Fear support was quite good as far as I remember from when he had to switch. I forgot why they switched in the first place, but yeah he was doing it fine. Thing to understand also is PPD is basically always the sacrificial 5 support, or almost always, guy apparently loves playing with boots and wards for 60mins. That means you put a dedicated farmer who's pretty inteligent about how to farm on the farming support, which isn't such a stretch. He gets less priority, but he still gets some.
You also have to consider his role other than his ingame performance. He's morale support and probably helpful with a bunch of out of game stuff for the cohesion of the team, which is actually quite important if they want to stay strong for a while.
What remains to be seen though is how his surgery goes and shit. I wouldn't be too surprised if they had to replace him also. Finding a good support, or carry, or anything in the NA scene might be troublesome after that.