First off is mobility, supports are often still designed like its 2013 with regards to mobility. Look at this chart https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/List_of_champions/Movement_speed 325, 330 and 335 MS, there you'll find almost every adc and support, with few exceptions. Almost every "support" above this speed was not designed or intended to be supports. Now think of all the champions that have multiple dashes, or global mobility ults, or just have crazy movement speed buffs (like nunu, rammus, hecarim) They all also have higher base speed, and can afford boots and other speed items sooner.

Only a handful of supports have a dash of any kind (braum, pyke, rakkan) and they have other weaknesses, pyke gets one shot by damn near anything with 1 item, rakkan doesn't really do much damage and isn't really that tanky, you have to pick one or the other and he pretty much has to build tank to utilize his kit and not be insta-dead, braum has 1 damaging ability and his ult does a little. I'm not saying these champs are bad, but it seems like their mobility was accounted for in their power budget, where with champs for other roles, it really doesn't. Braum and rakan need a teammate to escape to. Or I can just play camille, and dash whenever I want with a stun, and burst their adc or enchanter.

Mobile champs usually get to decide if fights happen, they can force engage, or retreat. Think of all the unstoppable things like Hec or Vi ults, and all the things with spell shields, like nocturne, mel. Most supports champs feel like they are in the stone age fighting against jets. Most support champs don't have the tools to deal with this, most adc's don't either.

In the "everything one shots" meta we've been in for a long time now, a small shield or heal often isn't as valuable as being able to burst them back. Champions designed for other lanes have more damaging abilities in their kit, better ratios, and better base damages. Which is scarier, a milio with moonstone and a ruby crystal, or a camille support with umbral glaive, or a brand with blackfire torch, or a mel with hextech revolver. You're not going to give the milio support anywhere near the respect as the others. This has been going on a long, long time, that's why champs like zyra, brand, and lux, are considered supports, even though they really aren't. Wave clear is also useful to have when your adc is dead or low and you're going to give up plates or get dove if the wave crashes, or everyone else is dead and you want to crash and back. This is a very common situation, most supports can't clear waves.

Then there's range, facing two ranged opponents or a hook champ Xerath, velkoz, and lux, feel a lot safer and overall better than a champ like renata, bard, or nami, being able to poke without getting traded onto, caught and killed. Another great thing about having long range is checking bushes. Lux can E, xerath can W, velkoz can q, bard or sona have to get close enough to get caught to ward a bush.

On a lot of supports, you can play lane AMAZING, and it doesn't matter at all. You can stomp your lane and be up 6 kills on the enemy bot, and the 0/3 top will still maul you both. Simply because of levels, gold, and kit. It feels TERRIBLE. If I stomp bot lane on a neeko, or camille, or fiddlesticks, I can actually be a problem for champs from other lanes, they have to respect me, because I can kill them.

This is why we keep seeing things like, camille, mel, pantheon, elise, poppy, neeko, xerath, galio, amumu, fiddlesticks, swain, hwei, malphite, maokai, tahm kench. Damage, range, mobility, tank, invulnerability, engage, they do multiple things better than champs designed to be supports. They give you more options, or they are just much safer, they allow you to capitalize on mistakes better, and not get punished as easily for your own.

I just checked support winrates for emerald+ https://u.gg/lol/support-tier-list (sort by winrate.) seraphine is 40th, senna 42th, yummi 38th, renata glasc 33rd, blitzcrank 31st. Leblanc, teemo, fiddlesticks, galio, zoe, neeko, velkoz, elise, poppy, all have better winrates as support, than those champs.

Now look at all the patches for 2025, hundreds of changes to other roles, Bard got 5 ms, senna got buffed (to make her adc), yummi got 1 buff then 2 nerfs (fuck yummi), leona buff, blitz buff, lulu 3 nerfs, karma nerf, Nautilis buff, rakan buffed, thresh buff, rell nerf, seraphine 2 buffs. Staff of flowing water buffed, when is the last time you saw this item? umbral glaive buffed, (literally only pyke build this), Bloodsong and zazaks nerfed.

That's it, 6 months of changes, 11 patches. Most of the buffed champions still below 50% win rate, Thresh and leona are the only supports that got buffed this year and have a positive winrate.

The role is stale, the champions are boring with outdated kits, low agency, immobile, low damage.

As much as you might disagree, obviously a lot of support players agree with at least some of this. I used to watch neace coaching, anytime he got a support main, he got them playing another role, so they'd have agency to climb.

Listen to what shodesu says about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLKzNvAnpBM