User blog comment:JojobaExtract/Supporting in the current meta/@comment-15244341-20130923231416

Riot are working to adress this concerns in Season 4 already.

1) Pick not the healbot. Sona and Soraka feel boring because they mostly are relegated to spamming heals and auras. Admitedly, Sona has poking power and her ultimate, but Soraka is pretty much the most boring support and Riot have said this themselves. People not only pick Thresh because he is strong now. He is truly fun to play: he has poke with E, a skillshot with high rewards in Q, a fun "not just a shield" in his lantern, plus his passive makes him a relevant force in a teamfight. Not to speak of the great damage on his ultimate thanks to his passive's AP plus high base damage. Leona is the same. She gets enough fun mechanics on her kit that she feels like a relevant character in the late game. Hell, she can even initiate.

2) People being idiots is not a problem of the role. Is a problem with people being idiots and ADCs believing themselves to be the new coming of Doublelift or whatever. Call them on their bullshit and keep on doing your job. To play LoL or any online game you need a thick skin. If you can't ward around lategame because no one wants to go with you to dissuade people from jumping on you, ask. If your ADC gets caught and blames it on you, tell them their positioning was awful in a manner as delicate as you are capable of or want to. When you support, you are your ADCs mom. Jungler is everyone's mom. Moms don't get thanked. Get used to it.

3) You do have to buy wards. Period. Everyone else does too. Tell them so in a polite manner. Say that you are X gold short of buying a ward for blue/enemy wraiths/their fountain or whatever. Say that you will pink both Baron and Dragon when needed, but that you will appreciate if someone else can spend 75g in a ward for a good spot. Heck, explain why the spot is great for warding. Tell them they will get something out of it. Always carry pinks/oracles. Your items are sadly not as important as vision. They don't care to help you? Then ask them if they would rather give you farm. Because you don't have gold. If that still won't work, then please ignore the idiots. They are beyond salvation and an annoyance.

4) I don't see the point being made here. Leona (the support I play the most) cares nothing for being full build. Her scalings are crappy. Her bases terrible and her passive doesn't exist in a solo lane. Her tankyness comes from one of her abilities which makes it so that she works wonders with little to no items. Soraka does some nice damage with a tanky Mpen build. So does Brand. A bit more, actually, since he is designed to be a damage champion. 2.5 second silence is something you get wether you are mid, top or bot, because CC doesn't scale with items. That's the point of a support champion. They do not scale well at all with items. They need levels and little amounts of utility items. Sure. 600 heal, 600 shield. Thats what... Orianna's Q->W->Q, which she does every what, five seconds? Support mages and heals are inherently problematic. If too strong, they are basically a must have and make the winning team the one who runs out of heals the last. Riot has opted for weak/long cooldown heals (Soraka) or spammable almost unnoticeable heals (Sona, Alistair). Supports are designed to work badly on anything that isn't bot lane. They might be situationally okay in some other places (such as Blitz top, which is actually his intended place, or Thresh top, because his damage is retarded), but they are definitely worse of. Janna, for example, is an ok pusher with tornado. And that's it. No actual damage to offer to a teamfight since her cooldowns are designed to protect the carry with huge CC, not to deal damage.

Also Karma is a support no more. She is a top lane mage. No buts about it, since she offers a mediocre shield and ok early game poke to bot lane. Her CC is suicide later on also.

Note that I do agree supports need love. They just need an item overhaul that lets them get their supporting items fast enough to keep up with the pace of the game. And something to be done about warding. Riot is working on both, so close you fingers and believe they will do well.

PD: On a side note. I almost always find myself buying wards early and mid game as a jungler, and lately the map has more of my wards than the support's. It feels pretty damn weird.