Riot, it's time to stop. The support changes are unacceptable.

Look. I'm gonna be real with you. I have been talking about how is a problematic item and worse than the likes of WOTA and the like before it. But once again Riot, you make the same mistake you made when back in Season 4 all over again, only worse.

SightStone remains in the game as a crutch for the game design, and is made intentionally slot inefficient to force it to be a burden on a given player as opposed to making it attractive to every role (because that would be broken). And of course, the support gets left with that job because ofc they do.

While removing the item was in my honest opinion a necessary step, this was perhaps the worst possible way to do it.

Instead of actually removing the item, you instead removed all the work you put into making the support role more fun, attractive and fulfilling via unique quests with unique buffs and actives to instead give people_** the permission**_ to ward like they currently do with , without actually having to buy it.

I don't think it is hard to see what the problem here is, but for those who might not see where i am coming from, they essentially replaced FUN and UNIQUE appeal from the role with elements that are already generally deemed less compelling about it.

Now some people might claim that it is a "worthwhile tradeoff", because the old items can be turned into new ones and now you don't have to spend 800g early game for SS. Lemme explain to you why i disagree with these notions.

1. You no longer have the OPTION to opt into SS early now. Riot has stated that one of the reasons they felt comfortable with this change is because the Rush meta showed them that the game can function without us having to rush . There are 3 major problems with this. The first is that it wasn't that the game "functioned without early vision" so much as it was that "rushing Ardent was by and far so powerful that it overrided the importance of early vision". Riot is putting the cart before the horse here with this jump in conclusions.

2. You have now taken away an option AWAY from the player. For the sake of argument, lets say that the conclusion Riot came to is, nonetheless, correct and the game is in fact fine without early vision. OK. But now with this change, you've effectively REMOVED the option to opt into said early vision all together. If the game had reached a state where support players can be fine without necessarily HAVING to rush Sightstone, then shouldn't that have been good enough? The problem with Sightstone was how it was an artificial burden on the role as opposed to an actual compelling or exciting aspect of it, on top of it being obligatory gold sick no matter what type of champion you were playing in the role. It's power was so great that it was deemed mandatory to rush it, which lead to stale and thoughtless gameplay with no real meaningful decisions making involved. If the game then reached a point where it was a viable option to opt into more power and delay ones purchase of the item, then it is evidence that the item already reached a much healthier spot as is. The argument that "players like rushing powerful items and Sightstone gets in the way of that" doesn't hold up when by your own admission, players didn't even have to rush it necessarily anymore. The result is you merely take away the gameplay option from players that would prefer to opt into it early on, removing a choice from the game as opposed to creating more, ON TOP of taking away fun and engaging aspects of the role on top of THAT in the process.

3. The argument of more new items doesn't hold up either. those items will now be burdened by either having to not fit into your build of which you will not be able to reach the end of anyway. People who were already getting the Eye items effectively got a net nerf, because all that has happened is power has been taken away from them only for them to have to buy it back again later, except with the likelihood of not even being able to do so. If i was buying the , I was already making the sacrifice of the active and stats for the slot efficiency. The net result of the changes for me in this scenario is now I'm just lose out on getting my quest buff.

If i was buying , I was opting into it for the actives and stats in the first place, and wasn't necessarily fully upgrading Sightstone right away, not that it would be a bad option given its item active CD, which would compliment it. I am now stuck with having to buy what is effectively a worse Eye item that i already rejected in favor of the Active version, and now have to buy the item with the active attached to it separately on top of that, with no option of active CDR either to boot. Nobody wins here.

The only arguably good thing this brought is the option to get the actives that were once tied to said items on more widespread builds, since Support items could not be bought together, making it previously impossible to get Tali active if you got any support item but , but unless the item actives are stupidly cheap (and therefore broken) I don't see this as even remotely a fair exchange. hell, i don't think it would be worth it even then.

What perplexes me the most is the choice of removing support quests all together, given there was no real obligation to do so.

I understand the actives since you can't have both at the same time, but Support quest buffs were passive effects. What was stopping you from simply leaving them be and having both warding AND support quest buffs unlocked at their respective threshold? Was it to much of an instant power boost perhaps? Then don't make them happen at the same time!