With the preseason support items, could we have more Sightstone options?

Knight Devout·10/26/2016, 12:58:38 PM·1 votes·944 views

Sightstone is around since season 3, and also one of the most used item in the game.
Now, I understand that, by that fact alone, one could think that the item is fine as it, and, well, it is.

with 800 gold you bring an improved Ruby Crystal with which you can also ward.
However, what's lacking are the upgrades.
Ruby Sightstone partially eased the gross slot inefficiency of the previous iteration of the items, but it's still true that you have a 1600 item that offers 500 health and wards, plus a 20% reduction on active items that's cool, won't deny that, but still doesn't mean you'll be able to use them twice in teamfights.
The only comparable forced item is the 1625 gold Jungler item, with the exception that jungler have a much larger and more diverse champion pool, and aren't nitpicked into a certain build for lack of gold (well, unless they're doing badly in game). Also, while junglers might sell their jungle lategame if they have sufficient damage to offset the loss of jungle bonuses (or a team that helps against epic monsters), sighstone is often something that a team cannot do away with, (which is a can of worm that we'll open another day. Sighstone support items upgrades (like Equinox) are nice alternatives, but with the buffs to face of the mountain and price drop on Talisman, the trade becomes less favorable.

On top of that, next season Locket is also going to lose health and become an armor+mr item.
Being able to build a Catalyst and include it in the finale build would make supports a little more durable while also providing them much needed sustain with the catalyst passive. Other options could include Kindlegem for extra CDR, or, altough I dread this would become even more mandatory, a sighstone+movespeed item in place of boots upgrade.
Final item would look something like this.

Enhanced SIghtstone. Sightstone 800 G Catalyst 1100 G Recipe Cost 300-600 G Final Cost 2200-2500 G
**Stats: ** 500-600 Health 300-400 mana Passive UNIQUE: Item Active cooldowns are reduced by 20%. UNIQUE passive: ETERNITY: 15% of damage taken from champions is gained as mana. Spending mana restores 20% of mana spent as health, up to 25 health per cast (Toggle spells heal for up to 25 per second). Active UNIQUE active: WARDING: Consumes a charge to place a Sight Ward that reveals the surrounding area for 150 seconds. Holds up to 4 charges and refills when visiting the shop. A player may only have 3 Sight Ward on the map at one time.

The item would essentially be a costly but effective durability item, with mana to make it less appealing to toplaners or utility junglers like Lee Sin, while still an option for tanky supports that rely on utility or with no particularly effective scaling, like Sejuani, but that can still get something back from having more mana. As for toplaners, the few that could afford to "postpone" their core items for health and mana are really few, maybe Poppy, Darius, or Sion. Keep in mind that while 500-600 health might seem a lot, they are still paying between 2200 and 2500 gold for a zero armor, zero mr, zero ad, zero ap item. I mean, if they wanted to ward that badly they could buy Ruby Sightstone for 1600 gold as it is on live, yet they don't, 'cause they can't afford the setback. Now they'd pay between 2200 and 2500 gold for the same (or slightly more) health, mana, and the Eternity passive that's still not that useful on them.

By the way, for more support discussions, you can check my previous posts regarding overall tanky support gameplay, a Zeke's Harbinger for melee, things to make more players inclined to play support, here too, and a past idea about support items that was somewhat mirrored by dragons.

10 Comments

Meep Man10/26/2016, 1:11:03 PM2 votes

But we already have like 5 different Sighstone items