Seriously, what's the deal with sightstone and the support role?
Keep seeing complaints about the support role, but nobody seems to care about this item despite it being mandatory to the point where you can get reported for not buying it.
Put aside your bias for a moment and give it to me straight.
Why is this item mandatory for the support role?
Why is this item a healthy addition to the game?
Why doesn't any other role get nearly as much flak for their vision participation, such as buying tracker's knife or just other wards in general?
If the support role is complained about regarding autofill, "participation" and the like, how come sightstone isn't one of the focused discussions? Is it not considered a chore by most players, or does it provide interactive gameplay for the support players?
I'm willing to set aside my bias here to get educated on the matter, as I am frustrated and want some straight answers. If that means being schooled and realizing I'm wrong on several counts, so be it. I'd rather be wrong and corrected at this point than keep on as an asshole. But I ask the same of you, to not just flame me for questioning it, and just give me some straight answers.
Is sightstone a good, interactive, and healthy item for the support role and the game in general?
support even gets more damage and tankiness from
while
just struggles to heal the health she spend and gets tankiness that is much less important for her. Unless you need the wards so badly, you might as well come back without shopping and be more efficient. Why not slap some armor/mr on it? Screw health.
is such a terrible buy i don't get any damage i might as well just save until i can finish my
that'll be more efficient!"
people will be criticizing his build. Even though it works to some degree, building any champion without their core build is more often going to result in a loss than building normally.
when you're going against a healing-based team composition. You technically can, but the damage amp isn't as great as the enemy healing reduction that benefits your entire team.
- Tanks (Braum, Leona, Thresh, Taric, Tahm Kench, etc)
- Mage/Damage-based supports (Karma, Lux, Morganna, Zyra, etc)
- Admittedly the weakest of these, but still great for pure utility supports (Janna, Soraka, Nami, Bard, etc). In many cases, I'd take EoW over this, but it has its place.

&
and DEWARD. A supports secondary goal is vision CONTROL of the map, which means not just getting allies vision, but removing enemy vision.