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For The Love Of Stealth, Can We Get Another Look At Vision?

DrugsForRobots··9 votes·683 views

I was trying to write some kinda witty preamble but I'm just going to jump right into it. If you haven't read it yet, check out Willbachbakal's "Another Look At Vision" where he outlines some of the vision problems plaguing this game as of the start of season 4. I disagree with the direction Will would take things, but his analysis is pretty solid, IMO, and still holds true even with Season 6 upon us.

Anyways, here we go. TL:DR at the bottom.

I find Riot's designs for vision... frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the new 'Eyestones', the trinkets are cool, and even the Raptor and Wolf smite bonuses and Skuttle 'shrine' (that we've had since season 5) are all steps in the right direction. Unfortunately, Riot has yet to address the relationship between true sight and stealth, and I cannot fathom why.

With so many cool and unique items granting awesome passive and active effects, it is a crying shame that there are practically none for true sight or stealth. To add insult to injury, the items that do exist function as hard-counters. There is no 'telegraphing', no projectiles to dodge, no activation delays - if you have the appropriate item you can wreck a subset of champions at instant speed, provided you have the mental wherewithal the use it in the heat of the moment, which isn't hard.

Also, consider that there is no counterplay inherent to stealth. Even if you know where that ward or Teemo is, if you don't have a Pink or upgraded Red then you can't touch them. Likewise a Rengar, Shaco, and Twitch can stealth as they run through half the enemy team to safety. And Vayne, too, can Tumble right on top of you without penalty. This is the opposite of organic gameplay.

Not all is lost, however. Riot is making progress, albeit slowly. The best thing that they've done, so far, is Rek'Sai's Tremor Sense. This kind of ability is unprecedented in League, as it gives information without providing targetability. Red trinket, too, just got some fancy new particles that act as detection. These are incredibly powerful effects, but then, so is stealth. The game needs more of these abilities as they are, on the whole, better for stealth that true sight.

The game also needs more sight-denial abilities. I'm talking about things like Graves' Smoke Screen, Nocturne's Paranoia, and Tahm's Devour. More effects that limit or reduce a target's vision range (and remove their shared sight) are necessary for the health of the game. Such effects would act as a psuedo-stealth, providing invisibility (and, subsequently, untargetability) in a different functionality. When stealth is no longer the only 'sight-based trickery' that player's must contend with, the game should become much more fun (hopefully) while requiring more skill and prediction, and reducing the need to rely on wards for info (tho they'd still be the best way of attaining it) or as a immediate answer to invisibility.

That isn't all that needs (or should be) done either. The champions with stealth need some kind of_ ability quirks_ or interaction with true sight. These would (ideally) be nothing more than QoL and utility buffs - exactly what the Juggernaut and Marksman updates gave to their respective champs classes. That way, even when true sight does come into play (and I do believe it should), they aren't completely gimped by it.

The goal here (what I would like to see from Riot) is to give players options when it comes to gaining information. Just like you build for the situation, and spec your champion your way, and pick champs based on the matchup, having variable options where none is strictly better than any other but situationally more appropriate is crucial to the health (and longevity) of the game.

A Summary:

  1. More Ward variety, please. Offer different types of wards with different quirks and functionality, to supplement the trinkets. They all do the same thing more-or-less (provide information) but how they execute on that is different. For example, bring back the 'Mandrake Ward'. Personally, I'd call it the 'Snitch'. It is invisible, has 3 health, grants no sight, can be placed anywhere, and pings whenever an enemy champ comes within it's range. Costs 50 gold. Lasts X seconds. Easy.

  2. Quirks and compensation for stealth champions while under true sight. For example, Evelynn's Dark Frenzy could have a clause for when she is seen under true sight. Maybe DF's cooldown is reduced in some way, or her MS boost is larger? Anything would be nice. Also, points for thematic flavor?

  3. Introduce more pseudo-stealth effects. This would take the pressure off of stealth, hopefully. For example, Teemo's blind, rather than guaranteeing all autos 'miss' for a certain duration, instead could reduces target's vision to X (maybe melee range?) Potentially more counterplay, more room to outplay for the opponent, and less frustration? Likewise, his shrooms, explode in a 'poison spore cloud' DoT AoE (like Singed and Cassie), rather than how they currently work (applying the DoT to you) which is frankly BS.

  4. Audio cues and 'tell-tale' signs on invisibility and stealth. For example, Rengar's ulti SFX. Good job, Riot, I'm proud. Now consider Shaco's traps (which already cackle upon placement) playing music if you are with X range of them. More can be done here. Maybe Twitch has 'skittering' sounds accompanying him?

  5. Alternate forms of detection. The design space here is largely unexplored! For example, we could have a 'x-ray' vision-like effect, an 'aura-awareness', or even 'smell' (what's that Warwick? Your nose somehow grants sight of units you smell but if they become invisible they are odorless? Yeah, that is weird, I'd get that checked out...)

  6. Some real (legendary or mythic-tier) items that grant true sight or invisibility. This way, everyone can have fun playing with vision! Ideally, these would be items for supports to help their allies. For example, Eleisa's Miracle: +Stats. Unique Active - Sanctuary: Target ally gains becomes invisible for X seconds, immune to true sight and totally undetectable. They cannot cast spells, use abilities, or attack during the duration.

  7. Inherent counterplay for stealth. We should be able to see stealthed champs if they are right on top of us or vice versa. Positioning is important for everyone, it should be doubly so for stealth! Highlight godly players from the mere mortals!

  8. (!Bonus!) Make the trinket key toggle between two inventories. One for major items, the other for trinkets, pots, wards, etc. I cannot imagine this happening, but I think it would be cool and I can dream can't I?

In Closing (TL;DR):

Change the relationship between sight, true sight, and stealth into a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock dynamic by introducing more vision-denial and detection effects, rather than the current True Sight > Stealth > Sight.

Why is there no love for stealth? Hasn't this kind of topic come up before at Riot HQ? What is the rationale behind letting stealth linger in such a torpid state for so long? Are their plans for more detection abilities? What about the role of summoner spells in the vision game?

Wait. Don't answer those questions just yet. Ask yourself this one first:

How can League have come so far and learned so much from it's predecessors, only to have true sight and stealth virtually unchanged from DotA? Riot, please.

6 Comments

Teridax682 votes

Willbachbakal here, thank you for linking my post! You make excellent suggestions in your post, too, and here are my thoughts:

To preface this, the direction I wanted to take in the blog post was to strip all item-based vision down to Sight Wards, which would function like current Vision Wards, except without the stealth detection, remove all true sight from the game, and work from there (wards should probably have a lower cooldown as a result, stealth champions should probably be at least partially revealed if un-stealthy things happen, like them bumping into enemies or getting hit by stuff). The main reasoning behind this is that a) red trinkets are essentially designed to counter stealth mechanics on items and enemies, and would be obsolete if stealth could be dealt with organically, whereas blue trinkets have a main active that's a bit too situational to compete with sight wards, and are only viable now because they copy the functionality of wards to some degree (the effect could probably work on an item, though), and b) itemization needs to be made as accessible and as simple to pick up as possible, as even now many people in lower elos don't realize how important it is to ward. With that said, that is one direction out of several possibilities, and you're proposing pretty interesting alternatives. Here's my response your ideas:

  1. I'm intrigued by the idea of a snitch/mandrake ward, and I'm sort of confused as to why it's been iceboxed on the PBE for so long. I really like how its sound effect could make it garner attention from players regardless of experience level, and its non-sight detection offers a means of dealing with stealth characters, especially in lane, that wouldn't just invalidate a major part of their kit. On the flipside, there's also the possibility that this might also really harm junglers, even non-stealth ones, as hearing a ping would just instantly prompt the laner to drop everything and head back to their tower. There probably needs to be more testing done on this, but if done right it could offer further means of dealing with stealth-based roaming (i.e. Evelynn, who currently has to contend with serious overall suckiness to compensate for her perma-stealth).
  2. I'm kind of against this, since you're basically giving a bit of extra power to champions at a time where they've been outplayed (no matter how binary or shallow the outplay is), and should be weak, or at least weaker. I'd rather make stealth soft-counterable via more organic gameplay than give stealth champions a consolation prize for being hard-countered.
  3. I like this a lot. The new Nearsight mechanic implemented on Quinn and Graves has a lot of potential, not just because it could be a far better alternative to Blind, which provides super poor feedback on both sides and causes a lot of frustration (and is now exclusive to Teemo), but also because it opens the door to a ton of vision manipulation that would allow stealthy characters to move out of enemies' sight in more interesting ways.
  4. I like this a lot too, though I think Rengar himself has a long way to go before he develops proper counterplay (he likely shouldn't have any front-loaded burst). Subtle cues to warn enemies that something is up would potentially create really unique and fun gameplay, especially when setting up ambushes (the victim would have to pick up on cues to avoid getting jumped), while also putting champions and traps at a disadvantage when popping stealth just for the untargetability (you'd be able to easily locate them if you know exactly where they are).
  5. Although my blog post went for a super-simplified approach to vision and stealth detection, I agree, there's a ton of unexplored space for different means of detecting enemies, and I think there's a lot that could be built on from existing mechanics or created from scratch to let players catch enemies in interesting ways. Tremor Sense is pretty awesome, and the silhouette detection on red trinkets is an interesting mechanic.
  6. More true sight on items could definitely allow more champions to react better to stealth, though I personally dislike both true sight and item-based counters for not carrying too much organic gameplay. Invisibility, though, is a lot riskier, and I think would be about as dangerous to include on an item as, say, hard crowd control or a gapcloser. Stealth could probably be an awesome component to a summoner spell, though, and if done right could be popular on ambush- and gank-heavy champions.
  7. Completely agree with this. The biggest problem with stealth right now, in my opinion, is that there is no organic counterplay to the mechanic, which makes for really awkward gameplay situations, e.g. not being able to deal with a Shaco/Teemo trap when you know exactly when and where it was laid.
  8. This sort of idea implies a much larger amount of non-permanent items than what we have, imo, and the current system seems to be dealing fairly well with the current setup. I agree that there's some slight degree of weirdness when you hit six items and can't purchase health pots anymore (or use a flask), but I'm not sure if that warrants a second inventory.

Thank you again for making this post! The topic of vision and stealth def needs a lot more visibility (/pun), especially since it's been causing major issues for an entire subset of champions for years now.

Beldair1 votes

Why is it that everyone forgets that Evelynn has stealth too...

But i do agree....they need to work on balancing stealth and vision.

DrugsForRobots2 votes

I could never forget Eve! D: She's one of the reasons I'm making this post. I even mention how her Dark Frenzy could use a QoL buff that interacts with True Sight. Upvote for Evelynn and the stealth crew? Need to raise awareness!

Beldair1 votes

Shhhh....you'll blow my stealthy jungle Evelynn cover lol

That stealth is what let's me escape. Seeing as how she is spotted within a certain distance near an enemy champion, pink ward, or tower. It's what i think worka for stealth champions (except twitch who has a duration on his stealth lol)

DrugsForRobots1 votes

No love for stealth or the vision game? :(

Valderis Vandala1 votes

I really hope Riot ignores 8, no double inventory management please.

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