well support has changed a lot since i mained it, but some general tips:
in solo queue you have to be able to lead people regardless of what role you play. if you are better than the people at your current rank, then you need to be able to consistently bring your teammates to your level so you can beat the enemy team together. solo carrying from any role is incredibly harder than it used to be.
ward and ward numbers are kind of like cs. you can see a guy lose with 500 cs and you can be like "wow he farmed so well, he must have been so strong blah blah blah" but in reality he did nothing but afk farm and not really pressure anything. wards are the same way in that each ward exists somewhere on a sliding scale of usefulness. for example, if a jungler clears his krugs and then someone wards that camp with a trinket ward, it's going to exist on the lower end of the usefulness scale. the jungler won't be in that area again until after the ward expires.
however, the common wards in tribush and lane bushes etc. are pretty much always useful in laning phase because they give you vision on people who are threatening, and also tell you when you aren't being threatened by said people. late game, when it comes to warding you want to try and look ahead. where do they want to be? where does your team want to be? what is the next objective in contention? and then you want to set up vision around that area.
placing wards is only one half of the vision game tho. it's also about denying vision, which requires smart trinket use and smart pink warding. like if you throw a pink at dragon and deny the vision, get the dragon, and then they come in after you leave and take the pink, that's still a good pink ward b/c it got the team an objective. you can also use upgraded trinket to clear out vision in a whole area, but it's still useful even if you don't find wards. if you sweep a contested area and find nothing around, then you've also found a path in which your team can maneuver into where ever you looked and set up a death bush
also, post laning phase you should basically never be alone as a support. if you can't get your team to listen to your calls and maneuvers, then you still have to stick by them. you should only be by yourself to ward an area, and even in that case you should still have someone following you as back up. try to use the fog of war to position near and ward a bush before you walk through it. moving cautiously through enemy territory with backup should allow you to get vision more safely more often.
re: initiation, communication is key. especially in lower elos(note: idk what rank you're in b/c PH has no lolking equivalent). you have to ping a ton and make sure that people know that you want to initiate, who you want to do it on, etc. you also have to be aware of the power spikes in the game(ex. corki/ezreal triforce completion, IE/PD on carries, etc.) and make sure to attempt to capitalize on your team's spikes while avoiding the enemies. i won a game like literally an hour ago b/c the enemy team got massively ahead and then just farmed out their power spike and became useless for the rest of the game.
i would give more direct advice but without a lolking type site, i can't creep on your account and see what you're doing exactly lol
