKET OF THE IRON SOLARI. I mean come on we all know this item should be removed and it should of been in the mage rework when you were already shifting/balancing new mage power/items. (I will provide a solution later for the iron solari problem though).

So right now we have really have three different type of supports (some supports can be listed in multiple groups depending on item build)

1. Tanks- Blitz, Thresh, Braum, Leona, Taric, Ali, and then you have the support wannabes who will play support if they are too weak to be top Naut, Poppy, Tahm, Trundle
2. Utility (Enchantress if you're Riot)- Nami, Soraka, Janna but you also have a sub-group of Enchantresses which I like to call Utility mages and that would include Sona, Zilean, Lulu (if her damage was toned down and her utility increased), and Bard.
3. Mages- Morg, Annie, Zyra, Vel'koz, Brand, and Lux

Supports get shafted pretty hardcore when it comes to income and experience for various reasons like roaming, warding, and we rarely if ever get solo XP or farm plus we sacrifice ourselves if it will save the carries in some situations (it's a lot better now then it used to be).

(This is where explaining through writing is going to be difficult) With the limited resources supports receive innately their power should be tied into their starting items Targons, FQC, and Ancient Coin. This is going to be hard to explain but I believe there would be a way to create an entire item set for supports that highlight strengths of different champions. Much like what you're doing with forbidden idol adding the healing bonus you could essentially create support friendly items that solo laners cannot purchase. Hopefully this example is going to make my intentions more clear, Thresh is a great champion he has many different play styles (my favorite is going balls deep trying to madlife Ezreals) but with the most recently changes to last whisper he gets cut down by adcs and well everyone in general he isnt that tanky and his cc isnt reliable. For a good Thresh build you need 40% cdr various ways can be upgrade to FOTM, FH, you obviously get 10 from Locket because you know I have to buy that item, and maybe 10 from boots depending if you want speed or spells. lets assume I dont get FOTM but instead trade off the speed for the Ionias and lets not forget the 2200 we have to spend on EOTE. For a Thresh to feel good about his build you need 8400 but I forgot to tell you that if you go with this build (very popular build) you will get one shot by most everything in the game...as a tank

Now if Xypherous if you have made it this far if ever made it to this page I have plenty of ideas and they are/might be terrible in your eyes but I believe if a change like this would be made it would not only increase the number of support but the quality of life for the supports as well. I would go into the actual items I have in mind for the supports and I will if I get any feedback and I do have ideas on how to not allow the FQC meta happen again with solo laners bogarted our support items.