When you're more surprised to see Jinx played as an ADC than Lee Sin played as a support in Korean professional play, you have to start asking yourself: Exactly what is it that makes a support champion viable?

Let's first ask ourselves, what is it that support champions do? Well, they help keep their ADC alive...or help lock down an enemy champion. They ward the map. They don't need to do damage but some of them do. Generally they have good crowd control even though some have very limited CC, like Soraka or Karma. Admittedly you don't see these supports that often but they do sometimes see play. We can actually go one level deeper and come up with an even more fundamental credo for supports.

Support champions benefit their team a lot without many items to make themselves stronger.

That's really what it is. When you're playing a support, you're not expecting to get a lot of gold. Of course there are those games where the enemy botlane tries to dive you twice by four minutes and you end up picking up two double kills and going legendary on support Annie by 15 minutes but that's definitely the exception. The norm is, you're not getting items that will directly make you stronger.

So let's talk about what you can do without items. There are two fundamental things that you can do that I'm going to break up into three categories.

1. Have high base damages
2. Provide utility in the form of CC
3. Provide utility in the form of buffs to your team

High base damage is especially important in lane. Supports like Annie, Zyra and, yes, Lee Sin score well here. After all, if you can snowball the lane hard enough, who cares that you provide somewhat less utility later on? Most unconventional supports fall into this category, such as LeBlanc. AoE base damage for clearing waves, such as Lulu's Q and Zyra's Q, are also important to consider here.

Utility can be broken up into two subcategories: Crowd control and ally buffs. The vast majority of champions frequently seen as support have at least one form of CC, the notable exception being Nidalee. Whether it's the all-in hard CC of Leona, the peel CC of Lulu, the engage CC of Sona, or the all-around CC of Thresh, supports do need something to facilitate fights in botlane.

Without CC, it can be extremely difficult to press an advantage to the point of picking up a kill and the threat of diving is low, so it's easy for the enemy botlane to stay under tower and farm. Of course, when it comes to teamfighting, having at least one form of hard CC on the support is almost essential. You need CC to initiate and you need CC to peel. Generally you'll want more CC than just what top/jungle/mid have, though of course poke compositions are an exception.

Finally, the utility can lie in the form of ally buffs. This is especially useful when you have a hyper-carry like Vayne (remember when Vayne/Janna was godly?), but poke compositions also benefit significantly from movespeed bonuses like those that Karma and, to some extent, Sona provide. Sustain also falls into this category, as do passive auras like Taric's.

All three of these factors are important in considering the viability of a support champion and a champion that doesn't necessarily excel in one of the areas can be very strong in the others. However, you need to be very aware of exactly how to take advantage of your support's strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. Don't pick Caitlyn with a Zed or Kha'zix support but if you pick someone with high burst potential and a gap closer, like Graves or Corki, and you play the lane correctly, you should be able to do well, especially if your opponents aren't expecting the damage. If you have a high-CC lane like Caitlyn/Thresh, take advantage of your utility with a high-damage jungler like Elise or Lee Sin but don't try to force all-in fights because you'll probably lose to a lane with more damage.

The moral here is to judge a champion by what it's able to do, not by whether you want to see it played in a certain role. Think hard about the synergy that can exist between ADC and support and try to be open-minded about support champions. At the same time avoid picks that don't excel in any of these categories, like Vayne or Irelia.

So the next time you go into solo queue and see that you have a support Ashe or Talon, don't immediately discredit that player. Instead, think to yourself, how can this champion assist me in lane? Play to that style and maybe you'll find that your support can carry the entire game. After all, someone with 1.000 Talon games and five Soraka games is probably going to be more useful to you as support Talon than as support Soraka.

The next time you're "stuck as support", try playing your main champion in that role. Explain to your ADC how you can benefit in lane, make sure he's ok with it and go carry your game!