Where's the love, Riot?

I know most people come on here and say 'I'm a support main and .... (insert whiny rant)' and get met with a lot of derision from everyone who is NOT a support main. Understandable. If this is you, ignore and move on.

That said, I'm a support main, bronze 2, m6 Morgana, m6 Soraka, m6 Sona (top three) among others. So now you know where I'm coming from. This is definitely not a challenger level opinion piece.

Where's the love for the support role? Yeah, I can collect coins now if I want to take the one support item that is useless until stage 3 except as a mana sustain, but let's face it: The last several 'support' pushes have been utter garbage. Let's look:

Ivern: Awesome in the jungle, undoubtedly. Has a support-ish kit. Sucks at being a SUPPORT.

Rakan: Very new and can be tuned, but all in all, very underwhelming. Major nerfs when he isn't supporting Xayah, and even then, is a wannabe tank/assassin who can't tank and can't assassinate. Passive is useless. Heal is still insignificant. Does little to no damage unless you move away from the tank build he needs to build AP, and then his ult is next to useless.

Support Quests: Do I really need to discuss this? Coin: Fun mini game with a bit of mana sustain. Spellthief: May grant a move speed buff. Relic shield: Gives you Rakan's passive. (Didn't we discuss that earlier?)

Why can't Riot just make a decent support champ or better support items to match the champs that see play? I'm a DM/GM for several tabletop RPG's, and I make up new items at a rate of about 10 per day. Given only about 2 or 3 are any good, and I don't have to do any coding to get them into the game other than writing stats on a piece of paper, but I know enough about my game to pre-balance my items rather than nerfing/buffing after the fact.

[/rant]

Suggestions:

• Support champs NEED sustain. PERIOD. Whether it's mana or health, something that keeps them in lane and not pinging 'Mana 5%' or 'Health 15%' followed by 'sorry brb' 'X signals to be careful.' would be good. Before you ask, I DO buy potions and do very well at proccing all of the relevant support items. BUT: Ancient Coin requires your ADC to be on their game, or you need to wait for your lane minions to off the wave and hope a coin drops; Spellthief requires you to harass the enemy team, and provides nothing in exchange except gold, which the other two items give ambiently; Relic Shield requires you to be melee and last hit things for a minimal return heal.

• For the most part, support items do a decent job of keeping supports in a decent gold range - if they can stay in lane, with a decent ADC. Probably not a major issue in higher elos, granted. Gold/Silver/Bronze they flat out suck compared to a first back where you can grab a tear or catalyst (etc.). Not to mention if you don't grab a ward item ASAP you're obviously trolling as support, so your first/second hard earned 800 gold tends to go into a sightstone, which has no AP, no armor, no CD, just 150 health and 3 wards. Maybe add a benefit to Sightstone so it's really worth it to be purchased by a support? Maybe 5% CD or even 5% move speed? Enhanced resource regen would be nice (mana/energy not health obv.), but doubtful because then EVERYONE would buy it and start warding....waitaminute................... [zombie-brand-facepalm] [zombie-brand-mindblown] I'm sure I could come up with more, and I'm sure others can too. Which is why I'm REALLY CURIOUS as to WHY Riot can't seem to get this stuff???

[edit] Why not a passive on a support champ that automatically let's them split gold with a linked champion, similar to the way kalista's passive or knight's vow/zeke's active works?