Boards›Gameplay

Improving the role of Supports: suggestion - say goodbye to sightstone

Adormas·11/26/2016, 9:16:53 AM·15 votes·1,251 views

Before I explain my suggestion, I'll quickly add that support has been my preferred role since season 2-ish. I've been playing league since launch.

So I realize most players think of warding as one of the core duties of the support role.

But what if it was not?

What if warding was EVERYONE'S duty (as it should be).

Why cant supports do what they are supposed to - support using their skills?

Lets remove signtstone. Lets increase the warding limit to 4/champ, as well as have the warding trinket give out 3 wards (numbers can be balanced by Riot, I'm sure)

This will achieve THREE things:

Free up an item slot that can be used to buff the support players play-style / skill set. Supports can then spend that crucial early gold on an item that buffs their supporting skills.
Get rid of a reason many supports get toxic comments like "lol noob support no ward / warding item". This is a big thing. I've read so many comments where supports get flak for not rushing sightstone. Which other role (other than jungle, but thats for their own good) is forced to build one item irrespective of the champ?
Remove the warding blame. Warding becomes everyone's responsibility, since everyone has the same number of wards at their disposal.

Potential problems: Now the team really has to decide how may sweepers they want versus how many warding trinkets. Supports will probably be forced into buying warding trinkets. Overall wards on the map may go down on average, and ganks become more frequent (junglers become more powerful...oops).

But it opens up a whole item slot for supports which is such as awesome thought. I'm not saying this will solve all support issues, but it could be a solid start.

/discuss

32 Comments

DrugsForRobots11/26/2016, 10:03:13 AM5 votes

I agree that SS shouldn't exist. Yet we still need powerful forms of vision and ways of getting information. The ward from yellow trinket has a shorter duration that your SS wards, so just giving out more yellow trinket wards won't make vision more exciting or interesting. We need more variety in how vision is expressed - AoE cones of sight, narrow but far reaching lines of sight, etc. If we had different types of wards that had different fields of sight, preferably with blind spots or unique weaknesses the enemy can exploit, then those wards could afford to be more powerful and cheaper at the same time.

ZephyrDrake11/26/2016, 9:26:11 AM4 votes

sorry but what? all this will accomplish is everyone having terrible vision, people will play passive as all hell due to not having enough vision and people will still be blaming the support regardless since they are still the main ones who play the vision game. It doesn't matter if an item slot is freed because vision is that important and critical to the game and yellow trinkets are just absolute garbage and won't be enough even if your entire team has a yellow trinket instead of the red one

DemoGuide11/26/2016, 2:49:26 PM3 votes

I always upvote removal of sightstone.

Saianna11/26/2016, 3:40:32 PM1 votes

My last 30 games on SR (no matter what mode).

On average only 3 teammates, me included, used wards. Rest was "I HAS TO HAVE THAT KILL!!!11"

I doubt they even knew how to use them. But it's cool, I just lost about 18 of them.. or 20. So.. 20x30 (avg game lenght) = Only 600 minutes of my life gone to shithole. Fair.

My salty rant aside. i have even better idea:

You have to, I repeat HAVE TO use a ward every 2-3-4 minutes, or you receive a debuff with -50% AS/AD/AP/HP/MANA/CRIT/IQ Which will NOT go away untill you place a goddamn ward. Also it stays for about 3-5 seconds after you used a ward.

With this you either will use a ward, or players will report you for trolling untill Riot bans your account = less bads in this game.

My silly idea aside

Your idea won't work. People simply DON'T WANT to use wards. You could even do something like this "Using a ward gives you MS boost for 5s" or "placing a ward rewards you 10g" or "every ward placed one yasuo main dies" and those idiots still wouldn't use it.

On the second note, increasing cap of ward holding will only strain support more. Now they'll be forced to: a) place all wards, cause ADC are those saint cows incapable of doing anything other than pressing right click b) ADCs will order supports to buy sightstone on top of it. (I know you'd want it removed, but Riot is known for doing 180 degrees differently than players want, So i know they will not touch it at all).

The Yetii Rider11/26/2016, 5:42:29 PM1 votes

"Which other role (other than jungle, but thats for their own good) is forced to build one item irrespective of the champ?"

Every role.

item 1001

Stephenizgod11/26/2016, 5:57:27 PM1 votes

No i don't think this will solve the issue, this will only hurt everybody. See its like 90% up to the Support to ward, remove their sightstone and slighty improve their trinkets and it will still be like 90% up to the Support... only now they have less wards.

Instead they should rework Sighstone into different items, similar to the Spellthief, Coin, and Relics. The sighstone+starter item ones are a good idea for saving a space, but they sort of limit the Support. They need to be expanded on so they are full blown items that a Support wants to buy instead of being forced to buy.

woodvsmurph11/26/2016, 6:02:05 PM1 votes

Remove sightstone so that no one champ/role can be expected to buy an item to help with warding (other than control/pink ward which everyone can buy). Interesting idea. I think it would have a better chance at working than other ideas that have been tried to get EVERYONE to ward. Seriously, I main top and jungle now instead of support like I used to, and I still find in half my games I'm the only person using a ward after the 5 minute mark. Like adormas suggested, you would have to buff the trinket items accordingly so yellow could always have 2 wards out, blue could always have 1 ward available, red clearing trinkets could work like control ward and activate upon being spotted by enemy ward and deactivate that ward (like control ward combo'd with old raptor buff). It could work and would be a great way to get some lazy people to consider actually using their trinkets after the 5 minute mark.

Dehitay11/26/2016, 6:22:02 PM1 votes

Riot isn't going to making warding with trinkets easier. They've been steadily making warding more and more difficult over the last few seasons. And even if they did, all this change does is give people an excuse not to build sightstone. Increasing trinket ward charges wouldn't really be that different from the system in place now.

IcyPepper11/26/2016, 6:39:39 PM1 votes

Now the team really has to decide how may sweepers they want versus how many warding trinkets. Supports will probably be forced into buying warding trinkets.

Supports and junglers would probably take the sweepers, while the ADC will take the scouting option (blue trinket currently) and the midlaner and top laner will likely take the warding trinket. Jungler can supplement this with tracker's knife for more wards, and supports can spend some gold on control wards throughout the entire game.

Ya know, strategy instead of "everyone gets trinkets, support gets sightstone, okay we're done thinking now."

I can certainly live with something like your OP :V

SSrikeShadow11/26/2016, 6:42:33 PM1 votes

How about we make it a 4v4 game and simply axe the support role altogether. That solution would solve a huge number of problems. Plus it would incidentally reduce lag.

Final Spark Lux11/26/2016, 6:48:25 PM1 votes

Sounds absolutely awful. I like having the ability to ward. Nevermind helping my team, it helps me. People already complain there's not enough wards on the map, and this would just make it worse. And you can forget about ever having vision on any objectives, since all your lanes have no charges and sightstone is no longer a thing.

bad arcade kitty11/27/2016, 11:40:39 PM1 votes

support role is actually pretty fine currently

they should give some small trinkets to encourage it more (icons or something) and people will eventually get used that they can be filled as a support from time to time

Tew Liter11/26/2016, 9:20:13 AM1 votes

You see I think kinda the opposite. I think they should make 2 or 3 items that build out of sight stone. Sort of like the support items but on a stronger scale.

bad arcade kitty11/27/2016, 11:42:20 PM1 votes

also as for the sight stone, surely you can go without it and put wards from your warding totem or w/e it's named but it means you can't counter ward, or you can pick a counter ward trinket and then you will have to buy wards with money because to ward is everybody's job and yours too

hence why sight stone is a very good item

Xilixer11/26/2016, 9:21:25 AM1 votes

the only big problem with this is the amount of vision. it was a problem back in season 5 i think? where majority of the map was just covered in wards.

Shuyin17811/26/2016, 2:38:34 PM1 votes

Personally I don't agree with this, mainly because Sightstone helps the team more than some people realize. By removing Sightstone that would also prevent supports from buying the red sweeper (which we use to clear out vision for advantages) that a number of others don't buy because honestly only the jungler would have any reason to get it. My Sightstones have saved even the most Crayola of crayon eaters in the past because of the vision I gave them.