Hello everyone. I'm Sam, and this is my first guide. I'm not the best player by any stretch, but I'm alright. I thought maybe this temoplate would help newer players have a standard build for their support champions. Different situations call for different builds, but this is an easy-to-remember build based off of aura items to help most supports most of the time until theu find their own, better build. Personally, I've been using a build similar to this most of the time recently, mainly as Leona. It's not perfect, but it works. The idea is that all of your auras can buff your adc in the laning phase, your team in teamfights, and even yourself all of the time. I'll get into more detail in further sections.

NOTE: I'm new and unsure of all the fancy intricacies of designing these. Therefore, most of this guide will be rather simple and text based rather than in-depth and full of graphics. After all, it's aimed at the simple, so there's no need to be too fancy.

As a support, you won't want to be getting creep kills. You most likely be camping in the side brush most of the time. That being the case, extra gold gain is a priority. Get all of the gold over time you can. This will be 3 quints and 9 seals totaling roughly 5 gold per 10 seconds, which is basically like having a gold per 10 item right off the bat, meaning you won't need to rely on them.

Also, your bush camping will come with a few advantages. Since you are usually out sight and of low priority to the enemy, you have a lot of downtime in the bushes. This is where the other runes come into play. Get 9 glyphs for health regen per 5 seconds and 9 marks for mana regen per 5 seconds. These will help you take some chances trying to secure kills. If you mess up a bit, simply retreat to your bush where you can regenerate your health and mana while still acquiring your passive gold. The health and mana regen will fall off somewhat fast, however, and are mostly aimed at giving you decent sustainability early game.

I wanted to keep these simple when I was making my support stuff. Basically, I try to put all of my masteries into the utility tree since it has the most usefulness for supports. It gives some more mana and mana regen, which is always nice. It increases the vision of wards, which you will need to buy. The most important feature is the further increase of passive gold gain. Along with runes, these masteries give you a total of around 7 gold per 10 seconds. This can easily help you avoid purchasing those pesky gold per 10 items. The final point in utility reduces the cooldown of your summoner spells, which is what the single point in the offense tree is about. Refer to the next section for some quick details.

The main summoner spells you will want are EXHAUST and IGNITE. (I just put them in caps for easy glancing purposes) Exhaust will reduce the enemy's damage and movement speed for a few seconds, which can be used to secure a kill or make an escape, and sometimes both. Ignite is good for getting kills, especially when your adc is gone and you are left facing an opponent alone that is low on health. Be careful. If you ignite a weakened enemy, you might steal the kill from your carry, which you never want to do. You're a support, you live on assists. Try to ignite early in a fight if you think it will ultimately result in a kill from the onset. Otherwise, consider saving it for the opportune moment.

The one point in the offensive mastery tree makes both of these spells even stronger. That's reallt all there is to it. All the more reason to take them both.

Alternatives:
-FLASH is always a good option. Personally, my reflexes aren't that great and it's an item you need to use with good timing. I usually end up in a panic and either use it too early or, even worse, too late... which isn't really using it anyway.
-HEAL can help your partner in a jam, but it has a long cooldown and it doesn't help acquire kills.
-CLAIRVOYANCE can be nice for some extra vision and quick checks of areas, but really it's more of a fun spell than it is a useful one.
-CLARITY is only for a very mana-dependent duo. If both you and your carry will have mana issues, this may be useful, plus the cooldown isn't too bad.

Overview:
I made the quick list of items simple so you know what to get. Here's how you should go about it logically.
1. Start - buy BOOTS OF SPEED and one SIGHT WARD
2. First time back - buy whatever you can to start getting ZEKE'S HERALD and another SIGHT WARD
3. Next time back - finish ZEKE'S HARALD if possible, start to finish IONIAN BOOTS OF LUCIDITY, buy a SIGHT WARD
4. finish boots, start AEGIS OF THE LEGION, buy a SIGHT WARD
5. continue to buy a SIGHT WARD each time back and building up each item in sequence
6. after completing boots and all of the aura items, you should have one slot left open. If you don't have much gold, simply buy another SIGHT WARD until next time. If you DO have a good pool of gold saved up, then here's what you do. Buy ORACLE'S ELIXIR. It takes up a slot, but use it at the fountain and since it stays active you can go back into the shop immediately and buy VISION WARDS. I recommend buying as many as you can with your leftover gold, although you'll usually have enough to buy the maximum 5 for the open slot.

Details:
BOOTS OF LUCIDITY help you with cooldowns so you can use your abolities more often, a common thing for supports to get.

ZEKE'S HERALD is one of the best support items in my opinion, and here's why. Zeke's gives you and your adc attack speed and lifesteal. If you can manage to get it early enough, it will help a lot for the laning phase. Your adc will be adle to sustain more, plus it helps the whole team late game since anyone can use autoattacks to recover during downtime after teamfights. Also, Zeke's give you cooldown, which you want as a support, and some health too.

AEGIS OF THE LEGION will give some nice durability to yourself and your team. It gives you armor, magic resist, and health. Also, the aura gives your team armor, magic resist, and attack damage. The durability and extra AD go along well with the buff from Zeke's herald, giving your team a solid amount of sustain.

WILL OF THE ANCIENTS provides your team with even more sustain. The spellvamp, along with the lifesteal, armor, and magic resist of the previous items, will make your allies heal with all of their efforts. The downside is that it doesn't provide much personal help since usually you want do enough magic damage to benefit from the spellvamp and it doesn't give you any cooldowns, health, or regeneration.

SOUL SHROUD will help mainly with everyone's cooldowns since the aura gives cooldown reduction to all. The mana regeneration isn't much so late in the build, but still a nice little bonus just in case you have issues with it. Also, the large amount of health you receive is always nice.

ORACLE'S ELIXIR is always nice for finding enemy wards or even just stealthed enemies. Alos, since it doesn't wear off until you die, you canactivate it immediately and keep the slot open for...

VISION WARDS are another nice way to keep an eye on the map. The bonus is that with these out, even your enemies can destroy enemy wards if you're not nearby with oracle's.

PROS
-Constant aid to teammates via auras
-High sustain for all
-Good cooldowns
-Simple build to follow

CONS
-No specialized area of support
-Dependent on carry for good early game
-Needs decent early/mid game to afford good portion of build
-Build is not the BEST for all supports, specialized ones may be better for the more skilled

MANA HUNGRY?
Try getting soul shroud earlier on to combat low mana rate.

AP HEAVY ALLIES?
Think about getting will of the ancients and soul shroud first.

TAKING A LOT OF DAMAGE EARLY GAME?
Consider picking up aegis of the legion before zeke's to help durability.

LOSING YOUR LANE?
When worse comes to worse, put the build on hold until you can make a comeback (if possible) later in teamfights. Start building PHILOSOPHER'S STONE and HEART OF GOLD to make some extra cash to make up for your lack of assists.

THE BUILD/SUPPORT ROLE NOT CUTTING IT?
Sometimes you just can't take out the enemy with this build or in the role entirely. You might have to just bite the bullet mid game and just start rebuilding your champ in a different direction in order to make it work.

This build is a simple template to follow for any support. It is aimed at aura buffs for the entire team. Passive gold gain eliminates the need for gp10 items. Early game lane success will ensure a solid build and increase odds of late game victory. This is a template and should not be viewed as a specific build for any one champion. Feel free to tweak and experiment as you please. Thanks for looking. I look forward to any feedback you may have.

NOTE: This build is NOT recommended for ranked play unless you know what champ you can use it best on and are able to pull it off yourself. I mainly just play blind pick matches.