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An idea about a change to sightstone to help all supports, maybe even some junglers as well.

Sheerish·12/16/2016, 8:44:49 AM·3 votes·866 views

This might be a little bit of a read but I'd appreciate any kind of feedback anyone has on this idea. ^^

So I was watching a video today about where supports are headed in season 7, and being a "support main" myself it kinda got me thinking. The video mentioned two things that really jumped out at me. First, how to increase the amount of gold supports earn without destroying the game for everyone involved. Second, the fact that as support a lot of people feel they get put behind by being forced into buying sightstone as a mandatory first buy no matter what champion you're playing in the support role.

When I first started thinking about it the idea came to me to give sightstone some form of gold earning quality. Giving it a passive gold earning ability like ancient coin might be a bit too much, so I figured why not give someone a little gold for every time they place a ward with a sightstone?

Of course the thought came to mind "oh well then they could just spam the wards in fountain to earn a bunch of gold." So I kinda came up with a solution to that. The gold earning aspect would not work in base, so anywhere inside the walls that surround the inhibitor turrets would not give you gold when placing a ward there AND you would have a minute long cooldown after leaving base before you're able to earn gold from placing wards. (So essentially your walk back to lane.) Which would stop people from backing constantly and just placing wards immediately outside of the base because it would just be a waste of time and experience to do that. Which of course you could still ward in base and still ward before your minute is up, say your jungler is getting counter-jungled and you want to be nice and ward their blue you'd still be able to do that you just wouldn't receive the bonus gold for it.

I really liked this idea once I figured out how to stop people from abusing it because there are so many times when it feels unrewarding to go and ward for your team. You lose experience, and risk your life occasionally just to secure something so important in this game. Vision. So I felt like giving supports a little pat on the head for doing a good job of keeping vision for their team would be a wonderful way to help them get ahead while also making the basic duties of a support rewarding.

Now to keep everyone in the game from buying a sightstone it wouldn't give that much gold. I did some thinking about it and I thought around 15-20 gold per ward would be the best. So say if you placed 20 wards with your sightstone you would only gain between 300 and 400 gold. Enough to buy yourself a pair of boots and some pots or a ruby crystal etc. So if you used your sightstone properly you'd get around 45-60 extra gold per back so pretty much you got yourself a cannon minion. :) So basically if you're mid, top, or adc you'd probably want to buy something else because while vision is always a plus the base stats of sightstone aren't that impressive and the amount of gold you earn isn't something that would be that appealing to anyone that doesn't HAVE to buy it.

Now I left jungle out of the "You'd probably want to buy something else" section and I added that this may benefit some junglers as well in the title for a very specific reason. As I've said repeatedly during this, we all know vision is so very important in this game but the only role I could see that this would also benefit without sacrificing anything would be jungle. Vision for a jungler is pretty mandatory and I've noticed a lot of junglers opt to get themselves a sweeper these days. So picking up a sightstone (especially on lee sin) isn't so extraordinarily uncommon. Now onto the part where this actually wouldn't be such a bad thing. As far as I've seen junglers are also in a little bit of a struggling position. I say this because okay for instance if you pick fill 99% of the time it's going to give you support but when it doesn't give you support it usually gives you jungle. It has just been my experience that jungle is the second position in line for the game of "who doesn't want to play this role."

So how would this benefit them. Well some thoughts did come to mind. Some junglers fall behind because of hard counter-jungling and the likes, simple things like that which would be easier to deal with if you had more vision in your jungle. So instead of having your laners/support leave their experience to help you deal with your counter-jungling issue you could just buy the sightstone, secure the vision yourself and earn a little more gold to get yourself back into the game while doing it. Maybe say if you're ahead, you want vision in their jungle and you again want to get yourself a little extra gold. Another scenario might be you just want to make a laner that's being camped feel more safe while they try to cs so you give them some extra vision around their lane. Finally I thought of what might be kind of a rarer one which involves both the support and the jungler but hear me out remember the whole "the fact that as support a lot of people feel they get put behind by being forced into buying sightstone as a mandatory first buy no matter what champion you're playing in the support role." well maybe as a support you could talk with your jungler before the game and say something along these lines. "I see you're playing a tankier jungler, would you mind picking up a sightstone for our team because I want to build it a little later. (if at all) It'd give you some health and some bonus gold etc." So basically instead of having this item locked to one single role it could be bought in two different roles and still be useful. Plus just a little thing such as that would make it feel like as a support you actually have options. (Which if it gave you some bonus gold I definitely wouldn't mind picking up a sightstone as a mandatory first buy, so I definitely couldn't see myself complaining about that. The last scenario was kinda a random this could happen but probably won't happen often if it does thing that happened to cross my mind when thinking about this.)

I personally don't think it would be such a bad thing to have 2 roles wanting to buy a sightstone anyway. In fact I kinda love the idea, I don't have to be the only one everyone is looking at to ward? Where do I sign up?

Anyway I think that's all I'm going to type about it for now, thank you so much if you read this far and let me know your thoughts/any flaws or improvements to this idea you might be able to see that I didn't mention or think of.

9 Comments

Tentacle Advisor12/16/2016, 9:30:04 AM2 votes

Can I first say that I had nice little giggle when I read "...giving supports a little pat on the head for doing a good job..."? :3

Anyway, I actually like this idea. Personally, I never saw Sightstone as a bad first buy. In fact, in all my items sets (rest the soul of this amazing League asset) I intentionally set Sightstone at the top of them all. I've always been a fan of vision, and I've noticed that, even if you do get put behind in things like tankier items (or more potent damage items, if mage), vision will always be more beneficial. Surviving/Avoiding ganks, making picks, etc. Vision has always been something I never took for granted.

Now, getting back to your vision = gold idea. I enjoy this a lot, actually. What intrigues me the most is that you even managed to make it an item that can't be abused by everyone in the game, with just a few simple cooldown numbers. I assume those numbers will be part of, like, a UNIQUE Passive or something, yes? Also, kudos to you for making it a viable buy for junglers, as well. My Nunu/Amumu jungle games (if this were to be a thing), would very much appreciate you. :D

Long story short, Good Job!

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Bonipherus12/16/2016, 6:24:54 PM1 votes

I don't hate this idea as I think it definitely would reduce some frustration supports have with the feeling of being behind with sightstone, but I believe getting rid of that item altogether better adheres to Riot's balance philosophy. Warding should be a team effort but currently it's still up to the support to get the vision item because it's still so much more powerful than the trinkets (instant 3 minute active vs 1 minute active that scales to a measly 2 minutes as well as instantaneous 3 uses compared to a maximum of 2 that need to be charged). Having sightstone in the game as (essentially) a must buy item just solidifies and validates supports as the "ward bitch". Junglers used to be in the same boat as supports (often even referred to as secondary supports) because it was their job to secure vision control and get sightstone/oracles extract and rely primarily on the base strength of their kit. Well, guess what, they didn't like that either. Why would they? You had to get these items every game before anything else but your jungle item. There wasn't much room for buying items to make you feel stronger: you had to wait until you got your 2 or 3 core items every game before you even had a chance to buy something else but with your low income most games were over by this point. Playing for vision control, with proper balancing and incorporation of clever tactics and trinkets, can be enjoyable for players. What is not fun, however, is when vision control becomes your entire purpose.

Getting rid of sightstone would take other balance adjustments, yes, but those are likely for the better. Riot would have to readjust trinket timers to fit the new environment. With the current sightstone, the support instantly gets 3 wards that last 3 minutes. Compare this to the trinket's measly 1-2 minute active duration and 120-90 second recharge rate. This power dynamic is what skews sightstone into being a "must buy": you get more uptime on wards and ignore the charge system. Trinket wards are designed with a few game fundamentals in mind that Riot have figured out through their years of balancing. The trinket wards lasting for only a little bit of time at the beginning of the game is important because too much vision during the early game can invalidate junglers and make them nearly obsolete. Trinket wards make you have to think of when to use them to fully optimize their effectiveness because you have a more limited duration and a set amount of time before you can place another ward. Sightstone ignores this thought process as it just hands you 3 wards with a long duration that you can use whenever you want to. Riot should remove sighstone and standardize the warding totems to continue scaling throughout the game but scale more efficiently through recharge time and active ward time. This change would take the vision burden off of the supports and junglers and make vision a completely equal team contribution and allow them to better balance how much vision is appropriate for teams to have at all stages of the game.

IcyPepper12/16/2016, 6:26:08 PM1 votes

You're my favorite kind of person

+1