Not bashing, but...

I don't like these changes because buying the trinket upgrade didn't mean that I wouldn't buy any green wards afterwards. The three main scenarios where I would buy green wards after upgrading my trinket was if; I had only just upgraded and there wasn't any charges in the trinket An important objective needs warding I am going to split push

The new trinket solves the first problem but it also means that you need to save charges if you want to ward and objective or if you want to split push, because both the lifespan of the wards and the cooldown for each charge got nerfed. The lifespan got nerfed from 3 minutes to 2 minutes (at max rank) and the cooldown per charge got nerfed from 1 minute to 2 minutes (at max rank). Because of this, there will, overall, be less vision from new warding totem and more from sightstones.

Also, recently as an experiment, I've been taking the farsight alteration for my split pushers, because wards last infinitely, don't have a cap and it recharges at a similar rate to the previous upgraded trinket.

I purchased stealth wards when I was top/mid/jung occasionally (mostly pre-level 9) because it was a three minute ward instead of 60 seconds. I still bought them into lategame if I felt I needed them. I liked having the option of buying stealth wards, and not relying on my trinket.

Which reminds me; is the ability to upgrade ward trinkets gone? Because even at level 18 I'm still having to wait a minute and a half to place some wards sometimes. I don't like that.

The 'forces the player to be efficient' part bothers me. I don't like being told how to play. Everyone that likes these changes have basically been telling me 'You SHOULD have been playing this way, and if you weren't, you were stupid'.

Hate to say it, but if you weren't buying stealth wards you were doing it wrong and if you really were second highest on warding that just shows a bigger issue of no one helping out with vision in the early game.

With the old trinket once it auto upgraded the first time you could have 1.5 wards out at a time, with a low low investment of 250g that increased to a 3 ward uptime. With the current warding totem it starts at 60 second lifespan 180 recharge and goes up to 120 lifespan 120 second recharge. AKA worse at every stage in the game.

Combined with the fact that you can no longer purchase sight wards people simply lost access to vision in season 6 unless you are buying a sight stone item variant. Once again warding is put mostly on the supports and now they can't even place more than 3.

The only real reason this could be happening is that Riot is making a conscious decision that there was to much vision control in League and are actively attempting to bring it down, this is alright and a choice about game health and all. But don't pretend that this is somehow an improvement to vision because people don't have to pay money for it anymore. As you say it 'forces the player to be efficient' but the new maximum efficiency is weaker than the previous MINIMUM efficiency at all stages in the game until you reach level 18 where it finally becomes equal to the previous minimum efficiency. Not what I would consider a buff.

And making it more difficult for players that liked to ward pre-level 9. Now you have to ration your ward trinket out.

From what I remember, past preseasons didn't literally turn everything in the game upside down. This preseason feels like a giant middle finger to everybody who isn't playing a champion who utilizes ad and/or crit to some significant degree.

Been playing since season 2, back when garen got nerfed for being a amazing duelist and wukong was a new champ, yeah those were the good old days where I didn't have to cringe every time a new overloaded heavy mechanic champ got made, and where the whole jungle itemization was redone, hell starting jungle item was cloth armor and 5 pots. Been playing this game so long I got married and had 2 kids.

Back when everyone had a heart of gold.

That's what I said! Though in reality it was probably a passive-aggressive move on their part.

Maybe they figured people would appreciate wards more if they took them away?

In reality this is putting supports in a tough spot prone to receiving toxicity again.

Sightstone wards start off with 150 seconds (as opposed to the original 180. Again, why change this AND nerf the charges on sightstone?) which means a support rushing sightstone has much better wards than a bot lane that relies on their trinkets. Sightstone charges were changed from 4 to 3, meaning once you put out three wards you need to go back to recharge them otherwise you can't put out anymore.

So what does this mean for the support? Riot wants to think positively and say that it encourages other players to ward more. If you're with friends that care then that's certainly true, but for most solo queue players at average to lower levels (Bronze/Silver and probably Gold too)?? It means the support is still the only one warding AND their wards were nerfed AND the charges were nerfed AND they'll still be blamed for the lack of vision because--and I know this is hard for Riot to understand--people still won't ward.

It's nice that they did that big article about how people don't buy wards. The 60% of people who don't buy wards also don't put down wards in general. Did they wonder why? Let's go over the reasons.

1. "I don't have the gold!" Well Riot tried to fix THAT for us.
2. "I forgot to upgrade my trinket!" Okay Riot fixed that for us too, that's good.
3. "I don't care." Well that's...um...

The problem is that the majority of players who don't ward also don't care enough to ward in the first place. They don't notice it, don't care, don't want to and just simply WON'T DO IT. This is something that RIOT CANNOT CHANGE.

So taking away wards from the few people who ACTUALLY DO CARE and ACTUALLY TRY TO WARD does not change the fact that a lot of people DON'T CARE. And those that don't are idiots, don't get me wrong. But we can't do ANYTHING about them. Trying to rewrite how the game works to force those people into doing something only hurts the players who actually know what they're doing.

Phew okay I ranted sorry I'm done.