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@Riot: What's the liklihood of a vision based support champion?

PHoToS999·6/21/2014, 9:18:58 PM·9 votes·1,588 views

There are a lot of supports that have vision granting abilities, such as Thresh's Lantern, Gragas's Barrel Roll, Leona's ulti, etc, but will there ever be a support that is all about granting and denying vision?

While there are more than a few champions that have the ability to hide themselves, only two have abilities that actually deny vision, those being Graves and Nocturne. As well, very few have the ability to safeguard themselves with vision granting traps, those being Teemo, Nidalee and Caitlyn. There are only three champions which utilize long range champion specific vision, those being Warwick (situational though), Twisted Fate and Rengar.

Supports are meant to be utility champions, and what greater utility is there than vision? Thresh can peel and Sona can heal, but in the end, preventing a fight from ever happening is even more powerful.

Vision control is immensely powerful and sparingly sprinkled over a small cast of characters. Will there ever be a support with such an interesting gimmick as granting and denying vision?

16 Comments

Kaine6/22/2014, 6:12:19 AM5 votes

They tried once, with a support that could lay damage dealing wards...

The result was horrifying and all other attempts were burned alive.

Thales6/22/2014, 6:34:30 PM2 votes

I think it could be an interesting concept, though it has the problem with being very hard to appreciate. For instance, a passive that lets the character see all noninvisible things within their vision range (over walls, into brush, that sort of thing) would be one of the strongest passives in the game, but it sure wouldn't feel like it is.

There's also issues with counterplay. There's nothing you can do to stop Ashe from scouting you with Hawkshot; it's limited only by its cooldown. Wards are great because they're easily destroyed. You'd have to have some analogous paradigm so that there's even something the opposing team can do to shut down the vision champ.

A vision based champion is a great idea, but it's one that would be really hard to do in a satisfying and fair way. I'm not even sure that support would be the right role for it.

Khodexus6/22/2014, 3:11:01 AM1 votes

You forgot Ashe's hawkshot in there. That I think is probably one of the best vision granting 'champion spells' in the game. Has a nifty passive attached to it too.

Hyrum Graff6/23/2014, 6:08:06 PM1 votes

My immediate thought upon reading this was, "It would be really cool if there were a champ who had lots of vision-granting abilities, and could forgo a sightstone because of it (use trinkets to ward river, and abilities to scout the bushes whenever you need).

Vodka SIut6/27/2014, 1:04:00 AM1 votes

an ability that allows you to pocket and steal set wards and traps from the opposing team to use as your own.