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Frustration with Pre-season Vision

Dragonzrkool··11 votes·872 views

Sorry if this type of thread has been placed before, but a quick search hasn't offered much in terms of results. This is half a rant, and half advice-seeking for the pre-season and the incoming new season.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with wards anymore. Wards are extremely weak, broken immediately by any Jungler who decided to smite raptor camp, last very little time v. their recharge rate. The lack of green ward purchases means we need to rely on vision wards, but those are easily broken by anyone who finds them, and there's no where "creative" perse that people won't find them and crush them. Sure you place your vision ward in a spot that won't be easily found, but it won't provide coverage for your lane or your jungle. Blue trinkets are a thing, but those are even weaker than pinks and while they have the lower recharge and advantage of being long range, they simply do not provide enough information to make heavy judgments on. Even red trinkets kind of suck now, giving stealth champions even greater power and in all honesty not even worth using because of how quickly wards fall - especially in the early game. Everything has an unnecessary risk, hell even laning does. I can be under tower and you bet my ass I'll get hit by some long range skill shot I had no idea was coming and I couldn't prevent. I've been trying to buy sightstone on laners just to cover the darkness across the map and, as expected it's a completely stupid purchase that wastes my combat power just to try to get a little bit more aggression in. I'm very susceptible to camping, and will get picked off in blind spots that I couldn't make any evaluation on. Yes, I know that's my fault and this is why I'm bringing up my second point.

What do I do? I am so utterly frustrated with vision being turned upside on its head. I like the idea of strategic warding, but what's so strategic about it? Where are the key points? What should I be doing at any one time? How can I even ward reactively with a regular yellow trinket knowing my casting range is lower than that leona's zenith blade? I don't know how to make my informed decisions anymore and I'm having an awful time adjusting to the pace of the game. The map is too dark to play in for me. I'm looking for some very helpful advice of how exactly vision has changed and what I should do to adapt to it.

15 Comments

MasterSomething2 votes

While I am neutral on the vision changes, Riot may have gone overboard with the vision nerfs. Green ward isn't necessary, but our vision totems cannot make up for the removal. Riot intended to make it less "spam wards until it lights up" to "make more strategic decisions", but it seems to have backfired.

Dragonzrkool1 votes

It just feels like I can't pick up the slack for my teammates anymore, and now my wards are just trash ontop of it. I haven't played ranked, but normals are a nightmare how dark it is that ranked scares me even if it's meaningless with the season actually rolling around.

MasterSomething1 votes

On the bright side, tis a good time to play Blitzcrank in ranked.

shyv1 votes

we're all there with you buddy. my advice would be to start using blue trinket as soon as you hit level 9 and spam that shit all over the map. put it in your own jungle in places it likely won't be taken out all game, then whenever it's up just use it. you can put as many blue trinkets on the map as you want and the cd is lower (i think?) than yellow trinket

Dragonzrkool1 votes

I'm getting better about spamming blue trinket but it's not nearly enough and it leaves you completely vulnerable pre-9 where your vision tools suck immensely. I had a game earlier where I wanted to shut out the enemy lux as hard as possible, but the enemy lee did absolutely nothing but camp me relentlessly. It pushed me into buying a sightstone and warding everywhere around mid with that + trinket and vision wards. I still kept getting hit from like one blind spot I couldn't reach in skirmishes and the like. Lux kept freezing the wave and I was having a difficult time resetting it or punishing her without getting stomped. If I had any more tools to dispose of without sacrificing my combat stats I'd have been a lot better off, but I'm just not adapting well I guess.

shyv1 votes

trust me. we all hate it. lol

Dealth1 votes

If you are top, for example, place the pink ward on the bush closest to your side and use the yellow to ward the other one. If you are bottom you don't have to worry about it since your support has sight stone plus 2 trinkets, and if you are mid use your pink on the river on your side of the jungle and if you are jungler you should make sure you are warding spots like the enemy buffs or the river.

Dragonzrkool1 votes

I appreciate the comments of typical sweet spots, but I've tend to have done all of these already. I find vision wards difficult to protect in that river side brush if i'm blue side top - purple's tri is a little easier. Mid makes no sense to me at all, I can't find a reasonable spot to put the vision ward where it's not auto-destroyed. Putting it directly in the riverside bush or on my side doesn't provide enough information either (E.G. One side or such). Bottom is a bit different, but even as a support I'm noticing my sightstone to be less and less effective. Tri-bush is like the new vision sweetspot and it's a constant sink of vision wards or sweepers. Anywhere else seems meaningless. I'm completely lost in overall team-game vision too, at later spots of the game. Like objective pushing.

Steelflame1 votes

Trust me, you are not alone in hating how nerfed vision is.

Personally, a change I would make would be having your yellow Trinket charge twice as fast if you have 0 charges on it, but 50% longer than current if you have a charge already stored. Overall you can build up 2 charges in the same amount of time if you want to have both up at once, say because your team wants to start prepping up for a major objective/split push, but you can instead aim for having double the current amount of uptime on vision instead if you burn it on CD, in trade for not having a backup.

Dragonzrkool1 votes

I know that old trinkets had long CD/Recharge rates as well, but you had green wards to supplement it. It feels like trinkets are still just as weak while we have absolutely no alternative. Without the 15% cast range buff on say a support mastery build as well, I can get cheesed just for going to ward an unwarded bush with it.

I think they need to be a little stronger or something... like they're so painfully weak that a sweeping lens is almost wasted compared to another blue trinket.

Steelflame1 votes

Old trinket CD was 60 seconds if you upgraded it instantly at level 9. Lasted 180 seconds. For comparison, yellow trinket now is 120 for 120 only by level 18. We went from 3:1 uptime at max upgrade, as early as level 9, to 1:1 uptime, at level 18 only.

Dragonzrkool1 votes

Ouch, I didn't even think of the cooldowns and how they've changed. I've always felt like the new trinket was significantly more punishing, but couldn't quite place why. I wonder why there is no neutral yellow trinket alteration still?

Jacobofcourse1 votes

I have personally enjoyed the vision changes, even as a support main. RIOT has been pushing away from warding being a one man job to a whole team concept. There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to warding. If you are alone, then always check the map before walking somewhere to ward. In a situation where people are missing, the best method is to ward over the wall instead of face checking a bush. You can place a ward a further distance when placed on a wall. The ward gets pushed to the closer end. As for the lanes, warding depends on your positioning. In the top lane, ward the tri and river whenever the lane is pushed. One of them should be a pink. The same thing goes in the bot lane. The advantage there is the ability to ward the lane bushes because there are two people. The mid lane is the most difficult. A certain amount of the vision battle needs to be won by the jungler to be successful. There should be a pink on one side of the lane and stealth ward the other side when possible. The jungler can either pink the other side, deep ward, and/or control the crab to help with vision. Otherwise, the support should roam up to ward the river bush. It is best to upgrade to the blue trinket once teams begin to roam. It allows to safely ward from a distance.

To follow this up, the key is to play around the vision. If you don't have vision control, lose vision of someone, and don't have summoners, then don't push your lane. You can't always defend your wards. It sucks to watch a ward be destroyed but at least it did it's job. That typically happens when someone roams or the other laner gets a better position on it. The team needs to respond accordingly. That various from counter-ganking, pressure a different lane, or just recall to heal up and get another ward. There are plenty of time when a laner has to give up some CS to avoid getting ganked.

Hopefully this helps with your frustration. I know a various amounts of people have posted stuff on the boards regarding the vision changes. The game wouldn't be fun if a team could take complete vision of the map. It has also forced teams to react quickly and roam together more. Just remember check to see who you don't have vision of and think: where were they last seen, how much health did they have, and am I in a position to get collapses on.

Dragonzrkool1 votes

I know the parts about the pushing a ward over a wall, but it's not always possible to do and I don't always remember to do it. I still dislike having such crap range to ward and being unable to protect my vision virtually at all. Also it's very rare that I can get my ADC to use their trinket at all, or in a spot i'd like for them to use (farther than the river brush). It's just feeling like my 75g on a vision ward is a liability that won't even protect me, and that i'm forced to get blue trinket because the yellow trinket sucks and the red trinket as a result also sucks because the yellow sucks.

As for your second point, I'm unsure how to work around that with characters who explicitly want to deny as much as possible. (EG Renekton into Nasus); especially with characters with good wave clear or build like a hydra, it makes it difficult to freeze lane if not impossible. I want to make that enemy laner be afraid of me at all times, and if I have to be afraid of the jungler 24/7 because that's the one person i can't keep a tab on then why should I bother taking early aggressive champions that I like? I'm better off taking the guy that wants to farm at tower forever apparently. I can't perfectly predict common jungle routes all the time as well. I just feel like I am being unnecessarily penalized for something that's beyond my control (Huge ward CDs, unreliable wards, and my allies leaving the map just as dark with me).

I'm not completely against the idea of vision changing, and I like the principle of strategic/reactive warding as a team effort but in game it really feels like a theory/practice discontinuity. Vision is just not sticking and it's making the game very difficult to proceed in. Even as is, the team that's more ahead and can more freely roam versus the team that has to turtle up has the vision game advantage. It feels like the oracle's problem all over again. I do apologize though, I do not mean to shoot down your advice and discussion. It's just most of these practices I've done before, but I guess I need to just have my eyes glued to the minimap as much as the screen any more and just refresh a ward every millisecond it comes off cooldown. I'm not very fond of the darkness of season 6 regardless.

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