Supports Upgrading Gold Income and Sightstone Items (In-Depth Guide)

Supports have 2 core items that generally are used to differentiate themselves from the other roles, and those items are your starting gold income item and your sightstone.

Supports have the option to combine their gold income item (2nd upgraded form) and Sightstone, to build into 1 item that posses both the the gold income's passive ability and the Sightstone's active ability. This provides the benefit of having one extra item slot for another item for future benefit and it is cheaper than fully upgrading the 2 items separately.

However, combining both those items would mean you would lose not only the stats of your final upgraded form of the gold income item (and ruby Sightstone too), but also your active ability that comes with it (for ruby sighstone, you lose the unique passive).

With all this in mind, is it better to upgrade your gold income item and Sightstone separately? Or is it better to upgrade them together and combine them?

Here are my personal opinions on whether I should upgrade them together or separately:

and vs

^Unless you plan to build , upgrading fully into a will provide a movespeed buff to you and any of your teammates in range, that can be used for engaging and disengaging a fight. The extra gold per minion death is also invaluable as a support, as it helps generate more gold for you to get your items quickly with relatively no risk.

and vs

^I always feel that upgrading fully into is better because the active is too useful in helping scout and area around you for enemies and can locate them. The slow effect is also a prominent reason why it is very good, the slow helps with catching up to fleeing targets or running away from chasing targets. Another important ability with the , is that it removes the downside of killing a minion, retaining the ability to earn gold when damaging the enemy with auto-attacks or spells.

and vs

^This comparison has always been the toughest for me to decide because on the one side, provides a shield based of 10% of your maximum hp for 4 seconds, which then detonates and slows the enemy by 40% for 2 seconds. This also provides 10% cdr, an important stat that the combined version does not provide. However, on the other side, provides 50 extra health than and the gold generation is the same for both items, but because is cheaper and creates an extra item slot to use (by combining its 2nd upgrade form with Sightstone), this actually allows you to buy another item that can provide you more efficient stats with extra effects as well.

So personal opinion, unless I am a heavy hp tank champion, I get > for the extra item slot, and to provide an extra slot for another beneficial item.

This has been my understanding and ideals with Supports and the option to either upgrade separately or together their gold income and Sightstone. This took a long time for me to think about and type out, so If you like what you see on here and if it has helped you in anyway, please upvote this so many others will come and learn as well! Feel free to comment below and I will answer any questions and reply back when I can!

Thank You all Again for taking the time to read all of this!