Greater Stealth Totem overshadows Sightstone in almost every way.

NaClBattery·5/23/2015, 10:16:15 AM·76 votes·6,408 views

See Title.

Currently, Sightstone costs 800 gold (health makes it 50% cost efficient), holds 4 charges, and player must be in the fountain to recharge.

Greater Stealth Totem, purchasable at level 9 for 250 gold, can hold two 3-minute totems, with a 60 second recharge time.

I main support, and do see the value of an early Sightstone in laning phase, but as the game progresses, it feels as if it falls off heavily. I often drop 2-3 wards during a Siege or prepping an objective. Meaning I'll have 1 left without having to recall. While people with an upgraded trinket can merely wait 60 seconds (which is about the time to recall, and walk to T2 turrets) for an extra charge. Not only that, but the recharge is faster than the ward's duration. You can drop 2, wait and drop another 2 before the first totem even comes close to expiring. But as a support, the Sweeper Lens is far too valuable not to take, which forces me into carrying around an unoptimal item.

I also understand that having a higher cap on wards is valuable (such as Ward Wars) dropping one right after the area was cleared. But, the Sightstone was a solution to a S3 problem. Supports, who were burdened with vision control. using all their gold income on wards by creating a Nearly limitless pool of wards. But I think it's time to rethink the item to bring it up to date.

Maybe adding some more stats to it (CDR, GP5, Health Regen), increasing the ward cap (4 stealth wards for sightstone, 5 for ruby sightstone.) or just having a recharge system, either by time, or gains a charge on Kills/assists or even clearing an enemy ward can give a charge. Again, I just want to bring the item in line with something that feels worthy of taking up an inventory slot, and not be outshined for a trinket.

TL:DR: Why is the upgraded Yellow just trink so much better than the sightstone. Can we buff sightstone to not feel like an inadequate trinket?

88 Comments

Only Play Darius5/23/2015, 12:19:04 PM28 votes

Well you buy SS as support so you can go item 3364 for your trinket and still not have to buy wards.

Lost R5/23/2015, 11:11:15 AM8 votes

I meant to post a similar thread yesterday.

Yes, the Sightstone needs to be adjusted in light of the trinkets. I've consistently been able to hit the cap on wards with the greater stealth totem alone. The only thing you're limited by is time and the ward limit. The Sightstone only alleviates the time part by giving you wards in absolute abundance, but you still have to contend with the ceiling at the cost of one item slot.

Almost every solution you could throw at this problem regarding the wards themselves unfortunately runs the risk of reverting back to a state where the supports invest their entire life savings into wards, and that's on top of everything else they have to do now. If everyone was warding diligently (assuming everyone went with the GST), you could have 15 wards on the map; imagine how much vision you'd have, but if they aren't the support, most people simply don't. This has to do with the heavy climate of Someone Else's Problem not just in League but seemingly in the entirety of humanity itself, but that's a scope and social discussion better suited elsewhere. In League, among many other problematic mindsets and mentalities that SEP has let fester, the support is still seen as the be all end all to warding, but three wards doesn't attribute to much in the grand scheme of things, and the support can't exactly run around the entire map to update the wards on every strategic point. At best, he's going to have vision control over one quadrant, or one fourth of the map, and usually one of the two on the enemy's side of the map. To take up one whole item slot, the Sightstone should have something over the trinkets and namely the GST, and the only thing it can really have is the unique passive or better stats in general, and no, 400 extra health doesn't count, especially for the support mages.

The thing is, it's not exactly an item geared towards the strengths of a support like the support items or the Ardent Censer are. A tank is going to invest in other items to build up their defense, and mages are going to invest in items with cooldown reduction, mana, mana regen, movement speed bonus and AP, generally in that order. With the new ward limit, it's not like we're going to see another ward war any time soon, and since it's basically seen as a support item already, then it's time it receives some support-based bonuses.

Martyrofsand5/23/2015, 10:23:33 PM4 votes

Perhaps they should give sightstone the boots treatment via enchantments. Once you habe a ruby sightstone you could enchant it with any number of possible options, anything from recharging out in the field to "stealing wards" IE you kill one you get one, perhaps even give it more than 5 wards.

To me that seems like the most logical way of updating sightstone without completely remaking the item and its components.

Syndrarella5/23/2015, 1:06:22 PM4 votes

[deleted]

Arveanor5/24/2015, 2:39:43 AM4 votes

Would increased placement range and/or increased move speed work out? Both of these would be great little boosts to some things supports tend to like without making it needed for everyone.

Blazing Tenshi5/24/2015, 2:30:46 PM3 votes

Spam wards on your spawn pool, trinket can't do that.

AnomalousChimera5/23/2015, 6:26:26 PM2 votes

I created a similar thread about this a few months ago.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Hw6Y8yWX-riot-give-sightstone-some-compensation

I agree completely about how it makes no sense for the upgraded yellow trinket to be that much superior to Sightstone.

I am not asking for huge compensation. What I want is for Sightstone to generate a charge every 4 (or 5) minutes (max charges still 4 and 5 for Sightstone and Ruby Sightstone respectively) and to have the charge generation not be reset upon recall. So if I generated half a charge before completing a recall, I expect it continue to generate the next charge. If I wait three minutes after that before placing down one ward (hypothetical nonsense scenaro), I would expect to have 4 charges (Expend one. Gain one).

Borfin5/24/2015, 1:22:06 AM2 votes

If its competition was not a rechargeable pink I would buy it more.

Dengeden5/24/2015, 8:28:13 AM2 votes

I can't deal with all these people who don't watch LCS. It feels real awkward when you're the only person who wastes their time :^)

The point is, competitive junglers get Sightstone more often than not. They're deliberately giving up stats to provide vision for their team. Buffing SS would go against that idea. Not that you couldn't combo SS with the GP/10 items but flat out buffing the item wouldn't work (in terms of helping out supports alone).

Not that I don't agree that vision denial is fairly unimportant in SoloQ (for the solo laners and the AD, that is).

Krys Star5/23/2015, 7:34:26 PM2 votes

I kind of wish the last mastery in Utility focused on Sightstone. Maybe make it half price, or... something. I don't know... +20 movement outside of combat next patch is meh. I'd prefer Sightstone mastery.

ecneregilleb5/23/2015, 8:26:23 PM2 votes

I support the idea of tweaking Sight Stone to bring it up to date and feel like less of an aged item. I've always felt like Greater Stealth Totem was more cost efficient and easier to utilize since its price dropped to 250g; I never really thought about it until you pointed it out, however, that Sight Stone's existence was to solve S3 vision issues for supports, and at the time it was amazing! This is important because compared to the League of Legends we have today, it's very much an evolved game. Sight Stone seems a bit over-ripe.

I've seen a very abundant amount of discussions and posts with either suggestions or cries for love for Sight Stone over the past few weeks. I can't say I lean one way or the other when it comes to any particular suggestion though...

I will say what I know though: Riot has stated that the cost of Ruby Sight Stone is as high as it is to gate the cost efficiency of it super high, so people aren't tempted to rush it by any means. It's meant to be a late-game "upgrade" when you are basically at full build. Although at the time I totally agreed with that, the fact remains that at this point now with Greater Stealth Totem existing and being as cost efficient as it is for the same purpose while not taking an item slot, and the allowance of a Sweeper to be on the same character does not validate the effective power level of the item slot being occupied by a Sight Stone. Obviously with 0 alternatives for Sweeping&Warding to be on the same character, the argument of "that's where it's power-level is defined" resides. That seems lame to me. The power-level of an item is defined by it's ability to let a different item exist on a kit?

The cost is very high; yes you can get it earlier than you can get Greater Stealth Totem, sure it gives minor amount of health (arguably decent in terms of early, early lane phase, and that's only if you get kills really early in the game to grab the item quickly) but for 800g you are given time-constraint convenience, and I suppose early vision for your lane safety. Ouch.

Jungle Lux God5/23/2015, 7:21:32 PM1 votes

Warding Totem and its upgrades don't completely outclass Sightstone because of the rest of the game that surrounds the trinkets.

Sightstone needs to be considered based on every other item in the game that is available, but you have 6 slots to fill out, 5 if boots are mandatory. Which they are, so you basically have 5 slots and a choice of boots.

Warding Totem competes with Sweeping Lens and Scanning Orb, but you only have one slot to get them. You need to choose one because you can only have one.

Because wards are normal purchases and can be used for free after spending 800 gold on Sightstone, Greater Stealth Totem doesn't completely outclass Sightstone because it has to compete with Sweeping Lens/ Oracle's Lens, and Lens is far more valuable than Totem because you cannot replace Lens as an item except from the Raptor smite buff, and that is only available for one player.

By itself, Sightstone is outclassed by Greater Stealth Totem, but in the broader state of the game Sighstone is not outclassed by Greater Stealth Totem because the rest of the game makes Totem weaker than other options.

chipndip15/23/2015, 7:50:46 PM1 votes

I don't know about you, but the last thing I want is a support without a sweeper, so plz don't be that guy.

However, I agree that the Sight Stone takes some fun out of support because it's a whole item solely dedicated to vision, rather than making your character stronger. Adding varying stats to the Sight Stone would be the best way to rectify this, so that multiple types of supports, between traditional sustain, all-in tanks, and poking mages, can have a solid option to utilize.

Just make it the next tier upgrade instead of the lousy Ruby SS. -_-

Matthias91195/24/2015, 2:39:00 AM1 votes

IMO the issue is that if you make SS significantly better (by making it more slot-efficient), it goes from "almost always a good idea on support" to "must-buy on every support no matter what" and/or "must buy on everyone who's not an ADC/APC". Vision is really valuable.

What might be interesting would be to remove SS and replace it with a fourth trinket option that behaves more like SS, maybe along with nerfing the charge rate on the upgraded yellow trinket a bit. e.g. something like:

Sight Totem Holds up to 3 stealth totems Gains a charge every 120s (or even less, maybe 150/180s so it's strictly worse than yellow if you don't back?) Refills to 2 charges when you are at the fountain

Greater Sight Totem Available at level 9 Holds up to 5 stealth totems Refills up to 3 charges when you are at the fountain Gains a charge every 90s (or maybe 120s if it's higher than that before 9?) Increases your stealth ward cap to 4 (?)

Koldheartedjsp5/25/2015, 1:16:41 AM1 votes

the trinket is much better because of the existence of the sweeping lens...

aaIam5/24/2015, 5:43:12 AM1 votes

ur fucking lvl 9 get level 30 then talk