Counterplay-less vision options shouldn't be the generally-best choice.

I usually play support, and when I play other positions, I'm always playing rotation heavy - in other words, the vision game has been my focus for years.

I've been playing in preseason for a while now. This is not the first time that Riot has promised to make vision "a more team-oriented" affair. Last time they set out to do that, they succeeded! Trinkets and ward limits (especially the one pink ward per player) really rewarded teams for having all players understand the vision game. This time, however, it hasn't worked well, and I think the problem is simple - though it's not what everyone keeps complaining about.

In this season, the approach Riot took was to limit the uptime on stealth wards, so that players would have to put more thought into when they ward, rather than just where. This does lead to a lot more successful ganks, but I think that's by design, and while it's frustrating for laners (it feels closer to how things were in season 2), that in and of itself isn't necessarily bad.

The problem is that, simultaneously with making the slow moving, short ranged, zone-of-control style vision game weaker, they also significantly buffed the "scouting" options, particularly the blue trinket and the frost queen's claim.

Even if you're placing defensive wards rather than trying to stake new vision territory, at present the blue trinket is better than the yellow trinket. The blue trinket wards last forever (or until they have shown you important information, at which point a stealth ward would probably have been swept anyway), come available more frequently, and have no limit. In effect, the uptime of your ability to see a things is just better with blue wards than with stealth wards, regardless of whether you need the safety of the semiglobal cast range.

And that long casting range is a big deal. It removes counterplay - if you want to see if a particular spot is safe, you can, regardless of what the opposing team may want to do about it. Doing a safe scout is now committing a smaller cooldown than dangerously placing a traditional ward. So, post-level-9, non-support players are no longer incentivized to worry about establishing and defending vision. TL;DR: the vision game has become much less of a team effort.

Frankly, I think it would be quite reasonable to ditch ALL of the advantages of the ward portion of the blue trinket - the mere fact that it can be used to scout is probably enough to justify picking it up, especially when the uptime of persistent vision is so much less now. At a minimum, however, the blue trinket having a lower cooldown than the yellow is a big problem - and it pumping out wards more than 2x as fast as the yellow trinket like it does now is just comical.